United States or Bolivia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
By a providential chance, he took the wrong road, and owed his life to this mistake. His pupil Possidius, who was then Bishop of Guelma, was not so lucky. Brought to bay in a house by the Donatist bishop Crispinus, he defended himself desperately. They set fire to the house to turn him out. When there was nothing else left but to be burned alive, he did come out.
Possidius, the faithful disciple, bent over him. Like a patriarch of the Scriptures, Augustin of Thagaste "slept with his fathers."...
A number of fugitive priests, and among them Possidius, Bishop of Guelma, had taken refuge in the episcopal residence.
While all about him mourned the present misfortunes, he was already lamenting over the evil to come, and this clear-sightedness pained him more than the shock of the daily horrors committed by the Barbarians. His disciple Possidius, the Bishop of Guelma, who was with him in these sad days, naively applied to him the saying out of Ecclesiastes: "In much wisdom is much grief."
Ten of those whom he trained in this his first monastery, became bishops of the various sees of Africa, including Alypius, who was sent to Tagasta, Possidius, his first biographer, and Fortunatus, who was his successor in the See of Hippo.
If the earthly reward seemed to slip from him now, if all was sinking around him, if his episcopal city was beleaguered, if he himself, although still a strong man "he had the use of all his limbs," says Possidius; "a keen ear and perfect sight" if he himself was dying too soon, it was doubtless in expiation for the sins of his youth.
And so, as Augustin's pupil, Possidius, the future Bishop of Guelma, puts it, "This shining lamp, which sought the darkness of solitude, was placed upon the lamp-stand..." Augustin, who saw the finger of God in this adventure, submitted to the popular will. Nevertheless, he was in despair, and he wept at the change they were forcing on him.
"One day," says Possidius, "some of his intimate friends, even other bishops, having forgotten this sentence, he reproached them warmly, and very much perturbed, he cried out that he was going to remove those verses from the refectory, or rise from table and withdraw to his cell. I was present with many others when this happened."
Possidius of Guelma was in the bishop's room, and the priests and monks. They sent up their prayers with those of the dying man. And no doubt they sang for the last time before him one of those liturgical chants which long ago at Milan had touched him even to tears, and now, since the siege, in the panic caused by the Barbarians, they dared not sing any more.
Word Of The Day