Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 71

For certain religious men, well known in the parts of the province of Apulia, are wont to bear witness of what has spread far and wide to the knowledge of many, concerning Sabinus, bishop of the city of Canusium: that this same man, by reason of long old age, had lost the light of his eyes, so that he saw nothing at all. Totila, king of the Goths, hearing that he had the spirit of prophecy, by no means believed it, but was eager to prove what he had heard. When he had come into those same parts, the man of the Lord invited him to a meal. And when they had now come to the table, the king would not recline, but sat at the right hand of the venerable man Sabinus.

But when, as was the custom, a boy offered a cup of wine to that Father, the king silently stretched out his hand, took away the cup, and himself offered it to the bishop in the boy's stead, that he might see whether, by a discerning spirit, he would distinguish who was offering him the cup. Then the man of God, taking the cup but not seeing the minister, said: "May that hand live." At which word the king, gladdened, blushed, because, although he himself had been detected, yet in the man of God he found what he had been seeking. Now while the life of this venerable man was drawn out into a long old age, as an example to those who should follow his life, his archdeacon, inflamed with the ambition of obtaining the episcopate, contrived to destroy him with poison.

When he had corrupted the mind of his cup-bearer with a bribe, so that he might offer him a cup of wine mixed with poison, at the hour of refreshment, when the man of God had now reclined to eat, the boy, corrupted by rewards, offered him that cup of poison which he had received from his archdeacon. To him the venerable bishop at once said: "Drink yourself this which you bring me to drink." The boy, trembling greatly and perceiving himself detected, chose rather to die by drinking than to bear the penalties for the guilt of so great a murder. And when he was raising the cup to his mouth, the man of the Lord restrained him, saying: "Do not drink; give it to me, I will drink; but go, tell him who gave it to you: I indeed drink the poison, but you shall not be bishop." Then, making the sign of the cross, the bishop drank the poison unharmed.

And at that same hour, in another place where his archdeacon was, he died, as though those poisons had passed from the bishop's mouth into the archdeacon's bowels. Yet for the archdeacon the bodily poison was indeed lacking to bring about his death, but the poison of his own malice slew him in the sight of the eternal Judge. PETER: These things are marvellous, and greatly to be wondered at in our times; but such is reported to have been that man's life, that whoever came to know his manner of living ought not to marvel at his miraculous power.