ON SAINT DUNSTAN,
FROM ABBOT OF GLASTONBURY, BISHOP OF WORCESTER AND LONDON, THEN ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.
IN THE YEAR DCCCCLXXXVIII.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
On the fivefold Life, whence the first and third is given: and on the translation and festive cult.
Dunstan, from Abbot of Glastonbury Bishop of Worcester and London, then Archbishop of Canterbury in England (S.)
BY G. H.
He flourished in the tenth century of Christ S. Dunstan, deservedly held among the most celebrated and most renowned Saints of England: whose signal piety, prudence, and other excellent endowments of mind and illustrious deeds all proclaim who have touched the history of the English Church of that century: among whom Cardinal Baronius at the year 988 number 3 treating of his death, asserts him to be he whom the excellent sanctity of life, the unmoved priestly constancy, the brightness of miracles, and all the charisms of the Holy Spirit illustrated. Several and those illustrious writers wrote his Acts, The first Life by B. a Priest an eye-witness. which with untiring labor we have endeavored to obtain. Of these the most ancient are those which a certain Saxon Priest among the English, who signed his name only with the letter B., inscribed to Alfric Archbishop of Canterbury, promoted to that See in the eighth year after the death of S. Dunstan, and then in the year MVI deceased. He in the Prologue asserts that he writes what he had learned of him either by seeing or hearing, or also from his alumni, whom from the tender age of youth even to perfect men, fittingly instructed with the pastures of doctrines, he himself by educating led. And at number 39, about to treat of his death, I think, he says, it equitable that those things which I myself either saw or heard, urged by a just admonition of God, according to the power of charity I should unravel. But, which is to be lamented, when it came to the exhortation made three days before his death on the feast of the Ascension, it is given from a manuscript. the rest were lacking in the most ancient manuscript codex, which we, returning from Rome in the year MDCLXII, found and transcribed in the most celebrated monastery of S. Vedastus at Arras. Perhaps some will be stirred up, to indicate the same Acts found elsewhere, and to send to us what here is lacking, afterward to be published in a Supplement.
[2] another Life by Adalardus of Blandinium is omitted. To the said Archbishop Alfric succeeded S. Elphegus, afterward in the year MXII crowned with martyrdom by the Danes: by whose command Adalardus a monk of Blandinium, as he prefaces, wrote the Life of S. Dunstan, distinguished into twelve lections to be recited at Matins; where he adds, that the Responsories correspond to his Lections, and the Lections to his Responsories. This Life, but without the Responsories, on the same journey turning aside to the ancient Norman monasteries we found in the celebrated monastery of Bec above Rouen. And this indeed is so a compendium of the former, that it even adduces some things there passed over. Yet not for that reason did it seem to be published: because whatever could be had hence is had more fully from Osbern, who flourished in the same XI century, and from his adolescence in the Church of Canterbury near the sacred Relics of S. Dunstan was educated, the third Life by Osbern, and afterward Precentor of the same Church and familiar to B. Lanfranc Archbishop of Canterbury, and a partaker of his counsels. For he, on the testimony of William of Malmesbury, in book 1 on the Deeds of the Pontiffs of the English, where he treats of S. Dunstan, in Roman eloquence wrote the Life of S. Dunstan, hitherto unedited; it is given from manuscripts. which we give from a double manuscript codex, one ours, which lest it perish we ourselves redeemed, the other transmitted to us from the monastery of S. Mary of Bonnefont, but we found the same also in the Bodecan manuscripts in Westphalia. Osbern moreover had when he wrote, the two aforesaid Lives, of which the one he says, indeed elegantly enough, yet not diligently enough written but as much as sufficed for the nocturnal Office; in the other elegance is wanting, while the author too diligently, in what manner each thing was done, attempts to explain, with a propped-up style. He had also certain things translated into the English speech, from the third Life, festive likewise and well ordered, which (alas) with several other writings was consumed in the fire of the church of Canterbury. Osbern adjoins another book, on the Miracles wrought after the death of S. Dunstan: of which very many he asserts to have been wrought before himself, and in B. Lanfranc, and in his own very person.
[3] Another in the twelfth century lived in England a writer of various Lives of Saints, born in the County of Suffolk, Other Lives afterward in Westminster among the Londoners a monk, Osbert by name, and on account of the nearness of his name to Osbern not sufficiently distinguished by some authors. Under his name is held a Life of S. Dunstan in a certain notable manuscript Legendary of ours containing the Acts of the Saints of May and June, in Surius and is extant printed in Laurentius Surius, and has most things contracted from the Acts written by Osbern, with some things here and there adjoined, which we note at other Acts. The rest we omit,
since they can be seen in the said Surius. There is extant also a Life in Capgrave in the New Legend of England once published, and Capgrave, but taken from the already related Acts. Only toward the end is added this title: But of the Translation of the body of S. Dunstan from Canterbury to Glastonbury, as I found written in the monastery of Glastonbury, here inserting it, I have entirely left the various opinions to be discussed by the more skilled. But that relation does not agree with those things which Osbern writes in book 2 number 16 of the body translated by B. Lanfranc, Osbern himself being then present. Yet because in volume I of the Monasticon Anglicanum page 3 are referred the Saints resting in the Church of Glastonbury, where on the translation of the body. and then at page 4 these things are added: There too rests S. Dunstan, Archbishop and magnificent Father of the Glastonbury men; we judge that translation to have been made after the times of the writers Osbern and Osbert, and wrongly attributed to the year one thousand and twelve, in which reigned Ethelred, not his son Edmund, surnamed Ironside or iron side: who in the year MXVI, in which his father on the ninth of the Kalends of May died, contended for the kingdom with Canute, and the same year about the feast of S. Andrew died. Meanwhile in Capgrave, in the year MXII, the said Edmund reigning, the translation is said to have been made. This Edmund, not yet King, could have been at Glastonbury, and by his counsel some translation of the bones of S. Dunstan could have been made, which was commonly believed the translation of the body of S. Dunstan: through whose intercessions and merits, as Capgrave adds, God there does not cease to work great things, restoring life to the dead, health to the sick more frequently, succoring also very many brutes in dangers. In the history of the Cathedral church of S. Paul of London, published by William Dugdale, page 234 these things are read: Item one silver vessel gilded, made in the manner of a tun, containing the Relics of SS. Oswald, Alban, and Dunstan: which would that they survive, and sometime receive the veneration due to them, together with the remaining parts of the holy body, wherever now preserved.
[4] Edmund being dead, King Canute held England under his dominion, and made Ecclesiastical laws, which Spelman published in the Saxon idiom with a double Latin version, the one of Lambard appended to the Saxon, the other from an old version separately published. The feast of S. Dunstan confirmed under King Canute. In the former at chapter 24 these things are read: Indeed truly the annual feasts of the holy Edward and Dunstan the Wise men religiously instituted to be observed by the English on the fifteenth of the Kalends of April and the fourteenth of the Kalends of June. In the latter version these things are read. The glorious day of the passion of the holy King Edward we will to be celebrated through all England on the XV of the Kalends of April, and of S. Dunstan on the XIV of the Kalends of June, and let there be in the holy observances, as truly is just, peace and concord to all Christians, and let all anger be taken away &c. But rightly in the former version the Wise men are said to have instituted those feasts before the times of Canute. For by the command of S. Elphegus Archbishop of Canterbury, slain in the year MXII, the above-related Adalardus a monk of Blandinium had distributed the Life of S. Dunstan into twelve Lections and Responsories, that they might be recited in the Ecclesiastical Office: and then the following English writers, when they treated of Dunstan, called him a Saint, and related longer encomiums from the Acts: Cult in the Breviaries, among whom are eminent William of Malmesbury in book 1 on the Deeds of the Pontiffs of the English, and Gervase a monk of Canterbury in the Lives of the Pontiffs of Canterbury.
[5] We have Breviaries according to the use of the Church of Sarum or Salisbury printed in the years 1449 and 1557: in which on this XIX of May is prescribed a solemn Office of nine lections, indicated with red characters in the Kalendar: and the six former Lections briefly contain some compendium of the life, but the Responsories are taken from the Common of a Confessor Pontiff, and this Oration is prescribed. O God, who didst translate Blessed Dunstan, thy Pontiff, to the heavenly kingdoms, grant us through his glorious merits to pass over to perennial joys. Through the Lord &c. We have some ancient Martyrology on parchment, written in England in the XI century: in which toward the end of this XIX day these things are read: and in the Martyrologies. On the same day the passing of B. Dunstan, Archbishop and Confessor. His memory too is celebrated in the Utrecht manuscript of the Cathedral Church of S. Mary, to which is subjoined a Paschal table from the year MCXXXIX, so that about that time it seems to have been written. The later Martyrologists commonly followed, as are the Author of the manuscript Florarium, the Author of the Martyrology of Cologne and Lübeck printed in the year 1496, likewise Greven and Molanus in the Auctarium of Usuard, Galesinius, Canisius, and others with the Roman and Anglican Martyrology, likewise the Monastic of Wion and others. And Wion indeed asserts that he migrated in the year of the Lord MI, and cites Trithemius: but he rightly in book 3 chapter 221 and book 4 chapter 100 writes that he died in the year DCCCCLXXXVIII, as the rest of the writers: among whom is Vincent of Beauvais, cited by him; who treats of S. Dunstan in book 24 from chapter 72 to 81, in which he asserts that his soul went forth from the dwelling of his most holy body in the year twelve less than a thousand, as in Osbern, from whom Vincent had taken his things, it was read: but that is the year nine hundred and eighty-eight. A long elogium of him Peter de Natalibus composed in book 8 chapter 49, and referred his death to the day VII of September. Peter was followed after their manner by Richard Whitford, in his Martyrology in English printed at London in the year 1526, Maurolycus, Felicius, and Ferrarius in the general Catalogue. But in the Anglican Martyrology of Wilson the day of the Translation is called, but from his own conjecture. I subjoin to these, what Eadmer a monk of Canterbury, in the History of New Things in England, has, while he thus begins the first book.
[6] The most glorious King Edgar reigning in England, and strenuously governing the whole kingdom with holy laws, Dunstan the Prelate of the Canterbury men, The encomium of Eadmer. a man wholly made of virtues, by the moderation of the Christian law disposed all Britain. By his grave operation and counsel that same King was both devoted to God, and by invincible virtue subdued, overcame, suppressed the assaults of the barbarians rushing in from everywhere. And so England obtained peace and happy days everywhere, while it deserved to enjoy the bodily presence of that King and of Father Dunstan. Which King, when he felt the last day of his life would be near, left the reins of the kingdom to Edward his son. The glorious successor therefore of the glorious Father, glorious Edward, instructed by Saint Dunstan, ruled the kingdom most strenuously while he lived. But a few years of his crown being elapsed, slain by the impious fraud of his stepmother, he obtained as heir his brother, Ethelred by name, the son of that same evil woman, of the kingdom indeed, but of no probity. To whom, because through the blood of his brother he aspired to the kingdom, the aforesaid Prelate threatened with a grave invective; that he namely would live in blood, that he would suffer the incursion of barbarians with atrocious oppression, that the kingdom itself too would be worn down by innumerable and bloody devastations, he declared. Which prophecy of the man of God how true it was; both in the chronicles, those who wish to read, and in our tribulations, those who know to attend, can most easily see; not to say in those things, which the series of this work through places, truth dictating, will demonstrate.
[7] Blessed Dunstan therefore being translated to heaven; immediately, as he himself had foretold, England lay open to the irruption of the barbarians. For the indolence of the King became known round about, and therefore the cupidity of foreigners, affecting the riches of the English more than their deaths, here and there, by sea and land to invade, and first the villages and cities near the sea, then the more remote, and at last the whole province with miserable depopulation to devastate. Whom when he, struck with too much fear, did not blush to meet not with arms, but with money given to seek peace from them; they, the price received, returned into their own, that, the number of their own being increased, they might return more ferocious, and receive the multiplied rewards of a repeated irruption: whence now ten thousand, now sixteen thousand, now twenty-four thousand, now thirty thousand pounds of silver they obtained; the aforesaid King Ethelred bestowing all on them, and oppressing the whole kingdom with grave exaction. Amid these evils the fourth from blessed Dunstan, Alphege, Bishop of Winchester, undertook the Church of Canterbury to be ruled; a strenuous man, and from his infancy adorned with the sacred life and habit of religion. He therefore, considering the innumerable evils by which the whole kingdom was immensely devastated, shuddered; and by what ways he could began to give effort, how the savagery of the nefarious men might be opposed. Which they perceiving, and lest they should be deprived of their wonted gains, providing for themselves and theirs, were animated against him with bitter hatred. Whence the city of Canterbury being devastated and burned, and its citizens lamentably condemned by them by chance, the fire too consumed the Church of the Saviour standing in it. The Father himself meanwhile bound by the hands of the raging is led away, almost all the monks being first slaughtered before him, who under his rule in that Church served the Lord Christ. Then Alphege, cast into a little boat, is carried to Greenwich, and consigned to cruel custody for seven months (while, conquered by no threats, he refused to give hand to the iniquity of the malignant) by a most savage death, stoned by them, he fell. These few things I have commemorated, not weaving a history, but laying open to the understanding of those wishing to know how by a truthful prophecy Father Dunstan foretold the evils to come to England. Nor here was the end of evils. For after these were done other huge evils too through England, and for several years they were always increased to themselves for the worse. Among which, the monasteries too of the servants and handmaids of God, which up to forty-eight in number, in the time of King Edgar through Father Dunstan, with the holy ones cooperating, namely Oswald of York and Athelwold the Bishop of Winchester, had newly risen, and in great part destroyed, and the religion of the Monastic order almost reduced to nothing.
LIFE
By B. a contemporary Presbyter, and an eye-witness.
From the Vedastine Manuscript at Arras.
BHL Number: 2342
BY B. A CONTEMPORARY FROM A MANUSCRIPT.
PROLOGUE.
[1] To the most prudent Lord the Archon Alfric, the lowest of all Priests, B. and the worthless native of the Saxons, the lofty joys of the poles.
Thee indeed, most lofty Pastor, on account of the enormity of thy divulged skill, and on account of the magnificent and placid dignity of thy privilege, for an insuperable protection of me before all others, although they be perspicuous in doctrine, I would set apart to be excepted: I who with a certain luculent pen of fitting eloquence attempted to draw out the worthy monuments of the merits of the becoming Sacristan, namely the kindly Dunstan, did I not, the begun proclamations of his glorious life and the whole definition of this little work, with the degenerate style of vices, Acknowledging the rusticity of his style, as thou seest, by staining defile. Wherefore first before others I profess this kind of disgrace with open protestation to thy Serenity, and so after the manner of the winged ones, who, before they emit the voice of their setting-forth, seem to scourge themselves with the plaudits of their wings, with the proper lashes of words, prostrate at thy knees, unburdening I afflict myself. So far, I say,
that whatever in this edition against the norm of orthography thou shalt have found usurped by the fault of the composer, with imperial power to scrape away, and with the weeping little quill of flowing ink, reformed for the better from error, to amend, thou wouldst command. Nay also the sagacious of either order in either sex, passing through this too the thin crop of letters of our little book with their feet, with the whole gaze of the heart, and rather with thy suffrage, likewise I admonish to do: he offers it to others to be polished, cunningly however, lest incautiously treading the seed-plots of the rare germination they press them down; nor meanwhile, while in the depressed corn they strive to extirpate utterly the perishing pot-herbs, rather the just plantings, intercepted by the hoe cutting alike with the evil ones, by eradicating they cut off: but the execrable tares of this surface, with a certain light effort, here and there through the spaces of places negligently sprinkled, may they explode from the bottom. If for me affecting these entreaties … I perceive they are to be conceded, sufficiently gracious benefits I declare to be repaid: but if refuted by the envious renunciations of rivals they are scorned, it is utterly unknown what better I should begin, than that with my own little sickle, although it be rough, by mutilation thinly overdrawn, I should proceed to atone according to the power of my strength for the proper harvest of sweated labor: but he desires to be dealt with indulgently, if however by a certain pointing little finger of the corrector there be indicated, in what part of the places the corruptible reproaches of the field provoked I fall into. Therefore since by reason of unskillfulness it will not be able to be done what I wish, I am at last compelled to wish what I can. This indeed, that to the desired mention of the aforementioned f Theologian (which with a graceful eulogy of facility, or, if I could, summarily searched out, the little chapters and the whole lofty series of this texture, with a golden scheme and the twofold color of shining amber to discourse jewel-wise, I longed) now at least with satiric fatuity and slipping step as one less wise vacillating I may proceed. Better however the comeliness of so great a life to fit composers (did I not greatly fear the impending anger of the Blessed Prelate) to be written I reserve: because not professing the highest, more excellent in any situation of this cosmos; but to all persons, lacking divine doctrine, more despicable. For of the prudent none, instructed with liberal genius, almost dost thou thoroughly know; who with so deformed eloquence in writing prologues, as I, seems to abuse. These following little pages nevertheless, with the small tinder of capacity composed in whatever manner, by the most faithful attestation of the faithful purged, about to write nothing but what is certainly ascertained. if thou shouldst distrust that I have inserted in them any signs figured by my own temerity, except perhaps what either by seeing or hearing, though with torpid understanding, I had learned of him; or also from his alumni, whom from the tender age of youth even to perfect men, fittingly instructed with the pastures of doctrines, he himself by educating led. Receive, I beseech, fenced only by the connection of charity, the thin heap of these little tittles, scarcely concreted with ebony titling and a darkening style, against all envious rivals with invincible defense to be protected, not given to favoring rumor, but conferred specially to thy sublimity. In this literal plain indeed, the mind rather spontaneous of the aspirant, than the rustic sloth of the composer, I demand to be explored: and thee, without the molestation of thy offense, I admonish, to be informed by the virtues of so great a Father, to be instructed by his examples, to be fortified by his morals, to be justified by his disciplines: that of him whose successor thou hast been on earth, thou mayest deserve to be a perennial confessor in heaven, the Lord our Jesus Christ bestowing it, who with the coeternal Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns God, through all ages of ages. Amen.
ANNOTATA.
The style obscure by a certain affected unusualness of phrases, in the Prologue, seems to have tortured the copyists and precipitated them into various errors; which lest they too much torture the reader, some of them I will attempt to amend by conjecture, the original reading of the Arras manuscript here referred, if anyone perhaps from it may be able to hammer out something more fitting: but where the matter could be handled by the sole transposition of one or another little word, I have not believed it worth the labor to warn the reader of the change made.
b Præmia rewards.
d Potitus.
g Summorum rimatum.
k Purgabo.
m Explorare.
CHAPTER I. Birth, education, studies, stay in the King's court, and thence expulsion.
[2] When the courses of many times had passed void of the true worship of the Christian religion, After S. Augustine was sent to the conversion of the English, in which the nation of the Angles decreed to be consigned to the old error by the rite of Gentility, rather than to Christ the Creator of all; the merciful Lord, lest His creature, ensnared by diabolical snares, should perish eternally damned; provided the remedy of eternal salvation for that same blindness, and, having compassion, destined the venerable Father a Augustine, elected by the blessed Pope Gregory, to these parts of the fatherland: who with the sagacious genius of his mind thence might associate the converted multitude of the faithful, as heir to the blessed company of the Angels. Soon therefore as the man of God among the briers of the unknowing nation fixed the furrow of most celebrated doctrine and the plowshare of God's visitation, and inserted the wheaten seed of the holy Trinity; so he extirpated the viperous germ of perishing tares from it, that further he prohibited the rubbish of the briary field to sprout in it, and demonstrated that worthy fruits of penance ought to be offered to God by document alike and example. And so, the whole people of the Albions, who before had spurned Him, believed in the Lord, and was joined through the recognition of true faith to his God. He moreover, without whose solicitude the small sparrows do not fall, and the Christian religion established, then applied care of the best provision for the state of His own condition. For He chose nurses for the children henceforth coming to Him, Kings, Pontiffs, Dukes, Deans, Provosts, and the other Rectors of His Church; who after the spaces of each measured might rule with justice the flock reborn to God under the custody of peace.
[3] Among these chief men of royal prelation, whom many most Christian and orthodox had preceded in reigning, whose names now difficulty does not allow to be searched through each, the glorious b King Æthelstan in succeeding years was numbered King of the English. c In the times therefore of his empire there arises a strenuous boy in the borders of the West Saxons: whose father d Heorstan, but his mother is called Cynedrydis. S. Dunstan born, Whom the pious parents, reborn by the waves of holy baptism, had called Dunstan. So the boy grew, and was made dear both to God and to men. There was moreover a certain royal island in the confines of the same aforesaid man, called by the old name of the neighbors Glastonia, measured by wide bounds of places, surrounded with fishy waters and marshy rivers, and apt for very many uses of human need, and the boy led to Glastonbury, and (which is the greatest) dedicated to the sacred gifts of God. For in those very places the first neophytes of the catholic Law, God dictating, found an ancient Church, constructed by no art of men, nay prepared from heaven for human salvation: which afterward the Fabricator of the heavens Himself, by many wrought miracles and many virtues of mysteries, demonstrated to be consecrated to Himself and to His holy Genetrix Mary. To this they added also another, a stone oratory in workmanship, which they dedicated to Christ and His Apostle S. Peter. Then thenceforth the frequency of all the faithful round about cherished it, he learns in a vision the buildings afterward to be made there. and humbly frequented the precious place of the already said island. It happened therefore for causes of this kind that the aforesaid man Heorstan, the blessed boy Dunstan accompanying him, passed over to Glastonbury; and when they passed the night there for the sake of prayer, behold a happy repose of most sweet sleep covered the boy: and he saw in an excess of mind a certain old man, clad in snowy whiteness, leading him through the pleasant courts of the sacred temple, and demonstrating the monastic buildings, which afterward through his Pastorate were to be built, in that order in which now they are referred to have been established.
[4] But afterward the parents of the religious boy Dunstan brought him studying to the sacred leisures of letters: Amid studies, to whom forthwith the Lord deigned to confer so great a grace of His liberality in these, that he excelled all his coevals, and with easy course leaped over the times of his studies: But what sign the highest Majesty had conferred on him, In those very studies with small power I shall lay open. It happened that he labored long with strict fevers, So far that he suffered the bitter disease of frenzy, And unmindful of himself through the deliriums of trifles, Had cast forth very many words from an empty mouth. Wearied with these calamities he is committed also to a woman fallen into frenzy and sick unto death, A certain one, who then would minister to the tender alumnus, And bear care under her lest by that plague he should perish. But the remembered pestilence pressed the boy upon the heights, So that as if lifeless he lay laid down at the last, And in all his members became as if now about to die. And when long he was thus weighed down by the mass of the hidden evil; Behold suddenly moving he departed, and quickly rises again, He snatched a cudgel and a little branch then by chance found; With which striking the airs on both sides, he ascends by night to the summit of the temple: As if he defended himself from rabid dogs, he went. So too by night they relate that even to the precinct of the temple He alone-wandering hastened, and thence came to the high Ascents of steps, by which the workmen of the works Were wont to climb the summits, who with great peril Of itself, alas the timid! had covered the peaks of the temple. There, as if strong, he ascended into the highest height, And too incautiously stood upon this and walked. But the piety of the Lord snatched the innocent from the falls Of the summits; placing him too thence below then he is found placed in it, Unharmed in his members, safe, and sound, set Within this same temple, conveyed from the top; Where two keepers alike according to custom lay, That at the same time among them that third one might repose. He himself however knew not, by what reason he came, Nor could anyone living under the heaven excogitate the manner. and restored to the temple with the doors closed. For the doors of the temple lay open to none entering, But the same the hard iron under the bark barred. Now best reader, with swift speech declare, What seems to thee truthful in this little boy: If thou doubtest such a one to ascend the temple above; Who here with the doors closed for the salvation of ruin Is hidden in the temple, that he might redeem from the malign fall Afterward very many and send to heaven companies, Distributing doctrines, and also leaving examples. Let the patient humble one rise up, and let the proud fall. For by how much he was loftier in growing, by so much richer in the genius of acuteness: and by how much riper in the little wheels of years, by so much more fervent in the love of God; but by how much more accustomed in the divine praises, by so much more instant with persevering mind.
[5] Seeing therefore the aforenamed parents so great an excellence of their son, they imposed on him the worthy h censure of the Clerical office, and in the famous Glastonbury
monastery of the church they associated him to the community; that there day and night he might serve God and the Genetrix of God Mary, in continuous time. And now bound by deific disciplines, the flourishing years of his puberty, youth being conquered, he trod under: and just in the house of his God, like a cedar of Lebanon, he flourished with the vigors of virtues: and planted in the divine courts, he extended the strength of his increase day by day to the stars. He pleases the King on account of his virtue and doctrine: Meanwhile so great a fame of his constancy lay open in the King's palace, that far and wide it was divulged with magnificent indications of laudable things. But he did not catch the vain favors of this world, but, prevented by the abundance of virtues, bore within that glory of the eternal King; which mighty wisdom dictated to him, with the learned finger of spiritual gifts, also with the variety of studies, and with the gemming splendor of golden ornaments. For he flew through many meadows of sacred and divine volumes, like an ingenious bee, with so rapid a course of his capacious genius, that he refreshed his mind rather than his body with the divine readings; and the receptacle of his chaste little breast, perfused with the breath of the Holy Spirit, with a nectarous taste devoutly supplied his sense. Then the pilgrims of the Hibernians cherished the place which I have said, Glastonbury, as also the other crowds of the faithful, with great affection, and most of all on account of the honor of i B. Patrick the younger, who is narrated to have happily rested there in the Lord. Their books too, philosophizing the path of right faith, he diligently cultivated; and those of other prudent men, whom from the inmost gaze of the heart he perceived to be solidated by the assertion of the holy Fathers, he always investigated with soluble scrutiny. So indeed he restrained the zeal of his life, that as often as he scrutinized the books of divine Scripture, God spoke with him alike: but as often as, freed from secular cares, he was soothed by the leisures of prayers; he himself seemed to speak with the Lord alike.
[6] he is accused by rivals, Therefore while these exercises of good works were carried on with him, some of his own comrades and of the Palatines, but then most of all of his kinsmen, who envied his salutary acts, attempted with the sharp tongues of serpents and the bites of dire teeth, like a bristly he-goat, to gnaw or cut off the vine and branch of the holy vineyard, tending to the heavenly kingdoms, namely the Blessed Dunstan mighty in Christ. as if he studied gentility: For they blew together under the livid cave of their spotted breast an unexpected scab of lying against him, saying; that he had learned from the salutary books and skilled men, not things to profit the salvation of souls, but the most vain songs of ancestral gentility, and cherished the frivolous dirges of the incantations of histories. But to this disease of lying the blessed novice always opposed Christ, who knows all things before they are made: in whose person the benign Prophet David, and His most faithful witness, prevented by the oracle of the Holy Spirit, against the false authors of the Lord's Passion, thus speaking says: Unjust witnesses have risen up against me, and iniquity has lied to itself. And again: They who sought evils for me, spoke vanities, and meditated deceits all the day. Ps. 26:12 and 70:13 And the Lord Himself in the Gospel says: Blessed shall you be when men shall hate you, &c. And to His hearers: If you had been of the world, the world would love what was its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Luke 6:22, John 15:19 And likewise: Blessed are you when men shall curse you, and shall persecute you, and shall say all evil against you, lying, for my sake. Matt. 5:11 Rejoice in that day and exult, for your reward is copious in heaven. By this most firm promise therefore the servant of God Dunstan, being comforted, was made as a deaf man and as one not caring for the voice of objurgation: since scarcely ever, the dogs barking against him, did he open his mouth through the eloquence of bitter rebuke. But they persevering in the machination of malice, driven from the court, accused him with a certain false objection before the King, and obtained that he should be driven from their company: whom, if they were of sound mind, they would have singularly loved. Then, the most atrocious rage of impiety prevailing, he is cast into a fetid marsh. seizing the innocent one with his members spread four ways, like a patient sheep, and bound by hands and feet, they cast him into the muddy places of the marshes: and that they might make him more contemptible in the dementia of their fury, they pressed upon him with their feet: until according to the malice of their will, they dishonored him in the fetid wallow. But they withdrawing, scarcely did he himself rise from the marsh of the river as if pitch-smeared: and he disposed to come to a certain one of his friends, distant one mile thence, that there he might wash himself. But the most fierce dogs of the same met him: and because they thought him, defiled with mud, more a monster than a man; with cruel barking they invaded him: yet as soon as they heard the voice of one coaxing, soon, by that alone keeping silent, they recognized him to be theirs. Then he, groaning with a sigh from the depth of his heart, said: O cruel madness of my kinsmen, changed into canine savagery from the humanity of love! For the irrational nature of dogs exhibited to me the love of humanity with a coaxing tail: but kinship, forgetful of humanity, sowed for me the severity of dogs infesting me: so the wicked order of both changed in each the just way.
ANNOTATA.
h Ms. Clericatus.
CHAPTER II. The monkhood of S. Dunstan. The deeds and pious death of Æthelfled the widow. An Antiphon brought forth from a harp.
