Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 145

There is also present here the venerable brother Venantius, bishop of Luni, and the magnificent Liberius, a most noble and most truthful man, who testify that they know—and that their own men were present at—the matter which they relate to have lately befallen in the city of Genoa. For there, as they say, one named Valentinus, defender of the church of Milan, died, a man exceedingly slippery and given over to all levities, whose body was buried in the church of the blessed martyr Syrus. But in the middle of the night there arose voices in that same church, as if someone were being violently driven out of it and dragged forth.

At which voices the guardians assuredly ran up, and saw two most hideous spirits, who had bound the feet of that same Valentinus with a certain fetter, and were dragging him forth from the church as he cried out and vociferated exceedingly; and they, being terrified, returned to their beds. But when morning came, opening the tomb in which the same Valentinus had been placed, they did not find his body. And when they sought outside the church where it had been cast, they found it placed in another tomb, with its feet still bound, just as it had been dragged away from the church.

From this thing, Peter, gather that those whom grave sins weigh down, if they cause themselves to be buried in a sacred place, it remains that they are even judged for their presumption, so that the sacred places do not free them, but the fault of their rashness even accuses them.