Saint Peter Damian

This great man was born in Ravenna , a cit Ravenne Birthplace of the saint and site of his final mission. y in Italy. No sooner was he born than divine Providence prepared crosses for him.

When Peter was still at the breast, his eldest brother showed his mother much sorrow at seeing such a large family to share the few goods they had; this mother, who had a thousand troubles and a thousand torments in her domestic affairs, was deeply affected by the reproaches her eldest son made to her; she gave way to a kind of despair, and lost the courage and tenderness she should have had as a mother to raise the young child she was nursing. Her rigor towards him was such that she refused him her milk, and abandoned him without wishing to give him any more of the nourishment he needed.

But God, who provides, says the Prophet, for the needs of the little birds that invoke his name with their cries when they are abandoned by those who gave them life, also listened to the sighs and little cries of young Peter Damian; and his body was already all livid and dying, when divine Providence raised up a foreign woman who, clothing herself with the love and tenderness of a true mother, took as much care of this little child as if he had been the fruit of her own womb.

When he was of a more advanced age, he lost all hope of possessing temporal goods, losing his father and mother, who died and left him destitute of all help; one of his brothers, nevertheless, under the pretext of charity and compassion, was willing to take him into his family; but, far from being favorable to him, he had only harshness for him, making him work like a mercenary, and refusing him the most necessary things for life; he was forced to go barefoot, he was beaten, he was only half-clothed, and they were not ashamed to send him to the fields to tend the livestock like the lowest of servants. Peter Damian suffered all this with admirable patience, complaining of nothing and receiving everything from the hand of God, whom he respected in the conduct of his relatives, whatever harshness they exercised towards him.

As he advanced in age, he also grew in virtue; the more he knew the world and its false attractions, the more he fled from it. With great freedom of spirit, he despised earthly goods, valuing poverty more than riches. It is said that having one day found a coin by chance, he first felt a small joy at the hope of buying some treats; but, reflecting a second time at the same moment, and considering that the pleasure he wished to procure would pass in an instant, he immediately went to give his silver coin to a priest, so that he might say some masses for the repose of his father's soul.

After having remained for quite some time under the harsh guidance of the brother of whom we have spoken, another of his brothers, named Damien, touched with compassion to see him in such a deplorable state , took Damien Brother of Pierre, who financed his studies and whose name he adopted. him into his home, and, noticing in him fine aptitudes for the sciences, had him study. This brother, then archpriest of Ravenna, later embraced the monastic state. It is believed that it was out of gratitude for all his care that our Saint later took the surname Damien. He indeed had for him all the tenderness of a father. He sent him first to Faenza, then to Parma. His masters were surprised by the vivacity and breadth of his mind: he became in a short time the object of everyone's admiration, and his reputation increased to such an extent that a great number of young men took him for their master, declaring themselves his disciples; he had easy access to the houses of the great, and people of intellect took singular pleasure in being in his company; he acquired wealth through his work and merit, and he had enough to take an honorable path in the world, had he wished to respond to the advances made to him.

Honors and pleasures presented themselves continually to his eyes; but God, who had taken special care of him from the cradle, did not permit him to stray from the path of virtue. He armed himself with the weapons of the Saints to calm his passions and submit them to the laws of reason and grace. He usually wore, for this purpose, a rough hairshirt under his clothes, which were otherwise quite neat, the better to hide his austerities; he practiced, while still in the world, the discipline of fasting, vigils, and prayer. When he felt attacked by some temptation against purity, he would plunge his body into half-frozen waters during the night, until he had obtained the calm he desired.

