ster, or any other
instrument. Even when we come from conversing with God, we ought to
appear all penetrated with the divine presence, and rather as angels
than men. Sanctity, modesty, and the marks of a heavenly spirit, ought
to shine in our exterior, and to inspire others by our very sight with
religious awe and devotion.

Footnotes:
1. Some have, by mistake, confounded this place with Ferden, or Werden,
beyond the Weser.
2. Voss. de histor. lat. l. 2, c. 3.

ST. BRAULIO, BISHOP OF SARAGOSSA, C.

HE was the great assistant of St. Isidore of Seville in settling the
discipline of the church of Spain, and is one of those holy pastors to
whose zeal, learning, and labors it has always professed itself much
indebted. He died in 646, in the twentieth year of his episcopacy. He
has left us two letters to St. Isidore, an eulogium of that saint, and a
catalogue of his works; also a hymn in Iambic verse in honor of St.
Emilian, and the life of that servant of God, who, after living long a
hermit, was called to serve a parish in the diocese of Tarragon, where a
famous monastery now bears his name.

{664}

MARCH XXVII.

ST. JOHN OF EGYPT, HERMIT.

From Rufinus, in the second book of the lives of the fathers; and from
Pallaudius in his Lausiaca; the last had often seen him. Also St. Jerom,
St. Austin, Cassian, &c. See Tillemont, t. 10, p. 9. See also the
Wonders of God in the Wilderness, p. 160.

A.D. 394.

ST. JOHN was born about the year 305, was of a mean extraction, and
brought up to the trade of a carpenter. At twenty-five years of age he
forsook the world, and put himself under the guidance and direction of
an ancient holy anchoret with such an extraordinary humility and
simplicity as struck the venerable old man with admiration; who inured
him to obedience by making him water a dry stick for a whole year as if
it were a live plant, and perform several other things as seemingly
ridiculous, all which he executed with the utmost fidelity. To the
saint's humility and ready obedience, Cassian[1] attributes the
extraordinary gifts he afterwards received from God. He seems to have
lived about twelve years with this old man, till his death, and about
four more in different neighboring monasteries.

Being about forty years of age, he retired alone to the top of a rock of
very difficult ascent, near Lycopolis.[2] His cell he walled up, leaving
only a little window through which he received all necessaries, and