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The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others

by Georgiana Fullerton · English · Gutenberg #8495 · 503,030 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others

Author: Georgiana Fullerton

Contributor: J. M. Capes


        
Release date: July 1, 2005 [eBook #8495]
                Most recently updated: December 26, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8495

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David Widger and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF ST. FRANCES OF ROME, AND OTHERS ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David Widger
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team




THE LIFE

OF

ST. FRANCES OF ROME,

BY

LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON;


OF

BLESSED LUCY OF NARNI,


OF

DOMINICA OF PARADISO


AND OF

ANNE DE MONTMORENCY:


WITH

An Introductory Essay

ON THE MIRACULOUS LIFE OF THE SAINTS,

BY J. M. CAPES, ESQ. _N.B. The proprietorship of this Series is secured
in all countries where the Copyright is protected._ The authorities on
which the History of St. Frances of Rome rests are as follows:

Her life by Mattiotti, her Confessor for ten years. Mattiotti enjoined
her, as a matter of obedience, to relate to him from time to time her
visions in the minutest detail. He was a timid and suspicious man,
and for two or three years kept a daily record of all she told him;
afterwards, as his confidence in her sanctity and sanity grew complete,
he contented himself with a more general account of her ecstasies, and
also put together a private history of her life. After her death, he
wrote a regular biography, which is now to be found in the Bollandist
collection (Venice, 1735, vol. ii.).

Early in the seventeenth century, Ursinus, a Jesuit, wrote a life, which
was highly esteemed, but which was never printed, and, except in certain
fragments, is now lost.

In 1641, Fuligato, a Jesuit, wrote the second life, in the Bollandist
collection, which contains particulars of events that happened after
Mattiotti's time.

Other well-written lives have since appeared: especially a recent one by
the Vicomte de Bussière, in which will be found various details too
long to be included in the sketch here presented to the English reader.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

THE MIRACULOUS LIFE OF THE SAINTS.

In presenting to the general reader a newly-written Life of so
extraordinary a person as St. Frances of Rome, together with the
biographical sketches contained in the present volume, it may be useful
to introduce them with a few brief remarks on that peculiar feature in
the histories of many Saints, which is least in accordance with the
popular ideas of modern times. A mere translation, or republication of a
foreign or ancient book, does not necessarily imply any degree of assent
to the principles involved in the original writer's statements. The new
version or edition may be nothing more than a work of antiquarian or
literary interest, by no means professing any thing more than a belief
that persons will be found who will, from some motive or other, be glad
to read it.

Not so, however, in the case of a biography which, though not pretending
to present the results of fresh researches, does profess to give an
account new in shape, and adapted to the wants of the day in which
it asks its share of public attention. In this case no person can
honourably write, and no editor can honourably sanction, any statements
but such as are not only possible and probable, but, allowing
for the degree of authenticity in each case claimed, on the whole
historically true. No honest man, who absolutely disbelieves in all
documents in which the original chronicler has mingled accounts of
supernatural events with the record of his own personal knowledge,
could possibly either write or edit such Lives as those included in
the following pages; still less could they be made public by one who
disbelieves in the reality of modern miracles altogether.

In presenting, then, the present and other similar volumes to the
ordinary reader, I anticipate some such questions as these: "Do you
really put these stories into our hands as history? Are these marvellous
tales to be regarded as poetry, romance, superstitious dreaming, or as
historical realities? If you profess to believe in their truth, how do
you reconcile their character with the universal aspect of human life,
as it appears _to us and to our friends?_ And finally, if you claim for
them the assent to which proved facts have a right from every candid
mind, to what extent of detail do you profess to believe in their
authenticity?" To these and similar questions I reply by the following
observations:

The last of these questions may be answered briefly. The lives of Saints
and other remarkable personages, which are here and elsewhere laid in
a popular form before the English public, are not all _equally_ to be
relied on as undoubtedly true in their various minute particulars. They
stand precisely on the same footing as the ordinary events of purely
secular history; and precisely the same degree of assent is claimed
for them that the common reason of humanity accords to the general
chronicles of our race. No man, who writes or edits a history of distant
events, professes to have precisely the same amount of certainty as to
all the many details which he records. Of some his certainty is all but
absolute; of others he can say that he considers them highly probable;
of a third class he only alleges that they are vouched for by
respectable though not numerous authorities., Still, he groups them
together in one complete and continuous story, and gives them to the
world as _history;_ nor does the world impute to him either dishonesty,
ignorance, credulity, or shallowness, because in every single event he
does not specify the exact amount of evidence on which his statement
rests.

Just such is the measure of belief to be conceded to the Life of St.
Frances, and other biographies or sketches of a similar kind. Some
portions, and those the most really important and prominent, are well
ascertained, incontrovertible, and substantially true. Others again, in
all likelihood, took place very much, though not literally, in the way
in which they are recorded. Of others, they were possibly, or even
probably, the mere colouring of the writer, or were originally adopted
on uninvestigated rumour. They are all, however, consistent with known
facts, and the laws on which humanity is governed by Divine Providence;
and therefore, as they may be true, they take their place in that vast
multitude of histories which all candid and well-informed persons agree
in accepting as worthy of credit, though in various degrees.

Supposing, then, that miraculous events may and do occur in the present
state of the world's history, it is obvious that these various degrees
of assent are commanded alike by the supernatural and the natural
events which are here so freely mingled together. Some are undoubtedly
true, others are probably either fictitious or incorrectly recorded.
The substance rests on the genuine documents, originally written by
eye-witnesses and perfectly competent judges; and as such, the whole
stands simply as a result of the gathering together of historical
testimony.

Here, however, the ordinary English reader meets us with the assertion,
that the supernatural portions of such lives are simply _impossible_. He
assumes--for I am not exaggerating when I say that he never tries _to
prove_--that these marvellous interruptions of the laws of nature never
take place. Consequently, in his judgment, it is purely ridiculous to
put forth such stories as history; and writers who issue them are guilty
either of folly, ignorance, superstition, or an unprincipled tampering
with the credulity of unenlightened minds. Of those who thus meet the
question of historical evidence by an assumption of a universal abstract
impossibility, I earnestly beg an unprejudiced attention to the
following considerations:

If it be once admitted that there is a God, and that the soul is not
a mere portion of the body, the existence of miracles becomes at once
probable. Apart from the records of experience, we should in fact have
expected that events which are now termed miraculous would have been
perhaps as common as those which are regulated by what we call the laws
of nature. Let it be only granted that the visible universe is not the
_whole_ universe, and that in reality we are ever in a state of most
intimate _real_ communion with Him who is its Creator; then, I say,
we should have expected to have been as habitually conscious of our
intercourse with that great Being, as of our intercourse with one
another. The true marvel is, that we are not thus habitually conscious
of the Divine Presence, and that God is really out of our sight. If
there is a God, who is ever around us and within us, _why_ does He not
communicate with us through the medium of our senses, as He enables us
to communicate with one another? Our souls hold mutual communion through
the intervention of this corporal frame, with such a distinct and
undeniable reality, that we are as _conscious_ of our intercourse as
of the contact of a material substance with our material bodies. Why,
then,--since it is so infinitely more important to us to hold ceaseless
communication with our Maker,--why is it that our intercourse with Him
is of a totally different nature? Why is it that the material creation
is not the ordinary instrument by which our souls converse with Him? Let
any man seriously ponder upon this awful question, and he must hasten to
the conclusion, that though experience has shown us that the world of
matter is not the _ordinary_ channel of converse between God and man,
there yet remains an overwhelming probability that some such intercourse
takes place _occasionally_ between, the soul and that God through whose
power alone she continues to exist.

In other words, the existence of miracles is probable rather than
otherwise. A miracle is an event in which the laws of nature are
interrupted by the intervention of Divine agency, usually for the
purpose of bringing the soul of man into a conscious contact with the
inhabitants of the invisible world. With more or less exactness of
similitude, a miracle establishes between God and man, or between other
spiritual beings and man, that same kind of intercourse which exists
between different living individuals of the human race. Such a conscious
intercourse is indeed asserted by infidels as well as by atheists,
to be, if not impossible, at least so utterly improbable, that it is
scarcely within the power of proof to make it credible to the unbiased
reason. Yet surely the balance of probability inclines to the very
opposite side. If there _is_ a God, and our souls _are_ in communication
(of some kind) with Him, surely, prior to experience, we should have
expected to be habitually conscious of this communion. And now that we
see that we are not at any rate habitually so, still the burden of proof
rests with those who allege that such conscious intercourse _never_
takes place. Apart from all proof of the reality of any one professed
miracle, the infidel is bound to show _why_ all miracles are improbable
or impossible; in other words, why man should never be conscious of the
presence and will of his ever-present God.

Protestants, however, and even weak Catholics, regard the record of one
of those mysterious lives, in which the soul of a man or woman has been
repeatedly brought into this species of communion with invisible beings,
as a tale which, though it is just possible that it may be true, is yet,
on the face of it, so flagrant a violation of the laws of nature, as
to be undeserving of positive hearty belief. They confound the laws of
physical nature with the laws of universal nature. They speak of the
nature of this material earth, as if it was identical with the _nature
of things_. And this confusion of thought it is to which I would
especially call attention. Miracles are contrary to the ordinary laws of
physical nature, and therefore are so far improbable, but they are in
the strictest conformity with the nature of things, and therefore _in
themselves_ are probable. If the laws of nature rule God as they control
man, a miracle is almost an impossibility; but if God rules the laws of
nature, then it is wonderful that something miraculous does not befall us
every day of our lives.

