Page:William of Malmesbury's Chronicle.djvu/203

 their limbs. This narrative was given to us by the lord Peregrine, the successor of Herbert, in the year of our Lord 1013."

In that city, which formerly was called Agrippina, from Agrippa the son-in-law of Augustus, but afterwards named Colonia by the emperor Trajan, because being there created emperor he founded in it a colony of Roman citizens; in this city, I repeat, there was a certain bishop, famed for piety, though to a degree hideous in his person; of whom I shall relate one miracle, which he predicted when dying, after having first recorded what a singular chance elevated him to such an eminent station. The emperor of that country going to hunt on Quinquagesima Sunday, came alone, for his corn-companions were dispersed, to the edge of a wood, where this rural priest, deformed and almost a monster, had a church. The emperor, feigning himself a soldier, humbly begs a mass, which the priest immediately begins. The other in the meantime was revolving in his mind why God, from whom all beautiful things proceed, should suffer so deformed a man to administer his sacraments. Presently, when that verse in the tract occurred, "Know ye that the Lord himself is God," the priest looked behind him, to chide the inattention of an assistant, and said with a louder voice, as if in reply to the emperor's thoughts, "He made us; and not we ourselves." Struck with this expression, the emperor esteeming him a prophet, exalted him, though unwilling and reluctant, to the archbishopric of Cologne, which, when he had once assumed, he dignified by his exemplary conduct; kindly encouraging those who did well, and branding with the stigma of excommunication such as did otherwise, without respect of persons. The inhabitants of that place proclaim a multitude of his impartial acts; one of which the reader will peruse in that abbreviated form which my work requires. In a monastery of nuns in that city, there was a certain virgin who had there grown up, more by the kindness of her parents than through any innate wish for a holy life: this girl, by the attraction of her beauty and her affable language to all, allured many lovers; but while others, through fear of God or the censure of the world, restrained their desires, there was one who, excited to wantonness by the extent of his wealth and the nobility of his descent,