ged to leave them off. He secretly
caused an undergarment to be made for him; and in the undergarment he
had strips of leather fixed, into which a hundred and fifty brass
nails, pointed and filed sharp, were driven, and the points of the
nails were always turned towards the flesh. He had this garment made
very tight, and so arranged as to go round him and fasten in front in
order that it might fit the closer to his body, and the pointed nails
might be driven into his flesh; and it was high enough to reach upwards
to his navel. In this he used to sleep at night. Now in summer, when
it was hot, and he was very tired and ill from his journeyings, or when
he held the office of lecturer, he would sometimes, as he lay thus in
bonds, and oppressed with toil, and tormented also by noxious insects,
cry aloud and give way to fretfulness, and twist round and round in
agony, as a worm does when run through with a pointed needle. It often
seemed to him as if he were lying upon an ant-hill, from the torture
caused by the insects; for if he wished to sleep, or when he had fallen
asleep, they vied with one another.[183] Sometimes he cried to Almighty
God in the fullness of his heart: Alas! Gentle God, what a dying is
this! When a man is killed by murderers or strong beasts of prey it is
soon over; but I lie dying here under the cruel insects, and yet cannot
die. The nights in winter were never so long, nor was the summer so
hot, as to make him leave off this exercise. On the contrary, he
devised something farther --two leathern loops into which he put his
hands, and fastened one on each side his throat, and made the
fastenings so secure that even if his cell had been on fire about him,
he could not have helped himself. This he continued until his hands
and arms had become almost tremulous with the strain, and then he
devised something else: two leather gloves; and he caused a brazier to
fit them all over with sharp-pointed brass tacks, and he used to put
them on at night, in order that if he should try while asleep to throw
off the hair undergarment, or relieve himself from the gnawings of the
vile insects, the tacks might then stick into his body. And so it came
to pass. If ever he sought to help himself with his hands in his
sleep, he drove the sharp tacks into his breast, and tore himself, so
that his flesh festered. When after many weeks the wounds had healed,
he tore himself again and made fresh wounds.

[183] "Insects