Again, it is in a high degree probable that miraculous events will
generally, so to say, take their colour from the special character of
that relation which may exist between God and man at the time when they
come to pass. If, in the inscrutable counsels of the Almighty, man is
placed, during different eras in his history, in different circumstances
towards his Creator and Preserver, it would seem only natural that
the variations in those circumstances should be impressed upon the
extraordinary intercourse between God and His people. Or, to use the
common Christian term, each _dispensation_ will have its peculiar
supernatural aspect, as well as its peculiar spiritual and invisible
relationship. If man was originally in a higher and more perfect state
of being than he is now, it is probable that his communion with God was
singularly, if not totally, unlike what it has been since he fell from
primeval blessedness. If after his fall, two temporary states have been
appointed to him by his God, then the miracles of each epoch will bear
their own special corresponding characteristics. And lastly, if by a
new exercise of regenerating and restoring power it has pleased the
Invisible One to rescue His creatures from the consequences of their
ancient ruin, then again we may expect to recognise the history of that
redemption in the whole course of the miraculous intercourse between
the Redeemer and the redeemed until the end of time. The supernatural
elements in the Paradisiacal, the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the
Christian states, may be expected to be in many respects distinct, each
embodying with awful and glorious power the invisible relations which
the God of nature and of grace has thought fit to assume towards His
creatures.

And such, in fact, has been the case. Not only is the ceaseless
existence of a miraculous intercourse between God and man one of the
most completely proved of all historical events, but the miracles of
each dispensation are found in a wonderful degree to correspond with
the relationship of God to man in each of the separate epochs. The same
superhuman consistency is found to pervade all the works of God, both
where nature and grace are separate from one another, and where the
common laws of nature are burst through, and the material universe
is made as it were the bondslave of the unseen. The impiously meant
assertions of unbelief are fulfilled in a sense which unbelievers little
look for; and they who cry out in their hatred of miracles, that all
things are governed by unchanging _law_, may learn that in truth
unchanging laws do rule over all, although those laws have a range and a
unity in the essence and will of God, of which mortal intelligence
never dreamed. The natural and the supernatural, the visible and the
invisible, the ordinary and the miraculous, the rules of the physical
creation and the interruptions of those rules,--all are controlled by
one law, shaped according to one plan, directed by one aim, and bound to
one another by indissoluble ties, even where to human eyes all seem lost
in confusion and thwarted by mutual struggle.

Of what we should now call the miraculous, or supernatural, communion
between God and man in Paradise, we know historically but little. The
records of revelation being for the most part confined to the state of
man as he is, and his actual and future prospects, present but a glimpse
of the conscious communion which was permitted to the first of our race
in their original bliss. It is, however, believed by theologians, that
in Paradise what we should now term miracles did not exist; for this
reason, that what is now extraordinary was then ordinary. God conversed
with man, and man held communion with angels, directly and habitually;
so that in a certain sense man saw God and the world now unseen.
[Footnote: See St. Thomas, Summa, pars prima, quæst. 94. art. 1,2.] For
it is not the mere possession of a body which binds the soul with the
chains of sense; it is the corruption and sinfulness of our present
frames which has converted them into a barrier between the spirit within
and the invisible universe. As Adam came forth all pure and perfect from
the hands of his Creator, a soul dwelling in a body, his whole being
ministered fitly to the purposes of his creation, and with body and soul
together he conversed with his God. It was not till the physical sense
became his instrument of rebellion, that it was dishonoured and made his
prison-house, and laid under a curse which should never be fully removed
until the last great day of the resurrection.

Upon the fall of Adam, a new state was introduced, which lasted
about two thousand five hundred years. During its continuance, the
supernatural intercourse between Almighty God and His degraded creatures
took an entirely different character. What had originally been
continual, and as it were natural, became comparatively rare and
miraculous. Henceforth there _seemed_ to be no God among men, save when
at times the usual laws of the earth and the heavens were suspended
and God spoke in accents which none might refuse to hear. Of these
supernatural manifestations the general aspect was essentially typical
of the future redemption of the lost race by a Saviour. That promise
of deliverance from the consequences of sin, which Almighty God had
vouchsafed to the first sinners, was repeated in a vast variety of
miraculous interventions. Though there may have been many exceptions to
the ordinary character of the Patriarchal miracles, still, on the whole,
they wear a typical aspect of the most striking prominence.

The first miracle recorded after the fall is the token granted to Abel
that his _sacrifice_ was accepted. A deluge destroys all but one family,
who are saved in an ark, the type of the Church of God, and a rainbow is
set in the sky as a type of the covenant between God and man. A child is
miraculously born to Abraham in his old age, who is afterwards offered
to God as a type of the Redeemer, and saved from death by a fresh
supernatural manifestation of the Divine will. The chosen race become
captive in Egypt, as a figure of man's bondage to sin; a series of awful
miracles, wrought by the instrumentality of Moses himself, a type of
Jesus Christ, delivers them from their slavery, terminating with the
institution of the Passover, when the paschal lamb is eaten, and they
are saved by its blood, as mankind is saved by the blood of the Lamb
of God. The ransomed people miraculously pass through the Red Sea,
foreshadowing the Christian's regeneration by baptism; as they wander
afterwards in the desert, manna descends from heaven to feed them, and
water gushes from the rock to quench their thirst, and to prefigure that
sacred food and those streams of grace which are to be the salvation of
all men. Almost every interruption of the laws of nature bespeaks the
advent of the Redeemer, and does homage to Him as the Lord of earth and
heaven.

At length a code of laws is given to the chosen race, to separate them
completely from the rest of men, and a promise of perpetual temporal
prosperity is granted to them by God as the reward of their obedience,
and as a figure of the eternal blessedness of the just. From that time
with, as before, occasional exceptions, the supernatural events which
befall them wear a new aspect. Their peculiarly typical import is
exchanged for one more precisely in conformity with the leading
principle of the new dispensation. The rites and ceremonies of the new
Law prefigure the Sacrifice and Redemption of the Messias; but the
miracles of the next fifteen hundred years are for the most part
directed to uphold that rule of present reward and punishment, which was
the characteristic feature of the Jewish theocracy. The earth opens to
punish the disobedience of Core and his companions. Fiery serpents
smite the murmuring crowd with instant death; while the promised Saviour
is prefigured, not by a miracle, but by the erection of a brazen serpent
by the hands of Moses. The walls of Jericho fall prostrate before the
trumpets of the victorious Israelites; one man, Achan, unlawfully
conceals some of the spoil, and an immediate supernatural panic, struck
into his countrymen, betrays the committal of the sin. Miraculous water
fills the fleece of Gideon, to encourage him to fight for his country's
deliverance. An angel foretells the birth of Samson to set his people
free, when they are again in bondage. Samson himself is endowed with
supernatural strength; exhausted with the slaughter of his foes, he
prays for water to quench his thirst, and a stream bursts forth from the
ass's jawbone with which he had just slain the Philistines. Bound in
chains, blinded, and made a jest by the idolaters, his prayer for a
return of his strength is heard by God, and he destroys a multitude in
his last moments.

And thus, through all the history of the Kings and the Prophets, the
power of God is repeatedly put forth to alter the laws of nature for the
purpose of enforcing the great rule of the Mosaic law. The disobedience
of the Jews might, if God had so pleased, have been invariably punished
by the instrumentality of the ordinary course of events, shaped by the
secret hand of Divine Providence so as to execute His will, just as
now we find that certain sins inevitably bring on their own temporal
punishment by the operation of the laws of nature. And so, in the vast
majority of instances in which the Jews were rewarded and punished,
we find that the Divine promises and threats were fulfilled by the
occurrence of events in the natural order of things. But yet frequently
miracles confirmed and aided the work of chastisement and blessing; and
of the numerous wonders which were wrought from the giving of the law
to the coming of Christ, we find that nearly all bore this peculiar
character. For many centuries also a constant miraculous guidance was
granted to the people in the "Urim and Thummim," by which they were
enabled, when they chose to remain faithful, to escape all national
calamities and enjoy the fullest blessings of the promised land.

Under the Christian dispensation, again, a new character is imprinted
upon the supernatural history of the Church, which is, in fact, the
impression of the Cross of Christ. While the characteristics of the
Patriarchal and Jewish miracles are not wholly obliterated, an element,
which if not entirely new, is new in the intensity of its operation, is
introduced into the miraculous life of the children of Christ, which
life is really the prolongation of the supernatural life of Jesus Christ
Himself. It is accompanied also with a partial restoration of that
peculiar power which was possessed by man before he fell, when his
body became a veil to hide the world of spirits from his soul. While
prophecies of future events have not wholly ceased in the Christian
Church, and miracles are frequently wrought for the conferring of some
temporal blessings, yet these other wonderful features distinguish the
supernatural records of Christianity from those of both Patriarchal
and Jewish times. The undying power of the Cross is manifested in the
peculiar sufferings of the Saints, in their mystic communion with
the invisible world, and in that especial sanctity to which alone
miraculous gifts are for the most part accorded under the Gospel. Not
that all these three peculiarities are to be observed in the life of
every Saint under the Gospel. Far from it, indeed. The supernatural
life of the Saints varies with different individuals, according to the
pleasure of that Almighty Spirit, who communicates Himself to His elect
in ten thousand mysterious ways, and manifests Himself according to His
own will alone. Still, at times, they are found united, in conjunction
with those miraculous powers which were possessed under the old
dispensations in one individual. In such cases we behold the Life and
Passion of the King of Saints visibly renewed before our eyes; the
law of _suffering_,--that mysterious power, as life-giving as it is
unfathomable,--is set before us in an intensity of operation, which at
once calls forth the scoffs of the unbeliever, and quickens the faith of
the humble Christian; the privileges of eternity are anticipated, and
the blessings of a lost Paradise are in part restored. Jesus Christ
lives, and is in agony before us; the dread scene of Calvary is renewed,
united with those ineffable communications between the suffering soul
and its God, which accompanied the life and last hours of the Redeemer
of mankind. Our adorable Lord is, as it were, still incarnate amongst
us, displaying to our reverent faith the glories of His Passion in the
persons of those who are, in the highest sense that is possible, His
members, a portion of His humanity, in whom He dwells, who dwell in Him,
and whose life, in a degree incomprehensible even to themselves, is hid
with Christ in God. Such a Saint was St. Frances of Rome, one of those
glorious creations of Divine grace by means of which, at the time when
the Holy City was filled with bloodshed and ravaged with pestilence, and
when the heaviest disasters afflicted the Church, Almighty God set
forth before men the undying life of the Cross, and the reality of that
religion which seemed to be powerless to check the outrages of its
professed followers.

