Page:Aelfric's Lives of Saints Vol 2.djvu/393

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Then the heathen prefect bade men seize Chrysanthus

and Daria together for their faith in the Lord,

and commanded men to punish them with divers torments unto death,

if they would not sacrifice to the venerable gods.

Chrysanthus was delivered to seventy soldiers,

and they bound him very harshly indeed;

but the bonds burst asunder as soon as he was bound.

They bound him again, oft and repeatedly,

but the bonds slipped off so quickly from him

that one could not perceive whether they had been knit.

Then the soldiers became irate against the Christian youth,

and set him then in a hard stock,

and fastened his legs in the fetters,

insulting with words the holy man;

but the fetters turned wonderfully to rottenness (?),

and all to dust through the Lord's might.

Then the soldiers supposed that he knew sorcery,

and drenched him all over with old urine,

thinking that the urine might frustrate

all his magic; but they toiled in vain;

because the urine through God's might

became straightway turned to a sweet smell.

Then they quickly skinned an ox in their fury,

and sewed up Chrysanthus with the hide

next to his naked body, and placed him facing the sun.

He lay thus all day in the overpowering heat,

but the hide could not harden about him,

nor hurt the saint in the liot sun.

Then they tied his neck strongly with chains,

and his hands together with hard iron,

and his feet together with cruel intention,

and cast him so bound into a blind prison.

Then the bonds on his neck and hands slipped asunder,

and there shone a great light, as if of many lamps.

Then the soldiers made that known to Claudius their officer,