ive away the devil by
that humiliation, and to seek a remedy. The discreet superioress often
enjoined her, on such occasions, some humbling and painful penitential
labor; as sometimes to carry great stones from one place to another;
which employment she once, under an obstinate assault, continued thirty
days together with wonderful simplicity, till the devil being vanquished
by her humble obedience and chastisement of her body, he left her in
peace. Her diet was only herbs or pulse, which she took after sunset, at
first every day, but afterwards only once in two or three, or sometimes
seven days. But her abstinence received its chief merit from her
humility; without which it would have been a fast of devils. She cleaned
out the chambers of the other nuns, carried water to the kitchen, and,
out of obedience, cheerfully employed herself in the meanest drudgery;
making painful labor a part of her penance. To mention one instance of
her extraordinary meekness and humility: it is related, that one day a
maid in the kitchen asked her why she fasted whole weeks, which no other
attempted to do besides the abbess. Her answer was, that the abbess had
enjoined her that penance. The other called her a hypocrite. Upon which
Euphrasia fell at her feet, begging her to pardon and pray for her. In
which action it is hard to say, whether we ought more to admire the
patience with which she received so unjust a rebuke and slander, or the
humility with which she sincerely condemned herself; as if, by her
hypocrisy and imperfections, she had been a scandal to others. She was
favored with miracles both before and after her death, which happened in
the year 410, and the thirtieth of her age. Her name is recorded on this
day in the Roman Martyrology. See her ancient authentic life in
Rosweide, p. 351, D'Andilly, and most correct in the Acta Sanctorum, by
the Bollandists.

Footnotes:
1. It is severely condemned by St. Bernard, ep. 345, ol. 321, p. 318,
and serm. 50, in Cant. St. Ambrose serm. 22, in Ps. 118, and by
Abbot Rance, the reformer of La Trappe.
2. This passage is quoted by St. John Damascene, Or. 3, de Imagin.

{587}

ST. THEOPHANES, ABBOT, C.

HIS father, who was governor of the isles of the Archipelago, died when
he was only three years old, and left him heir to a very great estate,
under the guardianship of the Iconoclast emperor, Constantine
Copronymus. Amidst the dangers of such an education, a faithful pious
serva