[7] That ancient enemy of the human race therefore understood that the remembered youth, Nothing moved by the counsel of S. Elphegus, through the sinister messengers of the envious comrades whom he had sent, had little yielded to his depraved wishes, with which lying in wait for him he began to fight with arms; but how great wrestlings of temptations he heaped upon him, the following page of this little book will partly intimate. For first he cast upon him the love of women, by which through the familiar embraces of women he might enjoy worldly delights. Meanwhile his kinsman a Elphegus, surnamed the Bald, a faithful Prelate too, with many petitions and spiritual admonitions asked him that he should become a monk. Which he, renouncing by the instinct of the aforesaid deceiver, preferred to espouse a young girl, by whose blandishments he might daily be cherished; rather than after the manner of monks to be clad in two-toothed rags. But when the man of God heard the words of one refusing, he is moved by a disease to become a monk, soon with a sigh from the depth of his breast he sought Him who rules the supernal kingdoms, that He might bring upon him the judgments of His corrections, that he might sharply recognize Him whose admonitions he scorned: which, God mercifully favoring, is proved to have been done in the space of a small moment. For in that manner the intolerable pain of urging blisters overspread his whole body, so that he thought he suffered the elephantine disease, and had no hope at all of his own life. Then hastily, seized with great anguish, he sent: and called to him the Pontiff, before by him spurned, with humble prayer, and announced that he wished to obey his salutary admonitions: but he coming to visit, consecrated to God the consoled and amended monk.
[8] and clings to him: The pious and merciful Lord therefore, having compassion, thus drew back His servant Dunstan from the love of women: who (as the histories hand down) recalled John the Apostle and Evangelist, specially beloved by Him, from the bridal chambers of nuptials. With this correction of God therefore, and the salutary instruction of the blessed Prelate Elphegus, being made of sounder understanding, sometimes afterward he clung with sedulous continuation to the kindliness of the same Pontiff, for the grace of most salutary doctrine and the cause of kinship. b Meanwhile the religious citizens of Winchester invited the same Pontiff of God to a certain dedication of a new church, returning with him from a dedicated church which in their city of Winchester, where he himself held the rule of the Prelacy, for the reverence of the highest Deity they had founded, in the southern part of the popular street: which church is now said to be in the western part nearer to all churches. At its consecration there was present among many others with the Pontiff also Dunstan, one with the chief men. Which being dedicated they constrained after the manner of humanity the venerable man with his own to the prepared banquets of charity, leading a joyful day for the veneration of so great a man and for the celebrity of the consecration. But the Pontiff after the giving of thanks with his own, night now impending, arose, and a blessing being given to the banqueters both men and women, blessing God, returned to his own; and they came walking along the way to the church consecrated to B. Pope Gregory; he is freed from a capital peril. and there halting the Bishop said to B. Dunstan: Let us complete here at the oratory of our holy Father Gregory our hour of Compline. And they approached, after the voices of prayers, joining their heads in one; that they might in the wonted custom disclose their confessions in turn. Which being performed, while remission of sins was given by the Bishop, a very great stone rushed from the high air: and the Lord sparing, between both heads with a vehement fall it fell to the earth; and only touching the hairs of each head, hurt neither of them; which, if I do not err, that malignant enemy of every just work, raging, cast down from the darts of his wickedness, as if he would avenge a twofold anger in both.
[9] But it happened in the same times that a certain Deacon of the Church of Glastonbury, named Wulfred, underwent temporal death: Forewarned of things to come by one appearing who, in the time while he lived, was both prelate to B. Dunstan and a familiar lover. He therefore not very long after his departure appeared to him rejoicing, defining many things unknown of the heavenly, and moreover the whole series of his life, and of his future age, and the fates of good or evil events. But the blessed man, having heard so great lights of mysteries, and such inevitable chances of his life, said, placed in an excess of mind: If the things which by certain relation you affirm are true and to be believed, whence shall I know? By what signs of open demonstration
will those things be made clear to me? But he led him into the court of the temple, where the buried bodies of the deceased rest: and with his finger demonstrated in the southern part of the church an undisturbed place, and said: That these things, which I have related to you, are true; know evidently, he is made more certain by the death of another, that in this place before three days a certain Presbyter shall be buried, and is not yet sick: but his little body from the Western part of the present temple shall be carried to be entombed. At this voice of the vision the Blessed Dunstan being awakened, and after the first hour of the day mindful of the wonderful revelation, with certain ones came to the place of the cemetery spiritually pre-noted to him; and taking one castable stone, cast it into it, and added this: If the things which I saw in sleep are true, a certain Presbyter ought here before three days to be buried. as had been said, by one buried within three days. Then they withdrawing there came the Master and Priest of a certain Æthelfled, a most noble and most religious matron, with another company of comrades, and obtained for himself among some utterances of speech that same place for burial, saying: When I shall be dead, here I pray bury me. For he himself by the testimony of many was still sound in body: but when after a little they had departed thence, he was burdened with a grave disease bordering on death: then on the coming night he commended his last breath to Christ the Lord, and before three days in that very place of his choice, which had been first assigned to B. Dunstan, was buried.
Then the servant of the Lord, happy through the ages, perceived, That from such signs all things had been future, Which the already said Wulfred bore to him in speech: And by these visions humble and wise the blessed one, Happy and strong, cautious, and chaste shone forth, Before God or before men through the times of his life.
[10] Æthelfled the widow honored by S. Dunstan. Now the begun discourse, by little deferring, I interrupt, until certain brief words, which I do not deem to be omitted, I shall bring forth in small speech. For there was a certain most wealthy Matron, sprung of royal progeny, but bound with the strict knots of divine religion, whose name with a brief touch of mention we lately reached. She after the loss of her husband, desiring to lead a widow's life according to the quality of her strength, established for herself little cottages of dwelling in the affinity of the sacred temple toward the Western quarter, that for the desire of the heavenly kingdom there she might not cease day and night to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. To her always the Blessed Dunstan clung, who loved her before the rest in wonderful ways: and her need, for the cause of religion and likewise of kinship, he sedulously relieved. But it is not of our possibility to narrate through the single eloquences of words, of what or how great a kind she prepared herself in the divine services. The Lord however, the inspector of all secrets, both in the last times of her goal, and also while she dwelt in this world, declared of what merit she was. She therefore loved all the Royal seed, from which she herself drew the origin of nobility, with the inmost ardor of charity: and therefore for the grace of sweetness she often ministered of her own things to the Kings. From this pious custom therefore to the glorious King Æthelstan she prepared a dinner as she could, ready to hand, she receives King Æthelstan with a banquet because she foreknew that he had come to Glastonbury for the cause of prayers. But the foreseers of the Royal ministration, knowing that the King had given to his niece a promise of turning aside to her, came the preceding day to see if all the offices of the preparations were fit or apt. And all things being beheld they said to her: You have the sufficiency of all ministration, if the liquor of mead be not lacking to you. But she, Let not my Lady, the holy Mother of my Lord Jesus Christ Mary, suffer that anything be lacking to me in the Royal dignity. And saying these things, she entered as quickly as possible the ancient church of the Genetrix of God Mary, and the mead being divinely multiplied, and there about to pray prostrated herself, long demanding that the most opulent supplement of the supernal King be present to her, for augmenting the King's ministration. What then? The King came, attended by a great retinue, at the predefined time; and after the celebrations of prayers and Masses, joyful entered to the invited dinner. And then indeed at the first draught they exhausted that vessel of mead, to the measure of one little palm: and so afterward, God augmenting and the blessed Matron meriting, it remained diminishing nothing, the cupbearers, as is wont in royal banquets, with split horns and other vessels of indiscreet quantity the whole day giving to drink. Which wonderful deed when the King himself had heard by the relation of the ministers, he said, changed in mind, to his own: We have sinned, too greatly burdening this handmaid of God by the superfluity of our multitude. And rising, his niece being saluted, he goes his way.
[11] S. Dunstan undertakes the care of her sick, But this handmaid of God, the course of the blessed contest being transacted, the end now approaching, began by human right grievously to fall sick: to whom B. Dunstan skillfully exhibited the cause of providing, and singularly guarded her as his own mother. It happened therefore, these cares hindering, that he was absent at the Vesper hours, and was not with the chanting troops in the wonted manner: yet in the twilight of the finished day, with the scholastics following him, he went to the now barred church, that he might complete the delayed Office. And while he stood outside before the door of the church for the sake of chanting, he saw far off from the climes of the Eastern sky a snowy dove bursting forth, shining with wonderful beauty and a new appearance. But the extremities of its wings were like sparkling fire, from which lightning-flights with striking feathers were poured scatteredly through the air: which with swift passage flew together to the courts of the blessed Matron. But the Blessed Dunstan, and finds her speaking with the Holy Spirit seen by himself on the way; not unmindful of his sick friend, immediately, the psalmodies being completed, returned; and coming heard her within the enclosures of her veils, with familiar speeches, as with a certain familiar friend, conversing by turns of words. He approached therefore humanely to the sitting little handmaids, the observers of their Lady: and wondering, with whom she spoke, he asks. But they said they knew not: but, Before you, they say, came, a radiance of immense splendor filled all this chamber with reddening: and afterward the light ceasing, she (as you yourself now hear) did not cease to speak toward one speaking. Then indeed by little he too beholding sat down, until she somehow rested from the speech. And when she too had rested from the eloquence, soon to her, the windings of the veils being thrown back, he entered, and familiarly asked her with whom she spoke. But she said to him: You too, before you came hither, saw Him coming, and now do you ask with whom I have spoken? For He Himself spoke with me, who appeared to you chanting while you stood before the door of the church: who also now announced to me the whole reason of my departure in order. Yet for you my friends it is not at all necessary to be saddened about me, since to me dying the mercy of my God shall meet, and shall mercifully concede to enter the joys of paradise. But to you, and ministers the sacraments to her. as the minister of a singular friend, this work I impose, that you too in the morning early should make haste to hasten the baths for me, and to prepare the funeral garments which I am to have with me, and after the washing of the body to celebrate Masses, and soon at the time of the participation of the sacred Blood and Body of our Lord Jesus Christ to receive communion, that so at the same moment I may go the way of the whole nation, the Lord leading. Which he most instantly, obeying in all the precepts of the blessed Matron, lest he should commit the last guard of his foresight, by the tedium too of slowness submitted, to a torpid care, fulfilled. But she too what to her of herself in the night this day was to be shown in the order in which she had foretold most certainly completed; so I say, that after the mystery of the Mass, after the most salutary taste of the Eucharist, she likewise with the finished Mass ended her happy life in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then the foreseer exulting, the soul with its near lot Committed to the Lord, entombing the corpse with honor, And gives her things to the saints, as before she herself wished While she lived in body. But the free attendant too departed, Wishing this, that she might rest in the sweetness of the Lord.
[12] He also amid the sacred studies of letters, that he might be fit in all things, diligently cultivated the art of writing, and also the skill of harping and likewise of painting: and that I may so say, shone forth a vigilant inspector of all things of use. The harp of S. Dunstan hung on the wall, Wherefore a certain noble matron, called Ædelpyrm, at a certain little moment called him with familiar entreaty to her: that he for the divine worship should fore-paint for her a certain stole with various schemes of figures, which afterward she might be able to ornament by varying with gold and gems. Which when by coming he had done, he took with him after his custom his harp, which in the paternal tongue we call hearp; that he might at alternate times rejoice himself and the minds of those reaching toward him in it. Then indeed on a certain day after dinner, while both he himself and the aforesaid matron with her work-women returned to the renewed works, by a wonderful event it happened, that this same harp of the blessed novice, hanging on the wall of the chamber, all hearing, of its own accord without the touch of anyone, with a loud voice sounded a strain of jubilation. For it sounded by chanting the melody of this Antiphon, and to the very end by series of singing carried it through: it sounds of its own accord. The souls of the Saints rejoice in heaven, who have followed the footsteps of Christ: and because for His love they poured out their blood, therefore with Christ they shall reign forever. Which when they had heard, terrified both he himself and the remembered matron, and all her work-women, altogether forgetting the works in their hands astonished they looked at one another, sufficiently wondering what that wonderful deed of a new example prefigured.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER III. Deeds done under King Edmund. The Abbey of Glastonbury undertaken. The snares of demons avoided.
[13] But then King a Æthelstan being dead, and the state of the kingdom changed, the sublimity of the succeeding King, namely Edmund, commanded B. Dunstan, who had been of probable life and learned tongue, to be present in his sight, that he too might be numbered chosen among the Royal Nobles and Palatine Princes. Called to the court by King Edmund, He not rashly resisting these commands, but rather mindful of the Lord's precept, hastened to render the things that were the King's to the King, but the things of God to God. Likewise,
moreover admonished by the bidding of B. James the Apostle. Matt. 22:21. He did not cease to subject himself to every human creature and especially to the more powerful, whether to a King as excelling or to Dukes as sent by him, for the punishment of the evil, but for the praise of the good &c. 1 Pet. 2:13. No less indeed, if I do not err, recalling B. Paul the Apostle below, who says: Every soul is subject to the higher powers: he comes obediently; for there is no power but from God: and those which are, are ordained by God: and so he who resists the power, resists the ordinance of God; but they who resist, acquire damnation to themselves. Rom. 13:1 and 2, and 7. And again, Render therefore brethren to all their dues, to whom tribute tribute, to whom toll toll, to whom fear fear, to whom honor honor: and likewise to this same Apostle in his own election the Lord said: It is hard for thee to kick against the goad of my power. Acts 9:5. For these and precepts like these of the sacred Scriptures B. Dunstan diligently hid in the bosom of his heart, lest he should sin against the Lord: but in the words of His commandments, and sweeter to his jaws above honey and the comb, he set the lamp of true light to his feet, by which he might walk the ways of the Lord c. And after he had recognized himself more wisely taught or illuminated by the commandments of his God, he resolved with himself and firmly established in the secrets of his heart, to keep to the end the judgments of His justice, as the same Lord of this same sentence elsewhere said, He who shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved. Matt. 10:22. And again: Be faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life. Apoc. 2:10. So namely, although laboriously, together with the lofty ones in the royal palace he long dwelt, holding two reins with sacred moderation, namely of the law and of the theoretical, and also of the practical life. But some of the Soldiers dwelling there, seeing this constancy of his d conversation, began to love him with the singular sweetness of charity or the love of brotherhood. but by the working of the envious thence driven, But very many on the contrary, overspread with nebulous minds, began to detest the same man of God with the most bitter hatred of vanity, and to envy his prosperities even unto death. These detesters indeed, for the augmentation of their malice, demanded whomever else they could, to persecute also the servant of God. For so long they twisted around him the little cord of their iniquity, about to ensnare themselves in it rather than him, that they should stain the King himself infected with their vices, and make him credulous of their fallacies: who immediately, as before he had been instructed by the wicked, moved with great fury, ordered him, his dignity taken away, also to be deprived of all honor, and for himself the old man to acquire a dwelling where he wished, without himself and his own. But there were at f Ceodriun, where these things had been done, venerable men, namely messengers of the g Eastern kingdom, then lodging with the King: whom he, as one now deputed to exile, ignorant of any other counsel for himself, approached, praying this, that they should not desert him left by the King, but lead him with them to their fatherland though to dwell there, he joins himself to the Essex legates. But they, compassionating his sadness, promised him whatever conveniences of their kingdom, if he should go to accompany them.
[14] So the King went soon on the next day, where he with his own after the wonted manner might rejoice himself with the hunting-spear: and while they came to the woods to hunt, they eagerly seize the diverse paths of the woody tracks. And behold from the manifold noise of those blowing horns and the barking of dogs, Soon the King going forth to hunt, many of the stags began a light flight: of which the King alone with the troop of dogs took one for himself to hunt: and this one long through diverse byways with the agility of his horse and the pursuit of dogs he wearied. But there is there in the near places of Cheddar a certain precipice among several others of a cut-off mountain, sloped indeed with wonderful and immense depth: to which the same stag, I know not by what compact, except by the secret arbitration of God, fleeing came; and headlong plunged itself into the depths of the same precipice together with the dogs following, and worn piece by piece they fell together into death. Likewise also the King following the stag and the dogs, came with the great impetus of his flying horse, and immediately the precipice being seen he attempted to restrain the course of the hastening horse, as much as he could with strength. But because it was of a contumacious neck and stiff nape, he could not. What more? All hope of his life taken away, he commended his soul into the hands of his God, he is endangered of life: which being preserved yet saying within himself: I give thee thanks, Most High, that I do not remember to have hurt anyone these days; except only Dunstan: and this with prompt will and my life preserved, reconciled to him, I will amend. At which saying, by the merits of the Blessed man, the horse stopped (which now I shudder to say) on the last turf of the precipice, where the front feet of his horse had almost been about to fall into the depth of the abyss. Then he with heart alike and mouth rendered the greatest thanks and praises to God for the restitution of his life, plainly understanding with himself, and more often recompensing in the secrets of his heart, that he had been almost deputed to near death for the avenging of so great a man: and coming home, he ordered B. Dunstan to be called to him quickly with great haste. he recalls Dunstan, Who when called he had come, the King said to him: Hasten as quickly as possible to prepare for yourself a horse, that you may be able to go with me with a small retinue where I am about to go. And immediately the horses being mounted, they held by a straight track the way which leads to Glastonbury: and when they came thither with leadership, they entered the churches of God, as was fitting, to pray. And immediately the prayers being fulfilled, and the little eyes wiped of the rivulets of tears, the King again had called to him the servant of God Dunstan: and makes him Abbot of Glastonbury. and his right hand being grasped, for the cause of placation or also of dignity he kissed him: and leading him to the Sacerdotal chair, and placing him in it, he said: Be prince and powerful occupant of this See, and the most faithful Abbot of the present church: and whatever shall be lacking to you for the augmentation of divine worship or for the supplement of the sacred Rule from your own provision, I will devoutly supply that by Royal liberality.
[15] Therefore after these things the servant of God Dunstan undertook the already said dignity for the sake of ruling by the command of the King: and in this aforesaid manner following the most salutary institution of S. Benedict, the first Abbot h of the English nation he shone forth: and so spontaneously from the affection of heart he vowed to render service to God. Then therefore the most prudent Shepherd first the enclosures of the cloisters with monastic buildings and other fortifications, From his discipline holy Prelates were everywhere sought. as long ago had been denoted to him by a certain old man through revelation, on every part firmly fortified; where he might enclose the Lord's sheep, far and wide collected in flocks, lest by the invisible wolf they should be torn apart. Then the same teacher of God began to nourish the aggregated community committed to him with the ferment of the divine word, and to give it to drink from the supernal fountain, namely the honey-flowing document of sacred Scripture, teaching that through the narrow paths of this life there is a passing over to the eternal delights of the heavenly feasts. For it is patent to almost all the faithful round about, that after the intervals of a few years, the disciples, whom he himself tender into the vine of true faith, namely Christ and the Lord, by persuading had inserted, grew abundantly, and bore the fruit of good work with obedient comeliness. And that after these things very many Pastors of Churches, instructed by his documents and examples, were sought to diverse cities now or to other places of the Saints, chosen that they might be there imbuers of sacred rule and the norm of justice, namely Provosts, Deans, Abbots, i Bishops, even Archbishops, and the most excellent from the other Orders. But whoever of his discipleship in those same times were unraveled from the bodily bonds to the end, underwent inevitable death, without doubt sought the lofty joys of the poles.
[16] And when the old enemy with perspicacious mind found that the blessed Father, indeed Dunstan, had extorted so great troops from his hands by snatching them, with whatever frauds he could he did not cease to oppose him, as we have already above begun to say, by days and nights. For on a certain night, while the athlete of God within the enclosures of the cloisters constant in psalmodies and vigils dwelt, He puts to flight a demon appearing under the appearance of a bear there appeared to him the enemy of God and men, shaggy and horrid in the appearance of a bear, wishing somehow with a grim imagination to terrify him, and by the industry of guile somewhat to dissociate him from a work sufficiently contrary to himself. But when the Champion of God had perceived this hostile monster with a spiritual rather than a corporeal gaze; the more secure he persevered in the begun praises of God like an unconquered man. But afterward a small moment being intermitted there was present to him again, not in the effigy of the former mockery, but in a canine appearance sufficiently worthy of himself, as his frauds are wicked in all things; that he might delude this one by impeding with the simulated savagery of dogs, and sequester him from the zeal of prayer, if by any device he could. Yet in vain did that tenacious tempter rage against the servant of God with the nefarious frauds of his cunning: whom he proved to have been on every side propped with the arms of faith: and therefore by the same aforesaid dart of the holy Cross, which he always carried with him in his right hand, and of a fox, being repelled he was annihilated. But he himself nonetheless in the praise of his Christ, the temptations of the adversary being spurned, remained intrepid. The same perfidious dragon added also after the viperous manner a third time to creep back, proving if perhaps he should still find the man of God of a more remiss mind to be conquered: and then indeed from the wicked composition of his heart he changed himself into a foul little fox, that even so he might overturn the servant of God from the intention of his God by shaking his tail and by a varied running about. Whom when the blessed Father Dunstan had seen so often transmuted, smiling he said to him: Go now, enemy, because now you have appeared made sufficiently like yourself, and the sign of the Cross being made the enemy disappeared.
[17] With these and arms of this kind larval the ancient seducer often wearied the blessed Father Dunstan, though with vain conflict: as also at a certain time, while in the work of prayer before the altar of George the Martyr of Christ keeping vigil he toiled. and again under the appearance of a bear It is unknown therefore by what chance, whether from the injection of the aforesaid deceiver, or from the continuation of the vigils, suddenly amid the chanting words a gentle slumber of sleep had crept upon him: and it seemed to him, not so to say utterly sleeping, that a shaggy bear, huge and horrible, came with great impetus, and placed its dreadful feet, prepared for tearing apart, upon each shoulder of him sitting, with greedy gaping too standing over him, as if to devour him. And when the man of God from the inflicted terror utterly awoke, attempting to oppress him as he dozed. he snatched as quickly as possible the staff which he always carried with him in his hand, striving from human fury to strike the nefarious monster: yet with a superfluous blow he struck the wall of the temple, rendering the greatest clap through the whole temple to those hearing. But he, returning into himself, of a stronger
fight he entered into the encounter, namely chanting this Psalm of the sacred contest, Let God arise, even to, thus, Let sinners perish from the face of God, as above: for in that place overcome by sleep, he had abandoned the zeal of chanting, and immediately, as they say, in this resumed psalmody, that nebulous mocker was recognized, like a blackest shadow in the aforesaid scheme confounded to depart.
[18] For there was to this same man of God from the human propagation of his parents a certain brother, While he awaits the funeral of his brother Wulfric, named Wulfric, whom he constituted for himself outside as a powerful provost in the affairs of his villages, lest either he himself or anyone of the monastic profession should wander outside, by the inept discussion of secular matters. He indeed after the space of his time being elapsed, prevented by a lethal condition, was undergoing temporal death by dying. For this cause it happened that all the monks of the aforesaid temple went out to his funeral; and none, except the Abbot alone and a small scholastic (who afterward being made a Pontiff, intimated these things to us) remained at home, that with sacred exequies they might conduct the lifeless body to the monastery, where it was to be entombed. Meanwhile the Abbot walked with the same scholastic, to see (as I think) if now the Brothers had drawn near with the little body of the deceased. he is preserved unharmed from a huge stone. And while he walked always chanting after his custom, there came unexpectedly beyond the ancient church a certain missile stone, with a vehement flight attempting to dash the head of the blessed Father: but God defending it could not: yet it cast off the cap, with which he veiled his head, struck off as far as one pole from his head. He turned and said to the scholastic walking with him: Hasten therefore, and take as quickly as possible this rolling stone, that you may carry it to me to be looked at. Which when he, very heavy by the Father's command, scarcely lifting carried back, the venerable Father Dunstan said: O opposing enemy, now long from malign industry you were lying in wait preparing for me the blow of this stone. For there was not, by the testimony of many, a stone of this kind, very great or moderate, in these borders of the Somerset men l, except perhaps in any stone-works whatsoever: and therefore it was openly patent from whose wicked hand it leaped forth emitted. Yet after these things he commanded that same stone, although it had been sent to his detriment, to be reserved attached to the custody as if for testimony.
ANNOTATA.
d Ms. conversionis.
CHAPTER IV. Acts under Kings Edred and Edwy. The Episcopate refused. Exile.
[19] King Eadmund therefore being slain by a wicked b thief, soon the next heir, namely Eadred, undertook by succeeding his brother the natural kingdom. He therefore strengthened in sublimity loved the blessed Father Dunstan with so great an ardor of charity, that he preferred almost no one of the Primacy to him. But on the contrary the man of God, that he might repay love in return with a diligent affection from the inmost of his heart, with the wonted appellation acclaimed the King dearest to him of all. He guards the treasures of King Edred: From this confidence of charity indeed, the King committed to him the best of his furnishings, namely very many rural charters, also old treasures of the preceding Kings, and also diverse gazas of his own acquisition, faithfully to be guarded under the fortification of his monastery. And when after passing times the happy man, namely old Æthelgar, a Prelate of the church of Crediton, by the carnal law compelled, ended his life in Christ; the already said King persuaded the man of God Dunstan with frequent exhortations, that he himself should undertake under Pastoral care the Pontificate bereaved of its Father. But he immediately rejected for himself with easy words the excuse, saying, that he was not provided for this Pastoral care, nor yet fit for so great and so high a dignity, by which he could guard so wide a sheepfold of Christ with probable caution without his own destruction. These and words like these of contradicting speeches he opposed sometimes to the King, until by utterly refusing he should restrain all his persuasion. Yet the secret intention of his will he by no means yet prevailed to change: because him whom above the rest he more highly loved, this one he desired to be made of higher excellence. and his mother the Queen, he does not admit; Wherefore he placed the words of his will in the mouth of his own mother, saying to her: I wish, O my most beloved mother, that you should have our special friend Dunstan invited with you at the time of your dinner, and while amid the joyful banquets you use blandishing speeches in turn, you should study to exhort him with feminine eloquence, that he may become according to our suggestion the Pontiff of the lately widowed Church. Which when she had done with all efforts, she could not change him from his pristine speech of renunciation. Yet by his counsel d Ælfwold a venerable man, on account of his mighty comeliness, obtained the same Pontificate.
[20] On the following night therefore it seemed to him through a nocturnal revelation, and therefore chastised by the Apostle. that with a prompt retinue he ought to hasten to Rome. There appeared to him in the ways themselves Peter and Paul with Andrew, laying open to him diverse and unexpected secrets of his events: and the familiar colloquy of the Apostles being finished, Andrew with the rod, which he bore in his hand, struck him with no moderate blow, saying: Have this of reward, that you scorned the consortship of our Apostolate yesterday by refusing it. And immediately awakened after the saying, he sought the monk lying before him, who had rashly struck him with the sharp little rod's blow. But he, No one, I say, touched you resting with any touch of striking, I knowing it. Hastening to the sick King He therefore premeditating said: Now, my son, I know: now, by whom I was struck, I recognize. And there was, alas, King Eadred, the beloved of Dunstan, through all the time of his empire too greatly languishing, so that at the time of refreshment, the juice of foods being sipped, the remaining part a little ground by the teeth he cast from his mouth, and so often to the Soldiers banqueting with him by spitting made a fetid nausea. Who although thus sick he drew out life by living long in an abused body, yet the increasable languor more often invading with a thousandfold weight led him miserably even to death. Then he from long languor doubtful of his own life, sent round about to gather his faculties, which while he could by spontaneous and free dictation he himself living might dispose to his own. For on this account the man of God Dunstan, like the other keepers of the Royal gazas, went; that those which for the cause of guarding he had had with him, he might carry back to the King. by a heavenly voice he understands him to have died. And while after some days he was returning by the way through which he had come, with the laden riches of the faculties, there was made a voice sent from heaven, saying to him: Behold now King e Eadred has died in peace. At this voice therefore the horse, on which the man of God rode, suddenly struck died, because it could not bear the presence of the Angelic sublimity. And when he came, he found the King at the same time, at which the Angel announced to him in the very journey, ended by the supreme death: whose lost spirit the standing troops of the faithful, and likewise the lifeless limbs after the manner of mortals to be buried, commended to the Lord the maker under the rest of peace.
