number: how they are known in the Church in earth with their sins, and it is to them no shame, but all is turned for them to worship. And therefore our courteous Lord sheweth [it thus] for them here in part like as it is there in fulness: for there the token of sin is turned to worship.
And Saint John of Beverley, our Lord shewed him full highly, in comfort to us for homeliness; and brought to my mind how he is a dear neighbour,[1] and of our knowing. And God called him Saint John of Beverley plainly as we do, and that with a most glad sweet cheer, shewing that he is a full high saint in Heaven in His sight, and a blissful. And with this he made mention that in his youth and in his tender age he was a dearworthy servant to God, greatly God loving and dreading, and yet God suffered him to fall, mercifully keeping him that he perished not, nor lost no time. And afterward God raised him to manifold more grace, and by the contrition and meekness that he had in his living, God hath given him in Heaven manifold joys, overpassing
- ↑ "and browte to mynd how he is an hende neybor and of our knowyng"—i.e. he was a countryman of our own. "hende" = near, urbane, gentle.
and nuns. In 718 John retired for the remaining years of his life to Beverley, where he died in 721 on the 7th of May. . . . He was canonised in 1037. Henschenius the Bollandist, in the second tome of May, has published books of the miracles wrought at the relicks of St John of Beverley written by eye-witnesses. His sacred bones were honourably translated into the church of Alfric, Archbishop of York, in 1037. A feast in honour of his translation was kept on the 25th of October."—Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints, etc.
Perhaps the fact that the Saint's original Feast Day of the 7th of May occurred on the second day of Julian's illness, had something to do with his being brought to her mind a few days after with so much vividness.
