Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 78

Recently too, Floridus, a bishop of venerable life, related a certain very memorable miracle, saying: The most holy man Herculanus, my foster-father, was bishop of the city of Perugia, having been brought from the way of life of a monastery to the grace of the priestly order. Now in the days of the treacherous king Totila, the army of the Goths besieged that same city for seven years without intermission, from which many of the citizens fled, who could not endure the peril of famine. But before the seventh year was yet ended, the army of the Goths entered the besieged city. Then the count who was in command of that army sent messengers to king Totila, inquiring what he commanded to be done with the bishop and the people. He commanded them, saying:

'From the bishop first strip a thong from the crown of the head down to the heel, and then cut off his head; but the whole people that is found there, destroy with the sword.' Then that same count led the venerable man, the bishop Herculanus, up onto the city wall and beheaded him, and cut his skin, while he was already dead, from the crown of the head down to the heel, that it might appear that a thong had been taken from his body. And he cast his body outside the wall. Then certain men, compelled by the tenderness of human kindness, placing the severed head upon the neck, buried the bishop's body together with one little infant who was found there slain beside the wall.

And when, on the fortieth day after that slaughter, king Totila had commanded that the citizens of that city who had been scattered anywhere should return to it without any fear, those who had before fled from the famine returned, having received leave to live. But mindful of the life their bishop had led, they sought where his body had been buried, that they might inter it, with due honor, in the church of the blessed apostle Peter. And when they had gone to the tomb and dug up the earth, they found the body of the boy who had been buried along with him, corrupted with decay and full of worms, as was fitting on the fortieth day; but the body of the bishop as though it had been buried on that very same day.

And what is yet to be revered with great wonder, is that his head had been so united to the body as though it had by no means been severed, so plainly, that no traces of the cutting appeared. And when they turned this side and that, searching whether any sign might be shown from some other incision, the whole body was found so sound and untouched, as though no cutting of iron had ever touched it. PETER: Who would not be astonished at such signs of the dead, which come to pass for the training of the living?