Moralia in Job 4 part 9/9

in vain did he wish to extinguish the flames of the wall, because he refused to extinguish the flames of his own stinginess. 89. In the same time, likewise, behind the apse of the oratory of Saint Mary ever Virgin, joined to the oratory of Saint Barbara, where Gregory was wont to celebrate the praises of the Lord, a demon appeared, and, making for itself a lodging in the cave which is seen there, in the night hours crashed with so great a din that it was thought to be tearing up all the foundations of the monastery. Sometimes it was heard, carrying off horses from the stables, to run about the whole night; and it was proved to have plunged two of them into a precipice.

And when by the dread of so great a noise it had utterly driven the monks away from the dining-hall, in which they were wont to lie for the air because of the heat's fervor, one of them, trusting in the power of almighty God, lying down before the opening and having made his prayer, began to sleep. To him the demon appeared in the likeness of a cat, and attacked him to tear him with its claws. When the monk had repelled it by prayer, he gave himself again to slumber, when suddenly the demon appeared in the likeness of a certain Ethiopian, threatening with a lance, saying: I indeed go hence, but I leave you wounded. Having said this, it brandished the lance and struck the monk, as it seemed, in his sleep. He wailed with such cries as though he had truly been struck;

and when the monks ran up, though frightened, he told what he had seen, and thereafter no demon came there any more. 90. In the time of the pontiff Benedict also, when Lucidus, bishop of Ficulea, presided over that same monastery, while a very great multitude was daily perishing from a pestilence of the throat, this same monk, his throat blocked, came near to death; and to him in his despair the blessed Gregory appeared in a dream, saying: Do you wish to be made whole? And he answered that he did. And the blessed Gregory said: If you promise me that you will say what I shall tell you, know that you are to be healed; but if not, that you will very quickly die. And when he promised with full certainty that he would say it, he heard:

Go, announcing to the monks Sabas, John, Benedict, Martin, Palumbus, and Antony, to Laurence the cook, to Gemmosus the carpenter, to Acceptus the baker, and to the laymen Andrew, Romanus, and Leo, that beginning from tomorrow they shall all follow one another day by day in dying. After their decease announce that Lucidus the bishop, who holds that monastery, shall die on the seventh day. When these things were said, bidding the monk to open his mouth, he thrust two fingers into his throat, and breaking open the ulcer, enjoined him to spit it out. He, coughing, in very truth cast forth a portion of clotted blood in the shape of a stone; and being freed from the very gates of death, that same night, against the hope of all, he took part in the matin hymns.

To the wondering brethren he made known the manner of his healing, and indicated when and how he had foreseen those of the monastery's household who would die; concerning the death of the bishop alone he kept silence for the time, being in doubt. And at once the rumor, flying, ran into the ears of all those appointed to death; and when they knew from the monk's report that they would die on a certain day, having disposed of their little possessions, they thus followed one another into death, just as they had been named in the dream. 91.

And since the priest-monk feared to reveal so dire a message to Lucidus the bishop, yet dared not keep utterly silent, he at last hurried out of the monastery and came to the bishop's house — not far from the river Tiber, in the district near the basilica of the holy Cyrus and John — to announce the dream. Learning that the bishop was dining with the pontiff in the palace, he waited for his return, and, when the bishop came clothed in priestly vestments, radiant in color and also most sound in health, he took care to salute him. To him the bishop said: Even now throughout the whole city you are held as divine, because of those you foretold would die, only one has remained. But he said:

Would that, just as he too whom you think to be alive is dead, so he himself who is foretold to follow this one might leap forth from life. And when the bishop inquired about it with every curiosity, and the monk hesitated to speak, at last, when he learned that he himself would die on the sixth day, he grew pale and trembled; and, recovering his strength, he gnashed against the monk and held him back as he wished to return. He wandered restlessly into the inner parts of his chamber; little by little he felt his throat pain him at food. Then, feeling a soft throbbing in himself, he soon recognized the signs of fever; he believed the monk; he set his house in order; and, wreathed with the same insignia with which he had returned from the patriarchate, he came to the monastery over which he presided.