In Paradise, then, as has been said, the whole nature of man ministered
to the fulfilment of the end for which he was created, namely, the
knowledge and love of God. He came forth from his Maker's hands endowed
not only with a natural soul and body untainted with sin, but with such
supernatural gifts, arising from the Divine Presence within him, that
nothing was wanting but perseverance to his final perfection. The
various elements in his nature were not, as now, at war with one
another. His body did not blind the eye of his soul, and agitate it with
the storms of concupiscence; nor did the soul employ the body as its
instrument of rebellion against God. Though not yet admitted to that
glorious vision of the Eternal which was to be the reward of his
obedience, yet he lived in direct commerce with the world of spirits. He
knew and conversed with God and His angels in a way which is now wholly
incomprehensible to the vast majority of his descendants.

When Adam fell, he became, in one word, what we all are now by nature.
Not only was he placed under a curse, but his God was hidden from his
eyes; and that corporeal habitation, which he had abused to his soul's
destruction, became the prison of his soul's captivity. Though
created in the image of God, and retaining, even when fallen, certain
traces of his celestial origin, he became a mere helpless denizen of
earth, and a veil descended and hid his God and all spiritual beings
from his mind. From that time forwards _suffering_ became not merely the
law of his daily life, but the only means by which he could be first
restored to the Divine favour, and finally be taken to a happy eternity.
And inasmuch as he was to be redeemed by the sufferings of One who
was at once man and not man, He was in a certain sense to share those
sufferings, in order to partake in the blessings they purchased for him.
A mystic union was to take place between the Saviour and the fallen
race, of which a community in suffering, as the instrument of
restoration, was to be for ever and in every case established. This
anguish, further, was to be twofold, including all the faculties both of
the body and the soul. Man had sinned in his whole being; in his whole
being, therefore, he was to suffer, both in the person of his Redeemer,
who was to suffer for him, and in himself, who was to suffer with his
Saviour. A "holocaust" was to be offered to the offended Majesty of God;
an offering, not only of his _entire_ nature, but a _burnt_ offering; a
sacrifice which should torture him in the flames of Divine vengeance,
and kill him with its annihilating fierceness.

As, however, it pleased the Divine Wisdom to postpone for forty
centuries the advent and atonement of the Redeemer, so, for the same
period, the race redeemed participated, in a comparatively slight
degree, in those restorative sufferings which derived all their virtue
from the sacrifice upon the Cross. Pangs of body and bitterness of soul
were, in truth, the lot of man from the moment that Adam sinned; but
they were the pangs and bitterness of a criminal under punishment, far
more than the sacrificial pains of the members of Christ crucified.
Asceticism formed but a small portion of the religious worship of the
people of God, until the great atonement was completed upon Calvary. Not
that any degree, even the lowest, of acceptable obedience could ever be
attained without some measure of the crucifixion of the natural man.
Patriarchs and Israelites alike felt the power of the Cross as the
instrument of their sanctification. But still earthly prosperity,
including bodily pleasures, was, as a rule, the reward with which God
recompensed His faithful servants. That which became the rule under the
Gospel, was the exception from Adam till Moses, and from Moses until
Christ. Here and there some great example of Christian asceticism
enforced upon a sensual people the nature of perfect sanctity. Elias
fasted on Mount Carmel, and beheld the skirts of the glory of the Most
High. The Baptist fasted and tamed his natural flesh in the wilderness,
and beheld not only the Incarnate Son of God, but the descent of the
Eternal Spirit upon Him. Yet, for the most part, the favoured servants
of God lived the lives of ordinary men; they possessed houses, riches,
and honours; and married wives, even more than one.

At length the Cross was set up in all its awful power; suffering
received its perfect consecration, and took its ruling place in the
economy of man's redemption. Jesus, in descending from the Cross,
bestowed that Cross upon His children, to be their treasure until the
end of the world. Crucifixion with Him, and through Him, as their Head,
became their portion and their glory. Every soul that was so buried
in His wounds as to receive the full blessings of His sacrifice, was
thereby nailed, in Christ, to the Cross, not to descend from its
hallowed wood until, like Christ, it was dead thereon. Henceforth the
sanctity of God's chosen servants assumes its new character. It is no
longer written, "I will bring you into a land flowing with the milk and
honey of this earth;" but, "Blessed are the poor, and they that suffer
persecution." The lot of Abraham and of David is exchanged for that of
St. Peter and St. Paul. In place of triumph in war with the idolaters,
the Christian is _promised_ persecution; in place of many herds and
flocks, and treasures of gold, God _gives_ him poverty and sickness; the
fast, the vigil, the scourge, take place of the palaces of cedar and
the luxuriant couch; marriage gives way to celibacy; and long life is a
privilege in order that in many years we may suffer much, and not that
we may enjoy much. Such is the ordinary course of the Divine dealings
with the soul since the Cross received its full mysterious saving power.

And to the full as mysterious is the new character imprinted upon
the miraculous life of Christian sanctity. The phenomena of that new
existence, in which certain souls are brought into mystic communion with
the unseen world, bear the print of the wounds of the Eternal Son in
a manner which fills the ordinary Christian mind with amazement and
trembling. It is by a painful crucifixion of the natural man, both soul
and body, carried to a far more than ordinary perfection, that the soul
is introduced into this miraculous condition. Imprisoned in her fleshly
tabernacle, which, though regenerated, is through sin foul, earthly,
and blinding as ever, the mind can only be admitted to share in the
communion which Jesus Christ unceasingly held with His Father and with
the world invisible, by attaining some portion of that self-mastery
which Adam lost by his fall. The physical nature must be subdued by the
vigorous repetition of those many painful processes by which the animal
portion of our being is rendered the slave of the spiritual, and the
will and the affections are rent away from all creatures, to be fixed on
God alone. Fasting and abstinence are the first elements in this ascetic
course. The natural taste is neglected, thwarted, and tormented, till,
wearied of soliciting its own gratification, it ceases to interfere with
the independent action of the soul. The appetite is further denied
its wonted satisfaction as to quantity of food. By fasts gradually
increasing in severity, new modes of physical existence are introduced;
that which was originally an impossibility becomes a second law of
nature; and the emaciated frame, forgetting its former lusts, obeys
almost spontaneously the dictates of the victorious spirit within.
The hours of sleep are curtailed under judicious control, until that
mysterious sentence which compels us to pass a third of our existence in
unconscious helplessness is in part repealed. The soul, habituated to
incessant and self-collected action, wakes and lives, while ordinary
Christians slumber, and as it were are dead. The infliction of other
severe bodily pains co-operates in the purifying process, and enables
the mind to disregard the dictates of nature to an extent which to
many Catholics seems almost incredible, and to the unbeliever an utter
impossibility. Physical life is supported under conditions which would
crush a constitution not supported by the miraculous aid of almighty
power; and feeble men and women accomplish works of charity and heroic
self-sacrifice from which the most robust and energetic of the human
race, in their highest state of _natural_ perfection, would shrink
back in dismay as hopeless impossibilities. The senses are literally
tyrannised over, scorned, derided, insultingly trampled on. The sight,
the smell, the hearing, the touch, and the taste, are taught to exercise
themselves upon objects revolting to their original inclinations. They
learn to minister to the will without displaying one rebellious symptom.
Matter yields to spirit; the soul is the master of the body; while the
perceptions of the intelligence attain an exquisite sensibility, and the
mind is gifted with faculties absolutely new, the flesh submits, almost
insensible to its condition of servitude, and scarcely murmurs at the
daily death it is compelled to endure.

The process is the same in all that regards the affections and passions
of the mind itself. The heart is denied every thing that it desires,
which is not God. However innocent, however praiseworthy, may be the
indulgence in certain feelings, and the gratification of certain
pursuits in ordinary Christians, in the case of these favoured souls
nature is crushed in _all_ her parts. Her faculties remain, but they are
directed to spiritual things alone. Possessions of all kinds, lands,
houses, books, pictures, gardens, husband, wife, children, friends,
--all share the same tremendous sentence. God establishes Himself
in the soul, not only supreme, but as the _only inhabitant_. Whatsoever
remains to be done in this world is done as a duty, often as a most
obnoxious duty. Love for the souls that Christ has redeemed is the only
human feeling that is left unsubjugated; and wheresoever the emotions of
natural affection and friendship mingle with this Christian love, they
are watched, and restrained with unsparing severity, that the heart may
come at last to love nothing, except _in_ Christ Himself.

