We meet with a man more famous, in Peter of Sebaste, whose pedigree
showed more heroes than could be boasted by any of Peter’s
contemporaries. He is not an example, indeed, of a man quitting the
camp for the cloister; but he and two of his brothers exhibit to us
three individuals who might have achieved great worldly profit, by
adopting arms as a vocation, but who preferred the Church, and became,
all three, bishops.
We have a similar example in the Irish St. Felan. His high birth and
great wealth would have made him the flower of Irish chivalry, but
he selected another profession, and despising chivalry, entered the
Church. He went _a Mundo ad Mundum_, for it was from the hands of
Abbot Mundus that he received the monastic habit. Thus, as it was
wittily said, the world (Mundus) at once drove and drew him into the
Church. It is clear, however, that, like the old war-horse, he pricked
up his ears at the sound of battle, and took an interest in stricken
fields. To such conclusion we must come, if it be true, as is asserted
of him, that the battle of Bannockburn, in 1314, was won by Bruce
through the saint’s especial intercession. The Dukes of Normandy owed
equal obligations to St. Vaneng, who unbuckled the armor from his
aristocratic loins, to cover them with a frock; and built churches for
the Normans, where he offered up continual prayer for the Norman dukes.
Then again, there was William Berringer, of the family of the Counts
of Nevers. No persuasion could induce the handsome William to continue
in the career he had embraced, the career of chivalry and arms. His
uncle, Peter the Hermit, may have had considerable influence over him,
and his change of profession was by no means unprofitable, for the once
horse-loving William became Archbishop of Bourges: and he defended the
rights of his Church against kings and councils with as much boldness,
zeal, and gallantry, as any knight could have exhibited against the
stoutest of assailants.
Among our English saints, the one who most nearly resembles him is
St. Egwin, who was of the royal blood of the Mercian kings, and who,
after a short trial of the profession of arms, retired to the cloister,
but was ultimately raised to the see of Worcester. The spirit of the
man may perhaps be seen through the legend which says that on setting
out on a penitential pilgrimage to Rome, he put iron shackles on
his legs, the key of which shackles he flung into the Avon. This is
very possible; but when we are told that on requiring the key at a
subsequent period, he found it inside a fish, we see that the author of
the legend has plagiarized from the original constructor of the story
of Polycrates and his ring.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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