On the second day of the week, while all marveled at so sudden a conversion, he took the monastic habit; and as the ailment gradually grew worse, at the dawn of the sixth day he fell into a light sleep. And being roused again, he declared that Saint Andrew the apostle had appeared to him, and that he was to be called about the third hour, and that it had been commanded him that — since the monks, held in suspense by the expectation of his death, could not celebrate the accustomed offices of Saint Fabian — they should soon deliver his body to burial, and, having received from him candles and incense, should hasten to perform the solemnities of the feast. And so at the third hour the bishop died joyful, so that in the very joy of his countenance it might be shown to all beholders that his conversion had been pleasing to God. 92.

At the same time the full brother of that same monk suffered a madness of mind, so that, fleeing human company, for a long time he wandered restlessly through solitary crypts and filthy tombs. His brother, grieving exceedingly at his madness, daily besought the holy Gregory with poured-out tears that he would deign to restore his brother to him safe and sound. And so, when on a certain night he rested after weeping of this kind, the blessed Gregory appeared to him, saying: Seeing your tears, I have received your prayer; and behold, I will today bring back your brother to you whole. And this shall be a sign to you, that, as soon as day dawns, by command of the pontiff the priest who is shut up here shall be brought out.

Rising at the morning hour, he told the brethren. Now at that time this same priest Campanus, from the place called Claustrum not far from Terracina, accused by his own people of a certain crime, was held in that same monastery; and, with many years slipping by, being now despised by his accusers, he had also been consigned to oblivion by all his own, since he had been able to have no kinsman, no acquaintance in the City who might make suggestion about him to the pontiff; and though the monks indeed were busy on his behalf, they had no means of gaining access. The pontiff, remembering him by divine inspiration, at dawn ordered him to be brought out of the prison and set free.

And not long after, the monk's brother returned so sound that thereafter he seemed to serve in the monastery of that same Father all the more faithfully, the more he remembered that he had been brought back to his former health by that one's aid. 93. In the time of the pontiff Nicholas also, of reverend memory, while Zacharias, prelate of the city of Anagni, was managing the governance of that same monastery — as remains to this day — a demon assailed the Barbilian estate, of which I made mention above, on account of the crimes of its inhabitants; and, in the likeness of a young bull, running back to the house from the meadows with bellowing, it was felt invisibly to strike a man with its little horns by night, and, dragging the oxen from their stalls, to weary them with a most swift course through the neighboring fields and crossroads.

And when it did this for a long while, and frequently threatened harm to the country folk, by blows of this kind it afflicted and destroyed a certain Saxulus, a tenant of that same estate. Then, assailing the herdsmen, it overpowered them with such slaughter that within the space of three months it left no one there except one only, named Ursellus, whom it was likewise afflicting. He, coming to Rome, while he was telling the brethren of the peril of so great a calamity, in the midst of his speech went out of the gates of the monastery, and, to the astonishment of the monks, did not return until morning had come. Being curiously questioned by them as to whither he had just carried himself off with such sudden swiftness, he confessed, saying:

While I was revealing to you the madness of the demon, the young bull appeared, and, clasping me with its forefeet and butting me with its little horns, began to drive me before it, and the whole night compelled me to climb over walls and trees. And when at last it tried to drown me by way of the bridge, I leaped out of its embraces, and, fleeing it with all my effort, came to the gates of this monastery which the hegumen Euthymius had made; finding them shut, I seized both its rings with both hands; and while it was struggling to tear me away from them, a certain bald pontiff, thrusting himself sideways through the chinks of the gates, struck the young bull's head with a rod, and, driving it into flight, freed me from its blows.

Therefore, when the inhabitants had perished, and no dweller approached that place, and thereby the monks were troubled at the desolation of the spot, Gregory, appearing in a dream to one of them, bade that, if they wished to drive the demon from the monastery's estate, the brethren should proceed with litanies, sprinkling exorcised water, from the oratory of Saint Martina as far as the oratory of Saint Mary, established there in the Lord's house. When this was done, the demon was so repelled from all possession of the monastery that afterward, along the borders of the confines, it was noted to cast flames from its mouth, nostrils, and eyes, and to drive the swine from the swineherd, but was never permitted to enter within the bounds of the monastery. 94.

