can say whether the all-holy and compassionate God may not have mercy upon him and bring him to repentance.”[87]
In the history of S. Rheticus, as related by C. Vettius Aquilinus Juvencus, the Latin poet of the fourth century, who was so popular in the Middle Ages,[88] we are told that when the saint had expired,[89] his body was carried in solemn procession to the grave of his deceased wife, and suddenly, to the amazement of all present, the dead man arose on his bier and said: “Dost thou remember well, my dear wife, that which thou didst ask me upon thy death-bed? Lo, here am I come to fulfil the promise made so long syne. Receive me then whom you have sweetly expected all this while.” At these words it appeared as if the deceased wife, who had been dead for many years, revived again, and breaking the linen bands which enswathed her, she stretched forth her hands to her husband. (Deprensa est laeuam protendens femina palmam, inuitans socium gestu uiuentis amoris.) The corpse was lowered into the tomb, and there the twain lie in peace, awaiting the resurrection of the just.[90]
Not unsimilar is the legend of S. Injurieux, whose dead body moved out of its own grave to repose in that of his wife Scholastica. Injurieux was a noble senator of Clermont in Auvergne, who married in virgin wedlock a lady of rank, Scholastica. S. Gregory of Tours, in his Historia Francorum,[91] tells us that Scholastica died first, and Injurieux, standing by the coffin in which her body was laid, as she was about to be carried forth to burial said in the presence of all: “I thank Thee, O, God, for having bestowed upon me this maiden treasure, which I return into Thy hands unspotted, even as I received it.” The dead wife smiled at these words, and her voice was heard to reply: “Why dost thou speak, O my husband, of these things which concern no one but ourselves?” Hardly had the lady been buried in a magnificent tomb, when the husband died also, and for some reason was temporarily interred in a separate grave, at a distance from the monument of his wife. On the next morning it was found that Injurieux had left the place where he had been laid, and his dead body reposed by the side of that of Scholastica. No man dared disturb the two corpses, and to the present day the senator and his wife are popularly called “The Two Lovers.”[92]
In his Vies des Saints[93] Monsignor Guerin relates the following
