Jocelin, a Cistercian monk of Furnes in the twelfth century, wrote “The Life and Acts of St. Patrick,” wherein he relates many extraordinary particulars, of which the few that follow are specimens: St. Patrick when a child in winter time brought home some pieces of ice, his nurse told him he had better have brought home wood, whereupon he heaped together the ice, and prayed, and the ice immediately became a bonfire. After this his foster-father died, and to relieve his nurse’s distress, St. Patrick prayed, signed him with the sign of the cross, and so restored him to life. Then by the same sign he freed a cow from an evil spirit; recovered five cows she had wounded; and, by the same means, when his nurse was ill and longed for honey, he “immediately changed water into the best honey.” At another time, when she was commanded to clean out some filthy stables, St. Patrick prayed, and they were cleaned without hands. Then St. Patrick himself was carried into slavery, and sold for a kettle; but the kettle being placed on the fire, the hotter the fire burned, the colder became the kettle; whereupon the seller of St. Patrick returned the kettle, took St. Patrick back, and the vessel was restored to its wonted power of boiling. St. Patrick desiring to eat meat, obtained some pork, and having concealed it for a convenient season, presently he saw a man with eyes before and eyes behind, and asked him why he was so formed; the seer answered, “I am the servant of God; with the eyes in my forehead I see things open to view, with my eyes behind I see a monk hiding flesh meat in a vessel to satisfy his appetite privately.” Then the seer vanished. St. Patrick repented, prayed for pardon, besought for a sign that he had it, was told by an angel to put the pork into water, did as the angel bid him, and the pork “immediately became fishes.” Having journeyed into Britain, he saw a leper whom mariners would not carry in their ship, whereon St. Patrick took a stone altar consecrated by the pope, cast it into the sea, caused the leper to sit on it, and the leper immediately set sail on the stone, kept company with the ship all the voyage, and got into port with her at the same time. St. Patrick, returning to Ireland, on approaching the shore, saw a multitude of devils in the form of a globe surrounding the whole island, when he “raised his sacred right hand, made the sign of the cross, and, unhurt and unterrified, passed he over.” Some fishermen in the county of Leinster, drawing their nets from a river loaded with fish, St. Patrick asked them for some; they refused him; he cursed them, and the river; and from that day the river never produced fish. Once when the chief king of Ireland ordered his subjects to prevent St. Patrick from landing, they set a fierce dog at him, whereupon the dog stiffened like a stone; then a gigantic man brandished his sword at the saint, the man stiffened likewise, but repented, and St. Patrick unstiffened him, and baptized him.