[21] King Edwy After him there arose Eadwig, namely the son of King Eadmund, in age indeed a youth, and mighty with small prudence of reigning, although in either people he supplied the numbers and names of Kings being chosen. To him a certain woman, though by nation lofty, yet an inept one, with a grown daughter, by a nefarious pandering of familiarity clung following: namely so far, that she might associate herself or also her offspring to him under the conjugal title binding them: whom he, as they say, alternately, which now it shames to say, with a foul stroking and without shame of either handled lustfully. And when at the appointed time by all the Princes of the English with common election he was anointed and consecrated King, on the very day of consecration, on the same day after the Royal unguent of sacred institution, suddenly he leaped forth wanton, leaving the joyful banquets or the seemly sessions of his Optimates, to the aforesaid stroking of the she-wolves. And when the highest of Pontiffs f Odo had seen the petulance of the King, especially on the day of his consecration, to displease all the Senate sitting round about; he said to his Co-bishops and the other Princes: Let, I pray, any one of you go to lead back the King, that he may be, as is becoming, the joyful companion of his Attendants in this royal banquet. But they fearing to incur the molestation of the King or the complaint of the women, each withdrawing began to refuse. But at the last they selected, out of all, two, whom they knew most constant in mind, namely Dunstan the Abbot, and g Cynegius the Bishop the kinsman of the same Dunstan, that obeying the command of all they might lead back the King willing or unwilling to the deserted seat. drawing him from the unchastity to which he devoted himself, And entering according to the commands of their Princes, they found the Royal crown, which with wondrous metal of gold or silver and the varied splendor of gems made shone, far from his head to the ground negligently torn off, and him in the malign manner among both, as in a vile wallow of swine, very frequently wallowing, and they said: Our Nobles sent us asking you, that you should go as quickly as possible to the worthy hall of your session, and not spurn to be present at the joyful banquets of your Optimates. But Dunstan first rebuking the inepts of the women, with his own hand, while he would not rise for him, drew him from the adulterous reclining of the brothels; and the diadem being placed on him led him with him, although seized by force from the women, to the royal company.
[22] Then the same Ædelgyw, so was the name of the ignominious woman, he incurs the hatred of the harlot: turned the empty orbs of her eyes against the venerable Abbot with fervent fury, saying, that a man of this kind was beyond measure magnanimous, who rashly entered into the secret of the King. For we have heard in the little books of the old Kings that Jezabel, perfused with the error of gentility and viperous venom, day and night raged against the Prophets of God with bitter detestation, and did not cease to persecute even unto death:
so also this shameless virago, from this aforesaid day, perfused with the same venomous breath of Jezabel, although she used the Christian name unworthily, did not rest to persecute the man of God Dunstan with hostile counsels, until she should fulfill the pestiferous will of her execration with the increased enmity of the King. Then she from the consent of the aforesaid King subjugated to her laws all the honor of that order and all the substance of his furnishing: and the perfidious monks striving with her too, nay also, the King's command urging, she herself quickly proscribed him to the dwelling of calamity. For the madness of this raging woman was not so much to be attended to, but the secret machination of the disciples, whom he himself tender nourished to be imbued with nectarous doctrine, more astounding: for they too were under hidden fraud assenters of the iniquitous conspiracy, who if they could ought to have detested his iniquitous losses. And while the ejectors of the same beheld all the ecclesiastical things to be written down, behold in the part of the western temple the harsh voice of a laughing devil, as the voice of a clapping little handmaid, was heard. To whom the man of God, when he perceived in mind who it was; Do not, he said, enemy, so greatly rejoice: because as much as now in my departure you will rejoice, so much again at my coming, God damning you, you will be saddened.
[22] But whoever of his friends after these things received this same man of God, cast out of the kingdom, cast out by the unjust arbitration of the accusing woman, for the cause of charity or compassion into hospitality, grievously incurred the raging anger of the King: and therefore he was compelled to swim across the insane waves of the troubled sea with a perilous voyage, and to go to the uncertain exiles of the Gauls. And when with the swift boat under sail he had entered as it were three miles of the sea, there came messengers from the wicked devastatress, as they relate, who would have plucked out his eyes by tearing them out, if he had been found on these shores of the sea. But he himself leaping over the watery ways of the cerulean sea with rapid course, he stays with the Count of Flanders, came to the unknown region of the already said Gaul, whose speech and rite he almost did not know. But the mercy of his God accompanying him he found favor before a certain h Prince of that land, who guarded him with the paternal affection of charity during the time of his exile. He therefore, although kindly cherished daily under the care of the same Prince, yet with assiduous mind remained in the fatherland, from which he had been removed without the censure of piety. He even often led an abundant rain of tears from the streams of his eyes by groaning, as often as, placed in exile, he remembered how great a loftiness of religion he had left behind in the monastery. Even long in the meditation of his sad heart while he thought about a matter of this kind; behold on a certain night he saw by a most well-known vision in sleeping, sad at the memory of his monastery, what now with most eager mind he sought waking; only this that after the wonted manner he had been in the monastery together with the standing troop of Brothers, while they performed the evening praises by chanting, and sang, after the last canticle My soul doth magnify the Lord, this i Antiphon, Why have you detracted from the words of truth: to rebuke you compose words: and you strive to subvert your friend? nevertheless. At this place all alike, the chant being left, were seen utterly to keep silence, he is refreshed by the nocturnal vision. nor any longer to be able in any way by word or voice to finish it, although by vain labor many times repeated they led it only to the same place by singing; and they never admitted the two final words modulating. But he through the same vision rebuking them, Why, he said, do you not wish to say it to finish the Antiphon! What you have thought, fulfill. Soon he weighed the divine response from another part under this voice, Therefore, I say, because they will never fulfill what they devise in mind: that they may also pluck you away by taking you from the power of this monastery. And awaking after the vision he gave thanks to the Most High consoling him. For it was patent from this most certain revelation, that, as above by whatever speeches we have commemorated, some of them were his secret persecutors.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER V. The Episcopate of Worcester and London: then the Archbishopric of Canterbury. The Roman journey.
[24] But it came to pass, that the aforesaid King in the passing years was utterly left contemned by the a Brumal people, because he had acted unwisely in the committed rule, destroying the sagacious or wise with the hatred of vanity, and adopting to himself any ignorant ones like himself by the zeal of love. He is recalled by Eadgar assumed into part of the kingdom, After him thus left by the conspiration of all, they chose for themselves, God dictating, Eadgar, the brother of the same Eadwig, as King: who with the imperial rod would justly strike the unjust, but the benign under the same little rod of equity would peacefully guard. So, all the people witnessing, the public matter of the Kings by the definition of the sagacious was disjoined, that the famous river Thames should bound the kingdom of both. Then Eadgar by the aforesaid people thus allotted to the kingdom, sent by the nod of God to recall the venerable Abbot from the hated exile in which he dwelt: not unmindful of how great reverence he had been to his predecessors, to whom with himself with salutary counsel he performed the untiring service of faithful obedience: whom led back from the dwelling with all the honor of dignity, as so much was fitting, he guarded. Meanwhile the brother of the same Eadgar, because he deserted the just judgments of God by deviating, breathed out his last breath with a miserable death: and his kingdom he himself, as a just heir chosen by both people, undertook, and receives his pristine dignities: and the divided rights of the kingdoms by subjecting to one scepter for himself he joined. He again restored B. Dunstan to the honor of his obtained pristine dignity, likewise also his great-grandmother and some others, whom his brother, before constituted in the same sublimity, by an iniquitous judgment had ordered to be plundered.
[25] Afterward there was made a great convention of the Wise in the place which is called c Bradanfoort, and in that place by the election of all Dunstan was ordained to a Bishop, especially so far that he had continually been present to the Royal presence on account of the provident counsels of his prudence. postulated to the Episcopate in a solemn convention, And when at the royal summons the King had been fittingly instructed in deific morals by B. Dunstan or the other wise men, he began everywhere to oppress the wicked, to love any just and modest with a pure breast, to subject to himself Kings and tyrants round about, to renew or enrich the destroyed Churches of God, and to aggregate serving troops to the praise of the highest Deity, and to guard royally his whole region under the fortification of peace. Then he was made Pastor of the Church of Worcester: inasmuch as d Cynewald after the manner of mortals and the course of temporal life being led out succumbed, he is created Bishop of Worcester, and B. Pontiff Dunstan constituted by the King undertook this same church to be preserved under Pastoral skill: in which immediately he planted the vine of true faith and the branch of justice with sagacious culture, and sowed the wheaten seed of the holy Trinity in the hearts of the believers, the thistles of errors being plucked out: through which, after the goal of the present age of good works, they might come unharmed to the perpetually abiding life. Seeing therefore the aforenamed King, that the committed Church the vigilant Pastor by duly ruling guarded, he committed to him the Church of London, afterward widowed of its pious e Pastor, that for the very great people of that city, and also of London at once. and also for the rest of the multitude of the Eastern Saxons, he might prepare a bridge for climbing to the lofty summits of the poles. These two Churches he, through many times of passing years, under the rule of Pontifical Excellence carefully ruled; and to either sheepfold the way which leads to the true sheepfolds of Christ, by example alike and document he showed f.
[26] But after greedy death had ended the venerable g Oda, Archprelate of the Metropolitan city and Rector of the Church of Christ, consumed from the Adamic condition, After the death of S. Odo and Ælfsinus, with insatiable devouring; Ælfsinus the Pastor of Winchester was numbered to the same See of the highest Priesthood. He when from the custom of the highest Pontiffs, about to ask for the Pallium of the principal infula he contended to hasten to the city of Romulus, there opposed him in the Alpine mountains a very great difficulty of snow: which had so bound him with the cold of rigor, that in these he failed by dying, and his accompanying recruits returning, the Pontiff being entombed, announced with weeping relation, that so great a misfortune had happened to him in the aforesaid mountains. After his consummation they chose Byrhtelm, and Byrhtelm rejected, the Provost of the Dorset men, to the highest Priest of the holy Church of Canterbury: and this man was mild, and modest, and humble, and benign, so far, that he did not, as he ought, restrain any swollen or rebellious under the scourge of correction. For it is the right of Rectors, that they should well guard the good, and inform them to better things as much as they can with all their strength; but the reprobate and rebellious under the correction of asperity reprove, until they turn them from the ways of vanities. Finding therefore the King that the aforesaid Pontiff did not, by growing mild, fulfill these prescribed rights, the Archbishopric of Canterbury asked of him. in the people committed to him; he ordered him to return by the ways through which he came, and to receive again the deserted dignity to be possessed. Thereupon he constituted from divine respect and the counsel of the wise Dunstan, whom he knew to be constant, to the highest Priest of the aforesaid Church.
[27] Soon he, the Priesthood being undertaken, stretched the long h journeys, which are wont to the highest Priests, by a prosperous path to the Roman city; and the Lord was the companion of his journey, and did not leave him singing back with pure faith, as He Himself through the Prophet promised to any faithful one, saying: I will give thee understanding, having set out for Rome, and I will instruct thee in this way in which thou shalt walk: I will fix my eyes upon thee. Ps. 31:8. And again: I will go before thee and humble the glorious of the earth. Isa. 45:2. And when he had made the long journey by hastening, and all the victuals, which they carried either by horse-bearing or by other conveyance, had been utterly spent on his own or others' men;
he said to his procurator, What of provision have you to confer for the sustenance of this night? But he indignantly answered, saying: Absolutely nothing: because you took no care to reserve anything for yourself, while whatever of victual we seemed to have, you had distributed to your own or strangers by a lavish command. And the Bishop said to him: Do not, I pray, be too troubled thereat: and the viaticum failing, trusting in Christ, because our Lord Jesus Christ toward all believing in Him is sufficiently liberal and rich. But he again, Now, he said, you shall see, what your Christ within the space of this night will give you to eat. And the Pontiff arose, because the evening time was at hand, that in remote places he might fulfill the fitting offices of evening praise. For still the already said procurator afterward clamored with foolish murmur, saying: Go indeed to adore only your Christ, attending nothing else of our necessity. For there were in this same village, where then the man of God lodged with his own, the messengers of a certain venerable Abbot, a copious provision is given: for three days awaiting the coming of the blessed Pontiff: and they came, before he had performed by singing the begun offices of evening praise, with rich gifts of thanks, and all the delicacies of that region, charitably from the mouth of the Abbot and his Brothers with a faithful phalanx saluting the Bishop. Which charities of blessings he gratefully receiving, saluted back the gracious Abbot, with the devout company of the Brothers staying with him. But afterward from the same gifts, conferred by the charity also of the aforesaid Brothers, they long lived deliciously by hastening: and thereupon the foolish murmuring of the impudent minister, thus overcome by the firm faith of the Pontiff, rested.
[28] At length he came, the Lord leading, to the desired Church of the Roman See: where the Principal Pallium, under the privilege of the Prelacy, thence returning the pallium received: together with the Apostolic benediction he gloriously undertook: and again the little tombs of the Saints being visited, and the poor of Christ being solaced, through the ways of peace he returned even to the fatherland. And when the highest Pontiff of the English had come, affected with a spiritual charism; he began first, as loftier than the other Orders of priests, and undertakes the pastoral duties. to subject himself to loftier services of Christ; lest while to others he ministered the ferments of true faith, or showed the right way to the heavenly by the salutary word, he himself (as the Apostle says) should become a reprobate, and contrary to his own preaching. 1 Cor. 9:27. Then moreover to renew the destroyed, to justify also the neglected, to enrich the holy places, to love the just, to recall the erring to the way, to build the churches of God, and to fulfill the name of a true Pastor in all things.
[29] I indeed, if day and night I should emit a thousand sounds with an iron tongue against nature, could by no means bring forth all the beneficent works of his virtues, which either manifestly or also secretly he performed. But one of him I profess that I am able to relate, that although here fenced with a fleshly veil he dwelt in the lowest; yet in mind, whether he kept vigil, always intent on the heavenly, or detained by sleep he rested, he always remained in the higher, as Paul the Apostle said: But our conversation is in heaven. Phil. 3:20 This indeed very often was patent, while he dictated divine canticles of sacred modulations, which he never received from men, but from the blessed citizens of the supernal region by a slumber-borne revelation had learned with capacious understanding, as this following sentence manifests. On a certain night by the example of this vision, after pious zeals of prayers and after the last office of Compline, while he had given his blessed limbs to rest, by a certain demonstration he beheld; in what manner his own mother, who had brought him forth into this world, was joined in marriage to a certain most powerful King for a conjugal spouse, under the highest testimony of his Princes and under the title of a dowry; and that there should be in these royal nuptials so great a gladness of those chanting, that on every part the rejoicing soldiery should sound a most sweet hymn, with sonorous praise to be modulated to the same King. And while these things were long done, there approached among the voices of those chanting a certain youth, clad in snowy whiteness, saying under that very vision to the Pontiff: Do you not see and hear, in what manner all this exulting multitude glorifies the great King by sounding aloud in their troops, you alone keeping silent? Why do you not in the proclamation of so great a King resound with us worthy praises with loosed mouth, who before the rest especially ought to rejoice for so great a joining of your parent? Then he answered that he knew not songs of this kind, and that he was utterly ignorant of what they sang in the praise of the aforesaid King. But he, Do you wish, he said, that I instruct you what you ought to sing? And while with humble profession he testified that he wished it, soon he imbued him with the example of this Antiphon. O King of nations, Ruler of all, and commits to memory the Antiphon heard under it. on account of the seat of Thy Majesty give us indulgence, Christ the King, of sins. Alleluia. For this being often repeated, and in the same vision well confirmed, awakened he emitted a doublable murmur: but immediately he ordered it to be written in the memory of letters, before it should be given to oblivion, and the one written commanded a certain monk so recently to have learned it: and morning being made all subject to him, both monks and also Clerics, he made by learning to sound this: he himself always among the voices of those modulating with much dew of tears saying, For He is true and not false, who showed me this sonorous Antiphon by imbuing me under the vision of this night. Hence without doubt (as we have already said above) it shone forth, in what parts of places, while he rested in body, he himself meanwhile remained with a happy spirit.
[30] Now I would wish, before hence further by reading I should hasten, to fit to me a skilled interpreter for the mystery of this wonderful vision: But the vision showed the mother the Church or if by some effort I could, to unfold its interpretation according to the power of my strength, although liquefied by a tepid fire. For the mother of the kindly Pontiff, joined in marriage to a great King, I think to designate the holy k Church, which either him or also very many others after a maternal manner through the spiritual womb of sacred baptism regenerated from the l privilege of the First parent. So indeed, married to Christ, she who now to the Highest King, namely Christ the Lord, through the recognition of true faith, and through the embrace of divine love, as a spouse joined to her husband, seems to cling; this same holy Mother Church in the Canticle of Canticles cries; The King has brought me into his chamber, we have exulted and will rejoice in thee, mindful of thy breasts above wine: the righteous love thee. Cant. 1:3 and 2:4 And again: The King has brought me into the wine-cellar: he ordained charity in me: prop me up with flowers, compass me with apples, because I languish with love. His left hand under my head, and his right hand will embrace me, &c. But otherwise I think the mother of the same kindly Pontiff, joined in matrimony to the lofty King, can designate the Church of his own Prelacy, which under the hand of the eternal King, namely Christ and the Lord, in the place of a mother to be guarded and with the pure integrity of virginity to be solaced he had undertaken, as the same Lord for the sins of the peoples affixed on the gibbet of the cross, the Angels singing peace, committed his virgin mother to the virgin disciple saying: Behold, to thee as a mother, I commit my genetrix. The military troops too, sounding aloud by exulting a canticle of praises to their King, I do not distrust to be the supernal citizens of the Angels, who, that sometime they were enemies of men, on account of the discordant distance of sins, existed; but now indeed, since they behold the inhabitants of the heavenly alike and the earthly joined into one family of the father, do not cease to sing to God the true King day and night songs of this kind: and an Angel Guardian teaching the Antiphon. Say praise to our God all His saints, and you who fear Him little and great, since the Lord our God omnipotent has reigned in heaven, alike and on earth: and therefore let us rejoice and exult and give glory to Him. This same glory the multitude of the heavenly soldiery chanting at the Lord's birth, in the highest and on earth announced peace to men of good will. That very peace, which the blessed Apostle demanded, saying: He is our peace, who made both one &c. Eph. 2:14 But that he had seen a youth whitening in a snowy garment, partly sharply rebuking him, that in the praise of the aforesaid Prince he kept silent; I do not doubt him to be his guardian Angel, who forewarned him by instructing him with spiritual words, lest, imitating the taciturnity of a dumb dog, he should permit the latent enemy, namely the thief the devil, to snatch furtively the souls of those committed to him, or the talent of his God: but that with open mouth he should preach, and with the pious confession of his heart sound that Christ is King and ruler of all, of the heavenly, earthly, and infernal; and that he, on account of the seat and name of His majesty, first for his own, then for the sins of the peoples interpelling should beseech, that He might be the pious indulger of sins to them, for whom He, obeying the paternal precept, did not delay once to offer Himself.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER VI.
Various visions. Preparation for death.
[31] By these aforesaid manners he had often learned the modulations of sacred songs or the other praises seemly to God with a vigilant spirit from the divine imbuers, although his human limbs subdued in the slumber of sleep had lain, as that is of Solomon: I sleep and my heart watches. Cant. 5:2 And again the Prophet Isaiah says: From the night my Spirit watches to thee, Lord, because thy precepts are my light. Isa. 26:9 He also in the world
placed, beheld with a clear gaze those very enemies of the human race, as was declared by the impending most miserable slaying of King Eadmund. This King therefore, while with his own after the wonted manner he visited the places of his own dignity about to banquet; it happened that B. Dunstan still Abbot was present to the retinue of the same King, going to the fortress next on the journey of a certain chief Duke, namely Ælfstan, and was a fellow-rider. And behold suddenly looking at the way of progression before him, He sees the devil leaping on the journey, he saw among the Royal trumpeters the horrendous enemy running about in play. Whom when he had long astonished beheld, he said to the aforesaid chief man accompanying him: Do you think, my beloved, that you can see what I see? But he, Nothing, he said, do I behold except what is fitting. And he; Sign therefore your own eyes with the salutary seal of the holy Cross, and prove if you can see what I see. And when by the command of the blessed Father Dunstan with a light impression of the holy Cross he signed his eyes, he saw at once, as if for the testification of so great a man, the same enemy of God and men, whom the blessed Father had seen, leaping under the appearance of a certain blackish little man: and soon from the hostile demonstration of the nefarious dæmon it was permitted to both to perceive, that some misfortunes of price were to be present to some of them; and the schemes of the Cross being made the enemy disappeared.
[32] But after they had ceased to speak of this wicked apparition of the beheld mocker, and he explains the dream about the King's slaughter the same forementioned Prince asked the already said man of God, that he would unravel for him by solving the dreams of his vision lately divulged. For he said that he had seen through the indications of visions the remembered King, with his Princes and all his Optimates, after the wonted custom sitting in the hall of his palace; and amid the joyful banquets of those ministering and rejoicing, the same King whom I said, lulled by sleep, fell asleep: and after the grave burden of his sleeping, almost all his Princes or Wise men had changed into he-goats and she-goats, the human effigy left behind. To whom forthwith B. Dunstan, instructed by prophetic eloquence, answered saying: The sleeping of the King is the indication of his death: but that you saw the Magnates or Wise men of him changed into dumb animals or insensible things, designates a future time, in which almost all the Princes of that region and Rectors of affairs, by spontaneous will from the way of truth, of which they themselves are wise, like stolid animals not having a shepherd, will deviate.
[33] These things being thus done they came to the royal village, always conversing of these things. He sees the devil again among the royal ministers. And the twilight of that day being made the man of God Dunstan saw again at the evening banquet of the King the same or some other enemy, wandering among the frequenting ministers. Then, if I do not err, after three days, on the very day too on which the already said King was to perish by the sword; he saw a third time a certain unknown, I know not indeed whether a hostile, or also a spiritual man, yet bearing a great little roll of a long charter in his hand, densely written with letters, namely at that moment of time, at which the King, about to enjoy the last banquet from the celebration of Masses, returned even to the hall: whom when he asked who he was, he answered with a Saxon voice, that he was from the parts of the Eastern kingdom, and that he had together with the King certain secrets of a nuptial word. He when he was announced to the King, [On the very day on which S. Edmund was slain he understands him to be called to the nuptials.] and ought after the manner of those coming to be led into his presence, nowhere appeared: but on the same, alas! day, as we have said, the bitterness of bitter death, through the dagger of a perfidious robber, latently entered the inmost parts of his heart. For behold how maturely the presages of the blessed man concerning the King shone forth. But concerning the Princes they were patent only in the times of King Eadwig, if he can rightly be called King, who had ruled neither himself nor any others well. Since indeed B. Father Dunstan was led by the Spirit of God, as the Apostle says, therefore these and mysteries like these as a son of God he had merited: so far too that very many asserted him to bring forth most vain deliriums of words, while with a prophetic mouth and the imbuing of the Holy Spirit he foretold very many things, which afterward by most evident signs we beheld done a. Rom. 8:14
[34] He also saw and heard without the obstacle of any difficulty certain wonderful mysteries of spiritual secrets, which now I shall sing. For the venerable man was always kindled in the love of God, as we have said, and therefore he went round the places of sacred monasteries for the edification of souls, solicitous. He saw the soul of a Glastonbury boy carried to heaven. He came also from this salutary custom to the place of the Baths, where warm water from the hiding-places of the abyss drop by drop bubbles up vaporing, which place the inhabitants in the paternal tongue are wont to call b Bath. And when there charitably received by the Brothers of the same place he had dwelt, he saw after the dinner hour the soul of a certain little scholastic from the monastery of Glastonbury, to the heights of heaven, by the Angels of God with the praises of hymns carried, and with the great exequies of the supernal citizens here and there attended. But there came the next day, as if for the testification of this wonderful vision, a certain Provost from the aforesaid monastery, named Ceolwy, wishing to take up the monastic counsels and the causes of his Brothers with the Pontiff alike after the wonted manner. Him as he came from the monastery, immediately after the blessing given, he solicitously, if all things with his Brothers were prosperous, asked: and he, not at all recalling the death of the boy, answered that all were constituted under the safety of integrity. But he with modest speech, since of his own vision he had been much more perspicacious than he; I do not think, he said, that all things among all in human excesses will be profitable. And he: There are indeed all things, except that a little boy of our society yesterday at the meridian time underwent inevitable death by dying. This is, said the holy Bishop, what I said. May his happy spirit rest, according to our vision, in peace.
[35] But again while he dwelt in his own monastery, that is at Glastonbury, the same skillful overseer of the sheepfolds of Christ walked, with any monk of the same monastery, from house to house, to consider the food-stores of the common Brothers and the other necessaries of the same. He understands by a heavenly voice a monk to die shortly: And while returning, the supplies being beheld, he came to the western climes of the ancient church, he heard far off a voice sent from heaven by an unexpected omen, which had invited the monk walking with him to the heavenly delights under a coaxing speech, saying: Come, come, Ælfsige, come: for so was, as I think, the name of the same Brother. Then the Blessed man understanding the calling of his client of merit, said: Hasten therefore strongly, Brother, to prepare yourself as quickly as possible: because in most swift days called by the Lord, from the dross of this world you shall migrate to Him. Which indeed days not so many being interposed thus of him, as he had foretold, by a probable indication was fulfilled. Thereupon in the same place he ordered a church square with equal angles to be constructed in the manner of a little shrine: and the one constructed in honor of the kindly Baptist John he honorably consecrated. O great merit of the glorious Prelate, who deserved living to see the visions of Angels, and to hear the wonderful voices of the same.
[36] To him therefore while he dwelt in the proper city of his Prelacy, it was of holy custom among the other zeals of sublimities, that in the secret times of c nights he should visit the holy places, on account of the manifold adhesion of the peoples coming to him, or also the occupation of many others, always chanting holy psalmody. And he came bound by this law of religion to the little chapel of the kindly Father Augustine, at nocturnal, as I said, times to pray: and while he there supplied himself with sacred prayers, he proceeded to the eastern church of the d Childbearer of God, to pray as much. And when by drawing near and chanting he had come to this, by chance from an unexpected event of the night he heard unusual voices of harpers, with subtle modulation in this same basilica sounding. But he immediately looking through the gap of an open hole, saw the forementioned church to be perfused with all shining light, and virginal troops in a circling choir running about singing this hymn of the Poet Sedulius, Let us sing, companions, to the Lord &c. And likewise he weighed the same after verse and verse with reciprocal voice, as if in the concert of their going round, to chant back the first little verse of the same little hymn after the manner of human virgins, saying; Let us sing, companions, to the Lord, let us sing honor: Let the sweet love of Christ sound with pious mouth. &c. These I say venerable signs of spiritual gifts, and others innumerable, which neither I nor any other inhabitant of this life can by any human eloquence narrate, the excellent Prelate Dunstan, because he walked the ways of justice, had deserved to receive.
[37] Now therefore, since all the exercises of his good acts, The author testifies by ocular faith, if day and night in the highest sagacity of meditation, deprived of natural sleep, I should dwell, I cannot explain; yet I think it equitable, that at least those things which either I myself saw or heard, urged by a just admonition of God, according to the power of charity I should unravel. For to him, while he laboriously inhabited the tedious dwelling of this life, it was the highest zeal, that namely in sacred prayers and in the Davidic psalmodies of ten chords with continual frequency he should insist, in what manner in prayer, or in vigils overcoming sweet sleep he should pass the nights with assiduous ones, or in Ecclesiastical works he should always fervently toil to work; or also faulty books, while he could behold the first light of the rising day, the falsity of the writers being erased he should correct; or that he should discern the true and the false between man and man by sagacious genius in judging; or any unpacified or quarreling he should make concordant and quiet with placid speech; or that he should profit widows, orphans, pilgrims, and strangers in their necessities with pious support; or that by just sequestration he should dissociate inept or unjust marriages, and in the duties of the Episcopal office, or every human order threefoldly prepared in the proper purpose of solidity he should confirm by the word of life or by example, or from the just census of his acquisition he should relieve the churches of God by pleasing probity to be enriched; or also the unskilled of either order, namely men or women, whomever day and night he could, he should season with heavenly salt, that is, the document of salutary wisdom. And therefore all this English land was filled with his holy doctrine, shining before God and men, as the sun and moon: or also when he had judged to pay the due Hours of his service and the other celebrations of Masses to Christ the Lord, the saint acted with mind always elevated to God, with so great integrity of mind he exercised them by chanting, that he seemed to speak with the Lord Himself face to face; although before too he was too greatly ensnared by the conflicts of the tumultuating people; meanwhile with his eyes and hands after the manner of B. Martin always intent on heaven never relaxing his spirit from prayer. And as often as he exercised any other work of worthy perfection or also of praise, in the sacred ordinations of Priests too, and the consecrations of churches or altars, with a shedding of tears. or also in any institutions of divine things, this he always performed with much dew of tears, which the invisible inhabitant the Holy Spirit too, who in him continually
dwelt, powerfully elicited from the rivulets of his eyes.
[38] And when the supernal Inspector to the lofty summits of the poles beheld these pious and all the most long-continued zeals of the blessed man with His speculation, at length He more clemently decreed an end of his laborious wrestlings, that with the blessed troops of Angels he might receive in heaven the recompensing coin, for which he had very often toiled, while he carried His light burden on earth. On the feast of the Ascension, after Mass For there was at hand alike the day of the Ascension of the Lord our God, and the day of his calling, on which day however the Lord dictating he had completed the solemnities of Masses without any injury, and ministered the last ferment of the word of God to the people committed to him with many rains of tears; teaching always, that the Son of God from the highest seats of the heavens for human salvation descended to the earth, that He might lay open Himself and His Father together with the sacred Breath to be one God with patent piety; and that on the same day, on which I have foresaid, the devil being conquered and His people freed, He should ascend the heavens, from which He seemed to come. and a sermon to the people, When he had placed the close of this exhortation by terminating, with great charity of heart he asked, what he himself first by a swift petition obtained, this namely, that the omnipotent Lord with paternal piety to any faithful, namely members of Jesus Christ, would grant the faculty of ascending, whither the beginning and head of any whatsoever Christ on the aforesaid day powerfully had ascended. With these addresses and the other salutary teachings three times under one celebration of that day he amply forewarned the hearts of those committed to him: he piously dies. for first, as the ecclesiastical order after the Gospel of the lesson rightly insinuates; secondly after the gratuitous benediction of the power conferred on him; thirdly after the conference of pious peace, when with a common song we sang, Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world have mercy on us, then indeed he too the little lambs committed to him, first lightened of the weights of sins, with pious
The rest is wanting.