He took great pleasure in visiting places consecrated to the Lord; one of his primary devotions was to recite and meditate upon the psalms of David. He gave a large portion of his goods to the poor: he often invited them to his table and served them himself, as they were the members of Jesus Christ. Although he led a very innocent life in the world, he resolved to embrace the monastic life, but outside of his own country, for fear of being dissuaded by his relatives and friends. While he was in this frame of mind, he met two Camaldolese hermits from the desert o f Fonte-Avell Font-Avellane Hermitage and monastery where Peter Damian embraced the eremitic life. ana, of whom he had heard; having opened his heart to them, they strengthened him in his purpose, and as he expressed a desire to withdraw with them, they promised him that their abbot would receive him. He offered them a silver vase to take to their abbot, but they said it was too large and would be a burden on the journey, and he remained greatly edified by their detachment. To test himself, he spent forty days in a cell similar to those of the hermits; then, having chosen his time, he tore himself from the arms of his family and went to Fonte-Avellana, where, according to custom, he was placed in the hands of one of the brothers to be instructed. The latter, having led him to his cell, had him remove his linen, clothed him in a hair shirt, and brought him back to the abbot, who immediately had him vested in a cowl. Peter was astonished that they gave him the habit right away without having tested him and without having made him ask for it; but he submitted to the will of the superior, although at that time the taking of the habit was not yet separated from the profession. When he saw himself clothed in the religious habit, he displayed such great fervor that all those who lived with him took him as an example and reformed their conduct according to his, even though they were already very advanced on the path of perfection. He had no difficulty in adapting to all the rules practiced in the holy house he had chosen, although the way of life there was very austere: for they usually fasted four days of the week on bread and water, and on the other days they added only a few vegetables; the use of wine was unknown there. At all times, one was obliged to go barefoot even in the midst of deserts filled with thorns; the religious lived two by two in cells separated from one another. They exercised themselves day and night in all kinds of holy practices, such as bodily macerations, adorations, genuflections, prostrations, psalmody, prayers, and other similar things which the Saints have always used to maintain the fervor of the spirit, and to render also, in this way, the double exterior and interior worship that is due to God.

The custom of the religious of Fonte-Avellana was to recite the Psalter during the night; but Peter Damian, whose piety knew no bounds, would anticipate the time at which his brothers were awakened, in order to increase his prayers by increasing his vigils. The excess of his mortifications went so far that he became ill: he was attacked by an insomnia from which he had great difficulty recovering. This illness taught him subsequently that one must not always follow the ardor of one's zeal and that one must use discretion in the exercises of piety; but in the end, God restored to him the health he had lost only by striving to give Him testimonies of a more perfect love.

After this illustrious Solitary had spent several years in a hidden and unknown life, during which he acquired great graces and a vast store of doctrine in the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, it pleased divine Providence to place this beautiful lamp upon the lampstand. His superior first ordered him to give exhortations to the religious of his community. He performed this duty with such success and acclaim that word of it spread through all the neighboring monasteries: the abbots of the surrounding area asked as a favor of the superior of Fonte Avellana to kindly permit this fervent religious to come and stay with them for some time, so that he might share with other Solitaries the bread of the word of God, which he announced with such unction and eloquence. He went, in fact, to the surrounding monasteries to distribute the rare talents with which God had favored him, and he edified them no less by the holiness of his example than by the power of his preaching and his speeches full of zeal. Thus he remained for two years at Pomposa, of which the virtuous Guy was abbot.

The wise superior of this true religious, noticing that he had no less prudence and discretion in his conduct than doctrine and virtue, first appointed him steward of the hermitage or monastery where he resided; then he declared him his successor; thus, after the death of this worthy abbot, whom Peter Damian called, out of respect and friendship, his master and his father, he was obliged to take up this burden and bear the weight of the priorate, for which he had always had a great aversion. He discharged all his duties in this new office with the success that one could hope for. His care was universal: it extended equally to the spiritual and the temporal; and as his zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls grew in his heart as he advanced in virtue and age, he found a way, without leaving his first flock, to establish a great number of other monasteries in solitary places that he went to choose himself in the deserts.

