S. Macedonius lived a life of great austerity on barley and water. For forty-five years he inhabited a dry ditch, after that he spent twenty-five in a rude cabin.
A sedition having broken out in Antioch, and the people having overthrown the statue of the Empress Flacilla, Theodosius, the Emperor, in a fit of rage, ordered the city to be set on fire and reduced to the condition of a village. Blood would also have been infallibly shed, had not S. Ambrose obtained from Theodosius, shortly before, the passing of the law that no sentence against a city should take effect till thirty days had expired. The Emperor sent his chamberlain, Eleutherius, to Antioch to execute his severe sentence against the city and its inhabitants. As he entered the streets lined with trembling citizens, a ragged hermit, it was Macedonius, plucked him by the cloak and said: "Go to the Emperor, and say to him from me, You are not only an Emperor, but a man; and you ought not only to remember what is due to an empire, but also to human nature. Man was made in the image and likeness of God. Do not then order the image of God to be destroyed. You pass this cruel sentence, because an image of bronze has been overthrown. And for that will you slay living men, the hair of whose head you cannot make to grow?" When this speech was reported to the Emperor, he regretted his angry sentence, and sent to withdraw it.
S. CADOC, AB.
(BETWEEN A.D. 522 AND 590.)
[English and Gallican Martyrologies. Through a strange confusion, S. Cadoc of Wales has been identified with S. Sophias of Beneventum in Italy; because S. Cadoc appears in the Martyrologies as S. Cadoc, at Benavenna (Weedon), and S. Sophias or Sophius Bishop of Beneventum being commemorated the same day, the life given by Bollandus, with hesitation, is a confused jumble of these two saints into one. The best account of S. Cadoc is in Rees "Lives of the Cambro-British Saints;" and in La Ville-marqué's La Légende Celtique. There is also a poem composed in honour of S. Cadoc, by Richard ap Rhys of Llancarvan, between 1450 and 1480, published in the Iolo MSS., p. 301, and the sentences, proverbs and aphorisms of S. Cadoc are to be found in Myvrian Archæology, iii. p. 10. The following epitome of his life is from M. de Montalembert's Monks of the West, with additions from M. de Ville-marqué and corrections from Rees.]
Immediately after the period occupied in the annals of Wales by King Arthur and the monk-bishop David, appears S. Cadoc, a personage regarding whom it is difficult to make a distinction between history and legend, but whose life has left a profound impression upon the Keltic races. His father Gwynllyw Filwr, surnamed the Warrior, one of the petty kings of South Wales, having heard much of the beauty of the daughter of a neighbouring chief, had her carried off by a band of three hundred vassals, from the midst of her sisters, and from the door of her own chamber, in her father's castle. The father hastened to the rescue of his daughter with all his vassals and allies, and soon overtook Gwynllyw, who rode with the young princess at the croup, going softly not to fatigue her. It was not an encounter favourable for the lover: two hundred of his followers perished, but he, himself, succeeded in escaping safely with the lady. Of this rude warrior and this beautiful princess was to be born the saint who has been called the Doctor of the Welsh, and who founded the great monastic establishment of Llancarvan. The very night of his birth, the soldiers, or, to speak more justly, the robber-followers of the king, his father, who had been sent to pillage the neighbours right and left, stole the milch cow of a holy Irish monk, who had no sustenance, he nor his twelve disciples, except the abundant milk of this cow. When informed of this nocturnal theft, the monk got up, put on his shoes in all haste, and hurried to reclaim his cow from the king, who was still asleep. The latter took advantage of the occasion to have his new-born son baptized by the pious solitary, and made him promise to undertake the education and future vocation of the infant. The Irishman gave him the name of Cadoc, (Cattwg,) which means warlike; and then, having recovered his cow, went back to his cell to await the king's son, who was sent to him at the age of seven, having already learned to hunt and fight. The young prince passed twelve years with the Irish monk, whom he served, lighting his fire and cooking his food, and who taught him the rudiments of Latin grammar. Preferring the life of a recluse to the throne of his father, he went to Ireland for three years, to carry on his education at Lismore, a celebrated monastery school, after which he returned to Wales, and continued his studies under a famous Roman rhetorician, newly arrived from Italy. This doctor had more pupils than money; famine reigned in his school. One day poor Cadoc, who fasted continually, was learning his lesson in his cell, seated before a little table, and leaning his head on his hands, when suddenly a white mouse, coming out of a hole in the wall, jumped on the table, and put down a grain of corn; then Cadoc rising, followed the mouse into a cellar, one of those old Keltic subterranean granaries, remains of which are found to this day in Wales and Cornwall. There Cadoc found a large heap of corn, which served to feed the master and his pupils for many days.
Having early decided to embrace monastic life, he hid himself in a wood, where, after making a narrow escape from assassination by an armed swineherd of a neighbouring chief, he saw, near a forgotten fountain, where a white swan floated, an enormous wild boar, white with age, coming out of his den, and make three bounds, one after another, stopping each time, and turning round to stare furiously at the stranger who had disturbed him in his resting place. Cadoc marked with three branches the three bounds of the wild boar, which afterwards became the site of the church, dormitories, and refectory of the great abbey of Llancarvan. The abbey took its name, "The Church of the Stags," from the legend that two deers from the neighbouring wood came one day to replace two idle and disobedient monks who had refused to perform the necessary labour for the construction of the monastery, saying, "Are we oxen, that we should be yoked to carts, and compelled to drag timber?"
The rushes were torn up, the briars and thorns were cut down, and S. Cadoc dug deep trenches to drain the morass formed about the fountain he had discovered. One day, when the chapel he was building was nearly completed, a monk came that way, bearing on his back a leather pouch containing tools for working metal, and some specimens of his handicraft. His name was Gildas. He was the son of a chief in Westmoreland, and his brother, Aneurin, was one day famous among the bards of Britain.[122] Gildas opened his bag and produced a bell. Its form was that of a tall square cap, and it was made of a mixture of silver and copper, not molten, but hammered.
Cadoc took the bell and sounded it, and the note was so sweet that he greatly desired the bell, and asked Gildas to give it him. "No," said the bell-maker; "I have destined it for the altar of S. Peter at Rome." But when Gildas offered the bell to the Pope, the holy father was unable to sound it; then Gildas knew he must give it to the Welsh monk; so he returned to Britain, and offered it to Cadoc, and when he held it, the bell rang sweetly as heretofore.
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."