Other accounts follow. Cures from cancer, gout, paralysis, calculus, and, what is more extraordinary still, no less than five restorations from death. In none of these latter, however, is any great interval said to have elapsed between death and revival. One story is told less miraculous than those just named, but which will recall an incident in the Gospels. A poor tailor is relieved in distress upon prayer to certain martyrs, by finding on the shore a fish in whose stomach was a valuable ring. St. Augustine himself was much struck with the great number of these miracles. He tells us that when he saw that these signs of Divine power, like those of old time, were frequent, he caused accounts of such things to be drawn up and to be read publicly. In two years, in his own diocese of Hippo, nearly seventy such miracles were recorded, and many he believed had missed of record. In the neighbouring province of Calama, an incomparably greater number had taken place.

I would next refer to Bede's history of our own English Church in its infancy. This work contains very many miraculous accounts It may be said that Bede lived in superstitious and credulous times. I may reply that he himself was probably the most learned and pious man of those times. His miracles are mostly cures by relics, or at the tombs of saints; for instance, the ninth and four following

chapters of his third book are full of accounts of cures wrought by the relics of Oswald, a pious king of Northumbria. These stories are not peculiarly fantastic or incredible. They are of the usual character of such accounts-recoveries from fever, blindness, paralysis, and the like, and their date is in Bede's own time, or a little before. Bede, I allow, is not generally particular as to circumstances or authorities. But he does give us his authority in the case of several wonders wrought by a Bishop John, viz. the Bishop's deacon, who was, Bede tells us, living in his own time, and of whom he speaks as ' reverendissimus ac veracissimus.'

St. Francis of Assissi, the founder of the Order of the Friars Minor or Franciscans, has been said to be the greatest of the medieval saints. And indeed we may see much to give him this pre-eminence, whether we look at the extent of his influence, the wonders related of his life, or, what is a much more just ground of esteem, the exalted beauty and goodness of his character. Miracles in abundance are related of him, even by his earliest biographers, and some of the first magnitude, as curing the paralytic, giving of sight to the blind, even raising the dead. The most celebrated of all these miracles, perhaps indeed the most celebrated miracle in the entire history of the Church since the days of the Apostles, is the receiving by the saint of the stigmata, or marks

of the wounds of Christ. It happens also to be remarkably well attested. M. Chavin de Malan, one of the modern biographers of St. Francis, is ready to renounce all faith in human testimony if this miracle be not established. Other historians have, however, I must say, come to a different conclusion. Especially Professor Karl Hase, of the University of Jena, has appended to his life of the saint a special discussion of this miracle, in which he decides against its authenticity. I am acquainted with this book through the French translation of M. Charles Berthoud, and I purpose to insert here, first the principal historical evidences for the miracle, and then the criticisms of Professor Hase upon them. We shall thus, I think, be placed in a good position. for forming an opinion upon the whole. I will arrange the testimonies according to their dates.

1. We have extant a letter written by Elias of Cortona, a companion of the saint in the latter part of his life, and his successor in the government of the Order. The letter is printed in the history of the Franciscans by Luke Waddington. This author wrote a full and minute history of the Order in the first half of the seventeenth century. He professed to publish the letter in question as a copy from the original, preserved in a convent of the Franciscans at Valenciennes, then a town of Belgium. It was written by Elias on occasion of the death of the

saint, to announce that event to the absent brethren. It relates that St. Francis, not long before his death (non diu ante mortem), appeared as if he had been crucified. It speaks of the marks (puncturas) of the nails in the hands and feet, and of their showing the blackness of nails.

2. Thomas de Celano, also one of the companions of the saint, wrote his history within three years of his death at the command of the then Pope, Gregory IX. This would be in the year 1229. The book was printed for the first time in the Bollandist collection,1 but evidence of its existence almost at the date in question exists, as we shall see. Celano tells us that St. Francis was in religious retirement on Mount Aumna (Alvernia), a desolate mountain in the Apennines, about two years before his death, and that he sought a sign of God's disposition towards him by opening a service-book. The book thrice opened at the passion of Christ, and this led the saint to believe that he should be conformed to the

sufferings of his master. Soon after, he saw a vision of a seraph, as it were a man fastened to a cross in the usual manner with six wings. Two wings were raised above the head, two were stretched out in flight, two covered the body. Whilst the mind of St. Francis was filled with the emotions

1

Acta Sanctorum.' Die Quartâ Octobris, de S. Francisco, Con

which this vision raised, there began to appear in his body the marks known as the stigmata, i. e. wounds in the hands and feet, as if by crucifixion, and also a wound in the side. Celano speaks of the appearance of nails in the wounds. The heads of the nails

appeared on one side of the hands and feet, and their points on the other. Celano particularly tells us that the heads of the nails were upon the inside of the hands, and upon the top of the feet. St. Francis was alone, when this wonder befell him, and he did all in his power to conceal the marks. It was his custom to reveal the secret rarely or to no one (raro aut nulli). This conduct seems to have arisen partly from humility and partly from prudence. As to the wound in the side, Elias only is said to have seen it during the Saint's life, and Ruffinus to have touched it. But blood occasionally issued from it, and stained the clothes of the Saint in a manner which those who attended upon him observed. But at the death of the Saint we hear of a concourse of people to see the dead body, and of their beholding not merely the wounds in the hands and feet but also, as it were, nails themselves in the wounds, and also the wound in the side. The brethren and disciples (fratres et filii) were allowed to kiss the stigThe people thought it a great privilege to kiss or even to see these marks. St. Francis died about an hour after sunset on Saturday, and during

mata.

M