Bede's Ecclesiastical History of EnglandBede, the Venerable, Saint
History
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England
Bede, the Venerable, Saint
England -- Church history -- 449-1066
After this, a certain man, who held the office of tribune, came forward
with his wife, and brought his blind daughter, a child of ten years of
age, to be healed of the bishops. They ordered her to be brought to their
adversaries, who, being rebuked by their own conscience, joined their
entreaties to those of the child’s parents, and besought the bishops that
she might be healed. They, therefore, perceiving their adversaries to
yield, poured forth a short prayer, and then Germanus, full of the Holy
Ghost, invoking the Trinity, at once drew from his side a casket which
hung about his neck, containing relics of the saints, and, taking it in
his hands, applied it in the sight of all to the girl’s eyes, which were
immediately delivered from darkness and filled with the light of truth.
The parents rejoiced, and the people were filled with awe at the miracle;
and after that day, the heretical beliefs were so fully obliterated from
the minds of all, that they thirsted for and sought after the doctrine of
the bishops.
This damnable heresy being thus suppressed, and the authors thereof
confuted, and all the people settled in the purity of the faith, the
bishops went to the tomb of the martyr, the blessed Alban, to give thanks
to God through him. There Germanus, having with him relics of all the
Apostles, and of divers martyrs, after offering up his prayers, commanded
the tomb to be opened, that he might lay therein the precious gifts;
judging it fitting, that the limbs of saints brought together from divers
countries, as their equal merits had procured them admission into heaven,
should find shelter in one tomb. These being honourably bestowed, and laid
together, he took up a handful of dust from the place where the blessed
martyr’s blood had been shed, to carry away with him. In this dust the
blood had been preserved, showing that the slaughter of the martyrs was
red, though the persecutor was pale in death.(95) In consequence of these
things, an innumerable multitude of people was that day converted to the
Lord.
Chap. XIX. How the same holy man, being detained there by sickness, by his
prayers quenched a fire that had broken out among the houses, and was
himself cured of his infirmity by a vision. [429 A.D.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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