All this, indeed, repeatedly takes place in the case of persons in
whom the purely miraculous life of the Christian Saint is never even
commenced. It is that which all monks and nuns are bound to struggle
for, according to the different rules to which they have respectively
received their vocation. And, by the mercy of God, this perfect
detachment from earth, and this marvellous crucifixion of the flesh, is
accomplished in many a devout religious, to whom the _extraordinary_
gifts of the Holy Ghost are as unknown as His extraordinary graces are
familiar. Still, in those exceptional instances where miraculous powers
of any species are bestowed, this bitter death, this personal renewal
(as far as man can renew it) of the agonies of Calvary, is ordinarily
the necessary preparation for admission to the revelations of the Divine
glory, and to the other mysteries of the miraculous life.

The physical nature, then, being thus subdued, and taught to be the
obedient servant of the sanctified will, the history of the Catholic
Church records a long series of instances in which the soul has been
brought into direct communion with God, with angels, and with devils,
more or less through the _sensible_ instrumentality of the bodily
senses, thus spiritualised and exalted to a new office. The ineffable
glories of the _life_ of Christ are renewed in those who have thus
endured the _cross_ of Christ. The death of the body is the life of the
soul; and the Son of God is, as it were, again visibly incarnate in the
world which He has redeemed.

The phenomena of this miraculous state are as various as they are
wonderful. There is scarcely a natural law of our being which is not
found to be frequently suspended. Such is the _odour of sanctity_,
a celestial perfume that exhales from the person of the Saint, in
conditions where any such delicious fragrance could not possibly spring
from natural causes, and where even, as in the case of a dead body,
nature would send forth scents of the most repulsive kind. In such
instances, sometimes in life, sometimes in death, sometimes in health,
sometimes in loathsome diseases, there issues from the physical frame an
odour of unearthly sweetness, perhaps communicating itself to objects
which touch the saintly form.

Or a strange supernatural warmth pervades the entire body, wholly
independent of the condition of the atmosphere, and in circumstances
when by the laws of nature the limbs would be cold; sometimes, while
sickness has reduced the system to such a degree of exhaustion, and
brought on so morbid an action of the functions, that the stomach
rejects, with a sort of abhorrence, every species of food, the most holy
Eucharist is received without difficulty, and seems not only to be thus
received, but to furnish sufficient sustenance for the attenuated frame.
Not unfrequently corruption has no power over a sacred corpse; and
without the employment of any of the common processes for embalming,
centuries pass away, and the body of the Saint remains untouched by
decay, bearing the impress of life in death, and not crumbling to dust,
as in cases of natural preservation, when exposed to the action of the
atmosphere. Add to these, the supernatural flexibility and lightness
with which at times the living body is endowed by Divine power; the
physical accompaniment of ecstasy; the elevation of the entire body from
the ground, and its suspension in the air for a considerable space of
time; and we have sufficient examples of the mysterious ways in which
the bodies of Saints bespeak the purity which dwells within them, and
in a degree anticipate the corporeal perfections of those glorified
habitations in which the souls of the just will dwell after the
resurrection.

By another class of miraculous powers possessed by Christian Saints,
they are enabled to recognise the true nature or presence of purely
spiritual objects by the instrumentality of their natural organs of
sense. Thus, a mere touch at times reveals to them the moral condition
of the person on whom they lay their hands. A singular distaste for
natural food is accompanied by a perception of a celestial sweetness in
the holy Eucharist. Gross sinners appear to the sight in the form of
hideous monsters, demoniacal in their aspect, or as wearing the look of
the most repulsive of the brute creation. The sense of smell, in like
manner, detects the state of the soul, while the ear is opened to
heavenly sounds and voices, and Almighty God speaks to the inner
consciousness in a manner which, inexplicable as it is when defined
in the language of human science, is shown by incontestable proofs to be
a real communication from heaven to the enlightened intelligence.

In certain cases the animal creation are taught to do homage to the
presence of a Saint. As God opened the eyes of Balaam's ass, and it
beheld the messenger of Divine wrath standing with a sword in his hand,
so birds, fishes, insects, sheep, and the wildest beasts of the forests,
have at times saluted the Saints with joy and sweetness, laying aside
their natural timidity or their natural ferocity, and recalling the hour
when Adam dwelt in sinless peace in Eden, surrounded by the creatures
which the hand of God had made. All nature is bid thus to arise to
welcome the elect of the Lord of nature. Flowers spring up beneath their
feet; fruits suddenly ripen, and invite them to gather and eat; storms
cease, and gentle winds refresh the sky. Every where the presence of Him
who lulled the tempest with a word is recognised in the souls in whom He
dwells, and in whom He thus, in a mystic sense, fulfils His own promise,
that the meek shall possess the land.

Thus, again, time and space are in their degree comparatively
annihilated for the sake of some of these favoured servants of the
Eternal and Omnipresent. St. Pius V., while bodily in Rome, was a
witness of the naval victory of the Christians over the Turks; St.
Joseph of Cupertino read letters addressed to him while their authors
were writing them far away; St. Dominic foresaw the war of the
Albigenses, and the death of Peter of Arragon; and St. Ignatius beheld
his successor in the Duke of Gandia. A similar mysterious faculty
enables its possessor to discern the presence of relics and other sacred
objects, more especially of the adorable Eucharistic species; or even to
behold Jesus Christ Himself in His glorified human form, in place of the
usual appearance of bread and wine; while in some instances the Host
has darted, unborne by mortal hand, into the mouth of a Saint about to
communicate at the foot of the altar.

On those species of miracles which are in no way peculiar to the
Christian dispensation I need not linger. Such is the gift of healing,
whether by the Saint's will and touch while alive, or by his relics and
intercession when dead. Such is the gift of prophecy, which abounded, as
we might have expected, far more in the Saints before the advent of
the Redeemer than since His coming, and which, indeed, was not rigidly
confined to men of religious character. Such are those supernatural
powers by which our present temporal blessings, in addition to the
cure of diseases, are conferred upon individuals or communities by the
instrumentality of holy men and women. I confine myself to those more
peculiarly Christian privileges, which, though they were not wholly
unknown to the Patriarchal and Mosaic Saints, are yet eminently
characteristic of those times in which the glorification of the humanity
of Jesus appears to have shed a measure of glories upon the bodies of
those who most intensely share the sufferings of His cross.

Some of these tokens of the perpetual death of the Son of God in
His Saints were, indeed, for several centuries either unknown, or
extraordinarily rare in the Christian Church herself. Such is that most
awful of the displays of the undying power of the Cross, in which the
actual wounds and tortures of the crucified Jesus are visibly renewed,
by a miraculous agency, in the persons of His chosen ones. This most
terrible of the gifts of the great God is generally preceded by some
supernatural occurrence foreshadowing the visible representation of the
scene on Calvary about to be set up before the eyes of men. At one time
it is a species of bloody sweat, like that of Jesus Christ in the garden
of Gethsemani; at another, a visible print of the cross is impressed
upon the shoulders; or angels present a mystic cup of suffering to
the hands of the self-sacrificing Saint. Then follows what is termed
_stigmatisation_, or the renewal of the actual wounds of the Crucified,
accompanied with the bloody marks of the crown of thorns upon the
sufferer's head; for the most part one by one, until the whole awful
commemoration is complete, the skin and flesh are rent on the forehead
and round the head, in the hands, in the feet, and in the side; a stream
of gore pours forth, at times trickling down in slow drops, at times (as
on Fridays) in a fuller tide, accompanied with agonising pangs of body,
and except in the fiercest moments of spiritual conflict, with interior
consolations of ravishing sweetness. The wounds pierce deep down into
the flesh, running even through the hands and the feet.

The state of _ecstasy_ is another of the most wonderful of the elements
of the miraculous life of the Saints. Under the Divine influence the
physical frame undergoes a change in many respects similar to that which
is supposed (whether truly or falsely) to result from the operation of
magnetism or somnambulism. Many features, at the same time, distinguish
the Christian ecstatic condition from that which is produced by purely
physical or (it may be) diabolical causes, on which we cannot at present
enter in detail. It is sufficient to say, that the results of the true
ecstasy are in the strictest conformity with the doctrines of the
Christian revelation, and in perfect harmony with the perfections and
rules of the _moral_ world.

The soul in this state becomes, as it were, independent of the power of
the body, or she uses her physical senses in an absolute subordination
to her own illumined will. Visions, such as are recorded in the Old
Testament in the case of the prophets, are presented to her faculties.
She is introduced into the courts of heaven, and beholds and converses
with Saints in glory, with the Mother of God, with Jesus Christ
Himself. Or the whole mystery of the Passion is re-enacted before her
spiritualised sight, the evangelical history being filled up with all
those actual but minuter details which are omitted in the written
records of the Gospels. In certain cases, the body itself is lifted up
from the ground, and so remains for a while in the presence of a crowd
of bystanders. In others, the soul, while in ecstasy, is the medium of
communication between Almighty God and other persons then present, and
the Saint's voice repeats the revelations to those for whom they are
designed. Or, again, an unearthly flame shining around the head or whole
person of the ecstatic, like the cloven tongues upon the Apostles at
Pentecost, attests the presence of the Invisible, and symbolises the
message sent forth from His throne to men.

