Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 99

GREGORY: In this matter, Peter, marvel at nothing; for your love knew Redemptus, bishop of the city of Ferentino, a man of venerable life, who nearly seven years ago departed from this world. This man, as long as I was placed in the monastery, was very familiarly joined to me, and what he had come to know concerning the end of the world in the time of John the younger, my predecessor, as it had shone forth far and wide, being asked by me, he himself related to me. For he used to say that on a certain day, while as was his custom he was making the round of his parishes, he came to the Church of the blessed martyr Eutychius.

As the day was drawing toward evening, he wished a bed to be made for him beside the martyr's tomb, and there rested after his labour; when, about midnight, as he asserted, he neither slept nor could be perfectly awake; but, weighed down, as is wont, with sleep, his waking mind was oppressed by a certain heaviness, and that same blessed martyr Eutychius stood before him, saying: 'Redemptus, are you awake?' To whom he answered: 'I am awake.' He said: 'The end is come upon all flesh, the end is come upon all flesh, the end is come upon all flesh.' After which threefold utterance the vision of the martyr, which had appeared to the eyes of his mind, vanished. Then the man of God arose, and gave himself to the lament of prayer.

For soon those terrible signs in heaven followed, so that spears and fiery battle-lines were seen from the region of the North. Soon the savage nation of the Lombards, drawn from the sheath of their habitation, raged against our neck, and the human race, which in this land had sprung up in exceeding multitude like a thick crop, was cut down and withered. For cities were depopulated, fortresses overthrown, churches burned, monasteries of men and of women destroyed, estates left desolate by men, and, bereft of every cultivator, the land lies vacant in solitude; no possessor inhabits it; beasts have seized the places which before a multitude of men held. And what is being done in other parts of the world, I do not know.

For in this land, in which we live, the world no longer merely announces its end, but shows it. So much the more, therefore, is it necessary for us to seek eternal things, the more we perceive that temporal things have swiftly fled from us. This world should have been despised by us even if it flattered us, if it soothed the mind with prosperous things; but after it is pressed by so many scourges, wearied by such great adversity, and daily redoubles for us so many sorrows, what else does it cry out to us but that it should not be loved! Many things there were, moreover, which still ought to have been related concerning the deeds of the elect, but these I suppress in silence, because I hasten to other matters. PETER:

Because I perceive that many established within the bosom of holy Church doubt concerning the life of the soul after the death of the flesh, I ask that you ought—either what things are supplied by reason, or if any examples of souls occur to your mind—to speak them for the edification of many, so that those who are in doubt may learn that the soul is not ended together with the flesh. GREGORY: This is a very laborious work, and especially for a mind occupied and stretched toward other things. But if there are those to whom it may be of profit, I without doubt set my own will after the benefit of my neighbours, and, insofar as by God's bounty I shall be able, I will show in this following fourth book that the soul lives after the flesh.