friend, who secretly supplied him with food let down by a rope, to which a bell was tied to let the
saint know when his dinner had come. But Satan threw a stone at the rope, breaking both it and
the bell. Nevertheless, the enemy of mankind was foiled in his hope of disrupting the Saint's food-
supply.
When Benedict had been as long in the cave as God's purposes required, our Lord appeared on
Easter Sunday to a certain priest, revealed the hermit's whereabouts, and bade him share his Easter
feast with the saint. About the same time certain shepherds found him. "At the first, when they
espied him through the bushes, and saw his apparel made of skins, they verily thought that it had
been some beast: but after they were acquainted with the servant of God, many of them were by
his means converted from their beastly life to grace, piety, and devotion."
Like other hermits, Benedict suffered from the temptations of the flesh. "A certain woman there
was which some time he had seen, the memory of which the wicked spirit put into his mind, and
by the memory of her did so mightily inflame with concupiscence the soul of God's servant, which
did so increase that, almost overcome with pleasure, he was of mind to have forsaken the
wilderness. But suddenly, assisted with God's grace, he came to himself; and seeing many thick
briers and nettle bushes to grow hard by, off he cast his apparel, and threw himself into the midst
of them, and there wallowed so long that, when he rose up, all his flesh was pitifully torn: and so
by the wounds of his body, he cured the wounds of his soul."
His fame being spread abroad, the monks of a certain monastery, whose abbot had lately died,
besought him to accept the succession. He did so, and insisted upon observance of strict virtue, so
that the monks, in a rage, decided to poison him with a glass of poisoned wine. He, however,
made the sign of the cross over the glass, whereupon it broke in pieces. So he returned to the
wilderness.
The miracle of the sieve was not the only practically useful one performed by Saint Benedict. One
day, a virtuous Goth was using a bill-hook to clear away briers, when the head of it flew off the
handle and fell into deep water. The Saint, being informed, held the handle in the water,
whereupon the iron head rose up and joined itself again to the handle.
A neighbouring priest, envious of the holy man's reputation, sent