turn thanks to God, and were accompanied by thousands;
but on their way, being surprised with a sudden storm, the people, to
show their singular regard for Fulgentius, made a kind of umbrella over
his head with their cloaks to defend him from the inclemency of the
storm. The saint hastened to his own church, and immediately set about
the reformation of the abuses that had crept in during the persecution,
which had now continued seventy years; but this reformation was carried
on with a sweetness that won, sooner or later, the hearts of the most
vicious. In a council held at Junque, in 524, a certain bishop, named
Quodvultdeus, disputed the precedency with our saint, who made no reply,
though he would not oppose the council, which ordered him to take the
first place. The other resented this as an injury offered to the dignity
of his see; and St. Fulgentius, in another council soon after, publicly
requested that Quodvultdeus might be allowed the precedency. His talents
for preaching were singular; and Boniface, the archbishop of Carthage,
never heard him without watering, all the time, the ground with his
tears, thanking God for having given so great a pastor to his church.[5]

{068}

About a year before his death, he secretly retired from all business
into a monastery on the little island, of rock, called Circinia, in
order to prepare {069} himself for his passage to eternity, which he did
with extraordinary fervor. The necessities and importunities of his
flock recalled him to Ruspa a little before his exit. He bore the
violent pains of his last illness for seventy days with admirable
patience, having this prayer almost always in his mouth:[6] "Lord, grant
me patience now, and hereafter mercy and pardon." The physicians advised
him the use of baths; to whom he answered "Can baths make a mortal man
escape death, when his life is arrived at its final period?" He would
abate nothing of his usual austerities without an absolute necessity. In
his agony, calling for his clergy and monks, who were all in tears, he
begged pardon if he had ever offended any one of them; he comforted
them, gave them some short, moving instructions, and calmly breathed
forth his pious soul in the year 533, and of his age the 65th, on the
1st of January, on which day his name occurs in many calendars soon
after his death, and in the Roman; but in some few on the 16th of
May,--perhaps the day on which his relics were translated to Bourges, in
France