ANNOTATA.
ANOTHER LIFE
By Osbern Precentor of Canterbury.
From the Antwerp and Bonnefont Manuscripts.
BHL Number: 2344, 2345
BY OSBERN FROM MANUSCRIPTS.
Book IPROLOGUE.
[1] To all the sons of the Catholic mother Church their confrater, through that regeneration which is in Christ, Osbern, good peace and perpetual salvation. The venerable authority of many and venerable Fathers often pressed upon me, that I ought to hand the life of the magnificent Father Dunstan to the monuments of letters, and to the praise of God and the profit of men, In place of other Lives, to insinuate it to the ears of the Church. To whom while I, for the making of an excuse, showed that as true, that several things had been written by very many men of nowhere ignoble science about this matter, and that I feared the reprehensions of men, who perhaps might call us too excessive or certainly rash, while these contended that we had not so much nothing enough, as that nothing could be enough for us; on the contrary they rather related that they had nothing enough, than that nothing could be enough, and said that they wished to assert this by probable supports of reasons. For of those, or in too brief ones, they say, whose concern it was to have especial diligence of this matter, some, although elegantly enough, yet not diligently enough; but as much as for the nocturnal office of the festivity they judged enough, wrote only in the manner of discoursing to the people; others moreover while too diligently, in what manner each thing was done, they attempted to explain, lost elegance; and into that kind of speaking, or inelegantly propped up, which the Prince of Roman eloquence calls propped-up, fell, Which more easily is wont to beget tedium to readers, than any emolument to hearers. But those who labored in either part of speaking, that they might be alike festive, and well ordered according to the deeds done; their writings were consumed in that fire, which before these years the holy Church of Canterbury, with great detriment of its affairs, or also burned, is known to have suffered. But from these, they say, some things translated into the paternal, that is, the English speech, survive, from which you will be able to elicit what we seek, and again into the Latin tongue, God favoring, to translate. And so by these either reasons or authors of reasons being led to writing, I preferred to obey another's will by blessing, than serving my own will to refrain from blessing. But to this daring I come not without a certain suffusion of shame: the author writes a new one because I think the mouths of all are upon me as upon a man after the manner of Laelius promising new victories of speaking, and as if presuming to say more aptly those things which by others have been aptly said. But I neither reprehend those for having spoken less aptly, nor do I promise that I will speak more aptly, but whether it be worthy, by the command of the Archbishop, or contrary to what is worthy of so great a material of things which I intend; I ascribe to the merits or fault of those, by whose command and importunity overcome I write these things. Although also my will ought to obtain so much of devotion toward the same Father and our Lord; that if none wished to seek these things of me, I for my own person would not doubt to thrust myself in. For so both in others me seeing, and in myself me feeling, and by devotion toward the saint, his merits prevailed. But it was not the counsel, to say in this little book what either in others me seeing, or in myself me feeling prevailed: but in another, which will be written of the signs wrought at his sepulcher, it was the counsel to say. But now the beginnings of his nativity, the progress of his age with the augmentation of heavenly grace, the change of the mortal age for the immortality of the eternal age, as most truly I shall attempt to absolve, all those things being omitted which were so wonderful, that to the unfaithful they seem incredible. And I indeed know myself unequal to narrating these things, but in the name of Him, in whom he himself faithfully believed, and to whom he himself exhibited a faithful ministry of work; I shall attempt to undertake these things.
CHAPTER I.
His birth illustrated by divine oracles. His adolescence piously passed at Glastonbury.
[2] The magnificent King of the English Ethelstan reigning, in the a first year indeed of his empire, but the four hundred and ninety-seventh of the coming of the English into Britain, when the same King, b the enemies being subdued round about, He had parents illustrious by birth and virtue: guarded the kingdom with peace and concord, the boy of God Dunstan was born, in the Wessex parts of England, of parents great indeed for the dignity of the world, but for the religion which becomes Christians far greater. For living by so great a reason of virtue they cultivated the soul, toiling with so many pious works they sweated, that having entered the way common to mortals they deserved to be associated with the Angelic spirits, as afterward to the same their son by divine revelation it became known. Which it is not foreign to the counsel of divinity to conjecture done, namely that so great an infant should have such parents, who when they themselves lived well, then could hand the form of living well to the son to be born of them. For God foresaw him to be great, whom there He had prevented with the blessings of His sweetness, where all the sons of Adam receive the sentence of native malediction, if they be not reformed to the pristine beatitude through the form of human habit assumed by the Son of God. For God foresaw him to be great; to whom so much of gift was given, that before he became known to the world by signs, than his mother had brought him forth into the light of this world. And that the rest may proceed clearly and orderly, hence I shall constitute the beginnings of speaking. The maternal bosom therefore swelling with the sacred childbearing, On the feast of the Purification the festive day of the Purification of the holy and perpetual virgin Mary shone. And when the neighboring people from everywhere flowed together to the church dedicated to the same Virgin at Glastonbury, that they might pay the ministry of their devotion in so great a solemnity to the King of Kings Christ, it happened that the father of the boy Herstan, with his wife Kinedrida came; and the d lamps being lighted, was present at the sacred solemnities of Masses. And now the Clergy had absolved a very great part of the daily service;
now in what manner the parents led the boy Jesus into the temple, had begun to be recited; when suddenly the majesty of the Lord appeared in the temple, the candles of the others being extinguished, which extinguished all the luminaries of all, and overspread the whole house with a dark gloom. Hence an icy fear crept over the members of all, the hair stiffens, the knees collide. They stood indeed clinging in sense, and with alternate gazes indicating stupor. But that it might be made clear to all, what in this matter the Majesty which appeared intended, forthwith a light sent from heaven shone again in the temple; and kindled that candle which the childbearing woman held in her hand. the candle of his mother, then pregnant with him, is first kindled. If before the people wondered at the lost light, now with greater admiration and at the same time exultation it was held. For it exulted that it had seen the present grace of God, but wondered that this had come to it through a woman. Hither therefore was it gone by all, and hence light was offered to all. We have therefore a new John from a new Elizabeth, we have a Jeremiah of our time, of whom the one God, the other the Archangel of God asserted sanctified in the mother's womb. And that you may notice the more excellent grace, on the day on which the Son of God was presented in the temple by the Virgin Mother, on that namely the boy of God in his mother's womb was carried to the temple. A light to the revelation of the gentiles, and the glory of Israel, holy Simeon exulting proclaimed: a light no less arisen in the land of the Angels, Christ, who is the true light, declared by light.
[3] But after the time of bringing forth the birth came, the woman bore a son, in quantity of body indeed a little one, he is called Dunstan: but immense by that grace of God by which he had been prevented. Thence immediately having obtained the honor of the second generation, the future solidity of his faith, then already divinely prefigured, he is allotted in name; Dunstan, which sounds the firmness of a rock, by the marking of his parents called. Then when the following age had excluded the tender years of infancy, and he had now begun to form his tongue into open sounds; to the temple once notable by the miracle of his birth, with the offerings of victims he is carried; nay he himself a living, holy host, pleasing to God, is offered. There while they passed the night in prayer there appeared a man, having ethereal countenances; and said that the place not long after time would be exalted, the boy there to be left to God, and that blessed one through the ages to be proclaimed. Then extending the line of a measurer through the level of the court, So, he said, shall this place be built, for the preparing of the hearts of those to the Lord, who in this place through this boy are to believe in the Lord. By which revelation they vehemently rejoicing, it is foretold that he will notably augment the place. paid immense praises to omnipotent God, commending the boy in the temple, that he might be a Levite to the Lord, and the Lord be his portion, as it was said to Moses, when he divided the dwellings of the Jews through the single tribes; There shall not be to the tribe of Levi a lot among their brothers, says the Lord: because the Lord God is their part. Deut. 10:9, Acts 3:6. Whence Peter, showing that he had a portion in God, not in the world; Silver, he said, and gold I have not, but what I have this I give thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise and walk. This is: Gold is not my portion: silver is not my portion: my portion is Christ. This name is munificent, this name to me is fruitful. Such a portion's fruit therefore the recruit of Christ in holy fear having obtained, with assiduous ministration served the Lord, advancing daily as much in the science of piety, as in the virtue of sanctity.
[4] At that time Glastonbury, devoted to royal stipends, was utterly ignorant of monastic religion. For not yet in England was the common rule of life cultivated, the practice of deserting their own wills was not affected by men. When the monastic life was scarcely yet known to the English, Scarcely had anyone heard the name of Abbot, scarcely had anyone enough seen a convent of monks. But to whom by chance it was of will that he wished to pass a pilgrim life, he now alone, now accompanied by a few of the same purpose, went forth from his paternal bounds; and where opportunity gave license of living, there a foreigner he led his life. And this custom both with very many, then vehemently still remains with the Irish: because what to others good will into custom, this to them custom turns into nature: nor unless the Irish professed it, of whom many and illustrious men, nobly erudite in divine and secular letters, when Ireland left they came into the land of the English to be pilgrims, and had chosen Glastonbury as the place of their habitation, for this reason that it was both sequestered from the civil multitude, and accommodated to human uses, and what they most affected, glorious by the religious veneration of the pilgrim g Patrick, who once coming thither by evangelizing the kingdom of God, by life, doctrine, signs and marvels manifoldly is reported to have shone, and after all these things there in the Lord to have rested. When therefore these such men for such causes had come to Glastonbury, nor yet, whatever was necessary for them, had most sufficiently found in the place; they undertook the sons of nobles to be imbued with liberal studies, that what the abundance of the place less exhibited for the use, might overflow by the liberality of those whom they taught.
[5] There is present therefore the most noble in Christ boy Dunstan, among others one, nay before others alone. When a little more diligently, than weak age could bear, intent on the study of letters, by a most sharp languor in his tender body he is wearied, so far that for some days, neither what he did, nor what was done by others, he is healed of a lethal disease by an Angel. he himself attended. But the coeval throng of scholastics wept, the whole family of the house wept, and the Doctors themselves, recalling the modesty of the boy, the genius, the nobility, the education. And when now on the threshold death was thought to be present, and nothing else than the obsequy of a funeral was meditated; behold in the dead of night the heavenly medicine revisited him, which Christ exhibited to him through an Angelic minister. And lest any delay of salvation should be interwoven, where the divine medicine had come; forthwith rising from the little bed of grief, to the temple to give thanks to God with moderate velocity he runs, having on the journey that leader, whom in sickness he had as savior. Stupefied at the greatness of the deed those who were in the house, who bore the care of that sick one, with slow foot tread the footsteps of the one going before, exploring the end of the matter with curious agility. He had not yet completed the middle of the journey, and the dæmon being put to flight, when the malign spirit, either envying his salvation, or having his future religion suspect, attended by a multitude of barking dogs met him, and strove to intercept the way to him going. The boy therefore cries out Christ, terrified with fear; but walled by the protection of his leader, takes a rod; which vibrating into the face of the resisting image, drove it with all its retinue into flight. O holy and terrible name of Christ, hidden from the wise, revealed to little ones! Behold the dragon, whom God formed the beginning of His creation to mock him, not only is mocked by the Angels of God but also is overcome by an earlier little one. Truly his pride is dragged down to hell, his carcass fell into the depth of the pit. But in whom could our little one do these things? except in Him, who though He be God over all blessed for ever, a little one of the Virgin was born to us, a son from the Father was given to us.
[6] Dunstan therefore coming to the gate of the temple, but finding the same barred with bolts, he is led to the summit of the temple, the ladder, by which those who repaired the upper parts of the temple were wont unwillingly, ignorantly and as if through an excess of mind he ascended. Thence proceeding to the other part of the roof, where there was no descent, by Angelic hands he is set down to the ground, and into the inner parts of the temple, the bolts not lying open, is led. But the light arisen, while through the neighboring houses a question was made about the boy, he was found in the temple with those who kept the nocturnal watches, poured out in gentle sleep: Asked to expound the manner of so wonderful an event, and soon is set down within it. he answered that this was not in his consciousness, and led the minds of the ignorant into greater ambiguity. But these, whom we have foresaid to have followed the boy for the cause of exploring, of all things which up to the highest summits of the temple had happened, testify with clear and approved speech: but the rest, since they lay hidden from both them and the boy, it became clear to have been wonderfully wrought by the sole power of God. With great fear therefore struck all who heard, thought what it might be that had happened to the boy, saying to one another: What does this boy mean for himself, to whom so many and so holy proclamations attest? who blessed before he was born? whom virtue showed glorious, before age proved him adult? We see this one endowed with singular grace, whom an Angel healed sick, the devil trembled at when healed, the church received signed. And again praying, May God, they say, augment the merit of the boy to His glory. But he, filled with the spirit of Christ ruling him, turned away the ears of his body indeed from his own praises, but in the secret of his little breast blessed God. From that day therefore he was held in so great admiration; that a very great multitude of either sex desired to see him, although still delicate. But he, the more excellent things he heard, the more lowly things to feel of himself.
[7] And now the verdant age had put on the comeliness of adolescence, when his parents asked him to undertake sacred Orders, that he who had been from primeval age chosen by the Lord, through grace of this kind joined to Him might cling. To whose will he humbly obeying, he undertakes the Minor Orders: undertook the lesser Grades both in habit, and preserved them by the honesty of life. Then indeed, which is no small ornament to that age, he strove to surpass all in office, to go before all in grace and affability; to preserve chastity, to flee wantonness; a seeker of the honest, an execrator of baseness; to be present at the colloquies of the elders, to decline the games of the young; abstinent of foods, temperate of sleep, grave in gait; neither to be moved from his place, nor to speak abruptly; of great confidence to begin the good, and endowed with the best disposition and morals of constancy to perfect it; to have God always as the beginning of acting well, but to commend the end to Him. To good morals too there acceded the zeal of sacred reading, by whose exercise he both avoided the importunities of vices; and nourished the augmentations of virtues. And since zeal has small efficacy, where natural genius does not suggest understanding; God being the author he was so endowed with both, that both by the facility of genius he most acutely understood any matter, and by the occupation of zeal whatever had been understood he most firmly retained. From which it was briefly done, that he was neither less skilled than his preceptors, and was himself much more skilled than the most skilled of his fellow-disciples. The sciences of the Philosophers, which the antiquity of truth defines to be the cognition of truth of those things which are and which cannot be otherwise, he excels notably in letters, as are magnitudes, and of these some abiding and lacking motion, but others which are turned with ever mobile reason nor at any times acquiesce; multitudes too, and of these no less some by themselves, some placed in relation; the sciences, I say, of these he cultivated with diligent reason, perceiving in them a great and constant
advancement. And although he was magnificently mighty in all these arts; yet of that multitude which instructs music, namely that which is agitated by instruments, he claimed for himself the science with a certain special affection: as David taking the psaltery, striking the harp; modulating the organs, touching the cymbals; but not as those whose inertia and luxurious idleness our Prophetic Herdsman rebukes, You who sleep, he says, in beds of ivory, and are wanton on your couches; who eat a lamb of the flock, and calves out of the midst of the herd; who sing to the voice of the psaltery. Amos 6:4 Like David they thought themselves to have vessels of song, drinking wine in bowls. in virtues. Nor do we commemorate these things for this, that we think these necessary to one tending to perfection; but that we may commend the manifold graces of God in the youth. For above all secular studies he preferred the science of piety, which is contained in the Evangelical and Apostolic letters, while always handing his own genius to the authority of the holy Fathers, and conferring both matters to the same letters, the true faith, the discipline of morals, and (which one and alone before all things is to be sought) eternal life he rejoiced to have found. Like David therefore our symphonist had vessels of song, because the use of them he expended only in the divine praises. Besides, fit of hand for all things; able to make a painting, and in various manual arts. to form letters, to impress with a chisel, of gold and silver, bronze, and iron, to work whatever he pleased.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER II.
His life in the court of King Athelstan, and thence his expulsion. Disease, monastic life. The devil conquered.
[8] Then the fame of the venerable man being heard, of a Athelm Archbishop of Canterbury, whose he himself was nephew and son of his brother, He goes to the Archbishop of Canterbury. by the permission of his parents he sets out to the same, that of so great a kinsman he might have both acquaintance, and by the example of his life inform his juvenile morals. So the Bishop rejoiced exceedingly at the coming of his nephew, considering in him the comeliness of body, the vigor of mind, and the eminence of all honesty. Whence by that Spirit of God by which he was inspired, foreknowing him to be a future vessel of election, he studied to adorn him with a more excellent grade, and to commend him to King Ethelstan with a familiar attestation. This, he said, youth, bound to me indeed very much, but to the royal stock by some right of consanguinity, I commend to your Excellence, by whom commended to King Æthelstan, that he may stand continually in your sight, and hear the word from the mouth of my Lord the King. I will try in him your favor, which manifold in the greatest matters I have often experienced, and henceforth more amply to experience I trust. Which the King receiving with prompt alacrity of heart, most gratefully received the offered youth, singularly loved him, after this constituted him to preside over necessary affairs too in the royal stead. Dunstan therefore dwelling in the earthly palace, went out and came in at the command of the King; and it was prospered in his hands, whatever work he himself began. And now indeed rising to pray to God, he enters into great favor with him. now sitting to adjudge the causes of men, so wisely and circumspectly he acted, that he both pleased God in all things, nor offended any of those living piously by his fault: for the Lord was with him, and directed all his works. Again when he saw the Lord King wearied with secular cares, he chanted on the drum, or on the harp, or any other instrument of the musical kind: which done he cheered the hearts both of the King and of all the Princes.
[9] b Then by the frequent and religious request of a certain matron he was urged, that he should fore-paint for her a Priestly stole with skillful working, About to delineate a Priestly stole, which afterward for divine worship she might figure with goldsmith's imitation. He, the harp taken in his hands, goes to the house of the religious woman, hangs the harp on the wall, diligently sets about the work for which he had come. And while he prepared his hand for the work, but his heart and lips for God, there appeared in the house the glory of the Lord; which refreshed him with joyful sweetness, but rendered the rest terrified with unusual admiration. he hangs the harp on the wall: and the same sounding of its own accord, For his harp, which we have said to have been affixed to the wall, just as it was hanging on the peg, without any impulse at least of a moving man, sounded the melody of this Antiphon wonted to all, with a most sharp and most distinct modulation; The souls of the Saints rejoice in heaven, who have followed the footsteps of Christ: and because for His love they poured out their blood, therefore with Christ they shall rejoice forever. The little girls therefore leap out clamoring, the mistress of the family, and all the household of the house, vociferating the man to be too wise, that he knew more than is expedient. he is admonished to suffer. But he with the most pure gaze of a most pure heart attending to that heavenly musician, understands himself to be admonished, that he should seize the harder ways, that he should follow the footsteps of Christ more closely, that he should not fear the shedding of his blood, if it delights to have the kingdom of God and eternal life. We have heard once a braying she-ass to have uttered words; but a harp without human impulse to have sung sensibly we have never heard. That one held back the rider lest he should die, this one admonished lest death should be feared. That one fearing the Angelic countenances sat down, this one to the sight of God and of His Angels invited all the hearers. But these are Thy great things, Christ, which in Thy Dunstan Thou didst will to work, and through our ministry to be preached to men.
[10] Kindled therefore with fury the devil, because he beheld the youth to lean on so holy beginnings, attempted to bring him into the envy of some, accused of magic by rivals, not knowing his evil will to serve God, for the perfecting of God's good will in the man, whom to rejoice and reign together He Himself had predestined. So he inflames with the goads of envy the workers of iniquity, who by a feigned lie hurt the opinion of the youth with the King, asserting him imbued with evil arts, and to work nothing by divine help, but most things by the trickery of dæmons. But Dunstan noticing the face of the King not to be as yesterday and the day before, prepares to depart from the palace; preferring to desert the King of his own accord, than himself to be left by the King unwilling. he is cast into a cistern: Which when it was learned by those who had been the most wicked emulators of his probity, they beset the way with snares, disturb his companions, cast him from his horse, afflict him with torments, at last him ensnared with bonds, into a cistern which was near, they thrust down. When meanwhile, defended by a horrendous troop of mastiffs, he is found by certain men, by whose zeal and piety he is carried to the village to be cherished. Then he groaning with a sigh from the depth of his heart said: O cruel madness of my kinsmen, changed into canine savagery from the humanity of love! For the irrational nature of dogs exhibited to me the love of humanity by coaxing, but kinship, forgetful of humanity, showed the severity of dogs infesting me. He understood therefore this to be the beginning of the contest, to which the divine harper lately forewarned him.
[11] But setting out thence, he went to his kinsman Pontiff Elphege, who at that time presiding over the c Church of Winchester, adorned his life with virtues. He goes to S. Elphegus Bishop of Winchester his kinsman, By whom asked with frequent supplication, that he should put on the monk, that he who had the beginnings of an Angelic conversation, might demonstrate perseverance in the habit; he answered, That it was of more excellent grace, who in the world grew old, and only did those things which are worthy of a monk, than he who gave himself to a monastery, nor could do anything else except what was appointed for him after this. The one, he said, is of necessity, but the other of liberty. to whom persuading the monastic life when he had long resisted, To this the Bishop. To all, he said, in common is the highest necessity, that he who wishes to escape the fire of gehenna, should study to extinguish the fire of concupiscence: but the fire of concupiscence is not much extinguished, if its fuels are not withdrawn from the human senses. For as wood to fire, so those things which lie subject to the senses to concupiscence: but there will be no subtraction of fuels, if there be not a renunciation of secular businesses. From all which this is elicited, that if you wish to extinguish the fire of gehenna, you should study to renounce the world. To this, what especially in the world is sought, is the liberty of man: for this lost, the rest cannot be possessed; but if they are possessed, that does not cease to be had: wherefore as long as you retain that, you have not given to God that which you most loved; that therefore you may give what you most love, you should cease to have that.
[12] When therefore with these and words of this kind the Bishop insisted day by day, and Dunstan with true or most likely reasons deferred the one insisting; on a certain day he was vehemently struck by this ambiguity of thought, as to what in life was most especially to be sought, virtue or pleasure, a wife or virginity, he greatly deliberated. Whom placed under such ambiguity a most grievous d fever invaded, and led to the desperation of life. seized by a perilous fever, He lay therefore without expectation of health sick, nor affording any sense of a living one to those beholding. Then unexpectedly growing warm again, thus he said: I renounce the laws of pleasure, here I promise myself an everlasting adversary to it. I will strike no covenant with a wife, virtue alone shall have me a soldier. For it is insane to endure that mistress of my mind, who neither renders the living satisfied, and leaves the dying desperate. by vow he gives himself. A virgin the Son of the Virgin has kept me thus far, a virgin Mary the Queen of virgins shall have me. Forthwith the Bishop being called to him, he asks the blessing of the deferred religion to be given him. The Bishop perfused with immense gladness for the health at the same time and conversion of the youth, quickly promoted him with monastic e and priestly grace, attributing him to the Church of B. Mary the Virgin, to whom the promise of his parents from the beginning dedicated him. But the first days of the begun conversion being consummated, when the Bishop had both instructed him by speech against the snares of the devil and strengthened him by authority, he dismissed him setting out to the place of the beginning of his generation; he dwells at Glastonbury: and there in the Church of the aforesaid Virgin he stayed, working those things which the norm of pious religion exacted.
[13] To which also a clinging cell, or destina,
or cave, or by whatever other name it can more rightly be named, for I do not find by what appellation I should call it most nearly, since it bears not so much the form of a human dwelling as of a sepulcher, he fabricated with his own labors. For that I may bear testimony of a thing which I myself saw, as far as my estimation bears, the length g of the same cell is not more than five feet, but the breadth has two and a half feet; moreover the height expresses the stature of a man, if anyone stand in the dug-out earth; for otherwise it is not extended even enough to the breast: so that, as I said, it seems rather the sepulcher of a dead man, than the dwelling of a living one. Whence it is manifest that he neither by lying took sleep, and standing always prayed God. But the little door is the same as the wall: for what was a door to one entering, the same became a wall to one entered (nor indeed in so small a work could a door, except in the whole, be made) but the middle of the little door a little window opens, through which the light shone for the one working. Wretched me and a sinner, bedewed with the tears of the writer. I confess to have looked in, to have seen the holy place of his sitting, also some works of his hands to have handled with sinful hands, to have applied to my eyes, to have bedewed with tears, and with bent knees to have adored. For I recalled, how often He heard me crying in dangers, how mercifully He had aided, and therefore neither did I temper my tears, nor if it could have been done would I wish to recede thence. This was the house to the youth, this the bed, this the spectacle of all the world. But to these straits the ample and spacious walls of cities cannot be compared, since through the same straits today both the feverish obtain health, and the furies of dæmons rest, and very much weakness convalesces.
[14] But lest the devil should seem to pity his poverty, who before did not suffer him to dwell in the palace, The Dæmon wishing to mock him, he now strives to drive him from the hut. The deceiver therefore, having covered himself with the deceptive image of a man, in the dark evening seeks the cell of the adolescent; his head let in he leans on the window, beholds him occupied with smith's work, demands some work to be fabricated for himself. But Dunstan neither noticing his craftiness, nor bearing his importunity, intends his mind to the work which was demanded. Meanwhile he with perverse composition to make words, to insert the names of women, to commemorate luxuries, then to show religion, and again to repeat the same. Then indeed the athlete of Christ, understanding who it was, to heat strongly the tongs with which he held the iron, with suppressed lips to invoke Christ. with heated tongs he holds him fast. And when by the highest ends he held the same tongs glowing, moved by a holy fury, he quickly snatches them from the fire, encloses the larval face with the tongs, and resisting with all his strength draws the monster inward. Now by holding Dunstan took strength, when this one who was held, the wall torn away, had fled from the hands of the one holding him, fremishing with monstrous roaring such howls: O what has that bald one done! O what has that bald one done! For he had thin, but beautiful hair, and for that reason he clamored such things of the man. But morning being made there gathered to him no small multitude of the neighboring people, inquiring what that clamor had been, which with so great vehemence had terrified them sleeping. The fury, he said, of a dæmon that was; who nowhere suffers me to live, also tries to eject me from the cell. Act cautiously against him, because if you cannot bear the voice of one angry, how will you endure the society of a damned one? After this day Dunstan as if to remain in the gird of war, to provoke the devil to contest with virtues, to macerate his body with want of food, to adorn his soul with prayers, knowing that in no matter more can the devil be overcome, than in that which the Lord said, by fasting and prayer. Whence with chastity of body he obtained so great cleanness of heart, that scarcely could anything lie hidden from him, whatever the sinister spirit had devised. Mark 9:28
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER III.
The deeds and pious death of the Matron Elgiva, by others Æthelfled. Five monasteries constructed by S. Dunstan. Things to come revealed.
[15] The fame therefore of his name ran through the whole region, Allured by the fame of his sanctity Elgiva, which kindled the hearts of all to see the man of God. Every age, either sex, the illustrious and the ignoble, the slender and the moneyed, the private and one with power; all utterly speak Dunstan, proclaim his wisdom, magnify his virtue. A certain woman, named a Elgive, sprung of royal progeny, of great riches, who had always loved with maternal affection all the royal seed, cherished, nourished it; leaning on the hands of her own came to the man of God, desiring to enjoy his most holy colloquy. Who when she had heard the word from his mouth, was so delighted with the sweetness of eternal life, that further she chose neither to seek her home again, nor to depart from the place, but with the Blessed Dunstan to remain, to live, to die. Therefore constituting a habitation for herself in the affinity of the sacred temple, there she flees a domicile: to be present sedulously at the hearing of the word of God, to give alms to the hungry, garment to the cold, herself to give effort to much continence, utterly to exist most ready to every work of justice. Toward the veneration of the blessed Virgin Mary she was so fervent, that in her temple she placed very many men of sacred Order, to whom she herself exhibited whatever was necessary by her liberality. Wherefore so far with the same Virgin her merits prevailed, she promotes the cult of the Mother of God: that if ever compelled by necessity she asked anything, scarcely with any little delay intervening, from the same she received it. For that without tedium of the readers I may make some little digression from what was begun (for it does not much deviate from the matter which we hold) when at a certain time the aforesaid King, on account of the religion of the place, had come to Glastonbury; she wishing to preserve the old custom, she receives King Ethelstan with a banquet, by which she was wont to minister to Kings, prays him to turn aside to her, to receive worthily the dinner which she had prepared for him. Which the King not without bashfulness granting (for he was not ignorant what she expended on the poor of Christ) commanded the provisors of the Royal ministration, to know if all things had been commodiously and moderately prepared. But they all things circumspected, announce all to be abundant; if only of that drink, which is made with a sprinkling of honey and myrtle, they had sufficiency. To whom she: Let not, she said, my Lady, [she commands of the Mother of God that the little vessel of mead be not diminished.] the Mother of my Lord Jesus Christ Mary, suffer that in all things which become Royal magnificence anything be able to be lacking. And running into the temple of the most blessed Virgin, she asks through her most bountiful goodness to be augmented, what in the Royal ministry seemed less to be had. So the King sat attended by much soldiery; the ministers draw that modest quantity of made liquor; so the little vessel remained undiminished, that you would think it the widow of Sarepta's, either the pitcher of meal or the cruse of oil. 3 Kings 17:14. At length the whole day they draw from the little vessel, the whole day no less they find it unexhausted. At which deed the King changed in mind; We have sinned, he said, too much against the handmaid of God, burdening her with the superfluity of our multitude. So he said: after the saying he turned away his face: by the way by which he came he set out.
