Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/112

 Readings in European History 29. How a monk dared to have gold in his possession. (From Gregory's Dialogues.) heaven, and even the streaming blood of the human race as it was afterwards spilt. Gregory's Dialogues, a collection of the lives of holy men, was for centuries, probably, the most popular of his works. Two examples of his accounts of the saints and the miracles which they performed will be found in the following chapter. The incident given below sheds light upon Gregory's life as abbot of a monastery. There was in my monastery a certain monk, Justus by name, skilled in medicinal arts. . . . When he knew that his end was at hand, he made known to Copiosus, his brother in the flesh, how that he had three gold pieces hidden away. Copiosus, of course, could not conceal this from the breth- ren. He sought carefully, and examined all his brother's drugs, until he found the three gold pieces hidden away among the medicines. When he told me this great calamity that concerned a brother who had lived in common with us, I could hardly hear it with calmness. For the rule of this our monastery was always that the brothers should live in common and own nothing individually. Then, stricken with great grief, I began to think what I could do to cleanse the dying man, and how I should make his sins a warning to the living brethren. Accordingly, having summoned Pretiosus, the superintendent of the monastery, I commanded him to see that none of the brothers visited the dying man, who was not to hear any words of consolation. If in the hour of death he asked for the brethren, then his own brother in the flesh was to tell him how he was hated by the brethren because he had concealed money ; so that at death remorse for his guilt might pierce his heart and cleanse him from the sin he had committed. When he was dead his body was not placed with the bodies of the brethren, but a grave was dug in the dung pit, and his body was flung down into it, and the three pieces of gold he had left were cast upon him, while all together cried, "Thy money perish with thee ! ". ..