The following is an excerpt from a biography of Pope St. Gregory the Great (d. 604), that outstanding defender and reformer of the Holy Church, written in the 9th or 10th century:
"From the time Gregory entered the monastery, not only did he gave himself up entirely to prayer and contemplation, but also to abstinence, fasting, and other penitential works which he rendered pleasant by his reading of and meditation on holy books. He was so given to these works that within a short time it seemed that he was about to die from his debilitated stomach and weakened strength. Frequent sicknesses could not persuade him to let up even a little on such harshness of life. His food was beans which his mother Silvia boiled and prepared. He contracted, by his own testimony, a most troubling disease which his doctors called syncope, or the cutting-off of the vital spirits. Suffering from this, he was thought to hasten towards his end at any moment by its repeated attacks. Unless he frequently refreshed himself with food, he felt the cutting off of his vital spirits. Still, he suffered more over the interruption of his fasting than from his illness."
It is to be remarked that despite this impairment of his health, which lasted the rest of his life, he always looked back upon his days as a monk as the happiest of his life.
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