He undertook arduous journeys to visit those who inhabited these new solitudes, in order to support them in the initial fervor he had inspired in them; he received an infinity of postulants of all ages and conditions, who made it their glory and merit to lead a penitent and hidden life under the direction of such a holy personage. Among the disciples of eminent virtue whom he formed and who later became lights of the Church, one cites Saint Rodolfo, Bishop of Gubbio (June 26); Saint Dominic Loricatus (October 14), and Saint John of Lodi who wrote his life (September 7).

He had a mind so expansive, and at the same time a hear t inflamed with such univers saint Dominique l'Encuirassé Disciple of Peter Damian known for his austerities. al charity, that he was not content to provide for the spiritual needs of the monasteries he had established; but he also helped, through his instructions and advice, in writing and by word of mouth, other houses, whether of men or women, who regarded his opinions as oracles and received his decisions as coming from the Holy Spirit; so that he became like the common father of a great part of Italy.

The Sovereign Pontiffs did not wish to be deprived of the admirable counsel of a man for whom they had such esteem. All those who occupied the See of Rome during the life of Peter Damian found great advantages in having relations with him. When the schism of the popes Sylvester III and John XX was extinguished, around the year 1044, and Gregory VI was legitimately elected, the holy abbot wrote him several letters: in one of them, he expresses the joy he felt upon learning of his elevation to the sovereign pontificate, and also makes known to him with what ardor and zeal he must work to restore peace and its former splendor to the Church. Baronius believes that this epistle is of such great weight that it alone can serve as a powerful testimony to prove the validity of the election of Gregory VI; all the more so, he says, because the holy abbot was not in the mood to have false complaisances that would commit him to giving vain praise and flattering the great, never espousing anything but the interests of truth, rebuking with great firmness those who were guilty, and always declaring himself the enemy of those who were not in the interests of the Church.

He was no less esteemed by Leo IX, who addressed great praise to him in a letter of congratulations on the zeal he showed against the heretics. Victor II and Stephen IX likewise maintained a close friendship with this holy solitary; Étienne IX Pope who appointed Peter Damian cardinal-bishop of Ostia. it was Pope Stephen who, having discovered extraordinary breadth of mind and capacity in this virtuous personage, had the bishopric of Ostia offered to him to give him the opportunity to exercise the great zeal with which he appeared animated. The servant of God, who had an extreme opposition to all dignities, and who preferred the sweetness of solitude and the humble quality of a religious to all titles of grandeur and to the highest ecclesiastical prelacies, absolutely refused the honor they wished to bestow upon him. The entire court of Rome made great entreaties to make him accept what was offered to him.

Finally, the Pope made it a duty for him to obey and to accept the bishopric he was giving him; this wise Pontiff at the same time placed the pastoral ring on his finger and the crozier in his hand; the humble abbot dared not resist any longer: he submitted, out of pure obedience, to the wishes of him who held the place of Jesus Christ, and he has since confessed that God had made known to him, three years earlier, the dignity to which he saw himself raised (1057).

He soon recognized the weight of the burden that had just been imposed upon him, because his great lights and the lively faith with which he was animated made him see the obligations as great as they were; he distrusted his own strength greatly, but he had perfect confidence in God, hoping to receive from Jesus Christ, the sovereign Pastor and Light of all prelates, the help he needed to lead his flock well. He therefore began to take great care of the Church that had just been entrusted to him; he had himself given a perfect knowledge of the affairs of his diocese; he spared neither his goods nor his health to make himself useful to his spiritual children. When he preached, he accommodated himself to the days and hours of his people: he was often seen, after having endured violent bouts of fever during the night, rising early in the morning to go to hear confessions, or to preach, or to go to sing solemn masses, or to perform other similar pastoral functions, which he believed to be his duty. He was always ready to sacrifice his health and even to give his life for the salvation of the souls entrusted to him. His preachings were accompanied by great unction and supported by a profound doctrine, which he knew how to temper according to the reach of his listeners; no one was bored to hear him, although his zeal sometimes made him spend several hours in the pulpit.

