Such a one was the Abbot Spiridion. His spirit passed from among men
in the hundred and fifth year of his exile, in the third month of the
year, on the morning of the resurrection of the Lord Christ, between
the white and the red of the morning, when the brethren were singing
prime. As he listened to them singing, his cheeks suddenly became
flushed with bright colour, and those who were about him, thinking he
was in pain, asked if in any way they might relieve him; but he replied
in a low voice, "When the heart is glad the face flowers." In a little
after that he laughed softly to himself, and so they knew that his end
was gladness.
When he died there were three hundred religious in that monastery, and
in his stead Samson was made Abbot of Gracedieu.
The body of Spiridion was laid in a stone coffin hard by the abbey
church, and to those who had known the holy man it seemed nothing
strange that the sick and afflicted should come and kneel by his grave,
in the hope that by his intercession they might obtain succour in their
misery. Certain it is that the blind were restored to sight, and the
sick to health, and the painful to great ease; and the fame of these
miracles was noised abroad in the world till thousands came in
pilgrimage to the spot, and costly gifts--gold and silver and jewels,
sheep and cattle, wine and corn, and even charters of large demesnes,
fruitful fields and woods and waters--were bestowed as thank-offerings
to the saintly man.
Then over his tomb rose a vast and beautiful minster, and the tomb
itself was covered with a shrine, brilliant with blue and vermilion and
gold and sculptured flowers, and guarded by angels with outspreading
wings.
At the beginning Abbot Samson was well pleased, for the great church
rose like a dream of heaven, but when he perceived that the constant
concourse of people was destroying the hushed contemplation and piety
of the house, and that the brethren were distracted with eagerness for
gain and luxury and the pride of life, he resolved to make an end.
Wherefore after High Mass on the Feast of All Saints he bade the
religious walk in procession to the splendid shrine, and there the
Abbot, with the shepherd's staff of rule in his hand, struck thrice on
the stone coffin, and three times he called aloud: "Spiridion!
Spiridion! Spiridion!" and begged him, as he had been founder and
first father of that monastery, to listen to the grievance which had
befallen them in consequence of the miracles he had wrought from his
grave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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