At another time also, Theutgaudus, formerly bishop of Trier, who together with Guntharius, bishop of Cologne on the Agrippina, had been deprived of the priestly office by Nicholas of reverend memory, by the liberality of the pontiff Hadrian received a lodging in that same monastery. To him the blessed Gregory, appearing in a dream, struck the greatest terror, by which he might be driven forth from his monastery. He, judging that what he had seen had been a phantasm, having made his prayer, began to sleep again. To him Gregory, appearing wreathed in pontifical habit, said: Did I not tell you to withdraw from my monastery — which in prosperous circumstances I dedicated to the Lord through the invocation of Saint Andrew the apostle — because it might in no way be permitted to become a lodging-place?

And when Theutgaudus answered that he had received license to lodge there from the pontiff, Gregory said: Both you who asked and he who granted, both of you have acted against God, whose vengeance you shall very quickly incur. Waking, Theutgaudus trembled, and, having made his prayer, wished to give himself back to slumber, when suddenly, hearing the sound of those coming, he was greatly afraid, and feigned to sleep. Gregory therefore, approaching, holding Saint Andrew the apostle by the right hand, commanded the subdeacon who went before him with a light, saying: Seize him. And when he, seized, had sat up on his little bed with closed eyes, Gregory said: Look upon us. Gazing at them, Theutgaudus trembled the more, and heard him threatening him thus:

Because, having been admonished a second time, you were unwilling to believe the words of my mouth, and by your disobedience so provoked me that I have now taken pains to weary the apostle of God to come hither, know and understand that unless you depart today from this my monastery, in the coming week you shall be deprived of life together with all your people. But if you depart, from this momentary sentence you shall indeed be freed; yet neither you nor any of those dwelling here with you shall see his native land again. At once Theutgaudus flung himself from his little bed, and revealed the dream first to his own people, then to the monks of the monastery, and lastly to whomever he could. And because he could not more quickly obtain another lodging from the pontiff, settling among the Sabines, in that same year he was deprived of life together with all his people. 95.

At the same time also Suppo, count of Picenum, arrived there, who indeed showed the monks very great munificence, and in the affairs of so venerable a monastery forbade the usurpation of his own men. A certain familiar of his, named Faraldus, whenever Suppo went forth to the palace, did not fear to bring harlots thither — to the monks' detestation — and to celebrate with them unlawful feastings and dancings. And this same man, seeking a privy at the beginning of night, was hung in the air by his hair by unclean spirits; and while, hanging the whole night, he had no use of his voice, at the matin hours the blessed Gregory showed himself to him to be seen, saying:

Enemy of God, are not the other evils which you obstinately work in my monastery enough for you, that besides you bring theatrical little harlots into the monastic cloister as though into a theater? Believe me, this year you shall perish. Then he began with great effort to plead for penance, and to promise full correction henceforth. At once Gregory commanded him to be let go; and falling to the ground, because he refused to be corrected, in that same year he proved by dying that Gregory's sentence had been true. 96. A man of the same count, at another time, was called Indulfus. When the cook asked him for pence to buy wood, he could by no means obtain it;

but by a wicked right he received license to attack and plunder the huts, and the windows, and the boards of the neighboring dormitory, and with their fires to prepare his dinner for himself. When on the following night this same Indulfus was going to the privy, he was questioned by a certain old man as to why he had so wantonly commanded the monastery's boards to be burned. But he, upbraiding the holy old man in the Gallic manner as a windbag, was indeed lightly struck by him with a rod; yet the proud man fell with such weight that he lay half-dead upon the ground. At the same moment, under the same appearance, that same old man appeared to a certain cleric sleeping outside, saying:

Rise, and tell the count that from this my monastery — in which it is by no means permitted for a lodging-place to be made — he should depart safe, before he provokes me to wrath. Behold, upon his familiar who is bound to me — whom, indeed, I left struck down as he went to the privy — I will pour out a fitting remedy. When the cleric asked who he was, he declared himself to be the very one who could easily be recognized from the picture which stood above his little bed. At once the cleric, rising, snatched up a light, and from the likeness of the picture recognized that Saint Andrew the apostle had appeared to him. And so he went on to Indulfus lying there, and found him now half-dead.

