Agnellus's long goodbye
[1195-1236]
Brother Agnellus of Pisa — founder, perhaps, of the University of Oxford — fell sick with dysentery, brought on by the exertions necessary to avert a civil war between the King and the Earl Marshal. Doctors thought he was cured when he was seized with a colic and such pain that he cried, for three days straight, almost without intermission, “Sweet Jesus, come!” until He finally came. His room fell silent, and a fellow monk entered to find a dead body, but, seeing stigmata, briefly confused Agnellus for Jesus.