A more purely intellectual vision or revelation is another of the works
of the Holy Ghost in His Saints. By such revelations, for the most part,
the truths of holy Scripture were communicated to its writers. God, who
created the human soul with all its faculties, and who is able to make
known His will in any way that He pleases to the intelligence, has His
own mysterious but not less accurate tests, by which He enables the
favoured spirit to discern a revelation from a mere product of the
human imagination, and to distinguish between the voice of God and the
suggestions of Satan. Nor was this mode of intercourse between the
soul and her God confined exclusively to the elder dispensations or
to apostolic ages. Many a Christian Saint has been privileged to
contemplate God Himself, in a certain sense, in His essence; beholding
the depths of such mysteries as those of the Holy Trinity, the
Incarnation, the Eucharistic Presence, or the true nature of sin, with a
directness of vision, and comprehending them to an extent, which passes
the powers of human language to define.

Lastly, all that we read in the Bible respecting the visible and
tangible intercourse between man and the angelic and diabolic host is
continued in the times of Christianity. The reality of the ministration
of angels and of the assaults of demons, in the case of all Christians,
is believed by every Catholic; but in very many cases the Saints have
become as conscious of the presence and actions of their unseen friends
and foes as of the presence and actions of mortal men. To some Saints,
our blessed Lord Himself has appeared in human form, perhaps in that of
the most despised and miserable of the poor and sick; to others, their
guardian-angels or other pure spirits have presented themselves,
sometimes in the guise of ordinary men, and sometimes in a manifestly
supernatural shape. Often, too, the enlightened soul has beheld Satan
and his accursed spirits, either working it some bodily injury, or
assaulting it with some subtle temptation, or seeking to scare it by
assuming some hideous loathsome shape, or assuming the garb of an angel
of light for the purpose of accomplishing his hellish ends. Of all these
supernatural phenomena, however, illustrations will readily occur to
those who are familiar with the lives of Saints, or, indeed, to those
who have studied the Bible only, and who read the inspired writings as
really _true_, remembering that the miraculous events there recorded did
not cease the moment that the canon of Scripture was closed, but that
such as was the relation between God and man and angels and devils for
more than four thousand years, such it has been until this very hour.

Such, then, are the doctrines and opinions which are implied in what
may be termed the miraculous life of Catholic Saints, and of which the
history of Frances of Rome presents one of the most remarkable examples.
They are here but briefly sketched: but I trust that enough has been
said to indicate the general character of the principles involved in
these wonderful histories; and I now pass on to offer a few remarks on
the self-contradictions into which those persons fall who refuse to
investigate this species of subject on the ordinary rules of historical
evidence.

I need hardly remind the reader that an immense number of persons,
both infidels and Protestants, especially in sober-minded England and
Scotland, treat every professed Catholic miracle as a portion of the
vast gigantic system of deliberate fraud and villany which they conceive
to be the very life of Catholicism. From the Pope to the humblest priest
who says Mass and hears confessions in an ugly little chapel in the
shabbiest street of a country town, all are regarded as leagued in
one wide-spreading imposture. Pius IX., for instance, it is imagined,
_knows_ the liquefaction of St. Januarius's blood to be a trick of the
Neapolitan clergy; but he keeps up the falsehood for the sake of gain
and power. In like manner, he has an extensive Roman laboratory ever at
work for the manufacture of all the instruments of delusion which his
emissaries propagate throughout Christendom. There he makes false
relics, from portions of the true cross downwards; there he sells
pardons and indulgences; and there he has a _corps_ of writers employed
in the invention of fictitious miraculous tales, saints' lives, and the
like. All over the world he has "agents" for the sale of these goods,
the Catholic Bishops in England being his "English Correspondents," who
doubtless receive a handsome percentage on the profits realised. The
staff of underlings is also complete, energetic, and well paid. Thus,
the Oratorian Fathers are busily employed in scattering "Saints' Lives"
throughout this country, greatly to their own profit. Thus, too, I am
myself engaged in a similar work, either laughing in my sleeve at the
credulity on which I practise, or submitting from sheer intellectual
incompetence to be the tool of some wily Jesuit who enjoins the
unhallowed task. Such, when drawn out into details, and stripped of the
pompous declamation of the platform, is, in serious truth, the idea
which innumerable persons imagine to be the Catholic system of
propagandism and deceit; and every Catholic miracle is thus accounted
for by the supposed wickedness of all Catholics, except a few blinded
ignorant devotees.

Any argument, therefore, addressed to prejudgments of this class must
merge in the general argument, which shows that, whether the Catholic
religion be true or false, it is beyond the limits of credibility that
its ruling principle can be one of intentional deception. I insist,
then, that it would not merely be a miracle,--if is an _impossibility_
that such an imposture should remain undetected to this day, and that
men and women of all ranks, ages, and countries, the ablest and the most
simple, including uncounted fathers and mothers of families, should
persist in submitting to and upholding the authority of a few thousand
priests, who are really no better than incarnate devils. Whether the
Catholic system be an error or not, it must have fallen to pieces a
hundred times over, if its chief ruler and his subordinates were mere
tricksters, playing upon the credulity of a fanatical and besotted
world. By this same test, then, its miraculous histories must be judged,
like the general characters of its supporters. They who propagate these
stories believe them to be true. They do not, of course, assert that
_every_ supernatural story is what it professes to be. They may even
admit that many are the mere creations of well-meaning but ill-informed
report. Nor is every Catholic priest, monk, or layman to be accounted a
sincere and honest man. There are betrayers of their Lord, from Judas
Iscariot to the last wretched apostates, who remain for years in the
Church, deceiving others without deceiving themselves. But on the whole,
and viewed as a body, the Catholic Church is as honest and truthful,
when she asserts that many wonderful miracles are incessantly taking
place within her, as the most scrupulous of moralists can desire.

"But she is herself deceived," exclaims the more candid separatist
or sceptic, taking up the argument declined by his scoffing brother.
Catholics, it is supposed, are under the dominion of so abject a
superstition, that the moment the subject of their religion is
introduced, they cease to exert their ordinary common sense and powers
of criticism, and believe any thing and every thing that seems to be
marvellous. Granting them to be sincere, the charitable Protestant is
of opinion that they are intellectually incapable of testing the
pretensions of these wonders to be real and true miracles. If, in plain
words, Catholics are not knaves, they _must be_ fools. Now, let me ask
any candid person who thus accounts for our belief in modern miracles,
to furnish me with an intelligible answer on two points. First, let him
explain how it comes to pass that an innumerable multitude of persons,
many of them distinguished for the highest intellectual powers, and
proving by their lives and their deaths that they are ready to make
every sacrifice for the sake of religion, should suffer themselves to be
imposed upon in so momentous a subject, should willingly accept as true
a series of absurd fabrications, whose falsehood they might detect by
the exercise of any ordinary acuteness, and should risk their reputation
with the world by professing to believe these fictions. If we _are_
sincere in our faith, it is impossible to suppose us so willing to be
imposed upon. The hollowness of these supernatural pretensions must
have betrayed itself to _some_ amongst us. The bubble must have burst
_somewhere_. If not at Rome, where Protestants imagine Catholic
intellect to be at its lowest ebb, at least in England, or France,
or Belgium, or Germany, _some_ of our great Catholic philosophers,
historians, politicians, and men of science, must have unveiled the
truth. [Footnote: It is a remarkable fact, that the most celebrated
work on the supernatural gifts accorded by God to Christians, is the
production of one of the greatest intellects, and by far the most
influential political writer, that modern Europe has seen. Görres, the
author of the _Christliche Mystik_, was the Wellington of literature
during the last European war. The influence which he exercised over
the whole German mind by his _Rhenish Mercury_ is altogether without
parallel in the history of journalism. It was, indeed, regarded as
so formidable by Napoleon himself, that he styled Görres a _fourth
continental power_. Yet this first of publicists devoted his whole life
to the investigation of the wonders of Catholic mysticism, and believed
with undoubting conviction in their reality.]

And, secondly, I desire to be told _who_ are the deceivers. If our
numerous miracles are all errors, there must be gross deception in a
host of instances _somewhere_. _Where_ is it, then? I ask; which are the
dupes, and which the rogues? Do the clergy cheat the laity? Or do the
laity (who have quite as much to do with these miracles) cheat the
clergy? Do the Jesuits entrap the Pope? Or does the Pope mystify the
Jesuits? When missionaries shed their blood in hundreds in heathen
lands, are we to believe that _they_ are the fabricators of the
wonderful tales which they have been in the habit of sending home to
Christendom? Or did they leave Europe with the intention of becoming
martyrs, without troubling themselves to ascertain whether they were
not the dupes of delusions already surrounding them in a Christian land?
Again I say, if Catholic miracles are all false, there must be boundless
trickery _somewhere_, and I demand to know _where_ it is. In an English
court of justice a charge of conspiracy cannot be entertained unless
the accuser can point out certain parties on whom to fasten his charge.
Judge and jury would laugh at a plaintiff who came into court crying out
that he was victimised by some invisible, indescribable, and unknown,
but yet very numerous band of foes. So it is with this popular theory
about Catholic miracles. We are told that we are deceived. We are all
cheated together. The bishops are victims; the priests are victims;
monks and nuns are victims; the laity are victims; the old Catholics in
England are victims; the converts are victims; the best of us all are
victims; the most learned, the most pious, the most able, the most
self-denying,--all _these_ are dupes. If there are deceivers, they are
the few, the ignorant, the cunning, and the vile. The Roman Church, as a
Church, is supposed to be under the dominion of a band of conspirators,
who have blinded her eyes without her having found it out, and who
are now using her for their own godless purposes. Does not such
a supposition confute itself? Is it worth admitting, even as an
hypothesis? Would such a statement be endured for a moment by a judge
and twelve men in a jury-box? I say, therefore, before moving a step to
overthrow the Protestant accusation, "Make a distinct and intelligible
charge of certain definite crimes against certain definite individuals.
When that is done, the proof still remains with you. Show us both who
are the deceivers, and how they deceive us; or admit that there is
no credulity so open-mouthed as that of Protestants when they attack
Catholics; no superstition so base as that which worships this visible
order of nature as an eternal rule which not even God Himself can ever
interrupt."

