and as if he were starting afresh. He thus won them round by his perseverance. Whatever opposition or trouble he had to meet he bore it all with a cheerful countenance.[1]
It would seem that sometimes he would pass three or four consecutive nights in vigil and meditation, during which he did not return to his own bed nor was there any other place out of the dormitory of the brethren where he could sleep. On these occasions he either devoted himself continuously to prayer or worked at some handicraft in the intervals of psalmody, or else he went round the island to examine each part of it. He used to reprove the brethren when they complained of being roused from their sleep at night or at noonday (meridianae quietis tempore)[2]—this phrase shows the monks had their siesta in Northumbria as in Italy.
He was of a very sensitive nature, and Bede says he could not complete the Office of the Mass without a profuse flood of tears, and when his penitents were confessing to him he would be the first to take compassion on them by weeping, and thus won over sinners to his way of life by his own example. The gift of tears was very much more available to the preacher in those emotional days. Bishop Stubbs describes it as curiously unintelligible at the present day, but he probably never attended the revival services among the Methodists and other Nonconformist bodies. Bede at all events seems to speak of it as quite usual in the pulpit.[3]
