The Lives of the Saints, Volume 01 (of 16): JanuaryBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
The Lives of the Saints, Volume 01 (of 16): January
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Christian saints
Llancarvan became a great workshop, where numerous monks, subject to a
very severe rule, bowed their bodies under the yoke of continual
fatigue, clearing the forests, and cultivating the fields when cleared;
it was besides, a great literary and religious school, in which the
study of the Holy Scriptures held the van, and was followed by that of
the ancient authors, and their more modern commentators. Cadoc loved to
sum up, chiefly under the form of sentences in verse and poetical
aphorisms, the instructions given to his pupils of the Llancarvan
cloister. A great number of such utterances have been preserved. We
instance a few. "Truth is the elder daughter of God. Without light
nothing is good. Without light there is no piety. Without light there is
no religion. Without light there is no faith. The sight of God, that is
light." "Without knowledge, no power. Without knowledge, no wisdom.
Without knowledge, no freedom. Without knowledge, no beauty. Without
knowledge, no nobility. Without knowledge, no victory. Without
knowledge, no honour. Without knowledge, no God." "The best of attitudes
is humility. The best of occupations is work. The best of sentiments,
pity. The best of cares, justice. The best of pains, peacemaking. The
best of sorrows, contrition. The best of characters, generosity." When
one of his disciples asked him to define love, he answered, "Love, it is
Heaven." "And hate?" asked his disciple. "Hate is hell." "And
conscience?" "It is the eye of God in the soul of man." "The best of
patriots," said S. Cadoc, "is he who tills the soil."
When a chief at the head of a band of robbers, came to pillage
Llancarvan, S. Cadoc went against him with his monks armed with their
harps, chanting and striking the strings. Then the chief recoiled, and
left them unmolested. Another chief, enraged at Cadoc receiving his son
into his monastery, came with a force to reclaim the youth and destroy
the cloister. Cadoc went to meet him, bathed in sunshine, and found the
chief and his men groping in darkness. He gave them light, and they
returned ashamed to their homes.
Cadoc had the happiness of assisting in the conversion of his father. In
the depths of his cloister he groaned over the rapines and sins of the
old robber from whom he derived his life. Accordingly he sent to his
father's house three of his monks, to preach repentance. His mother, the
beautiful Gwladys, was the first to be touched, and it was not long
before she persuaded her husband to agree with her. They called their
son to make to him a public confession of their sins, and then, father
and son chanted together the psalm, "Exaudiat te Dominus"--"The Lord
hear thee in the day of trouble." When this was ended, the king and
queen retired into solitude, establishing themselves in two cabins on
the bank of a river, where they worked for their livelihood, and were
often visited by their son.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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