the deceased. These charitable exercises produced their effect; some time after Durand again appeared, but now to announce his deliverance.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Matter of Expiation — Intemperance of the Tongue — The Dominican Father — Sisters Gertrude and Margaret — St. Hugh of Cluny and the Infringer of the Rule of Silence.
We have just seen how immoderation in the use of words is expiated in Purgatory. Father P. Rossignoli speaks of a Dominican Religious who incurred the chastisements of Divine Justice for a like defect. This Religious, a preacher full of zeal, a glory to his Order, appeared after his death to one of his brethren at Cologne. He was clad in magnificent robes, wearing a crown of gold upon his head, but his tongue was fearfully tormented. These ornaments represented the recompense of his zeal for souls and his perfect exactitude in all the points of his Rule. Nevertheless, his tongue was tortured because he had not been sufficiently guarded in his words, and his language was not always becoming the sacred lips of a priest and a Religious.
The following instance is drawn from Cesarius. [1] In a monastery of the Order of Citeaux, says this author, lived two young Religious, named Gertrude and her sister Margaret The former, although otherwise virtuous, did not sufficiently watch over her tongue; she frequently allowed herself to transgress the rule of silence prescribed, sometimes even in choir, before and after the chanting of the
- ↑ Dial. de Miraculis.
