Dialogues

There be also at this time here in the city our venerable brother Venantius, Bishop of Luna, and Liberius,^[4:83] a noble man and one of very great credit: both which do say that themselves know it, and that their servants were present in the city of Genua, when this strange thing happened. One Valentinus, who had an office in the church of Milan, died there, a man in his life time given to wantonness and all kind of lightness, whose body was buried in the church of the blessed martyr Sirus. The midnight following, a great noise was heard in that place, as though some body by force had been drawn out from thence: whereupon the keepers ran thither, to see what the matter was, and when they were come, they saw two very terrible devils, that had tied a rope about his legs, and were drawing him out of the church, himself in the mean time crying and roaring out: at which sight they were so frighted, that they returned home again to their beds: but when the morning was come, they opened the grave in which Valentinus was buried, but his body they could not find, and therefore they sought without the church to see where it was, and so found it thrown into another place, with the feet still bound as it was drawn out of the church. Out of which, Peter, you may learn that such as die in mortal sin, and cause their bodies to be buried in holy ground, are punished also for that their presumption: the holy places not helping them, but rather the sin of their temerity accusing them.

[4:83] Chapter LIII. p. 247. This Liberius, a contemporary ot St. Gregory, is not to be confused with the Liberius mentioned in Bk. II. chap. 35. The office that Valentinus held was ecclesiae Mediolanensis defensor (Cf. Book I. chap. 4, notes). St Syrus, who is specially venerated at Genoa, was Bishop of Pavia, and was martyred about 96.