itory things, and tramples on the backs of lions and dragons." By
these, and the like discourses, did this devout virgin excite others to
charity, humility, vigilance, and every other virtue.

The devil, enraged to behold so much good, which all his machinations
were not capable to prevent, obtained permission of God, for her trial,
to afflict this his faithful servant, like another Job: but even this
served only to render her virtue the more illustrious. In the eightieth
year of her age she was seized with an inward burning fever, which
wasted her insensibly by its intense heat; at the same time an
imposthume was formed in her lungs; and a violent and most tormenting
scurvy, attended with a corroding hideous stinking ulcer, ate away her
jaws and mouth, and deprived her of her speech. She bore all with
incredible patience and resignation to God's holy will; and with such a
desire of an addition to her sufferings, that she greatly dreaded the
physicians would alleviate her pains. It was with difficulty that she
permitted them to pare away or embalm the parts already dead. During the
three last months of her life, she found no repose. Though the cancer
had robbed her of her speech, her wonderful patience served to preach to
others more movingly than words could have done. Three days before her
death she foresaw, that in the third day she should be released from the
prison of her body; and on it, surrounded by a heavenly light, and
ravished by consolatory visions, she surrendered her pure soul into the
hands of her Creator, in the eighty-fourth year of her age. The Greeks
keep her festival on the 4th, the Roman Martyrology mentions her on the
5th of January.[1] The ancient beautiful life of S. Syncletica is quoted
in the old lives of the fathers published by Rosweide, l. 6, and in the
ancient notes of St. John Climacus. It appears, from the work itself,
that the author was personally acquainted with the saint. It has been
ascribe to St. Athanasius, but without sufficient grounds. It was
translated into {095} French, though not scrupulously, by d'Andilly,
Vies des SS. Peres des De certs, T. 3, p. 91. The antiquity of this
piece is confirmed by Montfaucon, Catal. Bibl. Coislianae, p. 417.

Footnotes:
1. She must not have lived later than the fourth century, for we find
her life quoted in the fifth and sixth; and as she lived eighty-four
years, she could not at least be much younger than St. Athanasius.
From the