E06550: Aldhelm, in his prose On Virginity, names *Luke (the Evangelist, S00442) as an exemplary virgin, whose bones were translated to Constantinople after his death. Written in Latin in southern Britain, for the nuns at the monastery at Barking (south-east Britain), c. 675/686.

Aldhelm, prose On Virginity, 24

Lucas, praesago vituli simulacro ab Ezechiele designatus et tertius evangelicae praedicationis historiografus, qui apud Antiochiam medicinale cataplasma procurans primo purulentas corporum valitudines et aegrotas viscerum fibras ac deinde spiritales animarum incommoditates torrido dogmatum cauterio seu divini verbi flebotomo salubriter sanabat, usque septuagenarium ac quartum aetatis annum illibatae castitatis a comes pudicissimus permansisse memoratur. Igitur cum generale mortis naturae debitum suprema sorte persolverit, Constantino orbis gubernante monarchiam ossa illius ad tutelam regni Romanorum Constantinopolim translata leguntur.

'LUKE, described by Ezechiel in the figural image of a calf, and the third historiographer of the evangelical mission, who acquired at Antioch the poultices of medicine and first healed sanatively the festering sickness of bodies and the diseased fibres of inwards, and thereafter (healed) the spiritual disorders of souls with the searing cautery of doctrine or the blood-letting of the divine Word. He is said to have persevered as the purest devotee of unimpaired chastity up to the seventy-forth year of his life. Therefore, when he paid the universal death by his final dissolution, his bones were, as we read, translated to Constantinople for the safekeeping of the Roman dominion when Constantine was governing the monarchy of the world.'

Text: Ehwald, 1919, 256-7. Translation: Lapidge and Herren 1979, 81-2, lightly modified.