ounced
their errors and idolatrous practices. Hereupon St. Barbatus gave them
the comfortable assurance that the siege should be raised, and the
emperor worsted: which happened as he had foretold. Upon their
repentance, the saint with his own hand cut down the tree which was the
object of their superstition, and afterwards melted down the golden
viper which they adored, of which he made a chalice for the use of the
altar. Ildebrand, bishop of Benevento, dying during the siege, after the
public tranquillity was restored, St. Barbatus was consecrated bishop on
the 10th of March, 653; for this see was only raised to the
archiepiscopal dignity by pope John XIII., about the year 965. Barbatus,
being invested with the episcopal character, pursued and completed the
good work which he had so happily begun, and destroyed every trace or
the least remain of superstition in the prince's closet, and in the
whole state. In the year 680 he assisted in a council held by pope
Agatho at Rome, and the year following in the sixth general council held
at Constantinople against the Monothelites. He did not long survive this
great assembly, for he died on the 29th of February, 682, being about
seventy years old, almost nineteen of which he had spent in the
episcopal chair. He is named in the Roman Martyrology, and honored at
Benevento among the chief patrons of that city.

* * * * *

Many sinners are moved by alarming sensible dangers or calamities to
enter into themselves, on whom the terrors of the divine judgment make
very little impression. The reason can only be a supine neglect of
serious reflection, and a habit of considering them only transiently,
and as at a distance; for it is impossible for any one who believes
these great truths, if he takes a serious review of them, and has them
present to his mind, to remain insensible: transient glances effect not
a change of heart. Among the pretended conversions which sickness daily
produces, very few bear the characters of sincerity, as appears by those
who, after their recovery, live on in their former lukewarmness and
disorders.[1] St. Austin, in a sermon which he made upon the news that
Rome had been sacked by the barbarians, relates,[2] that not long
before, at Constantinople, upon the appearance of an unusual meteor, and
a rumor of a pretended prediction that the city would be destroyed by
fire from heaven, the inhabitants were seized with a panic fear, a