Musk Narcisse. _Narcissus moschatus._
Dedicated to _St. Apollonius_.
~April 19.~
_St. Leo_ IX. Pope, A. D. 1054. _St. Elphege_, A. D. 1012. _St.
Ursmar_, Bp. A. D. 713.
_St. Elphege._
This saint’s name in the church of England calendar is _Alphege_. He was
brought up at the monastery of Deerhurst, in Gloucestershire; afterwards
he built himself a lonely cell in the abbey of Bath, where he became
abbot, and corrected the “little junketings” and other irregularities
of the monks. St. Dunstan being warned in a vision, drew him from
thence, and gave him episcopal ordination. In 1006, he became bishop of
Winchester, and was afterwards translated to the see of Canterbury. On
the storming of that city by the Danes, he endeavoured to allay their
fury, but they burnt his cathedral, decimated his monks, and carrying
Alphege prisoner to Canterbury, there slew him on this day in 1012.[96]
It is storied, that when St. Alphege was imprisoned at Greenwich, the
devil appeared to him in likeness of an angel, and tempted him to follow
him into a dark valley, over which he wearily walked through hedges and
ditches, till at last being in a most foul mire the devil vanished, and
a real angel appeared and told St. Alphege to go back to prison and be a
martyr, which he did. Then after his death, an old rotten stake was
driven into his body, and those who drave it said, that if on the morrow
the stake was green and bore leaves they would believe; whereupon the
stake flourished and the drivers thereof repented as they said they
would, and the body being buried at St. Paul’s church, in London, worked
miracles.[97]
In commemoration of this saint was put up in Greenwich church the
following inscription: “This church was erected and dedicated to the
glory of God, and the memory of Saint Alphege, archbishop of Canterbury,
here slain by the Danes.”