This vigilant Pastor did not flee when he saw the wolf coming: on the contrary, he went to attack it in its retreat and deal it death before it could swoop down on his flock, cutting off, by the sword of excommunication, those who wanted to introduce errors into the minds of his diocesans. He was the scourge of heretics, and he knew how to so effectively repress their audacity and temerity that other prelates sent to beg him insistently to come to their aid, to help them dispel the pernicious doctrines that had slipped into their churches.

The quality of cardinal, with which the Sovereign Pontiff had also honored him, obliged him to extend his zeal beyond the limits of his bishopric: he looked upon the interests of all individual pastors as his own; he exhorted all bishops to maintain perfect union in their dioceses; but if he judged that peace was so necessary in individual churches, he was even more convinced that there must be perfect understanding in the Sacred College, which had to work with the Sovereign Pontiff for the peace of the universal Church; it is for this reason that he did not fail to oppose with generosity the pretensions of the antipope Benedict X, who had himself named Sovereign Pontiff after the death of Stephen IX (1058); he supported, with incomparable zeal, the legitimate election of Nicholas II.

It was in the time of this Pope that the church of Milan found itself infected with two great disorders: it was a completely public thing and of common usage to buy benefices for money; there was no longer any regard for capacity or good morals, which are nevertheless the only qualities that should be taken into account, according to the holy Canons, in the distribution of benefices: they even bought ordination; the other disorder was that the priests, trampling underfoot the holiness of their state and the ecclesiastical laws, dared to contract marriages with as much pomp and splendor as laymen.

A great division arose in the church of Milan, between the clergy and the people, on the occasion of the scandals of which we have just spoken. The Milanese, seeking the remedy for these evils, had recourse to Pope Nicholas II. The Sovereign Pontiff cast his eyes on the prudent prelate, Peter Damian: he sent him to the scene. He was received there by the people as an angel sent from heaven; but, when he had declared the subject of his legation, the clergy, whose sick members did not want to receive healing, rose insolently against the designs of this wise physician; the most interested leaders of the party blamed the remedy he wanted to use and published everywhere that the church of Milan should not be subject to the laws of the Roman Church, that they were only doing what their predecessors had done, and that the church that Saint Ambrose had once governed should not have to render an account of its conduct to anyone.

The holy Legate used his ordinary prudence in an affair of this importance, where it was a question of making misguided minds return of their own free will, to put them back on the path of salvation; he made them know, by a great number of powerful reasons, what was the extent of the authority of the Holy See over all churches; he proved to them clearly the power it had to reform the morals and doctrine of its children when it had reason to do so, and he made them agree that they were in error and off the path of salvation. There were other much greater difficulties to overcome to apply the appropriate remedy to so many evils; but Divine Wisdom suggested to him means to succeed well, and, after having done what the circumstances of the time and the holy Canons of the Church required in such a case to put order to the present disorders, he attached himself with more care to providing for the future. For this purpose, he had the archbishop and all his officers subscribe to a declaration in due form, by which they protested in good faith that they would never again demand anything in the collation of benefices in any way whatsoever; they swore on the holy Gospels that they would never violate the word they gave: furthermore, the holy Prelate imposed a penance on all those who were evidently at fault, and then he reconciled them with the Church; he observed, in all this affair, not to admit or keep any of those who were convinced of having neither the capacity nor the good morals required to properly discharge their office: it is thus that this wise Prelate remedied two of the greatest evils that can be introduced into the Church.

