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.
The invasion of the Saxons obliged S. Cadoc to fly, first to the island of Flat-holmes in the Bristol Channel, and then into Brittany, where he founded a new monastery, on a little desert island of the archipelago of Morbihan, which is still shown from the peninsula of Rhuys; and to make his school accessible to the children of the district, who had to cross to the isle and back again in a boat, he threw a stone bridge four hundred and fifty feet long across this arm of the sea. In this modest retreat the Welsh prince resumed his monastic life, adapting it especially to his ancient scholarly habits. He made his scholars learn Virgil by heart: and one day, while walking with his friend and companion, the famous historian Gildas, with his Virgil under his arm, the abbot began to weep at the thought that the poet, whom he loved so much, might be even then perhaps in hell. At the moment when Gildas reprimanded him severely for that "perhaps," protesting that without any doubt Virgil must be damned, a sudden gust of wind tossed Cadoc's book into the sea. He was much moved by this accident, and, returning to his cell, said to himself, "I will not eat a mouthful of bread, nor drink a drop of water, till I know truly what fate God has allotted to one who sang upon earth as the angels sing in heaven." After this, he fell asleep, and soon after, dreaming, he heard a soft voice addressing him, "Pray for me, pray for me," said the voice, "never be weary of praying; I shall yet sing eternally the mercy of the Lord."
The next morning a fisherman brought him a salmon, and the Saint found in the fish the book which the wind had snatched out of his hands.
After a sojourn of several years in Brittany, Cadoc left his new community flourishing under the government of another pastor, and to put in practice that maxim which he loved to repeat to his followers:—"Wouldst thou find glory? march to the grave." He returned to Britain, not to find again the ancient peace and prosperity of his beloved retreat of Llancarvan, but to establish himself in the very centre of the Saxon settlements, and console the numerous Christians who had survived the massacres of the Conquest, and lived under the yoke of a foreign and heathen race. He settled at Weedon, in the county of Northampton;[123] and it was there that he awaited his martyrdom. One morning, when vested in the ornaments of his priestly office, as he was celebrating the Divine Sacrifice, a furious band of Saxon cavalry, chasing the Christians before them, entered pell-mell into the church, and crowded towards the altar. The Saint continued the sacrifice as calmly as he had begun it. A Saxon chief, urging on his horse, and brandishing his lance, went up to him and struck him to the heart. Cadoc fell on his knees; and his last desire, his last thought, were still for his dear countrymen. "Lord," he said, while dying, "invisible King, Saviour Jesus, grant me one grace,—protect the Christians of my country!"
S. Paul, after a Bronze in Christian Museum in the Vatican.
FOOTNOTES:
[117] 2 Tim. iii. 14.