“Alcuin was reading the Gospel of St. John before the master, in company of his fellow disciples. He came to a part of the Gospel which only the pure in heart can comprehend—that part, namely, from where John says that he lay on the Lord’s breast, down to the point at which he relates that Jesus went with His disciples across the brook Cedron.[19] Inebriated with the mystical reading of the Gospel, suddenly, as he sat before the master’s couch, his spirit was carried away in ecstasy, and by those same who once in a ray of sunlight showed before the eyes of the most holy father Benedict the whole world, collected as it were in an enclosure, the whole world was now set before the eyes of Alcuin. And as he looked intently at what he saw, he saw the whole of the enclosure surrounded by a circle of blood. While he was held by this marvellous vision, his fellow disciples gazed at him in wonder, for the blood seemed to have left his face. They tried to rouse him, as one asleep; the noise they made attracted the attention of Albert, who looked at him for some time in silence, and then said, ‘Go on reading, my sons, do not disturb him; if he rests awhile he will be able to follow me more effectively when I expound the passage.’ When the reading was completed, and Albin came to himself again, the father told them all to go except Alcuin. When they were gone, he said, ‘What hast thou seen? I beg thee, do not hide it.’ Alcuin wished to keep secret what he had seen, fearing to fall into the pitfall of elation; so he said, ‘Why, my lord father?’ The blessed man said again, ‘Do not, my son, do not hide it from me. It is not from vain curiosity that I require this of you, but for your own good.’ Alcuin saw that he could not keep it secret, and he told, humbly, how he had seen the whole world. Then the father said to him, ‘See, my son, see that thou tellest not this vision to any but that one whom after my decease thou shalt hold to be the most faithful to thy person. And charge him to keep it secret up to the time of thy death.’ Acting on this counsel, he told it only to Sigulf[20] during his lifetime. If any one desires to know how the whole world could be seen in one enclosure, he may turn to the book of Dialogues of the holy Gregory[21]; and in the meantime he may know that it was not the heaven and the earth that were contracted into a small space, but the mind of the seer that was dilated, so that when rapt in the Lord he could without difficulty see everything that was under God. Perhaps some one inquiring further may ask why under this figure of an enclosure, or why surrounded by blood? He may know that the Blood of Christ surrounds the fold of the holy Church, so that from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof those who are redeemed by His Passion can say the words which, without doubt, dominated the mind of Albin when he read before the master: ‘O give thanks unto the Lord, for