Dialogues

Constantius, likewise a man of holy life, was Bishop of Aquinum, who not long since died, in the time of Pope John of blessed memory,^[3:7] my predecessor: many that knew him familiarly, say that he had the gift of prophecy. And amongst divers other things which he did, religious and honest men then present report that, lying upon his deathbed, the citizens that stood about him wept bitterly, and asked him with tears, who should be their father and Bishop after him. To whom by the spirit of prophecy he answered, saying: "After Constantius, you shall have a muleteer, and after a muleteer, a fuller of cloth: and these men," quoth he, "be now in the city of Aquinum": and having spoken these prophetical words, he gave up the ghost. After whose departure one Andrew, his Deacon, was made Bishop: who in times past had kept mules and post horses. And when he died, one Jovinus was preferred to that dignity, who in former times had been a fuller in the same city: in whose days all the citizens were so wasted, some by the sword of barbarous people, and some by a terrible plague, that after his death neither could any be found to be made Bishop, nor yet any people for whose sake he should be created. And so the saying of the man of God was fulfilled, in that his church, after the death of two that followed him, had no Bishop at all.

[3:7] Chapter VIII. p. 116. The Pope in question is usually identified with John III. (561-574); but the previous reference to Constantius, Bishop of Aquino, as a contemporary of St. Benedict (cf. Bk. II. chap. 16), seems to point to John II. (533-535).