The Church then enjoyed a fairly great peace; but it was troubled by the intrigues or ambition of Cadaloüs, Bishop of Parma, who, upon the death of Pope Nicholas II, had himself declared Sovereign Pontiff by cabal, thus openly disputing the highest dignity of the Church with Alexander II, who had Alexandre II Pope whose election was supported by Peter Damian against the antipope. been elected according to the holy Canons. Peter Damian had, in this encounter, a new opportunity to show the affection he held for the Holy See; he wrote two extremely strong letters to the antipope, in which he showed him the excess of his ambition, the scandal he was causing throughout the Church, and the crime of which he was guilty; he threatened him, with apostolic firmness, with the imminent thunderbolts of the vengeance of God, the sovereign Judge; he also wrote to the King of Germany, Henry IV, who was supporting this antipope: he exhorted him to contribute, in all that he could, to restoring peace to the Church; he also addressed letters to Saint Anno, then Archbishop of Cologne, whom he gave just praise for having declared himself against Cadaloüs and having struck him with ecclesiastical anathemas; finally, he exhorted Prince Henry, of whom we have just spoken, to bring the cause to a complete end by the convocation of a Council, which he was to procure for this purpose.

This Council was assembled: a learned inquiry into the matter in question was conducted there before the Emperor; the illustrious Cardinal Peter Damian took a great part in it, and the entire Council gave him such universal approval that the antipope was condemned and the election of Alexander II was approved.

In the midst of these great affairs, he frequently reflected on the sweetness of solitude and sighed for that happy rest he had once enjoyed in the deserts he had been made to leave; he made known to Alexander, who then peacefully held the See of Rome, his inclination to retire, alleging, to obtain this grace, his advanced age, his infirmities, his diminished strength, and many other reasons that his piety and desire for solitude led him to set forth. He finally obtained from this Pontiff, though with great difficulty, what he had not been able to obtain from Nicholas II, his predecessor. History, however, notes that he always remained Bishop of Ostia and a Cardinal, and that he was only relieved of the great cares and burdens of these high dignities. He therefore went to rejoin his religious brothers in the desert, at the monastery of Fonte Avellana: there he asked for the poorest of all the cells; he fasted almost every day on bread and water; the bread he used was made only of bran or barley; he would drink only water that was half-corrupted and had been exposed to the air for a long time; the ordinary dish from which this humble cardinal ate was the same one in which he washed the feet of the poor; he slept on very hard boards, and although his body, exhausted by an infinity of labors, was still burdened and surrounded by iron rings constructed in his own way, he did not fail to take the discipline every day and to bruise his body with very austere instruments that the spirit of penance led him to invent.

When he gave exhortations to his religious in the Chapter, and had reproved them for their faults, he would descend from his seat himself, and, prostrating humbly on the ground, he would accuse himself of all his imperfections; then, not believing that the exercise of flagellation was an action unworthy of the qualities he held, since Jesus Christ himself, the first and greatest model of all perfection, had been willing to suffer it on his holy body, he would chastise himself very severely in the presence of his religious, by this type of mortification which was in such frequent use among the Saints.

After this harsh and humiliating practice of penance, which was a powerful example to animate his religious to virtue, one would see this venerable prelate rise from the humbled posture he had taken and return to his place, where he continued to give salutary advice, sometimes in general and sometimes in particular, pointing out the daily faults into which each one fell, well persuaded that, without this detail, exhortations and reprimands remain without effect.

He told his disciples that it was appropriate to know one's own strength well in order to know what one could do for heaven, and that it was unseemly for a soldier of Jesus Christ to be ignorant of how far he could advance on the path of virtue and in the ways of penance and mortification, especially since one can often do much more than one imagines. He could not suffer a lack of respect for God, especially in public prayer. Having noticed, one day while passing through Besançon, that the canons of the cathedral remained seated during the divine office, his zeal was inflamed and he took up his pen: he addressed a treatise to the Bishop of Besançon in which he proves that one can only sit during the lessons.

The more this fervent prelate approached his end, the more he wished to increase the number of his mortifications. Toward the end of his life, he spent the holy Lenten seasons without consuming any food other than a few herbs cooked in water; he even took no food during the three days preceding Lent. It is believed that it was he who inspired the practice of taking Friday of the week to honor in a special way the mystery of the Cross and the Passion of the Savior, who died on that day: he exhorted people to observe the fast on that day and to perform some bodily mortification in memory of the pains that Jesus Christ had suffered for us; this devotion, which is still quite commonly observed today, was approved at first from heaven by some events that are believed to be miraculous, and then by the common usage of all the faithful.