[16] But now, that we may touch what we instituted, the glorious contest of her labors being transacted, with grave infirmity of body this same began to labor. To whom while the mourning Father Dunstan entered, S. Dunstan visits her sick: after the most abundant inundations of mutual tears, after the most humble devotion of pious confession, after the sweetest consolation of the blessed hope and coming of the Lord the Saviour, he exhorts her, to make herself bare of every mundane appearance; lest in passing the prince of the world find anything of hers. To whom she, No one, she said, in the world, as you, do I hold most dear; for this reason that I know you the chief author of my salvation, and he is constituted curator of her testament: saving this that I believe God omnipotent to hold the princedom of all goodness. Him therefore I make heir of my things, but you I constitute guardian of the inheritance, that whatever you shall know him to wish, it be of your arbitration to consign to effect. Which B. Dunstan hearing, and although unwilling wishing to comply with her will; all her gazas, which could remain in movable things, forthwith he distributed to the poor, but the rest he reserved for the relief of the Churches.
[17] Then the sun verged to the setting, and Dunstan fleeing the nocturnal darkness, returns to his prison-house. And behold while he passed the door of the Church chanting, his eyes lifted to heaven, he sees the coeternal Spirit of God the omnipotent Father and the Son descending in the appearance of a dove: he sees the Holy Spirit approach her: whose body more shining than all whiteness, but the oars of its wings scattered the splendor of sparkling fire through the air. Which he then truly blessed contemplating with pious avidity of mind, beholds entering that inmost place of the dying matron. Quickly therefore returned whence he came, he sees the house glittering with the splendor of divine brightness, hears the woman within the enclosures of the spread veil giving thanks, wonders at the colloquy, and a patient hearer awaits the end of the speaking. Then the veil being lifted he enters the inmost place; he seeks the name of that star-bearer, he interrogates the messenger. She suffused with a certain excellent grace of countenance, modestly smiling says: You saw the star-bearer before you came hither, and now, do you ask of whom I have spoken? He Himself is who appeared to you chanting at the door of the Church; who also deigned to console me, terrified with the fear of impending death, with the grace of His visitation, and certain of eternal salvation, I announce therefore to all my friends, that they are not to be saddened about my death, since dying me the brightness of eternal life shall receive. But to you my most dear and singular friend I render abundant thanks, for this reason that always instructed by your admonitions, and aided by prayers, behold I go to God. One thing to you and the last, if I dare say, I make a precept, that b at the first dawn of the sacred
blood and the Lord's body you make me a partaker, that fortified with the life-giving mysteries I be not confounded in the gate, while there I shall have spoken to my enemies. To whose command the venerable Father Dunstan assenting departed, he fortifies her with the sacred viaticum, in the morning according to the agreement returned; and so he performed all things, that the Mass being almost finished, when she had received the body and blood of Christ, she likewise had handed her soul to Christ. She being honorably buried in the Church of B. Mary, Dunstan solicitous both of her and also of his own patrimony (for either parent had died, nor besides him left another heir) first indeed endowed the same Church with the nearer lands, from her goods and his own he builds monasteries, which were in all the patrimony: but the rest he reserved for the founding of five monasteries, separated from one another by the situation of the lands. Which monasteries in the times of the following Kings, were so far augmented by his industry, that in each were throngs of very many monks, who all lived according to the rule instituted by the same Father.
[18] Thereupon the holy man giving himself to greater advancements of virtues, besought the Lord, that the glory of the just be shown to him: that he who had it through faith well believed, through manifestation known might more sweetly love it c. To one meditating such things from the heart there assists d a youth, distinguished in beauty, by one deceased known to him whom once as a boy in body he himself a boy had known, and with holy familiarity always had loved; relating those things which are the joys of eternal life, but that he in this world would suffer many things, he learns things to come, the snares of dæmons, the malignities of men, after all these things would come to the highest grades, would gain many thousands of men to God, and with these would climb the kingdoms of heaven. But when he for the sake of caution had not given assent to the one speaking; the youth led him seized into the court of the temple, and showing a place hitherto undisturbed said; That no doubt of believing these things which you have heard touch you, before three days a certain Presbyter shall here be buried, who is not yet sick. But rising in the morning from prayer Dunstan, the Clerics being called together into one came to the place, and a sign being placed said: If true are the things which were shown to me in the nocturnal time, before three days a certain Presbyter shall here be buried, who is not yet sick. a sign being given he is made more certain. Scarcely had they departed from one another, when there came the once courtly Presbyter of that woman, whom we lately praised: who an agreement being made with the Clerics, obtained the aforesaid place for burial saying: When God shall have bidden me to migrate from the body, in this place I pray bury my relics. The Presbyter therefore departed in the evening sound, by night returned sick: he lay down, was agonized, dies, and in the place signed to the blessed Father is buried. Great stupor surrounded all, for this reason that the same man had foretold things so wonderful of place, time, and person, all which after this they themselves had seen true and manifest. But he himself of the glory of eternal life shown and promised to him is made most glad, but of the rest is rendered not a little sad and solicitous.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER IV.
The deeds done under King Edmund. As Abbot he rules Glastonbury. The snares of dæmons. Heavenly visions.
[19] But King Ethelstan being dead, his brother Eadmund undertook the monarchy of the empire. He when he knew, with how great virtue the venerable Father Dunstan had once shone in the palace, with what just works and right counsels he had been endowed, Invited to the court by King Eadmund, and through this had always loved him with fraternal love; messengers being directed to him prays, let him deign to come to him: that whom he knew acceptable to omnipotent God, him among the Royal Nobles and Palatine Princes he might make to hold the highest Princedom. But Dunstan, either wishing to obey the Apostolic precepts, by which every soul is commanded to ought to be subject to a loftier power; or desiring to exalt the kingdom of justice, which in great part had grown obsolete in the land of the English; gave assent to the Royal petitions, residing for the vicissitude of times in the palace, and submitting both the King himself, and all the Princes of the English to the laws of justice. 1 Pet. 2:13. But since it almost happens that from the industry of others, through envy he is driven from it: the envy of others grows; and when to what virtue every worst one is not able to rise, that in the one rising he attempts to expugn; again, as once, by very many of the nobles it was shown against the prosperous successes of Dunstan, and to the King, that he should be driven from their company, was suggested by a false accusation. But the King, attributing favor to the false more than to the honest, orders Dunstan, deprived both of the Kings and of royal favor, to be driven from the court.
[20] Thus first, thus on the second day it was passed. And so the third light had come, and the King with his own went hunting. But the wood, which for the sake of hunting he had entered, a most lofty mountain of cedars conceives, which interrupted in its middle, showed a huge gulf and a monstrous precipice to those beholding from the top. Therefore the King through the sloping bridles of the mountain to loose, and through every byway to pursue the fleeing stag. Both are wearied: the King for the stag; but the King, in the hunt preserved from the highest peril by his merits, the stag for itself. At length all liberty of fleeing being denied, the beast seeks the precipice, rushes, and cut into the most minute parts perishes: a similar destruction of the following dogs: last the steed carried the King, who having seen at close hand what fortune had prepared before him, drew back the reins, striving to turn back the rider too. When suddenly the reins broken and cast far from his hand, with a swift course the horse carries off the King the rider. What more? Utterly distrusting of himself, but somewhat confiding in God's mercy, he implores heavenly aid, and thus confessing prays: God the omnipotent King, who though Thou be high above all things, regardest the humble, and the lofty always knowest from afar; be present now not to a King, but to a man like the other mortals, and standing in the supreme peril of death, and remember not the injuries inflicted by me on Thy faithful Dunstan: for if Thou shalt rescue me from the present death by his merits, as long as I live Thou shalt have me devoted and a praiser of Thy name and of his. Not yet had he fully finished his words, he recalls him to the court, and what is incredible to be told, but to God nothing impossible, as if held back by a divine hand the animal remained fixed on the top of the abyss. But he with heart alike and mouth rendering excellent thanks to God, bids Dunstan the author of his liberation to be present; and what through him divinity had wrought, before every Prince he expounds: and the right hand of the man being seized, he kissed it, and said: I acknowledge, most holy of men, what evil I have committed against you: not, by my faith, that I wished it, but that compelled by the worst men I did it. I give thanks to the clemency of God, which willed not only not to inflict the punishment due to me, but also to prerogate the undue benefit, while rescuing me from the precipice of death, it granted the spaces of a longer life to your names. Let there therefore henceforth be between us a perpetual integrity of perfect familiarity, let there be for you always a free faculty of disposing affairs in the palace, let there be in all the empire of the English the highest power of judging between a man and his neighbor. And that you may have known the affection of my mind toward you, that place, in which I received you born, educated, conversed, by perpetual right to be possessed I deliver, that whatever about it you wish to establish, it be of your arbitration to consider. He, the church of Glastonbury being augmented But if this shall have especially seated in your heart, that men of that Order, of which you bear the habit, it shall please there to aggregate, whatever shall be lacking to them in any matter, I for the sake of you with royal liberality will supply a. Therefore Dunstan, the power being received over the royal mansion, which was called Glastonbury, after a few days to lay the foundations of a more august Church, to construct workshops according to the exemplar once shown to him, and all being consummated to gather together there a great and excellent throng of monks; of whom he himself being made the first Abbot, there constituted Abbot, led all the cohabitants to so great a perfection of justice, that as luminaries of heaven they seemed for the putting to flight of the clouds of all error and the darkness of sins. Then to all the Churches round about Pontiffs were chosen from these same monks, then Abbots assumed, then finally Provosts of diverse offices instituted; for this reason that they were both chief in the merit of religion, and most illustrious in the wisdom of doctrine, and most excellent for the defense of the Catholic faith b.
[22] But the evil spirit impatient of so great religion, by what compact he may cast down the man of the Lord from the state of rectitude, with how great snares he can he labors. To whose eyes, he puts to flight a dæmon in the form of a wolf and a fox: in his chamber on a certain night praying, he thrusts himself a monstrous wolf, and again after a little feigns a coaxing fox. Which variety of appearances he smiling, O you, he said, in all things like yourself! O forms congruous to your action! while in the one you prove yourself bloody, in the other fraudulent. Go now, enemy, since in His name I will conquer you in the wolf and the fox, who conquered you in the lion and the dragon. But perceiving himself to suffer great envy from the dæmons, he takes as patron S. Andrew, nor confiding enough in his own strength or that of his sons, he applied as the patron of his life Andrew the Apostle, that he might be a faithful interpreter with God, an assiduous companion on earth, and in all the whirlwinds of this world an unfailing guard. By his assiduous protection himself as if walled by a wall, secure within the cell he passed his age, with lofty mind transcending all things of the world, he is refreshed by a heavenly concert at the birth of Edgar. and in the love of divinity with continual meditation resting. Whence he often deserved to be present at the most sweet concerts of the supernal Spirits, God granting the good hope of future reward, that he who carried on the conversation of Angels on earth, might acknowledge their society in heaven. At length, when to the aforesaid King Edmund a son was born, by name
[23] At which time too the man of God bound by Royal prayers, he sees the soul of a disciple carried to heaven. goes to visit the Church of Bath to be instituted with divine worship: where while, the refreshment being made, he prayed solitary, suddenly rapt to the supernal, he beholds the soul of a certain disciple, nobly educated by him at Glastonbury, attended on this side and that by an innumerable frequency of Angels, and perfused with the splendor of immense light, to be carried to the palace of heaven: and soon commending it into the hands of divine piety, he invites also the Lords of the place to commend it. All being astonished indeed, and scarcely exhibiting faith to his words, by the testimony of a swift courier, both the death and the hour of death, according to the testification of the man, is proved true. But returned from the place, that he might go to the King most desirous of speaking with him, from the dance of the devil he knows the death of King Edmund to be at hand. he caught the devil most like a buffoon dancing before those riding, and as if glorying of some future gain. Whose presence when he had indicated to the people sitting with him, and the form horrible to the sight of all by command had laid bare; asked afterward, what the so petulant gladness of the same monster portended; he announces the death of the King, and the change of the kingdom to be near. To which soon the truth of things attested answered the prophecy. For not yet had the sun seven times created the day, and the King is slain, and the kingdom is changed: from which it is enough to notice, with how great grace of God the breast of this man was ruled, who could so easily catch the invisible enemy, and so truly lay bare his trickeries. But the exequies of the King were translated to Glastonbury, and there by B. Dunstan under the great frequency of the mourning people commended to the earth.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER V.
The deeds done with King Edred. The Episcopate not admitted.
[25] There succeeded into the kingdom by the right of a brother the excellent man Edred, a man a cultivator of justice and piety, With King Edred he administers the kingdom. greatly loving God, and himself by God much loved, and through this with paternal scourge as a good son often flogged by Him. In his sight the venerable Father Dunstan was so precious, that he preferred him to all the human race, constituted him chief of the testaments, delegated to him the treasures, committed his soul, body, and kingdom, nor was there anyone in all the kingdom of the English, who without his command moved hand or foot. Therefore Dunstan, as if made a King and Emperor of the King, to extend the rod of equity, the rod of the kingdom of God, through all the bounds of the English; to endow with ample inheritances the Churches, which either he himself had founded, or, founded by others, want had oppressed; utterly to make great gladness to the peoples in his power, while peace and justice ran together into mutual embraces, and offered the gift of kissing for one another.
[25] While these things are thus done, a Elfege, with whom we have foresaid him once to have dwelt, was disposed to the life of the spiritual age. That he may become Bishop of Winchester But the King thinking that he had received an opportune time, in which he might make Dunstan partaker of greater honor, undertakes to ask him, that the Church, destitute of Pastoral solace, he himself the Pastor should undertake. But when he saw that he could not persuade what he persuaded, to the Queen mother b Eadith he imposed the word of persuasion. I know, he said, dearest mother and Queen of all the empire of the English, that our common friend Dunstan especially among men loves you, in your works most of all delights, while whatever for the counsel of eternal life he himself has prescribed to you, whether it were in the sustentation of the poor, or in the endowment of Churches, you with sedulous execution always have not ceased to fulfill. Wherefore my mind is held by great hope, that if you ask anything of him, which becomes me and him, by no reason will he wish to deny it to you. But that it becomes both of us, that he himself attain the highest Priesthood, is manifest to all: who know all honors to be inferior to his life and wisdom, and know the King of the English to be more powerful than many Kings of other lands. Approach therefore, my sweetest, the man with feminine eloquence: exhort by that grace by which you are mild with him, that he consent to you, that from this he may be able more familiarly to cling to God, and us more powerfully to absolve from the bonds of sins. So the Queen mother obeys the King her son, solicited by the Queen mother he does not acquiesce: she invites Dunstan to a banquet, soothes him with address. But he according to the etymology of his name, as a mountain persisting immovable, I do not wish, he said, Lady, that to be sought of me, which either granted may perturb my mind, or not granted offend yours: for I am not ignorant, how difficultly each one pleads his own cause before the tribunal of Christ, much less is the cognizer or judge of another's cause. But if this greatest of reasons were not, that indeed would much hold me back from undertaking the Episcopate, that I see the Lord King endangered by a constant languor, nor can I much be separated from him, since he has constituted me both as his father and as lord of all the kingdom. And when she had wished to hold him still refusing by her reasons, he moved a little, Hold it most certain, he said, that in the days of your son, I am not to be exalted with the Pontifical infula.
[26] Thence bearing a fluctuating mind, he gave himself to his chamber, and therefore objurgated by the Apostles and there sleep crept upon him revolving many things with himself. And behold there are present the Princes of the kingdom of God and Judges of the age, the venerable Apostles of Christ Peter and Paul, with S. Andrew, as if from the city of Rome meeting him going forth, and joining themselves to him at Monte-Gaudii. By whom most graciously saluted, he saw single swords shine in the hands of single ones, which all with officious benignity they offered to him. And when he led his gaze through the swords extended before him, he read on the sword of Blessed Peter this writing, woven with golden letters: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. But the swords of the rest had inscribed the names of those holding them, of Paul Paul, of Andrew Andrew. Meanwhile he beholds Andrew with cheered countenance coming together, and hears him precenting with Evangelical words, Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me because I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls. Matt. 11 and struck, Then bidden by Blessed Peter to extend his left hand, he received a modest blow of a crackling rod, hearing this from him: Let this be to you both a punishment of the rejected, and a sign of no longer rejecting the Pontificate. At whose little rod's touch awaking from sleep, he understands himself divinely visited: he gives thanks to God, by whose gift he sees himself thus honored.
[27] And when the day brightening he had narrated to the King what he had seen, he wondering with such an unraveling solved the vision; since by the arms of the Apostolic benediction the Pontifical power is expressed, you should know yourself reproved for this, that yesterday you contemned the yoke of the Lord, and by divine election designated a future Pontiff. Moreover that, In the beginning was the Word, you saw inscribed on the sword of B. Peter the Apostle; since the Word of God is the only-begotten Son of God, God with God always, but man for men among men made; surely know yourself to be the future Prince of that See, which by the name of Christ in the city of Canterbury is celebrated more notable than the other Churches. By this sign of divine pre-announcement Dunstan was glorified, he is presignified the future Archbishop of Canterbury: and by this conjecture of the Royal interpretation, designated Pontiff. O notable sign! O grace given freely to a man! O the sincere purity of his heart! Still the highest Pontiff of the English Odo led his life in human affairs, and Dunstan in the eyes of the supernal Inspector was the highest Pontiff. Very wonderful that he himself still an earth-born one was mingled with the Angelic concerts in heaven, no less wonderful that the citizens of heaven frequented him on earth. Which to which I should prefer, a man joined to the heaven-dwellers, or the heaven-dwellers destined to a man, I do not sufficiently find, except that in the one he was happier, in the other he was more secure. Others are astonished at the diverse donations of diverse virtues, conferred divinely on certain men; I esteem nothing so much, as a man standing in the whirlwinds of this world, transcending all things of the world in mind, and resting in the love of the Creator, to live Martha by ministry, Mary by desire, working by faith, ardent with charity. But we have said nothing, if we shall have said those things which remain.
[28] But King Edred, seized with a lethal disease, fell into bed, nor did the physicians promise any hope of escaping death. Quickly therefore he sends messengers, who should summon the Father of his life Dunstan, that
he might be the witness of his last arbitration, the receiver of confessions, and a faithful intercessor with God. about to go to the dying King, Saddened therefore to the soul Dunstan, with what velocity he could goes to visit his friend the King. But God seeing him both afflicted with grief of heart, and suffering the labor of the body, did not suffer that affliction should touch him further, but both lightened the grief, and diminished the labor. he understands him to be dead, For when he was on the journey tending to the palace, and untiringly wearied his limbs consumed with fasts; a voice glided down from the highest ether sounded; Behold King Edred has fallen asleep in the Lord. By the emission of which voice the horse, on which he sat, struck died; his companions trembled, hearing indeed the crash of one thundering, but not understanding what it thundered. To whom himself opening the matter, commends the soul of the deceased King into the hands of the eternal King: and immediately by the messengers bringing word he hears, what before to him from heaven the Angel absolved. Having entered therefore the palace Dunstan, contemplates the corpse of the beloved man lying: the throngs of companions, who once gilded were wont to assist, to recede far off: he wonders at the change, pities the condition. Then the faith, by which he had loved him living, studying to expend on the deceased too, he undertook the wrapping of the body upon himself, and the due office of burying he paid to him with due honor.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER VI.
Acts under King Edwy. The exile of S. Dunstan.
[29] After him there arose Edwi, son of King Edmund, in age indeed a youth, Edwy the King insolent and libidinous, and mighty with no grace of reigning; who neither himself wise, nor acquiescing in the counsel of the wise, but another Roboam, the elders being despised, followed the counsels of boys. He having gained these most pernicious attendants, and relying not so much on their counsels as on their insanities, to despoil every best one of his affairs, to proscribe the wealthy, to disinherit the churches, to detract from religion, to exercise manifold exactions in the cities; nor only to strangers from his kinship did his cruelty avail, but also in the manner of Nero against men sprung of his stock, against the very mother of the Kings the Queen a Elgiva with his dementia to rage: besides these things burning with lust, without intermission he raged for coitus. he warns him in vain: By which things the venerable Father Dunstan grievously offended, frequently him at the same time and sharply in opportune places to rebuke: he to laugh at the one rebuking, and at the same time to threaten him many evils. But after he saw his industry to prevail nothing; finally his colloquy altogether to be abstained from.
[30] And so him being left, he is received in a monastery, and there dwelt in so great a loftiness of religion; that holy devotion exceeded measure. In this place a tower had been built, which not yet did any covering close at the supreme summit: a falling beam he draws back by the sign of the Cross: and when the people strove to apply the beam, the sustainer of the whole work, to the highest walls, suddenly the ropes broken the same beam began to rush downward. A huge clamor arose of all the people, sounding aloud Dunstan with repeated voices. So the Saint flies swifter, opposes his lifted right hand to the machine, paints the Cross over against it. Not yet had the holy hand contracted the holy fingers, when that beam which had begun to verge, not bound by chains, not lifted by machines, not finally sustained by any apparatus of human ingenuity, was seen to be carried back to the place from which it had begun to rush. If the malign spirit did not envy so great a glory, whom would he envy? If then he did not pour out the virus of his malignity, when would he pour it out? Having therefore no further doubt of the man of God, once and at the same time all the snares of his ambushes he resolved to direct against him. he puts to flight the devil in the appearance of a bear: So translated into a similar appearance of a bear, with gaping jaw, he attacks the one praying; and his claws thrown in he embraces the pastoral rod which he held in his hand, and attempts to draw it to himself. But the divine Dunstan, strongly strengthened by the Spirit of Divinity, raises the staff drawn back to himself on high, most direly beats the fleeing beast; nor does he desist by beating the monster, before the scourge appeared broken on its back into three parts.
[31] b Conquered therefore in himself the devil, seeks to conquer his conqueror in others: nor indeed were the occasions of things far off, by which what he perversely devised, he might transfer to malign uses. For the aforesaid King, on the same day on which he had been consecrated, publicly devolved into foul concubinages, he draws away the King from the adulteress: and through this every Senatorial order being offended, no one however daring to reprove his wantonness; by the equal and common vow of all Dunstan is urged, who should constantly approach the King, restrain the royal debauchery by divine and human reason, strike the harlotry of the adulterous woman with the threat of hanging. He did this: and this is little: moreover the Prince found together with the adulteress and her daughter from the adulterous bed he violently drew away, and a crown being placed on his head, before the highest Pontiff Odo led him. But the strumpet rolling her bloody eyes, by whose impulse proscribed, You, she said, have addicted me to the hanging of death; therefore you deprived of the comeliness of your members, I will damn to eternal exile. By the tenor of which invective the wicked spirit aroused, awaits vengeance on the man of God by the impulse of the nefarious harlot. So the devil instigates the mind of the woman, the woman exalts the anger of the King, both intend exile to Dunstan. And first indeed, the King's edict urging, all the Churches of monastic religion were despoiled of their things; that those which always had especially been of gladness to the man, now to the same should become of the greatest grief. Then when it had been come to Glastonbury, and all things being written down he himself had been proscribed, amid the tears of the monks, nourished by his hand, he represses the cachinnations of the dæmon, amid the laments of the friends coming to him from all places, amid the groans of the poor recreated by him with the wonted stipends day by day, there was heard in the court of the temple the voice of a clapping devil, as the voice of a young girl, sharply and finely cachinnating. Whom the Saint with severe brow looking up at, Nothing, he said, over my exile do you congratulate, since there is more that you should grieve at my returning, than whatever you can rejoice at my being in exile. At which saying, of the pallid kingdom the pallid minister departs.
[32] But Dunstan not unmindful of what the divine harper once had precented to him, nay mindful of the Lord's promise, and sails into Flanders: by which Christ asserted those would be blessed who suffer persecution for justice, gives himself to the marine waves, reaching the opposite shore in the nation of the Flemings. Matt. 5:10. Where favor being found before the eminent c Prince of that land, he remained in the monastery of B. Peter, which is situated at Ghent; for this reason that it seemed to excel the other monasteries of that region both by the profession of virtue and by the documents of philosophy. Nor yet does the insane madness of the raging woman cease, but that all, who had cherished the man of God in the time of his recession with hospitality, being scrutinized, proscribed, damned, she transmitted malign ministers to pluck out his eyes too. But the divine clemency pitying, dear to all. by whose aids he was never destitute, Gaul had received him before the watery waves of the servant of Jezabel had touched. So the Saint exults, deploring no losses of exile through the grace of God, while by his merits he so bound all to himself, that he thought exile to be a fatherland. Above these things the consolation of his friend the d Apostle cherished him; who suffered him to need nothing of any matter which he himself sought.
[33] The clemency of Christ therefore regarding the people of the English, destitute of so great a Patron, stirred up the hearts of men from the river Humber even to the river Thames, above which the city of London is founded, the English conspiring against the impious King Edwy: who all as if translated into one man, not only to abject his kingdom, but also to expel him from the kingdom strove, for this reason that in the committed rule he had acted unwisely, would destroy the wise, would adopt to himself the ignorant of good by his counsels, utterly headlong went off with lust and arrogance. So forced into a throng, the adulteress is slain: they do not cease to pursue with arms the King fleeing with the adulteress, and hiding himself in pathless places. And her indeed, found near the e city of Claudia, they hamstrung, then with the death of which she was worthy mulcted. Moreover the King wandering through diverse byways of places, they compelled beyond the river Thames. Then his brother being summoned, an adolescent of the best disposition, Edgar is established King. Edgar (whom we have foresaid to have been once designated by a heavenly oracle the future King, while the Angels announced peace and the safety of the kingdom in his and Dunstan's times) they establish him King over all the provinces, from the great river Humber even to the river Thames, by which river the Kingdom of both was divided from each other. So the Kingdom, which had been one divided into two Kings, for some while sweated with grave conflicts of wars; that veracious sentence of the Saviour being then fulfilled, by which He asserts every kingdom divided against itself to be destroyed, and a house upon a house to be about to fall. Edgar was daily advancing as David in piety and fortitude, and as Solomon in wisdom, riches, and glory: but the house of Edwy daily to decrease, since he himself did not cease to grow in flagitia.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER VII.
The return into England. The Episcopate of Worcester and London conferred, and the Archbishopric of Canterbury. Exercises adorned with miracles.
[34] But a few days after his election, Edgar the Dyarch commanded a council of all his Kingdom to be celebrated, S. Dunstan recalled, in which all things which by his brother had been decreed by iniquitous laws being annihilated, and all things which by his violent domination had been taken away being restored, he recalled also the venerable Abbot Dunstan in great glory from exile, and exalted him with greater glory than by all the Kings before he had been honored. To whom also that he should undertake the Pontifical dignity, he pressed with vehement petition; nor before would he rest from prayers, than he should draw him back from his sentence to consenting, and set him as Pontiff over the Church of Worcester, which flourished under the honor of the blessed Virgin Mary. and to be ordained Bishop, Who when he came to Canterbury to be consecrated, and the petition of the Clergy and people being recited the highest Priest of God Odo had joyfully assented; wonderful to be told, the rest of the ministry of consecration, not as over a Prelate of the men of Wicci, but as over an Archbishop of the men of Canterbury wonderfully and cheerfully he absolved. Wherefore reproved by the surrounding Clergy, that he acted against the decrees of the Fathers, who prohibit two to be Priests of one Church, nor by the right of inheritance an election of succession to be made, he is consecrated as Archbishop; he is reported to have given such an answer: If human things did not yield to divine, by right the authority of men could be pretended to me: but now indeed, since the author of all is God, I cannot not do that, which the Spirit of God has deigned to command to be done: for this blessed one will be next after my death the Archbishop of this see, and against the Prince of the world a most strong battler. Defended by this reason of the highest Pontiff, he proceeds to the people, that one too pretitled the highest Pontiff of the men of Canterbury, bearing the insignia of Aaron, not adumbrated by the veil of the law, but marked by the gift of divine propitiation through the grace of Christ. Thence returned to the Church which had been consigned to him, and exalted in the Pontifical Chair, he recalled what once he had promised to the exulting devil, when royal impiety had ascribed him to exile. So with hands rising against him, to divide his members with the Evangelical sword; and the sheep, which round about were carried wandering, to recall to the Lord's sheepfold.
