A suppliant to your window comes,
Who trusts your faith, and fears no guile:
He claims admittance for your crumbs,
And reads his passport in your smile.
For cold and cheerless is the day,
And he has sought the hedges round;
No berry hangs upon the spray,
Nor worm, nor ant-egg, can be found.
Secure his suit will be preferred,
No fears his slender feet deter;
For sacred is the household bird
That wears the scarlet stomacher.
_Charlotte Smith._
~January 15.~
_St. Paul_, the first Hermit. _St. Maurus._ _St. Main._ _St. John_,
Calybite. _St. Isidore._ _St. Bonitus._ _St. Ita_, or _Mida._ _St.
Paul_, A. D. 342.
The life of St. Paul, the first hermit, is said, by Butler, to have been
written by St. Jerome in 365, who received an account of it from St.
Anthony and others. According to him, when twenty-two years old, St.
Paul fled from the persecution of Decius to a cavern, near which grew a
palm-tree, that supplied him with leaves for clothing, and fruit for
food, till he was forty-three years of age; after which he was daily fed
by a raven till he was ninety, and then died. St. Anthony, in his old
age, being tempted by vanity, imagined himself the first hermit, till
the contrary was revealed to him in a dream, wherefore, the next
morning, he set out in search of St. Paul. “St. Jerome relates from his
authors,” says Butler, “that he met a centaur, or creature, not with the
nature and properties, but with something of the mixt shape of man and
horse; and that this monster, or phantom of the devil, (St. Jerome
pretends not to determine which it was,) upon his making the sign of the
cross, fled away, after pointing out the way to the saint. Our author
(St. Jerome) adds, that St. Anthony soon after met a satyr, who gave him
to understand that he was an inhabitant of those deserts, and one of the
sort whom the deluded gentiles adored for gods.” Ribadeneira describes
this satyr as with writhed nostrils, two little horns on his forehead,
and the feet of a goat. After two days’ search, St. Anthony found St.
Paul, and a raven brought a loaf, whereupon they took their corporal
refection. The next morning, St. Paul told him he was going to die, and
bid him fetch a cloak given to St. Anthony by St. Athanasius, and wrap
his body in it. St. Anthony then knew, that St. Paul must have been
informed of the cloak by revelation, and went forth from the desert to
fetch it; but before his return, St. Paul had died, and St. Anthony
found two lions digging his grave with their claws, wherein he buried
St. Paul, first wrapping him in St. Athanasius’s cloak, and preserving,
as a great treasure, St. Paul’s garment, made of palm-tree leaves,
stitched together. How St. Jerome, in his conclusion of St. Paul’s life,
praises this garment, may be seen in Ribadeneira.