The fact is, however, that no Protestant ever attempts any thing like a
profound investigation of the Catholic miracles. A calm, critical, and
judicial inquiry into the worth of the Roman process of canonisation has
never been risked. Here is an enormous catalogue of incidents, whose
supernatural character is vouched for by the decrees of a long series
of Popes, professedly based upon the most prolonged and anxious legal
examination. For centuries a tribunal has been declaring that one series
of miracles after another has come before it; that it has weighed them
all with the utmost care; that it has heard every thing that could be
urged against them; that it has rejected, as not proved, a very large
number; and that, after the most searching inquiry, it _has_ found such
and such supernatural incidents to be established by every law of
human evidence. [Footnote: For the steps followed in the processes of
canonisation, see Faber's _Essay on Beatification, Canonisation, and
the Processes of the Congregation of Rites_.] No man can look at the
processes of the canonisation of Catholic Saints without admitting that
very few of those secular events which we unhesitatingly believe are
supported by so overwhelming a weight of proof. Men's fortunes and lives
are incessantly taken away by law at our very doors on lower degrees of
evidence, and no one exclaims. And yet the decisions of this Catholic
tribunal are set aside without hesitation. People think them not even
worthy of listening to. The whole affair they count a childish trifling;
and with a shrug or a sneer they pass it by.

And it is the same with those miracles which have not been brought
before any such high tribunal, but which rest on undeniable private
evidence. Those who are not Catholics put them aside simply as
incredible. They assume that they cannot be true, and therefore that
they are not true. Press them in argument, and they will shirk your most
stringent proofs. You can make no impression upon their _wills_. They
will believe any thing but that God has interrupted the course of nature
in favour of any one but themselves. In short, if we wish to see
human reason in its most irrational mood, we have but to enter into
conversation with a Protestant who asserts and thinks that he believes
the Bible miracles to be true, and urge upon him the proofs of such
modern miracles as are recorded of St. Frances of Rome. You will
perceive first, that though he has made up his mind on the subject with
unhesitating dogmatism, he has never investigated its bearings or facts,
even in outline. Nevertheless, to your surprise, you will find him
perfectly ready to start some random theory, at a moment's notice,
unconscious of the momentous, the awful nature of the matter he is
handling. You see, perhaps, that his mind is powerfully influenced
by the singular character of many Catholic miracles. He thinks them
strange, unnecessary, unaccountable, absurd, disgusting, degrading. His
nervous sensibilities are shocked by an account of the fearful pangs
accompanying the _stigmata_. In the phenomena of ecstasy he can see
nothing more than the ravings of delirium, or (if he believes in
mesmerism) than the tales of a clairvoyante, and the rigidity of
catalepsy. His physical frame, accustomed to its routine of breakfast,
luncheon, and dinner, its sofas and easy-chairs, and its luxurious bed,
shudders at the thought of the self-inflicted penances of the Saints,
and at the idea of God's bestowing a miraculous power of enduring such
horrors. He would be as much surprised to be told that Smithfield was
literally the abode of incarnate demons, as to hear that demons have
often assumed the shapes of beasts and monsters in their conflicts with
the elect. The notion that an angel might visibly appear to a pious
traveller on the Great Western or Birmingham railroad, and protect him
from death in a frightful collision of trains, makes him open his eyes
and contemplate you as scarcely sane to hint at such a thing. That "the
Virgin," as he calls her, should come down from heaven and enter a
church or a room, and hold a conversation with living men, women, or
children in the nineteenth century, and give them a trumpery medal, or
tell them to wear a piece of cloth round their neck, or cure them of
some disease, he regards about as likely and rational as that the
stories in the _Arabian Nights_ and the _Fairy Tales_ should turn out to
be true histories. Be as serious as you please, he simply laughs in his
sleeve, thinking to himself, "Well, who would have believed that the
intellect of an educated Englishman should submit itself to such
drivelling as this?"

Perceiving that this is the state of his mind, you open the Bible, which
lies, handsomely bound, upon his table, and running rapidly through
the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, point out to him a long
series of supernatural events there recorded; and show him that in
their nature they are precisely the same as those modern miracles which
provoke his disgust or contempt. You remind him, first of all, that our
Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church, and that all His people
are made _like Him_, in His life and His sufferings, as well as in His
glory; and then proceed to your summary. He accounts the penances of
Saints needless and impossible; you remind him of our blessed Lord's
fast of forty days and forty nights. He is horror-struck at the details
of the sufferings of those in whom the Passion of Christ has been
visibly renewed; you beg him to attempt to realise the bloody sweat
in the Garden of Olives. He speaks of mesmerism and clairvoyance, and
derides the thought of a Saint's being illuminated with radiant light,
or exhaling a fragrant odour; you ask him how he explains away the
transfiguration of Jesus. He says that it is physically impossible that
a man's body can be (as he expresses it) in two places at once; you
desire him to say by what law of nature our Lord entered the room where
the disciples were when the doors were shut; how St. Peter was delivered
from chains and imprisonment by the angel; how St. Paul was rapt into
the third heaven, _whether in the body or out of the body, he could not
tell_. He says that when a Saint has thought himself attacked by devils
in hideous shapes, his brain has been diseased; you entreat him to
beware of throwing a doubt on the temptation of Jesus Christ by Satan in
the wilderness. He pities you for believing that the Mother of God has
appeared for such needless purposes to excited devotees; you ask him why
the Son of God appeared long after His death and ascension to St. Paul,
and told him what he might have learnt in a natural way from the other
Apostles. He calls your miraculous relics childish trumpery; you ask
whether the handkerchiefs and aprons which cured the sick, after having
touched St. Paul's body, were trumpery also; and whether St. Luke is
countenancing superstition when he relates how the people crowded near
St. Peter to be healed by his very shadow passing over them. Then, as he
feels the overwhelming force of your rebukes, he insinuates that there
is something divine, something evidently touching, pure, and strict in
morality in the Bible narratives, which is wanting in these lives of
Catholic Saints; and you refer him to such biographies as that of St.
Frances of Rome, and compelling him to read the narratives of her
revelations, ask him if all that she says when in a state of ecstasy
does not wear, even in his judgment, the impress of a Divine origin, and
seem to be dictated by the God of all purity, humility, and love.

At length your opponent, after brief pondering, changes his ground, and
asserts that you are yourself deceived; that the real defect in Catholic
miraculous stories is the want of evidence. He tells you that he would
believe, if he could; but that you have not proved your point. You next
call his attention to the distinct promise made by our blessed Lord to
the Church, that miracles should always continue with her; and ask him
how, on his theory, he accounts for the non-fulfilment of this promise.
You desire him to lay his finger on the epoch when its fulfilment
ceased; and not only to assert that it then ceased, but to prove his
assertion. He says nothing, for he has nothing to say which he can even
attempt to prove; and you proceed to furnish a few examples of miracles,
from patristic, mediæval, or modern times, or perhaps of the present
day, which are supported by at least as cogent an amount of evidence
as the historical proof of the Scripture miracles. You insist upon his
_disproving_ these. He cannot. He resorts to some new hypothesis. He
says that there is deception _somewhere_, though he cannot tell where;
and probably by this time is showing symptoms of a wish to end the
discussion. You urge him again, and press him to give an intelligible
reason for supposing that there _must_ be deception any where. He thinks
a while; and when at length you are looking for a rational conclusion,
he starts backwards to his old assumption that the Catholic miracles
_cannot_ be true. He begs the whole question, and says that they are in
favour of Catholicism, and that Catholicism is false. You too recur to
your old reference to the Bible, and so on. And thus you run again the
same round; and you may run it a thousand times over, till you perceive
that there is but one reason why your opponent is not convinced; which
is, that he _will not_ be convinced. And thus it was in the days when
those very miracles were wrought which Protestants profess to believe.
The Jews _would not_ believe our Lord's words and doctrines. He then
bade them believe Him because of His miracles; and they instantly
imputed them to the power of the devil. He showed them that this theory
was impossible; but, so far from being convinced and converted, they
went their ways, and plotted His death. Now, our controversialists
cannot, or do not wish, to take away our lives; but when not a word is
left them in the way of argument, they go their ways, and protest
to their fellows, that we are obstinate, unfair, superstitious,
and insolent; and too often encourage one another in the bitterest
persecution of those who are convinced by our reasonings, and submit to
the Church.


I now turn to the objections which are at times felt by Catholics
themselves to the publication of Saints' Lives, abounding in
supernatural incidents. Such persons are, indeed, not numerous; and
their number is rapidly diminishing. Still it can scarcely be doubted
that conscientious Catholics _are_ to be found who take the view I am
speaking of, from ideas which, though erroneous (as I believe), are yet
so truly founded in sincerity, as to demand respect and explanation from
those who differ from them.

The objections they raise are twofold. First, they allege that such
books scandalise Protestants and drive them from the Church; and
secondly, they do not see _how_ incidents, wholly unlike our ordinary
daily experience, _can_ practically serve us in our private Christian
lives.