Beginning to cry out with great wailings, he compelled both the count and all who slept under those same dwellings to come with pitiable outcry, and, pouring water on the face of the fallen man, through the invocation of Saint Andrew the apostle he at last made him speak at some point; and he revealed to the count, together with him, all the things which had been disclosed to him. The count, when day had come, called the monks and, full of complaint, began to inquire what he had committed against Saint Andrew. But they showed the dormitory of the cooks destroyed by their hands. And when the count, devoted to God, wished to subject them to punishment, they confessed that they had destroyed that building by the orders of Indulfus.

When, for its repair, the count wished to give the monks silver, Sergius, master of the soldiers, resisted, promising that he would at once restore it better on his behalf. Soon the count, humbly withdrawing from the monastery's cloister, betook himself with all his people to the house of Peter, son of the late Charles; nor did he thereafter allow a lodging to be given him in that same monastery. But Indulfus, left behind in the house of that same Sergius, master of the soldiers, perished utterly, and showed by his own ruin that the holy apostle had prevailed against him. 97. Recently a certain priest, Dominic, while Zacharias the bishop, of whom I have spoken before, was bearing the charge of the Gregorian monastery, became provost of the monastery;

who, corrupted by the frailty of the flesh, carried off or seduced a certain nun named Eupraxia from the monastery of Saint Andrew the apostle, which is called Clivus Scauri, and placed her in the region of the Seven Ways, at a place called Vipera. When the corrupted nun, because she did not have a latrine and an oven adjoining, frequently seemed to be a nuisance to him, the wretched priest, linking sin to sin, in order that he might be able to please his little harlot, did not shrink from offending the blessed Gregory. Plundering the wood and tiles of his marvelous — nay, most health-giving — fountain, he did not blush to build a privy and an oven for the prostituted woman.

When these things were done, and on the following night he was sleeping more securely, free from the complaints of the lascivious woman, in that same house, he saw two certain terrible chamberlains leading him back with bound hands to the venerable monastery. Questioning them by whose command they did such things to him, he heard that the Roman pontiff had commanded this. Now at that time John, pontiff of the holy Apostolic See, was traversing the shores against the incursions of the Saracens; and the bound priest, recalling his absence, added reproachfully: The lord pope set out yesterday against the Saracens, and how do you say that he himself ordered me to be bound, seeing that you have not seen him since? But they said:

If John the pope departed hence, holy Gregory remained here, who, surveying the cloisters of his monastery in his accustomed manner, found his fountain despoiled by you, and we saw the oven and privy of your little harlot covered with its coverings. When the priest heard this, blushing, he trembled; and — as you shall see him held by their violence in the court of the monastery — he heard a certain subdeacon coming forth from the innermost parts and saying to the chamberlains: Stretch him out, and with fifty red-marked rods beat the belly, and with as many the back, of this fornicating and sacrilegious priest.

Roused indeed by these pains, the priest, already fevered, was set upon a horse and, supported on either side by others, hastened back to the monastery, and made known to the brethren the sentence of his own guilt. Torn by invisible blows under the guise of a fever, he could say nothing else but: 'Lord, I am being paid back; Lord, I am being paid back.' And when he was asked why he repeated this so often, he said that he was groaning under a continual scourging; and thus on the sixth day he died with this pitiable cry upon his lips. Indeed, it has been proved by very many instances that those defiled by the contagion of fornication cannot survive long at all in that same venerable monastery.

By this token, even to this day the weight and the whole measure which the same blessed Gregory established is preserved in that peck-measure (modius); and if anyone should wish to make loaves from a measure of it for the use of the monastery, thirty-five are produced, each of just three pounds; but if anyone should make them for another's use, he never reaches that number. When the aforesaid bishop Zacharias wished to learn this for certain, for the celebration of the feast of the blessed apostle Andrew he gave the bakers a measure of ten pecks of wheat; and from these, to the astonishment of those same bakers, he received loaves multiplied as if from eleven pecks. Assuredly, if they, carefully counting them beforehand, had found any surplus, they would without doubt have kept it for themselves.

