the Saxons at Mount Badon, now
Bannesdown, near Bath, in Somersetshire. This Bede places in the
forty-fourth year after the first {307} coming of the Saxons into
Britain, which was in 451. Our saint, therefore, seems to have been born
in 494; he was consequently younger than St. Paul, St. Samson, and his
other illustrious school-fellows in Wales: but by his prudence and
seriousness in his youth he seemed to have attained to the maturity of
judgment and gravity of an advanced age. The author of the life of St.
Paul of Leon, calls him the brightest genius of the school of St. Iltut.
His application to sacred studies was uninterrupted, and if he arrived
not at greater perfection in polite literature, this was owing to the
want of masters of that branch in the confusion of those times. As to
improve himself in the knowledge of God and himself was the end of all
his studies, and all his reading was reduced to the study of the science
of the saints, the greater progress he made in learning, the more
perfect he became in all virtues. Studies which are to many a source of
dissipation, made him more and more recollected, because in all books he
found and relished only God, whom alone he sought. Hence sprang that
love for holy solitude, which, to his death, was the constant ruling
inclination of his heart. Some time after his monastic profession, with
the consent, and perhaps by the order of his abbot, St. Iltut, he passed
over into Ireland, there to receive the lessons of the admirable masters
of a religious life, who had been instructed in the most sublime maxims
of an interior life, and formed to the practice of perfect virtue, by
the great St. Patrick. The author of his Acts compares this excursion,
which he made in the spring of his life, to that of the bees in the
season of flowers, to gather the juices which they convert into honey.
In like manner St. Gildas learned, from the instructions and examples of
the most eminent servants of God, to copy in his own life whatever
seemed most perfect. So severe were his continual fasts, that the motto
of St. John Baptist might in some degree be applied to him, that he
scarce seemed to eat or drink at all. A rough hair-cloth, concealed
under a coarse cloak, was his garment, and the bare floor his bed, with
a stone for his bolster. By the constant mortification of his natural
appetites, and crucifixion of his flesh, his life was a prolongation of
his martyrdom, or a perpetual sacrifice w