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IT seems to me worth while to hand down another charitable act of the
same man, that the monks of our land may be taught by the example of one
and the same man to maintain not only a rigorous continence, but also the
most unfeigned affection of love. For he, sprung from no ignoble family,
while yet a child, scorning the love of this world and of his kinsfolk,
fled to the monastery which is nearly four miles distant from the
aforementioned town, where he so passed all his life, that never once
throughout the whole of fifty years did he enter or see the village from
which he had come, nor even look upon the face of any woman, not even his
own mother. In the mean while his father was overtaken by death, and left a
debt of a hundred solidi. And though he himself was entirely free from all
annoyances, since he had been disinherited of all his father's property,
yet he found that his mother was excessively annoyed by the creditors. Then
he through consideration of duty somewhat moderated that gospel severity
through which formerly, while his parents were prosperous, he did not
recognize that he possessed a father or mother on earth; and acknowledged
that he had a mother, and hastened to relieve her in her distress, without
relaxing anything of the austerity he had set himself. For remaining within
the cloister of the monastery he asked that the task of his usual work
might be trebled. And there for a whole year toiling night and day alike he
paid to the creditors the due measure of the debt secured by his toil and
labour, and relieved his mother from all annoyance and anxiety; ridding her
of the burden of the debt in such a way as not to suffer aught of the
severity he had set himself to be diminished on plea of duteous necessity.
Thus did he preserve his wonted austerities, without ever denying to his
mother's heart the work which duty demanded, as, though he had formerly
disregarded her for the love of Christ, he now acknowledged her again out
of consideration of duty.
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