[35] Meanwhile the most impious King Edwy being dead, and translated into the lot of the malign spirits, Dunstan in the Church over which he presided served the divine meditations, knowing nothing what had been done about the King. And behold the tartarean cohort, under his sight exulting, King Edwy being dead he sees dæmons exulting, as if to lead a dance, and as if of a captured prey to celebrate glad victories. So the Saint scrutinizes the cause of the gladness, hears the King to have died, his soul straightway to be delivered to the gehennal fires, but first this to be announced to Dunstan by divine command. Moved therefore by piety Dunstan, is prostrated to the ground, an abundant rain of tears is produced from his eyes, he beats God with prayers, nor does he rest from praying to Him, until he knows the spirit of the King to be freed. But a brief little delay being passed, the sad infernal legion returns, and with a great clamor breaks into these voices: O man of men! O alien from faith! O always ungrateful to our benefits. We brought obsequy, but by his prayers he saves the soul. you have repaid us punishment. To avenge your injuries from the region of darkness we came, and behold confounded by your adverse imprecations we return. And when he indicated to the dæmons the precept of bringing forth the truth; he recognizes, the soul of the King to have been taken from them by Angelic virtue, kept under a seal to the appointed term, the dæmons to have no right in it, but the same to pass into the lot of penitent souls. Then he exulting in the Lord, restrained their furies with such ratiocination: What, he said, was done unjustly to you? If this man sinned against Christ, he also sinned against me: but since I dismissed my injuries for Christ, Christ also dismissed His, when I besought His clemency. What therefore Christ and I have deigned clemently to indulge, by what temerity do you dare wickedly to reprove? By which sentence the foul spirits, as if struck by a Parthian arrow, leap apart in the manner of flies snatched by the wind.
[36] But Edgar, made Monarch of all the empire, thought to constitute the blessed man over all the Kingdom; not wishing in the Kingdom to grow without him, whom before the Kingdom before the rest he had studied more familiarly to love. Made Bishop of London, Whence the Bishop of London being laid with his Fathers, at the request of the King and Princes Dunstan is given by succession, all the inhabitants of the same city also striving for it, and with importunate voices acclaiming his name. For they had heard how he had been from primeval age most acceptable to God, how in that Church over which he presided solicitous, how finally in every good and best thing most approved; and for that reason they did not wish to have another, when they could have the most choice one. Nor did the excuse avail him, the authority of the Canons being pretended: who as they contradict one Church to be of two Bishops, he presides over both Sees; so they do not permit two Churches to be able to be made of one Bishop; since John, they say, the beloved of the Lord presided over seven Churches and their Bishops, and Blessed Paul had the solicitude of all the Churches at the same time and the mastership. By such testimonies of reasons the blessed Pontiff overcome, is enthroned Prelate of the city of London; not leaving that Church which before he had had, but presiding over both, ruling both, of both the true and proper Pontiff existing.
[37] You have therefore, most holy Father, the sword of Paul, which destined to you from heaven once he himself had brought, and to be had for dividing the enemies of the Church had delivered. And although your former Pontifical power, with the sword of S. Paul at London, not without the vigor of Evangelical discipline, was administered; yet it was not fitting that it be preshown either by a sword or by the person of the Presiding one, for this reason that neither does a sword become a Virgin, but it becomes men; nor by changing place did you change service, when from the Virgin mother of the Lord you passed to the Apostle of the Lord, from Worcester to London. Gird yourself therefore, most strong warrior, gird yourself with the sword of the power of God, made powerful through Him, who above the thigh too is most powerful, to fight against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spiritual things of wickedness in the heavenly places. Then those who by nefarious crime illicitly abuse matrimony, rightly let either the Royal power, or the singular sublimity of the Roman Pontiff recall from inflicting vengeance. Give sentence against the silver-dealers seducers of the people, and not before the sacred altar on the day of Pentecost about to offer do you proceed, than both vengeance strike them, and justice come forth to the people of God. Everywhere leave the signs of your virtues; everywhere erect the trophies of the Lord's Cross. For you will merit after a little the sword of Peter; in which innumerable, as Peter all kinds of animals, you will slay, and into the body of the Church by eating transfer. You will merit, I say, the sword of Peter, marked with the name of the omnipotent Son of God, that in all the breadth of the English the power of binding and loosing through it may be augmented to you, then about to use the sword of S. Peter at Canterbury. nor may he be able to enter into the sheepfold of the sheep, who with you as leader has not ascended through the door. How deservedly Door of the granary b Canterbury sounds, that the Granary be the breadth of the empire of the English, but the Door the Princedom of the Church of the men of Canterbury.
[40] He departed therefore from human affairs, led by the hands of Angels to paradise, the Prince of Priests Odo, a man illustrious in wisdom and laudable in virtue, and, unless Dunstan succeeded, by all the orb of the English always to be deplored. After whose death when the King adjured Dunstan to become Prince of Priests, After the happy death of S. Odo, nor he to the one adjuring by any reason accommodated assent; there assist certain ones, whose hands the Bishop of Winchester Elfin had filled, demanding the highest Priesthood to be confirmed to him: for he both before Odo had ambitioned the highest Priesthood, but the keeper of His Church Christ impeded his ambition. So the King, those who had been corrupted by the gifts of the Bishop suspecting nothing, and for this hearing them with a simple mind, delivered the Church bereaved of a Pastor to him to be governed. But when he had set out for Rome, that he might receive the Pallium from the Apostolic See, seized by grave cold among the Alps he miserably died, the death of Elfin, a worthy vengeance divinely recompensed to himself, that he who had grown cold from the love of the heavenly in his heart, through the asperity of cold should perish in body; and who had presumed to ambition others' honors, himself dying in a strange region, should lose alike honor and life. Again prayers about the Archbishopric are poured forth to Dunstan, nor work anything of consent in his mind. Wherefore there is chosen to the Patriarchate of the Church of Canterbury, Berthelm Bishop of the men of Dorset c, and Berthelm being rejected, a man more mild than industrious, and who knew to consult his own life more than another's. He after a few days of the undertaken Pontificate, recognized that for so great a matter he was less fit, bidden by the King and all the people, departs from Canterbury; and to his Church lately left, not without bashfulness returned: for the Lord acted for Dunstan, that He might fulfill His word, which He had promised in the hand of the Princes of the kingdom. But King Edgar noticing, that the reprobation of these was the vocation of the better, and that alone among all men was Dunstan, to whom no one could be compared, nay to all could be preferred; the third time him wearied with prayers, and at length both by his own and by the importunity of all the Bishops overcome, he is constituted Archbishop of Canterbury. he instituted Primate and Patriarch of the first Metropolis of the English. Whom immediately on account of the strength of Apostolic faith or authority, set out for the city of Romulus, the Roman Pontiff deserved to see: and him adorned with the sacred Pontificals, as an Angel of the Lord of hosts to exhibit the science of the divine law, or as a column of light to illuminate the face of the earth, he transmitted to the nation of the English.
[41] Behold in what manner were fulfilled, those things which by the sword inscribed with the Word of God, and exhibited by the blessed legation of the Prince of the Apostles Peter, so long before were pre-announced. But what does it mean that from the hand of the third Apostle he received the third sword, when in the Church which under his name at Rochester d is held venerable, he by no means sat as Pontiff. He sat
named Blandinium, once built by Saint Amand, in better elegance he renewed, and there the great Priest of God Wandregisil with his companion Archprelates by the nod of the Lord translated, where B. Dunstan staying for some while, left examples of light to be imitated. The said Arnulf lived until the year 964. But the exile of S. Dunstan they ascribe to the year 956, the men of Worcester, Durham, and others.
CHAPTER VII.
[34] But a few days after his election, Edgar the Dyarch commanded a council of all his Kingdom to be celebrated, S. Dunstan recalled, in which all things which by his brother had been decreed by iniquitous laws being annihilated, and all things which by his violent domination had been taken away being restored, he recalled also the venerable Abbot Dunstan in great glory from exile, and exalted him with greater glory than by all the Kings before he had been honored. To whom also that he should undertake the Pontifical dignity, he pressed with vehement petition; nor before would he wish to rest from prayers, than he should draw him back from his sentence to consenting, and over the Church of Worcester, which flourished under the honor of the blessed Virgin Mary, set him as Pontiff. and being ordained Bishop, Who when he came to Canterbury to be consecrated, and the petition of the Clergy and people being recited the highest Priest of God Odo had joyfully assented; wonderful to be told, the rest of the ministry of consecration, not as over a Prelate of the men of Wicci, but as over an Archbishop of the men of Canterbury he wonderfully and cheerfully absolved. Wherefore reproved by the surrounding Clergy, that he acted against the decrees of the Fathers, who prohibit two to be Priests of one Church, nor by the right of inheritance an election of succession to be made, he is consecrated as Archbishop; he is reported to have given such an answer: If human things did not yield to divine, by right the authority of men could be pretended to me: but now indeed, since the author of all is God, I cannot not do that, which the Spirit of God has deigned to command to be done: for this blessed one will be next after my death the Archbishop of this see, and against the Prince of the world a most strong battler. Defended by this reason of the highest Pontiff, he proceeds to the people, that one too pretitled the highest Pontiff of the men of Canterbury, bearing the insignia of Aaron, not adumbrated by the veil of the law, but marked by the gift of divine propitiation through the grace of Christ. Thence returned to the Church which had been consigned to him, and exalted in the Pontifical Chair, he recalled what once he had promised to the exulting devil, when royal impiety had ascribed him to exile. So with hands rising against him, to divide his members with the Evangelical sword; and the sheep, which round about were carried wandering, to recall to the Lord's sheepfold.
[40] He departed therefore from human affairs, led by the hands of Angels to paradise, the Prince of Priests Odo, a man illustrious in wisdom and laudable in virtue, and, unless Dunstan succeeded, by all the orb of the English always to be deplored. After whose death when the King adjured Dunstan to become Prince of Priests, After the happy death of S. Odo, nor he to the one adjuring by any reason accommodated assent; there assist certain ones, whose hands the Bishop of Winchester Elffin had filled, demanding the highest Priesthood to be confirmed to him: for he both before Odo had ambitioned the highest Priesthood, but the keeper of His Church Christ impeded his ambition. So the King, those who had been corrupted by the gifts of the Bishop suspecting nothing, and for this hearing them with a simple mind, delivered the Church bereaved of a Pastor to him to be governed. But when he had set out for Rome, that he might receive the Pallium from the Apostolic See, seized by grave cold among the Alps he miserably died, the death of Elfin, a worthy vengeance divinely recompensed to himself, that he who had grown cold from the love of the heavenly in his heart, through the asperity of cold should perish in body; and who had presumed to ambition others' honors, himself dying in a strange region, should lose alike honor and life. Again prayers about the Archbishopric are poured forth to Dunstan, nor work anything of consent in his mind. Wherefore there is chosen to the Patriarchate of the Church of Canterbury, Berthelm Bishop of the men of Dorset c, and Berthelm being rejected, a man more mild than industrious, and who knew to consult his own life more than another's. He after a few days of the undertaken Pontificate, recognized that for so great a matter he was less fit, bidden by the King and all the people, departs from Canterbury; and to his Church lately left, not without bashfulness returned: for the Lord acted for Dunstan, that He might fulfill His word, which He had promised in the hand of the Princes of the kingdom. But King Edgar noticing, that the reprobation of these was the vocation of the better, and that alone among all men was Dunstan, to whom no one could be compared, nay to all could be preferred; the third time him wearied with prayers, and at length both by his own and by the importunity of all the Bishops overcome, he is constituted Archbishop of Canterbury. he instituted Primate and Patriarch of the first Metropolis of the English. Whom immediately on account of the strength of Apostolic faith or authority, set out for the city of Romulus, the Roman Pontiff deserved to see: and him adorned with the sacred Pontificals, as an Angel of the Lord of hosts to exhibit the science of the divine law, or as a column of light to illuminate the face of the earth, he transmitted to the nation of the English.
plainly by power, even if not by corporeal sitting. He sat, I say, by power, by command he sat, by defense he sat, by benefits he sat. At Canterbury in his first Mass a dove appears, But lest the grace of his virtues should be deprived to the city of Canterbury, or the augmentation of the undertaken honor should seem to have been a diminution of the past virtue; the Holy Spirit deigned by certain new beginnings of His grace so to clarify the man in the Church of the Saviour, that wonderful he himself seemed to be beyond the nature of man. For when on the first day of his coming he assisted at the sacred altars, and offered the life-giving bread to the people of God by distributing it; suddenly the house being covered with a cloud, the dove, once seen in the Jordan by John, again appeared, which, until the sacrifice had been consumed, remained over him. And when the sacrifice had been consumed, it rested over the memorial of Blessed Odo, which was built toward the Southern part of the altar in the manner of a pyramid. From which day so the Pontiff revered the merit of the same man of God, that never did he pass by without bending his knees, and would call him good, thus saying, here rests Odo the good.
[42] At that same time a certain one, namely a great and powerful man, instituted a little chapel to the Saviour, and in a Church to be dedicated water flows from a rock, to consecrate which and to possess by proper right the venerable Pontiff Dunstan invited came. Where when for the ministry of the dedication water had been lacking, and through this bashfulness had accrued to the inviter; at the voice of the man, which by nature he had not, by the grace of God the dry rock poured out water: which flowing from the same rock until today, and affording a salutary cup to the faithful, makes the name of Dunstan celebrated.
[43] Dunstan therefore infulated with the white stole of his Apostolate by the Roman, as we have said, Pontiff, and destined Patriarch of all the nation of the English, and also of other regions subjected to the kingdom of the English, hastened to go through the single cities of the region; that if to any the name of the faith had been unknown he might preach, and the domestics of the faith by Apostolic tradition to good work he might instruct. he goes round the kingdom preaching, Nor was it easy for any of his hearers not to be teachable, for this reason that so great a sublimity of things was in him, so great a faculty of speaking, that there was nothing either wiser to be found, or more adorned to be spoken, or more pleasant to be heard. But when from external affairs rest had been given, then more conjoinedly to remain with God, by insisting on sacred vigils, by reading the divine Scriptures, or by emending their codices. And the highest zeal was, that he should never be at leisure from divine works: or indulges his own piety. but now to discern the true judgment between man and man, now to tranquilize the unpacified minds of men with placid speech; to dissolve the inept marriages of these, to refute the heretical opinion of those; here to renew the neglected, there to construct the new; neither to undertake superfluous buildings, nor to omit necessary ones; to succor widows, orphans, and pilgrims, from the just revenues of the Church; to have money not by the estimation of gain, but by the acquisition of piety, expending all his work on the fatherland; and rather to repel its destruction, than his own dangers.
[44] Therefore the King trusting his counsel as his life, and receiving everything that was said by him as if brought forth from the mouth of the Omnipotent, whatever By his counsel the wicked are driven out by the King, was to be established he established, whatever was to be damned he damned. By this counselor all the ministers of diabolical malignity, thieves, sacrilegious, perjurers, violators of faith, composers of poison, seekers of lust; to these whoever had conspired against the fatherland, who had extended hands against parents, women too who by adulterous fraud had killed their husbands, finally all whom he knew to live with God angry, driven out from all the bounds of his kingdom, he relegated to long or perpetual exile. By his counsel too all the ministers of the Churches, and the Ecclesiastics are corrected, who, the ministry of their profession being spurned, either intent on the zeal of hunting, or given to gainful businesses, or defiled by the insolence of concubinage, were wont to pass their age, all these either by strict animadversion he decreed to be coerced, or by swift subversion he decreed to be expelled. From which it was done, that the ministers of certain most illustrious Churches, while in choosing whatever they deliberated they preferred pleasure to honesty, by Royal sanction expelled from the same Churches, left their places to better men and of another order. On account therefore of these institutes of most holy discipline, so great a cult of divinity grew in the kingdom of the English, that even the most noble and in the world most powerful, all the pomps of the world being spurned, fled to divine services: and these whom now the Ecclesiastical Order had admitted contended of virtue, to the great good of the sacred and political matter. knowing that no one could attain to honor, whom the merits of virtues did not aid. On account of the excellence of this discipline too, so great a constancy of peace, so great an opulence of things existed, that all the elements of the world, even the very Creator God of the elements, you would think to smile in the royal times. So the wisdom of the Pontiff dictated the justice of the King, the justice of the King obtained the mercy of God, but the mercy of God afforded an abundance of all things.
ANNOTATA.
shall have undergone the punishment, which in the seduction of the whole people they have merited. For if in the avenging of so great an evil, when the business regards me, I forbear to placate God; how can I hope that He will receive a sacrifice from my hands? But although this can be ascribed to cruelty, yet to God my intention is patent. The tears, groans, and sighs of widows and orphans, the clamor too of all the common people lies upon me, and demands the correction of this evil: whose affliction if, as much as is in me, I do not intend to mitigate, both I too greatly offend God who compassionates their groans, and I make others more prompt and more bold to exercise the same evil. He had spoken, and for the punishment of those who were about to lose their hands moved with piety, he flows with tears, so that it was enough to see, from what fountain proceeded the edict, which to some seemed cruel. But when he heard the prefixed justice done, he arose, and his face washed going to the oratory with cheered countenance, said: Because I have heard the Lord today, by obeying the established laws of justice; I trust that He too through His mercy will receive a sacrifice from my hand today.
CHAPTER VIII.
King Edgar amended. SS. Edward and Ethelred his sons crowned. Other things done before his death.
[45] But the malign one desiring to disturb these common joys of the whole Church, kindled the mind of the most Christian King into the love of a Virgin devoted to God: The King reproved for a rape, that since he could not cast down Dunstan from the path of justice; him whom Dunstan especially loved, and upon whom the vigor of all religion lay, he might attempt to cast down. So the sin being perpetrated against a a veiled Virgin, and brought to the public hearing of the people, Dunstan as much for the fault as for the infamy of the King affected with most grievous grief; soon him as another David sleeping with Bathsheba, that other but far more severe Nathan intrepid went to; furious he entered to him. But the King rising to meet the coming Pontiff, extended his hand, that he might lead him to the Royal throne. Who refusing to give his hand, turned his eyes with a certain indignation of mind upon him, and said: Do you dare to touch the hand of a Pontiff, who did not fear to snatch a Virgin pledged by the gift of deity? You have committed adultery with the spouse of your Creator: and do you think the friend of the Spouse can be placated by any service of yours? I will not be the friend of one to whom Christ shall be an enemy. Terrified therefore by the thunder of words the King is forthwith prostrated at the feet of the Pontiff objurgating him, weepingly confesses his crime, humbly prays pardon. Which when the Pontiff saw he was frightened, and the King suffused with tears, himself too dripping with tears, raised from the ground. Then when he had expounded the greatness of the sin by amplification, he imposes penance for 7 years: and rendered him prepared for every satisfaction, he indicted to him a seven-year penance: that in all this space he should not bear the crown of the kingdom, should transact a two-day fast in the week, should largely disperse the ancestral treasures to the poor; above these things should found some monastery for Virgins to be consecrated to God, that he who had taken away one Virgin from God by sin, might aggregate to Him several through the volumes of the age; should drive the ill-acting Clerics too from the Churches, should introduce throngs of Monks; should sanction the just and to God acceptable reasons of laws, should write the holy ones, should command the written ones to be kept by the peoples through all the bounds of his empire. Nothing therefore was residual, which the King less or more slothfully fulfilled, than had been prescribed by the Rector of his life. But in the seventh year when, as it were the term of a jubilee returning, the time of penance had been accomplished; the sacred Prelate, all the Princes of the Empire of the English being summoned, the Bishops, Abbots, and all the orders of Ecclesiastical dignity, imposed the crown on the King before all the multitude of the people of the English, all rejoicing and with ineffable voices of jubilation praising God in Dunstan.
[46] Meanwhile so great the Clerical order in certain places was carried with confusion, that not only did it have nothing more excellent than the life of the secular, He amends the Clerics or expels them. but also lay far inferior with wicked acts: wherefore the Pastors of the Churches troubled, go to Dunstan as their proper Primate, expound the things ill done, seek out the counsels of correction. But he bringing forth against the nefarious men the sentence of his authority, Either canonically, he said, one must live, or go out of the Churches. From which it was done: that the Clerics of very many Churches, while they contemned to be corrected by the proposed condition, by the authority of the Pontiff were expelled. Who the King being gone to or those whom the King's favor had made near, accuse Dunstan of injuries, pronounce themselves lovers of virtue, pray that it be discussed in the presence of the King. So Dunstan, not wishing to go against those things which were as if reasonably demanded, a council being forced came to Winchester, where by the sentence of the whole council, he took the victory over the adversaries. And when from right they perceived nothing to remain for them, having used the aid of the King and Princes, they turn to prayers, by which they demand of the Bishop, that the introduced persons be expelled from the Churches, the expelled restored. The man of God therefore doubting, and offering no answer to what was asked; and lest he restore the expelled he is divinely warned; a thing wonderful and unheard of by the ages! Behold the form of the Lord's body, fixed on the standard of the Cross, and placed in the higher part of the house, expressing human modes, restrained the voices of all, saying: Far be it that this be done, far be it that this be done. At which voice the King and all the elders almost even to the expiration terrified, fill the area alike with clamor and the praise of God. b
[47] And with these adversaries indeed living it was ceased from contentions, until through the succession of sons the former discord was renewed. Who departing, and taking as the defender of their iniquity c Heornelm the Pontiff of the Scots, a man namely as much by genius as by loquacity almost insuperable, tend to the man of God in the village which is called Kalue; he sees the adversaries punished by the overthrow of the house. with swelling spirit propose a scandal. But Dunstan broken indeed by long old age and the great labors of the Church, now besides prayer had put all things behind his back. Nevertheless the iniquitous part, once conquered by a divine miracle, lest now of obtaining victory it should glory, vibrates this dart of response against the enemies: Since, he said, so great a time being elapsed, you did not pretend the handle of calumny, but now me growing old and giving effort to taciturnity you strive to make serve old quarrels; I confess, I do not wish to conquer you: I commit the cause of His Church to Christ the judge. He said; and what he said, the censure of an angry God confirmed. For soon the house being shaken, the upper room loosed under their feet, the enemies were precipitated to the ground, and oppressed by the weight of the falling beams. But where the Saint with his own reclined, there no inundation of ruin was made.
[48] But King d Edgar prematurely snatched by death, left Edward his son heir both of the kingdom and of morals. In whose election while certain Palatine Princes would not acquiesce, He consecrates S. Edward King. Dunstan the standard of the Cross being seized, which after custom was borne before him, stood in the midst; showed Edward to them, chose, consecrated him; and the affection of a father and master, as long as he lived, expended on him. And it was turned for all into joy, what a little before they had thought sad, thinking the young King would be inhuman, would not care for the counsels of the wise, but would do all things for lust. But after they knew it to be otherwise, otherwise also they themselves held the matter, and that the King had displeased them vehemently displeased. But he after the time of a triennium being slain by stepmotherly fraud e; Ethelred his brother obtained the scepters of reigning. and him being slain Ethelred, Which matter although it was done with Dunstan hostile, either because through the effusion of innocent blood he came to the kingdom, or since little of prudence and fortitude was in him; yet it was not the counsel to resist, for this reason that he seemed to be the son of the King and the next heir then. Nevertheless on the day of his consecration, after the crown imposed, Dunstan is reported to have foretold this to him: Since you have aspired to the kingdom through the death of your brother, whom your ignominious mother slew, the sword shall not depart from your house, raging against you all the days of your life, killing of your seed, foretelling to him the divine vengeance. until your kingdom be translated into a foreign kingdom, whose rite and tongue the nation which you preside over does not know: nor shall your sin be expiated except by long vengeance, and the sin of your mother, and the sin of the men who were present at that wicked counsel.
[49] In these times f it happened that Athelwold, the Prelate of the Church of Winchester, with a certain other g Bishop of Rochester to come to Canterbury, visited by the Bishops of Winchester and Rochester, and they afforded great joy to Dunstan at their coming: for this reason that by his care they were lofty, learned, and through the various disciplines of virtues had been advanced to the highest honors of the Church. Several days therefore being passed in mutual conversation at the same time and exultation, the Archbishop goes out of the city, wishing to set out to a manorial place of the Church of Christ. But they accompanied conducting him, until the way should divide them, which each one separated from the other, would direct to the place whither he was disposed to go. And when, evening now impending, they were still far distant from the place (for they had gone out of the city somewhat later than the hour demanded) the Prelate of Rochester begs the Archbishop, that he turn aside to a patrimony of his Church neighboring, going out with them, pass the nocturnal time with him, but in the morning, if so it shall please, make his migration; To which petition he worthily assenting, said: If our confrater i Athelwold shall wish to come with me, in me there will be no delay of coming. The Pontiffs therefore assent in the same, and alike go to the dwelling prepared for them. Now the golden light had put the shadows of night to flight, when those blessed ones having proceeded on the way ascend a hill, thence to be divided from one another by the reciprocal relation of peace. But the highest Priest of God extending his hand, that he might bless the lesser Pontiffs being with him and dismiss them; forthwith burst into weeping, weeping so great, he foretells to both impending death. that scarcely from his holy breast could he bring forth his voice. The Pontiffs are frightened at the unusual deed, solicitous seek out the causes of the weepings, and after a little receive this answer to what was asked: For this, he said, I weep, since I know you will die shortly. And when they replied; Do not, most holy Father, meet us with so dire a prophecy: for we will not die, but again and again alike we shall see ourselves unharmed; he confirmed by such response what he had said: What I have said must be done; For you will die to this age, but you shall live to God; You will die in this life not to remain longer; but you shall go to God, eternally to live with Him. The Pontiffs therefore part from one another, mourning for one another, yet more each one solicitous for himself with pious fear. But the Bishop of Rochester departing into his city, soon as he entered fell vehemently sick, and after a few days, as the truth-speaking seer had foretold, migrated from the age. But Athelwold, before he came to the city of his own See, seized with the last languor of the body, undertook the habitation of the heavenly seat.
[50] Over whose death the venerable Father much saddened, Through S. Andrew, whether because he was always of most holy religion, or because he had left to the living a great occasion of strife about substituting a Priest, besought
the Lord to be a benign provider for the deserted Church. To whom soon praying assists his familiar Andrew the Apostle, says that God assents to his prayers, warns that the Abbot of Bath, named k Elfeg, is to be brought, he obtains S. Elfeg Bishop of Winchester, and from the counsel of Divinity to be set as Prelate over the Church of Winchester. So whatever of things he himself desired through the interpreter Apostle he forthwith obtained from God: but he too repaying the return of honor to the Apostle, in every service studied to defer to him, to build Basilicas in his name, to adorn the built ones with gifts. While therefore at a certain time the aforesaid King, on account of certain dissensions, besieged the city of Rochester, and the difficulty of taking it being made invaded the patrimony of the B. Apostle by devastating it; and to the King on account of the city of Rochester besieged, the most blessed Pontiff commanded him to cease from folly, that Andrew, as he was easy to grant, so was manly to avenge, ready at hand, that he himself should experience his power, if he did not cease to vex his inheritance. Contemned by the King Dunstan, again messengers running suggests the same things, moreover transmits a hundred pounds of silver. He receiving it withdrew from the siege: which as soon as it had been announced to the Pontiff, wondering at the cupidity of the man, took care to write this to him. Since you have preferred money to God, silver to the Apostle, your cupidity to my will, swiftly shall come upon you the evils which the Lord has spoken: evils such as were not, from when the nation of the English began to reign, until that time: yet me living these shall not be, since this too the Lord has spoken. Which all things to have so happened, both to read in the Annals, and in our times it is to see.