When the holy Cardinal of whom we speak was thus enjoying the happiness of retirement, and was happily hiding the brilliance of the purple under the veils of deep humility and austere penance, the Sovereign Pontiff, who had so often known, as well as his predecessors, the great experience he had for the handling of the most considerable and thorny affairs, named him to go to France in the capacity of apostolic legate. He obeyed this order blindly and set out on his way; he first went to the Abbey of Cluny, where he was expected to settle great affairs; then, continuing his journey, he visited the archbishops of Reims, Sens, Tours, Bourges, and Bordeaux, to terminate, in all these dioceses, difficulties and disputes for which the Sovereign Pontiff had been asked to be the judge. Having perfectly fulfilled his entire mission in France, he took the road to Germany to go and reconcile King Henry IV with Bertha, his wife, whom this prince wished to repudiate; he opposed this separation with great firmness: he declared to the king that he would use against him the severity of the holy Canons of the Church if this mon arch pur Henri IV King of France mentioned for the dating of the chapel. sued his enterprise: he threatened with ecclesiastical censures the Bishop of Mainz, who had promised to acquiesce to this separation; finally, he told the king that he did not judge him worthy of the crown of the empire, which Henry hoped to receive soon, if he gave such a bad example to his subjects, and if he caused such a great scandal among all the peoples. God gave such a great blessing to the just severity of the holy Legate that all the princes of the empire and the king himself desisted from the design that had been formed; Henry kept his wife, and he had a prince by her who became his successor.

Empress Agnes, mother of Henry, took the holy Cardinal as the director of her conscience, and she made a confession to him of all the sins of her life since her earliest youth. As she had somewhat favored the party of the antipope Cadaloüs, she went to Rome to implore the pardon of her fault at the holy tombs of the Apostles: she then returned to Germany; but, as she had a correspondence of letters with the pious Cardinal of whom we speak, he persuaded her, for good reasons, to come to Rome: which she executed, and she ended her life there in the odor of sanctity.

The history of the famous person whose life we are describing also makes mention of some other legations with which the Holy See honored him; he traveled to the city of Florence to destroy the heresy of the Simoniacs who were causing extreme disorders in that church, and to extinguish at the same time a great schism that had occurred between the people and the clergy; all these affairs were happily terminated in a council of more than one hundr hérésie des Simoniaques Buying or selling of spiritual goods, a major struggle of the saint. ed bishops, held in Rome, against the Simoniacs, at the solicitation of the great Prelate who had made the necessity of it known to Pope Alexander II.

Finally, the last action that crowned all the labors of the famous Cardinal was the legation with which the Pope charged h im for Ravenne Birthplace of the saint and site of his final mission. Ravenna, in order to reconcile the people there who had hitherto unjustly wished to support the archbishop excommunicated for grave reasons. This tireless pastor accepted this mission, although he was at a very advanced age and it was no longer easy for him to travel; as he was from Ravenna and remembered that he had received life and baptism in that city, he took pleasure in going to perform a good office for that church, in recognition of the status of child of God that he had received there.

He succeeded in this affair as in all others; he reconciled the people after having shown them their error; he restored peace to the city and to the whole diocese, he received a thousand blessings for such a good office, and, after having happily discharged this last mission, he took the road back to Rome. But the time at which God had resolved to reward his labors having arrived, he was attacked by a burning fever on the road near the city of Faenza, which is only half a day 's jou Faenza Birthplace of the saint in Romagna. rney from Ravenna, from where he had departed; he was received with extreme joy by the religious of a monastery dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, which was situated at the gates of the city. He showed in his illness all the acts of virtue that could be expected from a man who had lived for so long in the continuous exercises of charity, penance, and prayer; he was ill for only nine days, and on the ninth, which was the day of the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, he had the entire office of that feast recited before him, out of a special devotion he had to the prince of the Apostles; and, after having thus satisfied his piety and having put in order everything that wisdom and charity required of him in this extremity, he peacefully rendered his beautiful soul to God, on February 23 of the year 1072.

