the preservation of our race in Noah's Ark is an historical fact,
which history never would arrive at without revelation.' With
these principles to guide him, he plunged with his disciples into
a prolonged study of the English Saints. Biographies soon
appeared of St. Bega, St. Adamnan, St. Gundleus, St. Guthlake,
Brother Drithelm, St. Amphibalus, St. WuIstan, St. Ebba, St.
Neot, St. Ninian, and Cunibert the Hermit. Their austerities,
their virginity, and their miraculous powers were described in
detail. The public learned with astonishment that St Ninian had
turned a staff into a tree; that St. German had stopped a cock
from crowing, and that a child had been raised from the dead to
convert St. Helier. The series has subsequently been continued by
a more modern writer whose relation of the history of the blessed
St. Mael contains, perhaps, even more matter for edification than
Newman's biographies.

At the time, indeed, those works caused considerable scandal.
Clergymen denounced them in pamphlets. St. Cuthbert was described
by his biographer as having 'carried the jealousy of women,
characteristic of all the saints, to an extraordinary pitch'. An
example was given, whenever he held a spiritual conversation with
St Ebba, he was careful to spend the ensuing ours of darkness 'in
prayer, up to his neck in water'. 'Persons who invent such
tales,' wrote one indignant commentator, 'cast very grave and
just suspicions on the purity of their own minds. And young
persons, who talk and think in this way, are in extreme danger of
falling into sinful habits. As to the volumes before us, the
authors have, in their fanatical panegyrics of virginity, made
use of language downright profane.'