In the territory of this city [Tours] at Lingeais, a woman who lived there moistened flour on the Lord’s day and shaped a loaf, and drawing the coals aside she covered it over with hot ashes to bake. When she did this her right hand was miraculously set on fire and began to burn. She screamed and wept and hastened to the village church in which relics of the blessed John are kept. And she prayed and made a vow that on this day sacred to the divine name she would do no work, but only pray. The next night she made a candle as tall as herself. Then she spent the whole night in prayer, holding the candle in her hand all the time, and the flame went out and she returned home safe and sound.
Relics Handed Down in Gregory’s Family
(Ibid., ch. 83)
I shall now describe what was brought to pass through the relics which my father carried with him in former times. When Theodobert[85] gave orders that sons of men in Auvergne should be taken as hostages, my father, at that time lately married, wished to be protected by relics of the saints, and he asked a certain bishop kindly to give him some, thinking he would be kept safe by such protection when absent on his distant journey. Then he enclosed the holy ashes in a gold case the shape of a pea-pod and placed them around his neck; but the man did not know the blessed names. He was accustomed to relate that he was saved by them from many dangers; for he bore witness that by their miraculous power he had often escaped attacks of highwaymen and dangers on rivers and the furies of civil war and thrusts of the sword. And I shall not fail to tell what I saw of these with my own eyes. After my father’s death my mother always wore these precious things on her person. Now the grain harvest had come and great grain stacks were gathered at the threshing places. And in those days when the threshing was going on, a cold spell came on, and seeing that Limagne[86] has no forests, being all covered with crops, the threshers made themselves fires of straw, since there was nothing else to make a fire of. Meantime all went away to eat. And behold, the fire gradually increased and began to spread slowly straw by straw. Then the piles suddenly caught, with the south wind blowing; it was a great conflagration and there began a shouting of men and shrieking of women and crying of children.[87] Now this was happening on our own land. My mother, who wore these relics hanging on her neck, learned this, and sprang from the table and lifted up the holy relics against the masses of flame, and all the fire went out in a moment so that scarcely a spark of fire could be found among the burnt piles of straw and it did no harm to the grain which it had just caught.
Many years later I received these relics from my mother; and when we were going from Burgundy to Auvergne, a great storm came upon us and the sky flashed with many lightnings and roared with heavy crashes of thunder. Then I drew the blessed relics from my bosom and raised my hand against the cloud; it immediately divided into two parts and passed on the right and left and did no harm to us or any one else thereafter. But being a young man of an ardent temperament I began to be puffed up with vain glory and to think silently that this had been granted not so much to the merits of the saints as to me personally, and I openly boasted to my comrades on the journey that I had merited by my blamelessness what God had bestowed. At once my horse suddenly shied beneath me and dashed me to the ground; and I was so severely shaken up by the fall that I could hardly get up. I perceived that this had come of vanity, and it was enough to put me on guard thenceforth against being moved by the spur of vain glory. For whenever it happened after that that I had the merit to behold any of the miracles of the saints, I loudly proclaimed that they were wrought by God’s gift through faith in the saints.
Comparative “Merit” of Gregory and his Mother
(Ibid. ch. 85)
… On this matter I recall what I heard told in my youth. It was the day of the suffering of the great martyr Polycarp, and his festival was being observed at Riom, a village of Auvergne. The reading of the martyrdom had been finished and the other readings which the priestly canon requires, and the time came for offering the sacrifice. The deacon, having received the tower[88] in which the mystery of the Lord’s body was contained, started with it to the door, and when he entered the church to place it on the altar, it slipped from his hand and floated along in the air and thus came to the altar, and the deacon was never able to lay hands on it; and I believe this happened for no other reason than that he was defiled in his conscience. For it was often told that he had committed adultery. It was granted only to one priest and three women, of whom my mother was one, to see this; the rest did not see it. I was present, I confess, at this festival at the time, but I had not the merit to see this miracle.
A Fly might be a Demon
(Ibid. ch. 103)
Pannichius, a priest of Poitou, when sitting at dinner with some friends he had invited, asked for a drink. When it was served, a very troublesome fly kept flying about the cup and trying to soil it. The priest waved it off with his hand a number of times, but it would go off a little and then try to get back, and he perceived that it was a crafty device of the enemy. He changed the cup to his left hand and made a cross with his right; then he divided the liquor in the cup into four parts and lifted it up high and poured it on the ground. For it was very plain that it was a device of the enemy.[89]
Miracles in Gregory’s Family
(Book on the Miracles of St. Julian, Ch. 23, 24)
At that time my father’s brother Gallus was bishop of Auvergne, and I do not think I should fail to tell how he was aided in his youth by a miracle of the saint. Now I have often described the ruin king Theodoric brought upon Auvergne, when none of their property was left to either old or young except the bare land which the barbarians were unable to carry off.[90] In those days, then, my uncle of glorious memory who afterwards, as I have told, governed the church of Auvergne in the high office of bishop, was a ward; and his property was so plundered by the soldiers that there was nothing at all left that was available; and he himself used often to go on foot with only one attendant to the village of Brioude.[91] It happened once when he was trudging along on this journey, that he took his shoes off on account of the heat, and as he walked in his bare feet he stepped on a sharp thorn. This by chance had been cut, but was still lying on the ground and was concealed point upward in the green grass. It entered his foot and went clear through and then broke off and could not be drawn out. The blood ran in streams and as he could not walk he begged the blessed martyr’s aid and after the pain had grown a little less he went on his way limping. But the third night the wound began to gather and there was great pain. Then he turned to the source from which he had already obtained help and threw himself down before the glorious tomb; when the watch was finished he returned to bed and was overcome by sleep while awaiting the miraculous help of the martyr. On arising later he felt no pain and examining his foot he could not see the thorn which had entered it; and he perceived it had been drawn from his foot. He looked carefully for it and found it in his bed and saw with wonder how it had come out. When bishop he used to exhibit the place, where a great hollow was still to be seen, and to testify that this had been a miracle of the blessed martyr.