To the idea that non-Catholics are thus needlessly prejudiced against
the faith, I reply, that this assertion is wholly unproved. That they
do, as a matter of fact, laugh and attack such biographies, I fully
admit; but they laugh at them on grounds which we cannot admit without
giving up the Christian revelation itself. They scoff at them, not
because they think them not supported by credible testimony, but because
they are not what they call dignified, refined, and just such as they
should have supposed all things to be that come from God. That such a
temper of mind is indicative of pure Deism, it needs no words to prove.
A man who derides a miraculous event merely as _trifling_, thereby
asserts that he himself is the judge of what is great and what is little
in the sight of God. He lays down laws for the guidance of the Almighty.
He is adopting the identical reasoning of professed infidels, who on
this very ground reject Christianity itself. And it is obvious that
nothing can be more perilous than the encouragement of so fatal a
principle of judgment. Once let the acute and logical Protestant
perceive that you move one step backwards in deference to this
objection, and he will press you with fresh consequences of the very
same admission until he lands you in undisguised scepticism, if not in
the blackest Atheism.

Can any single instance, in fact, be named in which a mind that was
apparently determined to seek salvation at all costs, has been actually
deterred from entering the Catholic Church by meeting with these
extraordinary histories? Are they not a butt for determined and
obstinate Protestants, and for such Protestants only? Ask any convert
whether, on looking back, he can say that the knowledge of these
peculiarities in Catholic hagiology ever practically held him back for
four-and-twenty hours in his journey towards the Church. That the world
is angry, and that the world vents its spleen and its contempt in bitter
jests, is true enough; but _pious souls are not made to sin, or kept
away from their Saviour_, by any thing of the kind. And that the rage
and mocking of man afford not the slightest reason for inducing the
Church to turn out of her natural path, I shall not dishonour my readers
by attempting to prove to them.

That it _is_ her natural course to make these histories public, for
the practical edification of her children, is clear from one fact
alone,--they are precisely parallel to the life of our blessed Lord, as
narrated in the four Gospels. The whole question resolves itself into
this: If such lives as that of St. Frances, and many others, recently
published in England, are not edifying to the ordinary Christian, then
the life of Jesus Christ is not edifying. The Gospels, as well as the
Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, must be rigorously expurgated and
cut down to the type of the common domestic life of the present day.
Nothing can be further removed from the circumstances of most men than
the records of our Lord's miracles and supernatural acts in general.
What has the temptation, the transfiguration, the driving the devils
into the swine, the turning the water into wine at what we should now
call a "wedding-breakfast," and, in fact, almost every _act_ in our
blessed Lord's life, in common with our amusement, our business, our
society, our whole experience? Yet, to say that a devout soul can
meditate on these transcendently mysterious events, and not derive from
them practical instruction to enable her to fulfil her little trivial
earthly duties with Christian perfection, is nothing short of blasphemy.
The Son of God incarnate, all glorious, all awful, all unfathomable as
He was even in the days of His sojourning on earth, was yet our example,
our model, our embodied series of precepts. The eye of the simplest
regenerate child cannot be turned for an instant upon His Divine glories
and ineffable sufferings without drawing light therefrom to guide it
even in its play with its fellows, or in the most trivial of the duties
towards its parents and teachers.

And such, I am convinced, is the experience of Catholics of all ranks,
of every age and every degree of intellectual cultivation, who study
religiously the miraculous lives of the Saints, believing them to be, on
the whole, correct histories. It is not needful that they should regard
them to be literally true in all their details, as the Bible is true. We
have but to regard them as we regard other authentic human narratives,
with the addition of that veneration and confidence which is due to such
portions of them as have been formally sanctioned by the Church, to
derive from them unceasing spiritual comfort and instruction. Doubtless,
if we are so ignorant as to fancy that all Saints' histories are to
be alike in details, and that therefore we ought to wish that the
circumstances of our lives were the same as theirs, we shall be doing
ourselves great mischief. But let us study them with a true knowledge of
the mere elements of the Christian faith, and they will be to us what
St. Paul desires his disciples to seek for in _his_ life, namely, a
continuation, as it were, of the life of Jesus Christ, carried on
through all the successive ages of His Church on earth. They will
impress upon our minds with an intensity peculiarly their own, the
reality of the invisible world and the ensnaring tendencies of every
thing that we possess. Weak and ignorant as is the imaginative and
sensitive portion of our nature, it needs every possible help that it
can find to counteract the paralysing effects of the worldliness of the
world, of the lukewarmness of Christians, and of the enthralling
nature of the universe of sight and sense. Our courage is wonderfully
strengthened, and our love for things invisible is inflamed, by every
thing that forces us, as it were, to _see_ that this visible creation
_is not_ the only thing that is real, mighty, and present. The general
precepts and the dogmatic statements of religion acquire a singular
and living force when we perceive them carried out and realised in the
actual affairs of life in a degree to which our personal experience is a
stranger. Influenced as human nature is by example, these unpretending
narratives, whose whole strength lies in the facts which they record,
and not in the art of the biographer, undeniably _strike_ the mind with
an almost supernatural force. They enchain the attention; they compel us
to say, Are these things true? Are these things possible? Is religion,
after all, so terribly near to us? Are this life and this world so
literally vain and worthless, so absolutely nothing worth? Are suffering
and awful bodily anguish blessings to be _really_ coveted? Are the
maxims which I daily hear around me so hopelessly bad and accursed? Are
angels and devils so near, so very near, to us all? Is purgatory so
terrible and so inevitable to all but the perfect, that these fearful
visions of its pains are in substance what I myself shall endure? And
if I fall from grace and die in sin before one of the innumerable
temptations that hourly beset me, is it true that nothing less than
an eternity of such torments, the very reading of which even thus
represented makes me shudder with horror, will be my _inevitable_
lot? And is the bliss of the Saints and the joy of loving God so
inexpressibly sweet to any souls here on earth? Is it possible that any
one should escape from a state of coldness, deadness, worldliness, and
unwilling performance of his religious duties, and positively come to
lose all taste for bodily and mere intellectual pleasures through the
absorbing of his whole being into the love of Jesus and of Mary, and
through a burning thirst for the beatific vision of the Eternal Trinity?

And who will venture to say that it is not good _for us all_ to have
such thoughts frequently pressed upon our attention? If there is any
meaning in the command that we are to aim at being perfect, whatever be
the state of life _in which_ we are called to seek perfection, surely
it is no ordinary advantage thus to have the essentially supernatural
character of our religious life forced again and again upon our
attention. For, be it never forgotten, this very _supernaturalness_ is
one of its essential features. There are innumerable varieties in our
vocations. The earthly circumstances in which we are to serve God are
almost innumerable in their variety; but the supernatural element
appertains to them all alike. Our actual relationship to the awful and
glorious realities of the unseen world is precisely the same in kind as
that of the most miraculously endowed Saints. The only difference is
this, that in their case that relationship was perceived and visibly
manifested in a peculiar mode, to which we are strangers. Heaven,
purgatory, and hell are as near to us as if we beheld the visions of St.
Frances. The cross is as literally our portion, in its essential nature,
as if the five sacred wounds were renewed physically in our agonising
frame. Our angel-guardian is as incessantly by our side, as if our eyes
were opened to behold his effulgent radiance. Satan strikes the same
blows at our souls, whether he shows himself to our sight or not. The
relics of Saints, which we carefully look at or criticise, _may be_
at any moment the vehicles of the same miraculous powers as the
handkerchiefs from the body of St. Paul. Who would say to a blind man,
"Forget the tangible realities of this life, because you cannot see
them"? Who would not rather say, "Bear constantly in mind what is the
experience of those who _can_ see, that you may practically remember
their ceaseless nearness to you"? And just such is the experience of the
Saints, in whose histories faith has partly merged into sight, and the
veil which blinds our eyes has been partially and at certain seasons
withdrawn. It tells us, as few things else can tell, of the _reality_ of
the objects of our faith.

I add a word or two on the question, how far the actual conduct of the
extraordinary persons whose lives are here related is to serve as
a model for practical imitation by ordinary Christians. To the
well-instructed Catholic, it would be an impertinence in me to suggest
that they are not in every detail thus to be followed. It is the duty
of a Christian to follow the rules for daily life which it has pleased
Almighty God to lay down in the Gospel, and not to imagine that those
exceptional cases of conduct to which He has supernaturally prompted
certain individuals are to be imitated by those who have only the
ordinary graces of the Holy Spirit.

The general reader, however, may be reminded that Catholics believe,
that as the Creator of the universe occasionally interrupts the order of
the laws of nature, so He at times interrupts the relative order of the
laws of duty; not, of course, the essential laws of morality, but those
positive laws which are obligatory simply because they are enacted by
competent authority. No person, indeed, can be justified in acting on
such an idea in his own case, unless guided by supernatural light,
beyond the usual spiritual illumination given to all Christians. This
supernatural light is rarely vouchsafed, and it is accordingly in the
highest degree presumptuous in any person to overstep the ordinary
routine of distinctly ordered duty, under the idea that he is called by
God to break the rules given for the guidance of mankind in general. In
all such supposed cases, the Catholic Church has the proper tests to
apply, by which the soul can learn whether she is led by a Divine
afflatus, or betrayed by her own disordered imagination, or the deceits
of an invisible tempter.

J.M.C.

[Illustration] CONTENTS.

I.

ST. FRANCES OF ROME.