[51] But that we may now more confidently address that Blessed one of whom we speak for the obsequy, and so to his happy passing with wet eyes pass over, Of how great contemplation is that, wonderful Father, inestimable Father, of how great contemplation is that, exceeding the minds of all mortals, that you saw either the Genetrix of God in this mortal life, or your genetrix in eternal life? For you were led into heaven, on earth you were delighted with those blessed troops and with the modulations of Angels, joining that same l genetrix of yours as if in a nuptial chamber to the eternal King, and resounding the sweet Kyrie eleison with modulating organs. And when you were accused of the silence of your taciturnity, that amid so great joys of eternal life you alone ceased from the divine praises, when especially you ought to have rejoiced for the honor of your parent; and you replied that you were ignorant of this so great sweetness, how briefly and how sweetly taught by the citizens of that city, into these voices by singing you burst: O King ruler of the nations, save the race of Christians still pilgriming on earth, that both they after enmities may return to grace, and the losses of the Angelic ruin may be repaired through them. But now with what lips of exultation shall I declare, that you saw with virginal eyes the mother of the Lord the Saviour, and the Mother of God Mary, the Queen of the world, the Lady of the Angels, not surrounded by a Vestal choir, but encircled with a Virginal crown. Happy your eyes, which could see her, whose most chaste womb deserved to bear the Maker of heaven and earth. Happy your eyes, to which it was given to see her, whom beautiful above the daughters of Jerusalem the Angels venerate, men desire, hell trembles at, and every creature wonders at her. Nor thence only happy, that you could see that singular ornament of the whole world; you could also hear her honey-flowing voices, precenting the praises of Christ. by which she exhorted her companion Virgins to praise together the King of the ages, temporally procreated from her flesh, singing that of the wise man and Senator Sedulius. Let us sing to the Lord, companions, let us sing honor, Let the sweet love of Christ sound with pious mouth. And when this had been received from the other Virgins, the others who follow pronounced the verses. First to the depths he rushed, proud of the great light So man when he swelled, first to the depths he rushed. For the merit of one all the lesser perished, All are saved for the merit of one. A woman alone there was, by whom the gate of joy lay open, From whom life returns, a woman alone there was. And in this manner of the whole song two and two verses ran on, those always being repeated, which first were said by the mother of the Lord. Let us sing to the Lord, companions, let us sing honor. Let the sweet love of Christ sound with pious mouth. These you, most worthy of Pontiffs, by the most sharp force of corporeal eyes translated into spiritual power, could see: these you, intimate searcher of the heavenly secrets, could hear: at these so great and so stupendous things you could be present. O holy purity of your mind, and pure sanctity, which thus honors the supreme dignity of the supernal city! O ornament and reward of virginity, in which thus rejoices together the nature of Virginal and at the same time Angelic dignity. But behold it is above the strength of the living, to dwell upon the praises of you living in body: how much less of you passing over and reigning eternally with Christ shall we be able to declare worthy praises. May omnipotent God grant through your most powerful merits, that we may be able with however little laudable speech to describe even the end of your life, that whom always living corporeally with us it was not permitted to have, may it be permitted at least from the consideration of your most precious death to know your everlasting life, by knowing to love, and by loving to obtain something of the blessed reward through you the most pious Father from God. Let meanwhile the devout hearers of so great marvels learn, by your example to live soberly, frequently to celebrate the sacred watches, to serve chaste prayers: since you too therefore deserved to be present at such and so great joys, because while others slept you yourself in holy desires kept vigil, prayed, and the last hour without intermission thought of. Nor yet was it sufficient in the secret of your chamber to work these things, unless also in the nocturnal colds you frequented the chapel of the blessed Father Augustine, and thence to the neighboring temple of the aforesaid Virgin to see this glory of God you proceeded.
ANNOTATA.
After human manner the present Cross brought forth with mouth Things uttered from heaven, which you behold here written below.
CHAPTER IX.
The last three days of his life, his happy death, burial.
[52] In the year therefore of the incarnate Word twelve less than a thousand, of the coming of the English into Britain the five hundred and sixty-third, the most holy and to God most beloved Dunstan, deserting the transitory light of the present life, came to the light endowed with blessed and eternal pleasantness; where as the sun he shines again from the brightness of God, and possesses the eternal day eternally, in the year of his Patriarchate the thirty-third, of his nativity about the seventieth, when now he was full of every charism of virtues, and wearied with the desire of seeing God. Whose venerable passing, foreknown as much by himself as by others by manifold revelation, brought him joy, to others grave grief. To himself joy, since what through hope in life he had more pleasant, that through the thing he rejoiced he would see, and enjoy it perpetually; to the rest grief, since one who likewise excelled in divine and human reasons, they thought none would thereafter appear on earth.
[53] But we, the manifold relation of manifold reasons being postponed, of those things which we have proposed will demonstrate single by single reasons only. The festive day therefore b of the Ascension of Christ preceded the day of the clarification of B. Dunstan the third. On the day of the Ascension, by Algar, then Bishop of Elmham, So of so great a day the dawn rising, a certain Priest named Algar, chief by the merit of doctrine and action (whom afterward we have received to have shone forth noble as Bishop into c Elmham) while he vigilant expended the sacred honors of the Lord's Ascension in the Church of the Saviour, and extended his mind to contemplate the heavenly, himself and all the things of this world transcended, beholds Dunstan presiding on the Pontifical throne, to be girt by Angels, and invited to heaven, and to the Clergy seemingly dictating the Canonical rights. And behold through all the doors of the Church infinite troops of Angels rushing in enter, shining with most white stoles, ruddy with golden crowns, proclaiming themselves Cherubim and Seraphim, and as if bearing a divine message. Who while in forced ranks they stood by the sitting Pontiff, pay him this address of salutation: Hail, they say, our Dunstan. If you are prepared, come, and gracious use our company. Dunstan answered: You know, O holy Spirits, today Christ has ascended the heavens, and that it is of our office as much by word as by sacrament to refresh the people of God, and therefore I cannot come today. So the holy Spirits said, the day of his death being indicated. Be prepared on the day of the sabbath hence with us to pass over to Rome, and before the highest Pontiff, a Saint, eternally to sing. After therefore the day of eternal retribution was indicted, and Dunstan, by divine faith induced to consenting, forthwith the Angels who had appeared disappeared. But the Priest who had been so evident a contemplator of things, observed their issue, an explorer at once stupid and silent.
[54] And when amid the sacrosanct joys of the same day that lesson of the Gospel was recited, Himself after the Gospel read, in which our Lord Jesus Christ after His resurrection is read to have appeared to His disciples, and their incredulity and hardness of heart being reproached to have given a mandate,
that in all the world they should preach the Gospel of the kingdom, announce faith and baptism, propose salvation to believers, threaten condemnation to non-believers: and when for confirming these things He delegated to them the power of making signs, the ejection of dæmons, the novelty of tongues, to take up serpents, to extinguish the virus of a deadly potion, and over every sickness the salutary imposition of hands: when therefore that lesson of the Gospel was pronounced, and after this in what manner, those beholding to whom this power is delegated, Christ ascended into heaven, was subjoined; he explains the mystery of the Incarnation the Pontiff proceeded from the sacristy, about to treat these same things more amply among the people, and to impress the memory of God's mercies more strictly on their hearts. He spoke therefore as never before he had spoken, showing for what reason the Son of God put on flesh, why He completed the salvation of the human race only by dying, in what manner rising from the dead He overcame the Prince of death, and with Angels serving entered heaven. Then he taught the blood of Christ to be incomparably more excellent than all creatures and that the world could have so great a confidence in the effusion of His blood, unto the remission of sins: that if some one had the sins of the whole world, neither of the multitude, nor of the magnitude of the crimes should he despair, if he had the Mediator of God and men as Advocate.
[55] Amid these happy joys of the happy promise, the Pontiff is led back to the altar, transferring by the most omnipotent words of the Lord the appearance of bread and wine into the true substance of the flesh and blood of Christ. Again under the Mass, And now the time of blessing the people had come, and a repeated time that Blessed one proceeded to the people, wishing to announce to them his departure; but by the love of the sweetness of his sons he was recalled. Therefore he exhorted all, that they should tend thither with all the intention of mind, before the benediction he exhorts the people, whither our head and beginning Jesus Christ on the same day had preceded: and a benediction of his authority being given over them, he prayed the Holy Spirit to be present to them, as the Son of God had promised, when the heavenly cloud received Him returning to the Father. I, He said, will send you the Spirit of truth, that He may remain with you forever. With discussing these things therefore the most blessed Pontiff having longer stayed, they saw his face as the face of an Angel of God, so that truly visibly it was to recognize, that this Holy Spirit whom he invoked had deigned to demonstrate the presence of His majesty. But him wishing to turn to the altar, the people sighed after him, desiring still to see his desirable countenances, and to enjoy his colloquy; as if taught by the magisterium of the same Holy Spirit, that they would not see him further in the flesh. Whom in the love of the eternal Trinity a third time confirmed, to whom he indicates death to be at hand for him. after the kiss of his peace and charity offered, he could not longer conceal the glory at hand for him; but asks, that they be mindful of him, says the day of his calling to be at hand, and that he would not further remain with them in this world. Then you would see so great a confusion of the mourning people, so mixed with tears the conclamation of the Clergy, the miserable perturbation of widows and orphans, that you would think the day of judgment to be at hand, and all the ages to have come together into the supreme hour. The Priest too, who had put on so wonderful an ecstasy in the Church, having recognized that not in image, but in the truth of things he had sustained the same; openly to all and with great groans absolved what he had seen. Whose sadness the most precious Father as he could benignly consoled, returned to the altar: and the banquet of eternal life being received, both himself and all committed to him, he consigned to the eternal Pastor.
[56] Thence entering the house of refreshment joyful, all flowing together to him both with food of the body and the aliment of spiritual life he fattened. he signs the place of his sepulcher, But after dinner, or rather the last supper, again with the Brothers he enters the church of Christ, and the place of his sepulcher being signed, conspicuous to all ascending to the altar of Christ, the upper room for the mode of the summer time about to rest he ascends. The mournful family of the Church surrounds him reposing: which whether from fear of itself, or troubled by his death, sounded horrendous complaints by weeping. Whom he cherishing as always with most holy reasons, and to the hope of the future age more diligently informing, they behold the man moved from the earth by a certain invisible virtue of God, by divine force he is lifted on high: moved to be raised to the supreme summits of the house. But these, who a little before had stood nearer, terrified by the strangeness of the miracle, the seats being left all fly away. Yet they stand leaning on the walls and the thresholds of the partitions, looking up from afar, desiring to see the issue of the matter. For they thought, either that he was to be translated as Elijah with the flesh, or in some other and unusual manner to be taken from them. But soon set down with that sweetness with which he had been carried up, he calls together all who had taken flight, soothing them with such an address.
[57] You have seen, he said, sons, you have seen most dear ones, whither God calls me; whither the ineffable mercy of God invites. The path of my journey has been shown before your eyes, that none of you may distrust of the reward of taking heaven, who shall be a diligent follower of my life. The seats of erebus shall not hold my soul, he leaves his last admonitions to his own: the foul face of the depth shall not hold my soul; the inextinguishable fire and the worm not dying shall not hold my soul: Upward is what I embrace, upward whither I go. Be therefore imitators of my life, if you desire to be followers of my journey. Learn always to know the will of God; and when you shall know it, wish to prefer nothing to it. But if you shall know yourselves to have erred however little from doing His will, immediately turn to beseech His clemency; lest while you exhibit a less reverence than is fitting, you be judged not only prevaricators, but also unfaithful. Do not wish to seem good, but to be so; nor so much not to seem evil, as not to be so. For this is the greatest evil among men, that all desire to seem good, and do not wish to be so; none wish to seem evil, and do not wish not to be evil. Always follow peace, nor before cease from following it, than you apprehend it in heaven. And that you may be able efficaciously to attain this, always have Him most sweet in your mind, to Him continually give thanks, to His precepts humbly obey, who willed a singular sacrifice before all to be immolated, in which it pleased all fullness to dwell, and through Him to be reconciled all things, in Him making peace through the blood of His cross, whether those things which are on earth or those which are in heaven. I foretell also to you, that the nation of the English will suffer dire and long evils from foreign nations, but at the end of days the compassion of God will drop upon it. But it will be profitable for you to recall these words, that whether these happen to the amendment of sins, or to the perfecting of virtue, you should always subject your souls to the divine disposition; lest as evil sons you love the one coaxing, and contemn the one instructing (which be far from you). Surely of no man is either so grave a punishment or so excellent a merit, by which the vision of omnipotent God, the vision of blessed eternity, the vision of eternal truth, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, can be merited: but rather, if God did not attend to the natural goodness of His clemency, man suffers nothing, which is not owed to him by the just judgment of God from his own fault. In these words the most blessed Father felt the strength of his body little by little to fail, while his spirit knew not to fail from its integrity: for so serene in face, sober in sense, assiduous in the speech of teaching, all that day and the following sixth feria he remained, that whoever had come about to commend themselves and to ask the benediction of so great a Father, asserted themselves refreshed and manifoldly confirmed in the love of divinity.
[58] And now the Sabbath of the promised beatitude had shone, now the time of resting from all his labors was at hand for Dunstan: and farewell being said to all, when behold a manifold throng of sons ran together (sons whom he himself within the bosom of mother Church had more tenderly nourished, and to a more excellent perfection of spiritual grace had led) with clamors and excessive wailings complaining, that he should depart leaving them, nor be permitted to them to die with him. But he commending them into the hands of omnipotent God, and confirming them with a gracious benediction, bids the mystery of holy Communion to be celebrated before him. Which when with extended hands offered from the heavenly table he had received, with this prayer he began to supplicate God. and the viaticum being received, Glory to Thee, omnipotent Father, who to those fearing Thee hast given the bread of life from heaven, that we may be mindful of Thy marvels, which Thou hast wrought in the midst of the earth, by sending to us Thy Only-begotten, true man born of a true Virgin. To Thee, holy Father, we render deserved thanks, who both didst create us when we were not, and when we were sinners didst make us partakers of this grace: through the same Thy Son, our God and Lord, doing all things with Thee and with the Holy Spirit, governing, and through the infinite ages of ages reigning. Amid which words, from all the marrows of his soul to God, most piously he dies, whom he had always desired, poured forth; he sees those, who had invited him to the heavenly banquet, the blessed Angels assisting, and preparing for him the heavenly service. By whose venerable presence his happy soul congratulated, glad goes forth from the dwelling of his most holy body, setting out with them to contemplate the brightness of the eternal Creator. Behold in what manner he was honored, whom God judged worthy of honor. Behold in what manner he entered into the joy of his Lord, who in the money of doctrine committed to him existed a faithful disburser. O bowels of the mercy of God, which thus always sweet this man of God had experienced! O heart of a man always prepared to the will of God, who could say, My heart is prepared, God, my heart is prepared. Behold now he chants in his glory, illustrated with the light of the vision of the glory of God.
[59] But the venerable Priests of the Lord receive the venerable body of the highest Priest, carrying it into the basilica of the great Basileus the Lord the Saviour, under the immense murmur of the mourning peoples, surrounding the bier most densely, cutting their faces, striking themselves with their palms, and with bitter voices, and he is buried. Alas! alas! most dear Father, crying out. There in the place, which two days before he himself had dictated, with all diligence buried, and after this with the structure of a more eminent work becomingly covered, he left to all, whether chanting in the choir, or ascending through the steps to the altar, a memory of himself at once tearful and amiable. Tearful therefore I would say, because they had daily before their eyes the monument of him, whose venerable aspects they could not see: amiable, for this reason that, although they lacked his visible presence, yet they knew his invisible and incorporeal spirit to rejoice in the heavenly seat, and for them with the Lord's mercy more earnestly to pray.
[60] After whose death (if it is to be called death, to which eternal life succeeded) so all things took a contrary motion, The affliction of England that followed that all things seemed to bewail the death of Dunstan, nor to be able to bear his absence. From the highest peace there is made a change to intolerable war,
from immense gladness to enormous sadness, from the abundance of all things to the indigence of all things. Finally the air itself was changed, the natural vicissitudes of the seasons disagreed with one another, heaven did not hearken to the earth, nor the earth to those things which were sown in it. Hostile incursion left everywhere a foul face, while by their irruption the cities were destroyed, the Churches despoiled, the altars undermined, and the Priests of the Lord slain. in which S. Elphegus the Martyr fell, Of whom the man of virtues Elphegus, who was the fourth from the great Dunstan Archbishop of Canterbury, when he had converted a great multitude of enemies to the Christian religion; and those whom he could not convert from the error of infidelity, he reproved with daily invective; taken by the same, after his city was destroyed, after the bloody slaughter of the innocent people, after the spoiling at once and burning of the sacred temple, bound he was led away, and through seven months vexed with various tortures of torments; and after all these, stoned by the hands of the same, directed his spirit with triumph to heaven. So therefore were fulfilled those things which either of the prosperity of things the Angels to Dunstan, or of their adversity Dunstan to King Athelred had foretold. But in these so grave straits of the tumultuating people the compassion of supernal piety was not wanting, which showed so great prodigies of coruscating grace at his memorial, that they were both a terror to the reprobate, and a consolation to the afflicted. the consolation from the miracles of S. Dunstan alleviates it. For not otherwise did his heavenly spirit work, than if into the earth with his revived body he came daily. But we shall not be able, on account of our infirmity, to tell all things which are of him; nor do we think we must abstain from all, lest there seem to be nothing which we should say. And some things indeed from the books of his miracles, which now by no means survive, we have excerpted; but some things in our age, either done in others we have seen, or wrought in ourselves we ourselves have experienced. But here let there be an end of this little book, that what we intend may be taken from another beginning.
ANNOTATA.
BOOK II.
The miracles wrought from the death of S. Dunstan.
PROLOGUE.
[1] We have said in the former little book, of what parents Father Dunstan sprung shone forth, the times of which Kings he ennobled, what advancements of virtues he had, and in what manner to the heavenly kingdoms glorious he migrated. Now we have proposed to narrate those things, which after the laying down of the corporeal burden his happy spirit deigned to work in this age, that all the people of the English of future time may acknowledge, what of honor and reverence they owe to a man of so great a name. But, since of those things which are to be written most, and almost all, we have known done in our times; but a few in other times indeed, The author describes things done in his times, some also seen by himself, but to us most truly exposed by the relation of most truthful men; for this reason all who shall deign to read these things to believing we invite, that as they wish to be believed, if perchance they should wish to write some things done in their times; so they should believe us, when they shall hear those things narrated, which by us could be seen: for what estimation of the truth concerning themselves they will wish to be had by those following, that rightly to those preceding they ought to grant. But if no things which ought to be written happen to be done in their times, not for that reason let them straightway accuse us of falsity, as if what at one time by the hidden providence of God is not done, at another time for correcting or reproving men cannot be done: since the grace of miracles always requires the opportunity of things and times. For is therefore less to be believed, that the Prince of the Apostles Peter, at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, healed a lame man, because in our times he did not do that? or therefore did not the blessed Evangelist John drink poison without harm, and not raise those who had perished by poison, because I know not what impostor and calumniator did not see these things? As if, if one should hear a shipmaster or charioteer praised, that this one knows skillfully to rule a ship in a storm, that one by art to lead horses into a course; he should contend this to be above human nature, for this reason that he does not believe it can be done. Not therefore this for imitating, but that each thing regards a time and order it is to be believed. and worthy of all faith. Let them therefore deign to believe, who shall deign to read these things: that as by the merit of our faith, by which we believed those things to be true which we had not seen, it was done, that we could see some things; so let them have the reward of faith, sometime to be able to see, what at our narrating they could with undoubted faith believe. Now we shall pass to the things proposed, and in what order each thing was done, as much as we can, briefly and clearly we shall narrate.
CHAPTER I.
Miracles before the times of the Writer, some when he himself was a boy.
[2] There is a village near the city of Canterbury, by the inhabitants called Leoham. This a certain man inhabited, whom a long blindness of the eyes grieved. A blind man warned in sleep is illumined, He was admonished therefore in sleep, that he should go to the father of the fatherland Dunstan, bewail his committed evils, and that it would be that through him he should receive the lost light. The man narrates to his own what he had seen: they favored, and procured for him the authors of the journey. So the blind man enters the Church of Christ, prays that license be given him to pass the night there: Such, he said, a precept I have received. But on the following and midnight there began from the tomb of the man of God every kind of perfumes to be perceived, and the blind man meanwhile to be most grievously tortured with most grievous prickings of the eyes. He cried out therefore strongly, was healed wonderfully, praised God and Dunstan cheerfully.
[3] Three women too dwelt in one house; struck with a similar blindness from a long time and oppressed with the burden of poverty. and by his example 3 blind women, These that great Dunstan, while he lived in body, like the other stipendiary poor of the Church, was wont to feed. They, the rumor of the wrought miracle being received, exhorted themselves with alternate speeches. Why do we sit here, they said, who hear the Father of our life to revive? Let us go to him, bewail our calamity, demand his aid. He who was wont to drive away our poverty, will deign to put to flight the blindness of our body. He will compassionate those about to die of hunger, that the light being restored he may afford grace to the poor little ones, henceforth to live by the works of their hands. They said, and with a guiding staff began to go the way which leads to the city. And when they had come to the gate of the Church, their hands joined to one another they entered: and falling down before the memorial of the man, with this supplication they bring forth their grief. Holy Father, serene Father, attend to these stipendiaries of your mercy, that either after the wonted manner you grant them victual, or restore the light of the eyes, through which they may be able to pass their life. And again they said: Most pious, most powerful, have mercy on these your wretched little ones. So they prayed, and amid praying clearly saw, and afforded great joy to the people.
[4] A certain Priest, Provost of the men of Folcanum, named Ceonulf, was a very wealthy man, A rich Priest a paralytic, and was mighty with much nobility among his own. He through many years had been so dissolved with paralysis of all his members, that he could neither go to neighboring possessions, nor touch the thresholds of the Church, unless carried in a litter. So persuaded by his intimates, that he should suffer his wretched body to be carried to the memorial of the Lord Dunstan, first indeed he bashfully deferred it, a rich man disdaining the company of poverty, flowing together thither from all places for the hope of recovering health. But when now for the magnitude of grief he was intolerable to himself, he ordered a litter-machine to be fitted to the sides of horses, and himself placed in it to be dragged to the doors of the Church, where the remembered Saint rests. There sustained on the shoulders of his clients, he was carried in; a not small multitude of kinsmen following him, with tearful voices invoking the name of Dunstan. But on the second day made sick in agony, he felt as it were the hand of a man running through his whole body, and stretching all the nerves of the whole body. Thence vociferating he leaped from the earth, and stood on his feet, and his health restored to the full he began to exclaim: he is healed, Blessed is the Son of the living God in His good servant Dunstan, and blessed His good servant Dunstan in Him. Truly pious, truly omnipotent Christ, who has servants so powerful and endowed with so great piety. Soon hymns and praises being most devoutly paid to the Lord, he who had been carried by others' hands, ran with his own feet, mounted a horse, and with all his retinue rejoicing and cheerful departed. But after a few days, a banquet being made in his house, he called together all his friends and acquaintances, that they might congratulate and rejoice with him over the health obtained. And when in great joy they banqueted, they began to praise and glorify God, who though He be powerful did not abject the powerful one, but ungrateful and relapsed he expires. but with His poor granted him spaces of penance. Over which indignant he answered: Do you reckon me among the other poor, because you assert me healed among them? It is not so, since even if Dunstan had not been, so it would have happened to me. At this voice he trembled in his whole body: so in one moment he was struck with the same infirmity which had left him, that there was nothing in all his members, which remained untouched from this stroke. He vociferated therefore miserably, and after a little expired unhappily. From that day great fear and great veneration toward the Saint of God grew, the sick being restored to the full perfection of health, now single, now several day by day, brought from afar from the remoteness of diverse regions.
[5] Among these a youth hanging on the necks of many was carried, of comely face indeed, but from birth impotent of speech, A dumb man is healed, the same crooked and lame, and who for eleven years' times neither lifted his head upward, nor directed his step downward. Whom raised higher above their heads,
with these prayers mixed with weeping, they offered to the Saint. O Christ, they said, the salvation and Creator of all, who willed men in this part too to excel the other animals, that they can speak and walk with erect head; reform in this our son, either what nature left unformed, or what, formed, a sickness hostile to health corrupted: for it is of Thee alone, from that which is not to lead into that which is, and what is into whatever forms Thou shalt wish to change. Hear therefore the prayers of the supplicants, for Thy own sake and for Dunstan Thy beloved. Then the sick one let down from the shoulders of those bearing him, that he might be applied nearer to the memorial of the Saint; soon as he touched the tomb, he stood on his feet; lifted his head with his shoulders upward; and his tongue loosed, which never before had spoken, with a high voice began to cry, Glory to God in the highest. Alleluia. And so he persevered in the integrity of the speech received, that until the end of his life not only expeditely, but also eloquently he spoke all things.
[6] A poor little woman too came with the rest of the multitude, bearing in her arms a three-year-old born from her womb without light: who when for some days she had solicitously incumbed on prayer for the health of her daughter, a girl from birth, lest she should somewhat feel herself unheard; she besought all the Clergy to be a help to her with the Saint of God, confiding that they would obtain what she wished so much the more quickly, as before the other men they more familiarly served him. So the Monks affected with piety, for the grief of the mother and the languor of the girl, began with most instant prayer to demand of the Saint, that to their affliction with his wonted goodness he would deign to succor. But on the tenth day, while by chance the girl incumbed on her mother's bosom, suddenly her eyes opened she clearly saw all things, and leaping from joy said: My mother, what are these beautiful things which I see? To whom she: Do you see, she said, my dear? Who said: That beautiful man bade me see these beautiful things. So it was cried out through the whole church, the girl blind from birth illumined by the great Pontiff Dunstan. There is a concourse of all, crowding round the mother with the daughter: but when some of the Clergy could not believe, that in the open eyes there was the acuteness of vision, wishing to see a sign for investigating the truth, they throw apples as is wont to be played with boys through the pavement of the Church, that they might experience if without error the little infant could by following catch them. Who forthwith leaping from her mother's bosom, pursued the rolling apples through diverse windings, and these seized with swift course returned to her mother. Then it was perceived that the girl could see with open eyes, which before without light seemed to lie open.
[7] Likewise a certain old woman was led to the memorial of the holy Pontiff, an old woman blind from youth; that what in youth she had lost, in extreme age she might receive the light of the eyes. Devoting herself therefore to prayer, nor obtaining any remedies of health, she goes out of the city, wishing to return to the place whence she had come. And now she had begun to ascend the bridge of the river Stour, when by chance destitute of the aid of her leader she cried out: Dunstan, Dunstan, neither have I obtained the light hoped for from you, and now I have lost my leader. Wonderful to be told, and difficult for the ill-faithed to be believed: forthwith she most clearly saw youths carrying wood through the middle of the bridge, with whom she returned into the city, and what had been done indicated to all.
[8] What shall I say of Clement the German, to whom a more fitting name is Demens [mad] than Clemens? whom a Priest, for the fault of pleasure and contumacy, had delivered to Satan unto the destruction of the flesh, and so by the sentence of malediction had bound for seven years, a demoniac trembling in his whole body; that not only in the same place trembling in his whole body, but also from place to place running about he was carried with unstable motion. But in the basilica of the Saviour presented before the memorial of the great Dunstan, when by chance at the nocturnal vigils the Responsory, See the miracle, was begun, he gave a leap on high, vomited out the dæmon with blood, and after these at all times according to every kind of quality of the sane, quiet both in place and in body he remained.
[9] Or how shall I narrate the miracle done in you, b Edward? a man of gigantic magnitude, a man crippled 30 years creeping on the earth; if the weight of a most grave infirmity did not press you creeping in the whole earth with the mass of your body for thirty years: but afterward dear offered to Father Dunstan, and by him wonderfully healed, not only were you made amiable to all on account of the miracle of the health obtained, but also admirable on account of the spectacle of your corporeal quantity. You a musician at banquets learned after this to soothe the minds of the banqueters with song, and amid singing to modulate the song on pipes: but thence to you the ensign of lofty honor accrued, that the universality of men with concordant voice called you the man and little servant of Dunstan.
[10] But that too is worthy of no small admiration; which by a certain venerable old man, and one proved in all religion, relating we have known. a loripes [club-footed] For he says that the same Father and our Lord, appeared in sleep to a certain loripes, and commanded that he should come to the rest of his body to be healed. Who coming to the place, and finding nothing of health through many days by praying, broken by tedium or despair departed, and attempted to return by the way by which he had come. And now he had passed almost the middle of the way, when he who lately had appeared to him sleeping, serene in countenance, becoming in garment met him, inquiring whence he came, or whither by going he tended. For the sake of recovering, he said, health, bidden I went to the Saint of God Dunstan; but profiting nothing, I thought I must return to my house. Then he, I, he said, am Dunstan, fellow-servant of all the servants of God: occupied with certain necessary causes, after a twofold vision of the Saint: I could not these days visit the rest of my body, nor exhibit my presence to the sons there remaining: for Elfricus, surnamed Beta, attempted to disinherit the church of God, but for fear of me could do nothing: but now the business being finished, I go to the place of my repose: see therefore that on that day and hour I find you there, that through you I may show my grace to my citizens. So the sick one returned into the city, narrated to all what he had heard, and patiently awaited the appointed day. Greatly to be wondered at! On the day and hour, on which the Saint had foretold himself to come, the loripes rejoiced over the health received, and filled the whole city with ineffable gladness. Thus far those things which by the testimonies of others have been brought to our notice we have narrated, now to narrating those things which in our age have been done we shall give effort.
