Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/154
all who visited them left with a peaceful heart.
When St. Andrew Svorad felt that his hour of death was near, he returned to his monastery and there peacefully prepared himself for death. At that time a certain criminal was sentenced to be hanged at Trenčín, whom St. Andrew accompanied to the gallows. After the criminal had been executed, St. Andrew Svorad said a prayer over the corpse of the man, made the sign of the cross over him, and immediately the man arose from the sleep of death.
After a life of heroic sanctity, St. Andrew Svorad died in the year 1009 at the monastery of St. Hypolitus. After his death, a heavy rough chain was found fettered around his body. It had eaten its way deep into the flesh. The body of this holy man was buried in the Cathedral Church of St. Emmeram in Nitra.
After the death of St. Andrew, St. Benedict remained at his hermitage on the Skalka. There he continued his former life of abnegation and meditation, and strove to follow in the footsteps of his departed companion, St. Andrew. In this manner he lived for three years, until he was one day surprised by robbers, who expected to find his cave full of riches. But finding none, they brutally murdered him and hurled his body over the steep cliff into the water of the Vah. This took place in 1012.
St. Benedict’s body was preserved in the water for a whole year before the people of the vicinity learned of his whereabouts. They noticed that a large eagle hovered daily around the cliff at the point where the body of St. Benedict was thrown into the water, and would swoop down to the spot where the saint’s body lay whenever anyone approached the place. The people through a holy inspiration realized what the hovering of the bird signified, and set about to find the body. After it had been found, it was buried near the city of Trenčín; and after miracles had occurred at the saint’s grave, the people exhumed the body and transferred it to its present resting place by the side of his holy predecessor, St. Andrew Svorad, in the Church of St. Emmeram at Nitra.
Because of the many wonderful miracles wrought through the intercession of these two holy men, the faithful and the Catholic Church recognized them as saints. On the 17th of July, 1224, James I, bishop of Nitra, dedicated the Skalka, where our saints had lived and where St. Benedict was martyred, and founded a Benedictine abbey there, which he also richly endowed. King Bela IV. increased these benefices in the year 1228. Later, in 1297, bishop Paschasius of Nitra confirmed the fundatory documents of the abbey on the Skalka. After several military plunders of the surrounding country, King Ferdinand III in 1644 requested Archbishop George Lippan of Ostrihom (Strigonia) to transfer the possession of the abbey to the Jesuits, who then conducted a college. there. Gradually, however, due to the frequent change of owners