and to wash their souls by true repentance
from all sins, that they might journey
to God's brightness with brotherly love.
After these words the monks became
greatly moved (to devotion), and sang their offices,
and prepared themselves for the true life,
and committed themselves to the faithful Creator.
The pestilence then came upon them even as the angel said,
so that one hundred and sixteen monks,
within five months, departed from the monastery,
and Maurus the abbot died afterwards,
as the angel had told to him before.
There remained alive, however, in the monastery,
four and twenty monks after Maurus' death,
and he was buried within Saint Martin's church.
There miracles are wrought by the holy man
to the praise of God, who liveth ever in eternity.
This holy Maurus' life was thus divided ;
when he was twelve winters old, he was committed to Saint Benedict,
and he remained with him twenty winters thereafter,
and in his own monastery just forty years;
these are altogether seventy-two years.
Two of the monks who came with him thither,
died there in the aforesaid pestilence,
and two returned again, as he himself commanded,
back to Monte Cassino, whence they had first come,
and one of them [named Faustus] wrote this true history
in the Latin tongue, but we tell it in English.
Be glory and praise to the benevolent God,
who rewardeth His saints with glory in eternity. Amen.