Saint Peter Damian has been represented: 1st with a discipline in his hand, to express the ardor with which he devoted himself to mortification; 2nd under the various costumes of a cardinal, a hermit, and a pilgrim; in the latter case, a diploma or a bull is placed in his hand to recall the various legations with which he was charged by the Popes. He is the patron of Fonte-Avellana and Faenza. He is invoked against headaches, probably in his capacity as a man of study.

## CULT AND WRITINGS.

As it was known everywhere what the merit of this incomparable Prelate was, and the danger of death in which he found himself, guards had been placed around the monastery where he had fallen ill, for fear that his religious might come to take away his precious body. The whole city of Faenza, being warned, went to the place where this holy deposit was; he was transported to the church consecrated to the Mother of God; such a great concourse of people from all the neighboring places came there that one could not enter the church; everyone hastened to kiss the feet of the pious deceased, or to have something touched to his body out of devotion. A very beautiful mausoleum was raised for him; his tomb was placed at the top of the choir of this church, opposite the middle of the altar, where it received, for a very long time, the vows of all the peoples who came to venerate his memory and implore his help. One will be able to see in his Life, which is at the head of his works, the account of several great miracles that brevity does not allow us to report here.

Pope Leo XII gave Saint Peter Damian the title of Doctor of the Church and extended to all of Catholicism the cult that was rendered to him in the Camaldolese Order, as well as in the dioceses of Ravenna and Faenza. He has a double office in the Roman Breviary.

Boisil was, according to the venerable Bede, a man of eminent virtue and endowed with the prophetic spirit. Nothing was spoken of everywhere but the holiness of his life; which led Saint Cuthbert, when he left the world, to prefer the monastery of Melrose to that of Lindisfarne. From the first time that Boisil saw him, he said to those who were present: Behold a servant of God. He applied himself to giving him the understanding of the divine Scriptures and to perfecting him in the practice of all virtues.

Boisil often spoke of the three persons of the adorable Trinity, and when he pronounced the holy name of Jesus, he did so with such tender devotion and sometimes with such an abundance of tears that the listeners were moved. As his office placed him in the position of instructing the brothers, he discharged it with all possible zeal and edification. He did not limit himself to the instruction of the brothers; he also went to preach in the villages, imitating the example of Jesus Christ, who took delight in conversing with the poor.

The venerable Bede reports several predictions of our Saint, one among others of the plague that ravaged England in 664. Saint Cuthbert was also attacked by this formidable scourge, but he did not die of it. Boisil, having seen him after his recovery, said to him: "God has healed you, my brother, and your last moment has not yet arrived. As for me, I shall die in seven days; thus we have only this time to converse together." — "But," replied Saint Cuthbert, "what shall I be able to read in such a short space?" — "The Gospel of Saint John," replied our Saint. "Seven days will suffice to read it and to make our reflections." The pleasure that Saint Boisil took in the reading of the Gospel according to Saint John came from an ardent love for Jesus Christ and a great desire to kindle in himself more and more the fire of divine charity. The disciple retained from his master this solid devotion, and a Latin copy of the Gospel according to Saint John was found in his tomb.

The seventh day having arrived, the Saint was attacked by the plague, as he had predicted. The more he saw his last moment approaching, the more he rejoiced at the proximity of his deliverance. He repeated often and with extraordinary fervor these words of Saint Stephen: Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. His blessed death occurred in the year 664.

The relics of Saint Boisil were carried to Durham in 1030, next to those of Saint Cuthbert, his disciple.

Bede says that our Saint took an interest from the height of heaven in favor of his country and his friends; that he appeared twice to one of his disciples, and that he charged him to warn Saint Egbert that it was the will of God that he should go to the monasteries of Saint Columba to teach there the true manner of celebrating Easter.