Indeed, how frequently blessed Gregory appears—both there and in the basilicas of the apostles, and also in the patriarchate—now exhorting the innocent, now deterring the guilty, in the very likeness of his own recognizable form: because I am not now able to recount this, here, with the Lord's assistance, I make an end of this work, and I leave the remaining miracles of the same Father to be recorded after me by men more learned than I. His venerable merit indeed, as long as the orbit of this world revolves—so that I may confess it with Paul, that most eloquent man—shall ever receive increase:

For it is without doubt ascribed to his grace, whether that the Church of the English is ever made fruitful with new offspring, or that by his teachings throughout the whole world many who were estranged through sin are brought back to the mercy of Christ, or that all good men, kindled by his exhortations, seek the heavenly homeland with longing. 100. Behold, most zealous of pontiffs, compelled by the force of your command, while I have desired to cull certain deeds of blessed Gregory your predecessor—the apostle, that is, of the Saxon race—I, an unskilled writer, have described a rhetorician. But I beseech that, with the same care with which you long ago bade me pluck out these things, you would bring them, as you have begun, to the notice of all:

so that in that which I rejoice to have pleased your sacred and holy judgment, I may not at all be assigned to be judged by anyone, but rather be found among those who shall judge. Indeed, most recently, when with the Lord's cooperation I was eager to close this fourth book, on the night when the venerable day of the Lord's Resurrection was dawning, while I was writing in my sleep, a certain one under the likeness of some ancient plotter openly presented himself to be seen; and, adorned in priestly fashion with a most white and at the same time most thin tunic—through whose very sheerness the blackness of the tunic beneath shone through—he soon stood close by, and, with puffed-out cheeks, could not contain his laughter.

While I was thinking to prepare a curule seat for him, seeing him laughing beyond measure, I seemed to accost him, asking why a man of such weighty office should make such a wanton uproar in the silence of the night. But he said: 'Because you write about the dead, whom while living I never once saw.' And when I had replied that I was writing all the more truthfully in that they were unknown to me by face, yet not unknown by reading, and without any fault of envy or flattery, he answered: 'You, as I see, have done what you wished; but I shall not cease to do what I shall be able to do.' Saying this, he utterly extinguished the flames of the lamp by whose light I happened to be enjoying; and yet the whole wick he could not extinguish;

yet he so terrified me, placed as I was in darkness, that I thought I would forthwith be cut down by swords at his hands. When after a little while, as I was in despair, blessed Gregory appeared to me, made bright with much light—accompanied on his right by Pope Nicholas of reverend memory, and on his left, as it seemed to me, by his deacon Peter—saying: 'O you of little faith, why did you doubt?' And when I, struck by my former fright, could not answer him, the kindly father Nicholas, pointing out with his finger the adversary lurking behind the curtain which then surrounded my little bed, said: 'Because this envious one has, so far as lay in him, extinguished the very flames of the lamp.'

At once Gregory, seizing the hand of the deacon in which he seemed to hold a great torch, and scorching with its flames the face and countenance of the wanton one, blackened him after the likeness of an Ethiopian. From this burning, a tiny spark descending from the mouth of the wanton one set his gleaming tunic ablaze quicker than a word could be spoken; and thus he appeared wholly most black. And when the deacon said that the adversary was blackened enough, blessed Gregory said: 'We have not blackened him, but have shown that he was black.' Then, having encouraged me in my misfortune with various consolations, he departed. And the torch indeed he carried away with him, but he left the place where I was sleeping truly shining with so great a light that, on waking, I again and again called out to the boys sleeping before me;

nor did they in any way answer, sunk in heavy sleep, or manage to rise, before the abundance of the light that had been left, gradually withdrawing itself, had wholly flowed away. But concerning these matters, let God see to it; I, however, strengthened by the confidence of divine hope—since Gaudericus, bishop of Velletri, requests it—shall, with the Lord's help, turn my pen to the merciful bishop of the Roman see: so that I, who, worn down by continual misfortunes, cannot repay to my friends—by whom I am somehow sustained—the merit due them, may at least be known not to have withheld the words which I am able to offer.