[11] A certain Virgin, devoted to God, came into the city for the sake of prayer; thence wretched, because from when she was born she had not seen the light of this world; Blind from birth, but from this blessed, because the eternal light with ever ardent desire she had sought. And when by chance the natal day of the holy Confessor of Christ d Audoenus the Bishop was at hand, on which alike and of all others, whose Relics in the Church of the Saviour are contained, the memory was celebrated with especial veneration; she asked of the keepers of the Church, that it might be permitted her on the same night to celebrate vigils there. Which when she had easily obtained on account of the religion of her life, she remained in the Church standing beside the rest of the blessed Father Dunstan, and the whole night devoting herself to vigils and prayers. standing the whole night at the tomb, Now we had begun the nocturnal praises, now the eighth Responsory, Let your loins be girt, with modulated voices we sang together; when the Virgin of God, sustaining a vehement itching in her face, with a most close pressing of her fingers began to rub her eyes. Thence immediately blood coming forth abundantly, flowed down upon the veil placed under her head: and she modestly nodding to the bystanders, Afford, she said, me a vessel to receive the blood, lest the holy ground be stained with its filth. Which after they had done for her, they afforded also water for washing the orbs of the eyes. Meanwhile we boys directed our faces thither, Osbern looking on, glanced with our eyes, and again to one another with mutual aspects and at the same time nods signified gladness. For we suspected, what the matter was, our good Father to have wrought some good. Now the chant of the girding of the loins and the bearing of burning lamps was for the second time terminated, now by the cantors glory was rendered to the holy and undivided Trinity; and behold she, who had had her loins always girt with chastity, to the glory of God saw the lamps burning in the Church with great gladness of heart. she receives the light: She wondered therefore at all things which she saw. There were shown her golden plates, crosses, basins, the keys of the Church: all things she wondering laughed at, the very figures of men too with great stupor she considered. You would see therefore all in the Church express tears, and with the modulation of voice, and the jubilation of heart praise God. But morning arisen, by chance we entered to the masters, about to be beaten for the faults which we had committed. And behold from across the good man Godric furious burst in, thus crying out: You here, most inept men, vomit out cruelty against innocence, and our most sweet Father Dunstan shows the sweetness of his mercy on us sinners. Go out. The prerogative of the miracle, The miracle is published: once celebrated by the Saviour in the man born blind, you see again celebrated, and do you dare to do something cruelly? Go out. So we escaped the impious hands, and after this entered the Church. Then the bell of our most blessed Father being rung, which he himself with his hands once was said to have made (than which none is sweeter, nor for moving the minds of men more tearful) the whole city ran together, wishing to see with their eyes, what by rumor opening it they had heard. So we began with high voices and at the same time tearful to praise the Lord our God, who through His blessed servant Dunstan deigned to beatify our times with so great gladness. And when many thousands of peoples stood in the Church, you would see no one among all, who did not for joy piously and sweetly weep.
[12] It was the Vigil of the Blessed Apostles of Christ Peter and Paul, and the day now inclined the Clergy performed the evening prayers in the Church. By chance I, with another little boy my coeval, had ministered at the altar of Christ, and the ministry being consummated I began to descend through the steps: and behold to meet us a certain little old woman, with a well-grown daughter, gave herself in our way, falling down on the steps and at the same time crying out: Have mercy on me, boys of God, that omnipotent God may have mercy on you, granting the advancement of virtue, and the boyish age to mature years happily leading. But we, as boys of that age, frightened at the deed of the woman, stuck in our place, tearfully inquiring the causes of her misery. A girl, foully contracted in her fingers, Then she: This, she said, whom you see my daughter, from the highest shoulders even to the extreme joints of the hands collided, I know not whether the fury or negligence of her midwife rendered foul and useless. I have heard a certain great virtue of God to be in this place, and therefore to supplicate it by a long journey we attempted to come hither: do you declare to us what is to be done. We beheld meanwhile hands without the form of a hand: the joinings did not cohere to the joinings, but a certain discordant deformity an unformed certain
connection of bones made. The thumbs bent backward, bore an immobile sensibility: for of the other fingers there was no figure, but certain roots prominent from the palm curved inward, which fixed in the palm perforated it with the nails, which thing brought intolerable straits to the one suffering. We turned away therefore our eyes, saying only this: Not us, good woman, do not wish to consult us what is to be done; near is He who can both consult for you, and procure the health of your daughter: for He is wont according to their faith to succor all invoking Him. Then she having seized the hem of her daughter's garment, drew her to the place: and soon both prostrated in their whole body on the ground, both adore the Saint, with weepings and wailings beating on his goodness. And truly they beat, to whom so quickly the bowels of his mercy lay open. For not yet had Phoebus brought his head into the marine waves, she is suddenly healed. and she who had been contracted by disease, the veins broken, lifted her arms, extended all the joints of the hands: and she who from many years could not move her fingers, expeditely now handled all things. So we ran up, we saw, we wept: and morning being made, with the exultation of the whole city, we praised the Lord our God.
[13] One of the youths dwelt near the city, so weakened from boyhood, that from the loins and downward through the whole dead, he leaned on two staves, Dead from the loins and downward, dragging behind him the half of his whole body. He on that day, on which the Son of God in assumed flesh deigned to die, having entered His Church; the standard of the Cross, on which dying He destroyed our death, with the rest of the multitude adored; and the joys of the future festivity, remaining beside the body of the venerable Father Dunstan, awaited. But the hour coming, in which our Lord Jesus Christ, the devil being triumphed over, is believed to have risen from the dead; a great clamor was made in the Church, tumultuating that the adolescent stood erect in his whole body, who for many years had been wont to drag the lower parts of the body behind him: which although the Clergy knew, yet patiently at the same time and gladly awaited the rising of the sun. he convalesces. But the morning of the Lord's Resurrection an infinite multitude of the whole city came together into the Church, to see what in the man the divine power had wrought, whom before in infirmity they had well known. They saw therefore, and gave glory to God, crying out, that Dunstan had served the good Lord in life, to whom after death not only did it happen more blessedly to live, a cripple is healed but also to afford the grace of his benefits to men. A boy too contracted in all his members, through the same Saint of God we saw healed.
ANNOTATA.
a Osbert, a Bishop.
CHAPTER II.
The translation of the body: various benefits conferred on S. Lanfranc and others.
[14] But on a certain day while more than usual the fury of the masters raged against the boys, nor was there anywhere any hope of intercession at hand; The boys invoking him against the masters, this one and only remedy they believed remained, that they should make a refuge to the memorial of the most sweet Father Dunstan, and exhibit him not so much an intercessor as a defender against the ministers of impiety. So they betake themselves at the highest dawn to him, with many tears asking his clemency, the masters sitting through diverse places, where the passage of the boys ought to be, and watching for their issue from the Church with manifold diligence. And behold to them weeping there appeared, bearing pious countenances, the pious Father Dunstan; and touching with the rod which he bore in his hand, one of them seeing with open eyes, but altogether unable to move himself, thus he began to speak: Now let it be ceased, boys, from weeping, since I permit no one to be troublesome to you today. For therefore I came, invited by the tears of your grief. the Saint appearing to one of them, Behold now I will go, and the masters watching for your issue I will lull with a most grave sleep. But you, boy, who see and hear me speaking, when you shall know yourselves freed by my gift, in this you will afford me grace, if to the Provost of this Church in my name you should command, that this initiated little infant, who lately beside me is buried, the son of Count Harold, you should cause to be cast out: for it is very unbecoming, that there the bodies of pagans be buried, where the divine mysteries are daily celebrated. he commands the pagan corpse to be removed, But if he himself either from fear, or incredulity should neglect my precept; let him know that in this Church nothing prosperous will proceed, as long as this my precept by work shall not have been fulfilled. Saying these things he was received into the sepulcher. But he who had seen these things (then indeed a boy, but now a senior of reverend age, and who solicitously admonished us that these things should be written his name being suppressed) immediately made master of himself, nodded to his comrade boys, saying; Have you not seen Father Dunstan? Have you heard what he spoke? And he narrated all things in order: These things, he said, and these he spoke.
[15] Rising therefore the boys, that they might enter the house of martyrdom, they passed before the first masters, they slept: they passed before the second, they slept: they passed before the third and fourth, and them, the masters being lulled, he frees. they slept. But after a little waking, and grievously grieving themselves derided, turned into fury, they resolve to take a most savage vengeance on the boys at the third hour of the day: whom, Dunstan protecting, in the morning they could not touch. For such a custom in the Church at that time was, that those whom the first hour of the day preserved without vengeance, those the third hour more harshly punished. But Dunstan, always and everywhere faithful, so divided the aforesaid masters from him at the same hour, that they were not so free to think of the hurting of the boys, as to treat of their own confusion. So the boys escaped the peril of that day, and on the morrow with rejoicing mind saw the vigils of the Lord's nativity. But he who discharged the legation of the Father, the Provost neglecting the precept, what he had heard faithfully announced to the Provost: but he with unfaithful mind made little of the announced things. How often too in nocturnal vision was he seen by the Brothers to go out of the Church? whom when going out they wished to retain, I cannot, he said, remain there, on account of the stench of the pagan boy, although initiated, buried in this Church. the church is burned: Nor much after, the Church of the Saviour was burned by fire, the walls fell, nor did anything of all the workshops of the monastery remain in the burned place, except two houses, without which the monks could not remain, namely the dormitory and the refectory, and so great a part of the cloister, under as much as without the infusion of rains, from one house to another they could enter. From which it was enough to see, how great a care of us Father Dunstan had. But the ruin of these was changed for the better, the venerable man b Lanfranc the Archbishop coming, both the most holy and at the same time most wise of all who in our age were in the land: which B. Lanfranc about to restore, who when he wished to lay the foundations of the new Church to be constructed, nor could do this without the translation of the bodies, resting within the circuit of the same Church; he indicted a fast to all the people, that the will of the Saints might be done, that their bodies ought to be translated to other places.
[16] But on the day constituted for this business, all the people praying, he translates the body of S. Dunstan, the Clergy with wax tapers and aromatics and every kind of joys coming, the Priests prepared themselves, that they might raise the shrine of the holy Father Dunstan, without the handling of his body, from the earth, and carry it to the place prepared with all diligence. Which when they had received on their shoulders, it is held back by certain Soldiers of the Church, who had lately broken the peace of King William, two Knights being slain, namely the nephews of c Scotland: who was Abbot of the monastery of saint Augustine, constituted outside the walls of the city. in vain asked to remit vengeance for which, But they feared, lest the death of the slain should be loosed by their death, and therefore for the cause of avoiding this evil neither would they recede from the Saint, nor dismiss his shrine. So both the Abbot and all those whose concern it was were called: they refused to grant vengeance, nor would they remit the death of the slain without vengeance. What then? The sacred body was led back, the business unfinished, and placed in the oratory of the blessed Virgin Mary d. But at the highest dawn, we still resting in our beds, the Abbot burst into the Church, attended by throngs of kinsmen; he asks the Brothers to be more quickly roused, says he necessarily wishes to speak to them. Who when they had come, he approached the body of the Saint, bent his knees, and into these words tearfully burst: We have sinned against thee, Saint of God, not wishing to exhibit to thee in the sight of the people the honor of service. Behold now both we grant the injury, and of the obstinacy of our mind we implore pardon. they are compelled by punishments on the following night. But we wondering at so sudden a change of things, learned that they through a vision had been terrified by the Saint of God, and scarcely had passed that night alive; for this reason that a certain Presbyter, terrible of aspect, who from the figured images seemed most like Dunstan, had vexed them with grave torments, and long vexed had violently dragged them to be burned in a burning pyre. So they, the injury which willingly they would not, compelled, granted. e
[17] In these times Lanfranc the Archbishop entered into a conflict against the elders of the kingdom of the English, especially against the Bishop of Bayeux named f Odo, who was the brother of the King and Count of Kent, concerning the right of the Church of Christ, The same B. Lanfranc and certain lands thence from ancient times unjustly taken away. But confiding nothing in his own strength (for he was as to all incomparable in wisdom, so in the sight of God before all always admirable in humility) he besought B. Dunstan to be a help to him, for defending the cause of his Church. And the salutary Host being offered for being heard, quiet he sat in his place, awaiting the calling of the pleaders, and at the same time meditating, what either he himself should object to the adversaries, strengthened by B. Dunstan, or in what manner to whatever objected he could respond. Then meanwhile to him suffering an excess of mind there appeared the Saint of God, standing in the midst of two others endowed with Angelic dignity, having himself too Angelic countenances, and in his countenance showing to Lanfranc a certain winking of brow and eyes. g By which vision he made secure of taking the victory, intrepid went to the council of the malignant, he wins the suit: their fortifications with a torrent of reasons utterly dissipated: for so he overcame all the adversaries of Christ and his own, that both those things which were of its right were most integrally restored to the Church of Christ, and that this was done not by human wisdom, but by divine virtue, the same servant of the Lord gloried.
[18] After some days Lanfranc, most grievously touched by corporeal infirmity, was altogether despaired of by the physicians. And when he thought the end of his life now and now to be at hand, a legation being sent he commands the brothers of the Church of Christ what was being done about him: sick unto death, he desires the presence of the seniors, that if it should not be permitted longer to live in the body, the deceased, that I may use his words, corpse to the city
they should carry with them: for in a certain patrimony of the Church, far distant from the city, which is called Ealditun, the same venerable Father was sick. So they come to the place, find all things filled with tears, weep with those weeping, not wishing to see a man to be ended by death, like whom after this they knew was not to be found. But he either not bearing his own straits, or the miseries of his sons (for as a mother her only son, so he loved each one of us singularly) turned his face to the wall, about to beseech the divine clemency with as great sighs as he could. he sees in ecstasy the Saint, But forthwith rapt upward, he saw as it were an army of men clad in white, having faces shining like the sun, sitting on white horses adorned with golden trappings, and exhibiting liberal jests to one another with a certain pleasant sweetness. Whom he passing by beholding with joyful eyes, inquired whose this expedition was. But it was said this house to be of Dunstan, but he to be not far off. So Lanfranc awaited, exploring the countenances of the single ones passing by, desiring to know him before the rest, from whom before the rest he hoped to receive the remedies of health. And behold the most blessed Father Dunstan, attended on this side and that by squadrons of venerable seniors, and seen to embrace his foot is healed, was coming; bearing in all things a habit similar to the rest, except that from the shoulders and upward he stood out loftier than all. To meet whom Lanfranc humbly advancing, and joining himself to the side of him riding, embraced his foot together with the stirrup, on which he seemed to lean: and to himself for the sake of kissing he attempted to draw it. But h Dunstan, as if frightened at the deed, or exhibiting to Lanfranc the grace of honor, his knee constricted with both hands seemed to draw back his foot to himself. In this blessed wrestling of contest Lanfranc returns to that which he had been, and so finds himself sound, that no vestige of infirmity in his whole body remained. He gives therefore thanks to God, by whose gift he could both see Dunstan, and the desired health, him granting, receive. So those being called who reclined nearer, he narrates in order what he had seen, at the same time asserts himself to have convalesced. But them thinking that he spoke with alienated mind, Let there be prepared, he said, for me an altar, and this to his wondering ones gratefully he narrates. for you shall see him offering Sacrifice to God, whom a little before you saw scarcely moving his lips. Then the seniors being summoned, who lately had come; This day, he said, will be to you a day of good news. The Lord and our father Dunstan to have been here, and me from all molestation of body to have healed know. Return therefore to the Church, bar its gates upon you, go to the memorial of the Saint, bend your knees; and for the health restored to me render abundant thanks. For I do not wish through myself now to come, lest men think me to be something, as one who could see the Saints of God. They do the commanded things, and afford great joy to the Brothers, suspicious of the death of the Father.
[19] A certain Chaplain, the Presbyter of the Archbishop, had been so grievously tortured with the vexation of fevers through eight months, that the flesh being consumed, scarcely did the skin cling to the weak bones. He at that moment, at which the Archbishop was made well, His Chaplain is freed from a grave fever of eight months. obtained the health desired from God himself too: and in the morning joyful entering to the Archbishop (for he had learned him to have convalesced) inquired the manner of the health received, and heard it. Asked also himself, that in what manner he was he should declare; Plainly, he said, I am very well: since He, who regarded thee in the peril of death pitying, conferred health on me too for the grace of thee in this night. For I lay in my bed, which only a wooden wall separated from thy bed; and I saw in vision B. Dunstan, performing solemn Masses in the Church of the Saviour, and me serving him in the ministry of the Subdiaconate. And when the Epistle had been read by me, I approached to kiss his feet after custom, asked the benediction, and so departing with his benediction I convalesced. Hearing these things the venerable Father Lanfranc, bursting into joy, thus said: Nothing of infirmity could remain in a place, which the Saint of God with the grace of his visitation deigned to illustrate.
ANNOTATA.
the subtleties of the adversaries, and demonstrating the paths of escaping. Similar things indicate Osbert, Knyghton on the Events of England chapter 5 and others.
CHAPTER III.
Other Miracles.
[20] At that time too two certain things happened among us, which we have thought to be ascribed not more to B. Dunstan, than to the other Saints resting there. For by the precept of the Bishop of Bayeux a certain man had been cast into chains, A guilty man praying in the church of the Saint, for this reason that a stag pursued in his wood by dogs, and giving itself headlong to meet him, an arrow being shot he had slain. Held therefore in chains in the city of Canterbury, by days and nights to frequent the Church, to pour out tears for his sins, and to excite great affection of the people around him from the sound of the grating chains. And when this for two years he had unceasingly done, on a certain day, when before the altar of the Lord's Cross he lay prostrate, the chains are loosed of their own accord, all seeing who stood around, the chains were burst, the fetters broken into four parts, the nails broken into minute parts: but he himself was utterly ignorant of what was divinely being done about him. But him rising from prayer, the chains fell from his feet. Which taking in his hands, through the midst of the Brothers, praising omnipotent Christ for the miracle, he went, and placed them upon the altar of Christ; bringing to God as a gift, what had been to him as a burden. After a few days while Lanfranc the Archbishop had narrated this matter to a certain most powerful man, he by a reciprocal relation, And I, he said, can narrate some such thing to your Excellence, which I think will be of no less admiration with you. For the third day is today, from when sixteen ships of pirates driven by a most strong wind, were cast to the shore of the sea. But the men who had been within, partly were immersed in the waves of the sea, partly seized by the Royal exactors, with their Prince, named Baraba, were bound with fetters. a pirate going to the same place escaped from the chains, Who therefore wished to be called Baraba, because he had always been of too great cruelty, and had slain a great throng of men with his hand. But escaping from the fetters, he seized the way which leads to Canterbury, knowing that he would lack neither life nor members, if he could touch the Church of Christ as an asylum. But when he was now near the city, soon as he saw the pinnacle of the Church and the golden Cherub, as if repelled by the virtue of the heavenly Cherub, he could not proceed further. So he strives with all his strength against the empty air: but he always felt it as an iron wall. He stuck astonished, the church being beheld he cannot proceed, and again his strength being resumed undertook the contest of the former wrestling: but by that virtue by which before repelled, with a greater space than before he leaped back. He tried if whence he had come he could return, he could run as much as he wished: but if whither he was disposed he wished to proceed, soon as he saw the Church, he could not move his foot. Despairing therefore of his health and of the mercy of God, It is manifest, he said, that I have a lot with the damned, to whom it is not permitted to see the Church of Christ. What therefore does it profit to invoke a cruel Christ, from whom there is no mercy to be obtained? As fortune shall will, let it go, I henceforth will not enter into flight, but whence I came about to die I will return. Saying these things with headlong course he returns; what had happened to him he narrated to many thousands of men, and pays the penalty. after this paid penalties worthy of his deeds. These things received Lanfranc, me being called commanded these things to be preached among the people, adding that this one was terribly driven from the Church, because with feigned heart he had approached it; but that other was for that matter wonderfully freed in the Church, because to the same daily with devout mind he had tended.
[21] But that too is worthy of perpetual memory, which in a Edward, Archdeacon of the city of London, The Archdeacon of London made a monk at Canterbury, his clemency wrought in a wonderful manner. Who when he was in the world mighty with delights, beholding all the goods of the world to be narrow, betook himself to the one immutable, common, sufficient good, God, the holy garment of religion being undertaken in the Church of Canterbury, under the rule of the aforesaid glorious man Lanfranc the Archbishop. Where through some years honestly conversing, he obtained great favor with all the cohabitants. But after this the malign spirit, envying his conversion and at the same time his conversation, with certain occult and importunate suggestions brought into his mind a tedium of religion, desiring to lead him to this insanity of mind, that to the world whence he had come by repeated vomit of filth he should return. For the devil sent into his heart the pleasures of the world, the embraces of women, ample houses, the societies of friends; nor did he permit him to think, how sweet is the Lord to those tasting Him, how great the house of God and the huge place of His habitation, but meditating return, how blessed the society of Angels, praising God world without end. Overcome at length by the importunity of the tempter, he labored at an issue from the Church: and all things being prepared, which for fulfilling this sacrilege seemed fit, he enters the Church, about to ask of S. Dunstan license of going out and of returning to the world: knowing without doubt, that nothing would prosperously proceed for him, if he, that one offended, did not fear to depart. And rising from prayer that he might go out the door of the Church, he found in the door Dunstan standing with a rod; he is chastised by the Saint appearing. not such then, as Lanfranc had seen him, but terrible in countenance, threatening with eyes, and with biting lips fremishing these things: Return, wretch, return, prostrate yourself to omnipotent God, and the conceived poison of the devil from your heart vomit out. And when he fearing and trembling stuck, Dunstan the rod being raised against him, said: You shall not go out, but here you shall die. This said, he who spoke disappeared: and he to whom he spoke, grievously fell sick. So soon received into a little bed, for two months in great straits he lived: and after this consummated his life. But when it had come to this that he ought to render his soul, those being summoned, whom he had had first in the love of fraternity, all things in order which he had either ill disposed, or for his good seen, in great contrition of heart he narrated. These same things a certain other Brother, an adolescent of good disposition, named Adrian, before all confessed, saying himself both conscious of the counsel and consenting to the work.
[22] Before these days, when I was in the Isle of Thanet b, I walked along the shore of the sea with a Soldier, who had invited me for his defense, Osbern himself acting with a soldier, considering those things which there are the marvels of God, and eliciting thence the material of good discourse. Thence the discourse was drawn to Father Dunstan, since I always reckon it the greatest gain, as often as I find an occasion of speaking of him. Then the same Soldier, this name being mentioned, grew wholly pale, and as if sighing grief from his inmost: Woe, he said, to me ungrateful, who hitherto remain unmindful of so great benefits. Then I: And what, I said, are these so troublesome sighs? Do you know, he said, how hostile the Abbot of S. Augustine was to me while he lived, while he desired to plunder, the things which had come to me by inheritance? I know, I said. Do you also know that, that not only did his immoderation nothing hurt, but, he understands him in a suit, also grew to a heap of greater glory for me? Nor this, I said, lies hidden. But to what purpose you commemorate these things I know not. Know, he said: for on the night which preceded the day of the plea appointed between me and him, recalling when I was in my house, which is near, that you frequently were wont to extol Father Dunstan with your reasons, Now, I say, I have to experience, if as I have heard, so he exists laudable. Bent therefore in prayer, God of Father Dunstan, I say, favor today our part. Thence giving my little body to rest, strengthened by S. Dunstan to have conquered: I see in sleep the city of Canterbury, the basilica of the Saviour, the memorial of the Father. On which as if leaning, I behold a man standing near, becoming of form, splendid of garment, holding in his hand a lamp of light. At whose image terrified, Who, I said, are you, most beautiful of men? The same, said he, whose aid you a little before were praying. Wonderful! I said, how swift you are to pity the wretched! Do you know, what the Lord threatens? Nothing, he said, of his threats fear, nor at all esteem them greatly. So that Soldier prayed: after this turned to me, he said. Now the rest you know, in what manner I and you met, contended, conquered. A sign, I said, great on that day the Saint gave, for this reason that when they were several and of polished acuteness, by a few and less acute conquered they departed. Then I looking at those who were present, showed by words, what now I bring forth in letters.
[23] Now to those things which properly touch my person, as one perhaps less wise, I will pass, and so to my mouth I will put silence, the same affected with great injuries, to my hands too I will indicate leisure. At a certain time certain men infested me with grave hatred, nor before from infesting would they rest, than me affected with great injuries, with graver they threatened to be afflicted. But of those who were given judges of pleading our cause, so the mind either by the favor or the importunity of the adversaries was alienated from me, that neither by speech could they be bent, nor by any reason be moved. Despairing therefore of the succor of men, the aid of God alone and of that Blessed one I judged to be sought. So in the nocturnal time all being lulled, his memorial in great confidence I went to, and the multitude of his compassions with groaning voices and weeping eyes I beat. Then weary in mind, anxious with grief I withdrew; sought the secret; the grief of the heart by the rest of the body, as sometimes happens, desiring to lighten. Not yet had I sufficiently for reposing composed my body, and at the sepulcher of S. Dunstan recreated by a coaxing vision, when, my mind exceeding all things, I seemed to myself in the court of the temple to see a house, whose magnitude was wonderful, the beauty inestimable, to which no one except through a certain inundation of waters could pass over. But the law for those passing over was, that the more they approached to the entrance of the house, the less they felt the same waters. I passed over with those passing over, and the waters thinning I came to the further shores of the channel: and soon entering the house, I saw the whole of it shining with a brightness greater than solar, a choir as it were of Saints with a certain ineffable sweetness rejoicing sitting around, and a certain subtlety of beauty, which in the manner of crystal could be seen through by the eyes of the beholders, presenting. I considered more diligently, wishing to perceive, whence so immense a brightness of light flashed; and it seemed to me, that not from elsewhere than from the bodies of the Saints the same splendor came forth. But to me asking what these things were, it was taught this to be the Clergy of the great Dunstan, but he a little before to have been present, to have celebrated the divine Sacraments, and not yet the Antiphon of Communion being chanted to have withdrawn, and to have commanded that he should await him who lay down at his rest. I thought therefore lest perchance I were that one
were that one. And while I revolved this in my mind, those men rising and seizing me set me in their midst, exhorting themselves with mutual voices; Come, Brothers; let us terminate the Masses, since he is present, for the grace of whom this delay was made. So they began with most sweet and most modulated voices to chant, he understands himself to be the superior in the judgment. and to invite me to organize what they chanted; But I say to you my friends, do not be terrified by those who persecute you. At which voices awakened, forthwith to the sepulcher of the Saint I ran, embraced its middle with both arms, vociferating and with great exultation of heart speaking out; You have been present, most dear Father, you have been present, you have been present to one laboring in straits, and humbly asking your grace. Truly you are the Saint of God, and whatever you wish you can obtain from Him. Now secure I will go to the judges, nor will I dread the threats of anyone today. The judges coming therefore, whose concern it was to terminate the cause, there came those who labored to trouble me: I too came, I moved a calumny concerning the adversaries. So, God aiding and Dunstan patronizing, I overcame all opposing me, so that they too fell by their own reason, and I not only did not escape the injury done to me, but also in my defense at the same time and exaltation exulted very greatly.
Annotata.
EPILOGUE.
[24] I think these things to be enough, most dear Lords and Fathers, either for insinuating the temporal labors of the holy man, or for commending his everlasting glory to the faithful of the Catholic Church. Not that there are not more and perhaps greater than these, which still can be narrated: but that I have wished to narrate only those things, which the faith, The author touching upon some miracles, as I said in the proem, would not seem to exceed. For who would straightway accommodate credulity to me, if I should say, either that he suspended a garment on a column of light, or that he led the extreme want of a kinsman to the highest riches by half a coin? Whose mind would not horror strike, if he should hear a monk hastening to Jerusalem, surrounded by the army of the Emperor of Constantinople, at the sole invocation of that Saint to have been freed from their most troublesome irruption? Whom, I say, would not astonishment apprehend, considering either a thief frightened by the Saint, to have left the things carried away from his rest in the court of the temple untouched? or a citizen of Canterbury, against the opposed authority of the Saint, snatching the substance of the Church of Christ, after a few days to have paid the penalty of his temerity? You see from what I abstain, for this reason that I do not wish to go beyond the estimation of the hearers. Which yet if I should commemorate, I ought not to be incredible, for this reason that there is nothing of difficulty, where the Lord Christ is the author of the work. Then after the manner of cantors performing at banquets we have done, who when it is most beautiful, are wont to cut off the middle of the song, by which both tedium is taken away from the hearers, and again a greater delight of hearing is excited. But at the last we have wished to obey the precepts of speaking even at the end of this oration, who, the minds of the hearers being moved, put an end to the offices of Orators. For a tear, as Tully says, nothing dries up more quickly. But if I have performed the office as it was fitting, give thanks, I beseech, to omnipotent God with me, by whose compassion it was effected that it could be performed. But if I have said less aptly, he asks thanks to be given to God, not therefore less is he, of whom I have spoken, to be appreciated, for this reason that nothing is more unworthy, than on account of the fault of the writer to diminish the virtue of one well meriting. Rather in him let us magnify God, and let us emulously exalt His name in turn, giving thanks to Him, who chose him before the constitution of the world in His eternal wisdom, and willed to beatify the times of the English through the showing of his corporeal presence. Let us also venerate him in God, and let us extol his merits with the highest honors, certain that it pertains to the glory of God, whatever in his veneration our devotion informs. and the Saint to be praised. Let us love him from all the marrows of our hearts, and through him whatever we shall faithfully ask of God let us hope ourselves to receive: for this reason that nothing will the clemency of God be able to deny us, if him whom He loves we shall have studied both to love in mind and to venerate by service. Glory to omnipotent God the Father, who made him; glory to the only-begotten Son of God, who redeemed him; Glory to the Holy Spirit, who illuminated him with His grace: to the one, sole, living and true God, praise and giving of thanks, through the infinite ages of ages. Amen.
Annotata.