Chapter

HOW VENERABLE BENNET PROPHESIED

TO KING TOTILAS, AND ALSO TO THE

XV BISHOP OF CAMISINA, SUCH THINGS AS

WERE AFTERWARD TO FALL OUT.
Totilas himself in person went unto the man of God; and seeing him sitting afar off, he durst
not come near, but fell down to the ground: 
whom the holy man (speaking to him twice or thrice) desired to rise up and at length came
unto him, and with his own hands lifted him up from the earth, where he lay prostrate: 
and then, entering into talk, he reprehended him for his wicked deeds, and in few words told
him all that which should befall him, saying: 
 "MUCH WICKEDNESS DO YOU DAILY COMMIT,
AND MANY GREAT SINS HAVE YOU DONE:
NOW AT LENGTH GIVE OVER YOUR SINFUL
LIFE. INTO THE CITY OF ROME SHALL YOU
ENTER, AND OVER THE SEA SHALL YOU PASS:
NINE YEARS SHALL YOU REIGN, AND IN THE
TENTH SHALL YOU LEAVE THIS MORTAL LIFE."
The king, hearing these things, was wonderfully afraid, and desiring the holy man to commend
him to God in his prayers, he departed: and from that time forward he was nothing so cruel as
before he had been. Not long after he went to Rome, sailed over into Sicily, and, in the tenth
year of his reign, he lost his kingdom together with his life.

The Bishop also of Camisina used to visit the servant of God, whom the holy man dearly loved
for his virtuous life. The Bishop, therefore, talking with him of King Totilas, of his taking of
Rome, and the destruction of that city, said: 
 "THIS CITY WILL BE SO SPOILED AND RUINED
BY HIM, THAT IT WILL NEVER BE
MORE INHABITED."

To whom the man of God answered: "Rome," quoth he,

"SHALL NOT BE UTTERLY DESTROYED BY

STRANGERS: BUT SHALL BE SO SHAKEN
WITH TEMPESTS, LIGHTNINGS, WHIRLWINDS,
AND EARTHQUAKES, THAT IT WILL FALL TO
DECAY OF ITSELF."
The mysteries of which prophecy we now behold as clear as the day: for we see before our
eyes in this very city, by a strange whirlwind the world shaken, houses ruined, and churches
overthrown, and buildings rotten with old age we behold daily to fall down. True it is that
Honoratus, by whose relation I had this, saith not that he received it from his own mouth, but
that he had it of other monks, which did hear it themselves.