CHAPTER I.

General character of the Saint's life--Her childhood and early piety

CHAPTER II.

Francesca's early inclination for the cloister--By her father's desire
she marries Lorenzo Ponziano--Her married life--Her illness and
miraculous cure

CHAPTER III.

Francesca proceeds in her mortifications and works of charity --Her
supernatural temptations and consolations

CHAPTER IV.

The birth of Franceseca's first child--Her care in his education--She
undertakes the management of her father-in-law's household--A famine
and pestilence in Rome--Francesca's labours for the sick and poor--The
miracles wrought in her behalf

CHAPTER V.

The birth of Francesca's second son--His supernatural gifts --The
birth of her daughter--Satanic attacks upon Francesca --Troubles of
Rome--Francesca's husband is severely wounded--Her eldest son, when
given up as a hostage to the Neapolitans, is miraculously restored to
her


CHAPTER VI.

Sufferings of Rome from the troops of Ladislas--Death of Francesca's son
Evangelista--The famine and plague in Rome--Francesca's labours for the
starving and sick--Her miracles


CHAPTER VII.

Evangelista appears to his mother--An archangel is assigned to her as a
visible guardian throughout her life


CHAPTER VIII.

Francesca's illness and recovery--Her vision of hell--Restoration of
tranquillity in Rome--Return of Francesca's husband--Her power in
converting sinners


CHAPTER IX.

Fresh supernatural events in Francesca's history--Her obedience to her
husband and to her confessor rewarded by two miracles--Marriage of her
son, and ill conduct of his wife--Her conversion through Francesca's
prayers--Fresh miracles worked by Francesca


CHAPTER X.

Francesca lays the foundation of her future congregation-- Her
pilgrimage to Assisi


CHAPTER XI.

Death of Francesca's friend and director, Don Antonio-- Troubles in
Rome and Italy foretold by Francesca--Death of Vannozza, Francesca's
sister-in-law--Foundation of the Congregation of Oblates of Tor di
Specchi


CHAPTER XII.

Progress and trials of the young community--It is confirmed by the
Pope--Troubles in Rome and the Church terminated through Francesca's
intercession and the council of Florence


CHAPTER XIII.

Death of Francesca's husband--She goes to reside with the community of
Tor di Specchi--Her life as superioress


CHAPTER XIV.

Francesca's last illness and death


CHAPTER XV.

Francesca's funeral, and her subsequent canonization


II. BLESSED LUCY OF NARNI


III. DOMINICA OF PARADISO


IV. ANNE DE MONTMORENCY, THE SOLITARY OF THE PYRENEES


(Illustration) ST. FRANCES OF ROME




CHAPTER I.

GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE SAINT'S LIFE--HER CHILDHOOD AND EARLY PIETY.

(Illustration)

There have been saints whose histories strike us as particularly
beautiful, not only as possessing the beauty which always belongs
to sanctity, whether exhibited in an aged servant of God, who for
threescore years and more has borne the heat and burden of the day, or
in the youth who has offered up the morning of his life to His Maker,
and yielded it into His hands before twenty summers have passed over
his head; whether in a warrior king like St. Louis, or a beggar like
Benedict Labré, or a royal lady like St. Elizabeth of Hungary; but also
as uniting--in the circumstances of their lives, in the places they
inhabited, and the epochs when they appeared in the world, much that
is in itself poetical and interesting, and calculated to attract the
attention of the historian and the man of letters, as well as of the
theologian and the devout. In this class of saints may well be included
Francesca Romana, the foundress of the religious order of the Oblates
of Tor di Specchi. She was the model of young girls, the example of a
devout matron, and finally a widow, according to the very pattern drawn
by St. Paul; she was beautiful, courageous, and full of wisdom, nobly
born, and delicately brought up: Rome was the place of her birth, and
the scene of her labours; her home was in the centre of the great
city, in the heart of the Trastevere; her life was full of trials
and hair-breadth escapes, and strange reverses; her hidden life was
marvellous in the extreme: visions of terror and of beauty followed her
all her days; favours such as were never granted to any other saint were
vouchsafed to her; the world of spirits was continually thrown open to
her sight; and yet, in her daily conduct, her character and her ways,
minute details of which have reached us, there is a simplicity as well
as a deep humility, awful in one so highly gifted, touching in one so
highly favoured.

Troubled and wild were the times she lived in; perhaps if one had to
point out a period in which a Catholic Christian would rather not have
had his lot cast,--one in which there was most to try his faith and
wound his feelings, he would name the end of the fourteenth century, and
the beginning of the fifteenth. War was raging all over Europe; Italy
was torn by inward dissensions, by the rival factions of the Guelphs and
the Ghibellines. So savage was the spirit with which their conflicts
were carried on, that barbarism seemed once more about to overspread
that fair land, and the Church itself was afflicted not only by the
outward persecutions which strengthen its vitality, though for a while
they may appear to cripple its action, but by trials of a far deeper and
more painful nature. Heresy had torn from her arms a great number of her
children, and repeated schisms were dividing those who, in appearance
and even in intention, remained faithful to the Holy See. The successors
of St. Peter had removed the seat of their residence to Avignon, and the
Eternal City presented the aspect of one vast battle-field, on which
daily and hourly conflicts were occurring. The Colonnas, the Orsinis,
the Savellis, were every instant engaged in struggles which deluged the
streets with blood, and cut off many of her citizens in the flower of
their age; strangers were also continually invading the heritage of the
Church, and desecrated Rome with massacres and outrages scarcely less
deplorable than those of the Huns and the Vandals. In the capital of the
Christian world, ruins of recent date lay side by side with the relics
of past ages; the churches were sacked, burned, and destroyed; the
solitary and indestructible basilicas stood almost alone, mournfully
erect amidst these scenes of carnage and gloom; and the eyes of the
people of Rome were wistfully directed towards that tutelary power,
which has ever been to them a pledge of prosperity and peace, and whose
removal the signal of war and of misery.

It was at that time, during the Pontificate of Urban VI., in the year
1384, that Francesca was born at Rome; that "she rose as a star in a
dark night," according to the expression of the most ancient of her
biographers. Her father's name was Paul Bussa; her mother's Jacobella
de' Roffredeschi; they were both of noble and even illustrious descent,
and closely allied to the Orsinis, the Savellis, and the Mellinis. On
the day of her birth she was carried to the church of Santa Agnese, in
the Piazza Navona, and there baptised. Little could the worshippers who
may have been praying there that day for a blessing on their bereaved
and distracted city, have guessed in what form that blessing was
bestowed, and that that little babe, a few hours old, was to prove a
most powerful instrument in the hands of God for the extinction of
schism, the revival of piety, and the return of peace.

From her infancy, Francesca was not like other children. Her mother,
when she held her in her arms or hushed her to sleep on her knee, had
always an involuntary feeling of reverence for her little daughter; it
was as if an angel of God, not an earthly child, had been lent her; a
heavenly expression shone in her eyes, and the calm serenity of her
infant features struck all who approached her with admiration. Francesca
learned to read at the same time that she began to speak; the first
words she was taught to utter were the sacred names of Jesus and Mary;
at her mother's knee she lisped the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin,
and during the whole course of her life she never omitted that practice.

At two or three years old she had the sense and intelligence of a
grown-up person; an extraordinary piety revealed itself in all her words
and actions. She never played like other children; but when left to
herself would often retire into silent corners of her father's palace,
and kneeling down, join her little hands in prayer; and lifting up her
infant heart to God, would read a devout book, or repeat hymns to the
Blessed Virgin, her own dear mother as she used to call her. Silence
appeared to be the delight of this young child--the deepest reserve and
modesty an instinct with her. At the age of six years the practices of
the saints were already familiar to her. She had left off eating
meat, eggs, or sweets of any description, and lived on plainly boiled
vegetables and bread. The necessity of eating at all seemed irksome to
her, and she never drank any thing but pure water. Then also had begun
her unwearied study of the lives of holy women, and especially of the
virgin martyrs who have shed their blood for the love of Jesus Christ.
The Sacrament of Confirmation, which she received at that time in the
church of Santa Agnese, the same in which she had been baptised, filled
her with ardour to show her love for her Lord by every imaginable means,
even those the most painful to the flesh.

Her mother was a very devout person, and in the habit of visiting every
day some of the churches, especially those where indulgences were to
be gained, and she also frequented the stations with affectionate
assiduity. For in that troubled epoch, as in the earliest times of the
Church, as now, as always, on certain days, in certain places, the
relics of apostles, of martyrs, and of confessors were exhibited to the
faithful, often on the very spot where they had finished their course
with joy, having kept their faith and won their crown. The devotion of
"the stations," as it is performed in Rome, is one of the most touching
links with the past that it is possible to conceive. To pass along the
street, so often trod by holy feet in former and in latter days, and
seek the church appointed for that day's station; to approach some
time-worn basilica, or ancient sanctuary, without the city walls may be,
and pausing on the threshold, give one look at the glorious works of
Almighty God in the natural world,--at the wide Campagna, that land-sea,
so beautiful in its broad expanse and its desolate grandeur, at the
purple hills with their golden lights and their deep-blue shadows, and
the arched sky telling so vividly the glory of its Maker; and then
slowly lifting the heavy curtain that stands between that vision of
earthly beauty, and the shrine where countless generations have come
to worship,--to tread under feet the green boughs, the sweet-smelling
leaves, the scattered flowers, that morning strewn upon the uneven,
time-trod, time-honoured pavement; bowing in adoration before the Lord
in His tabernacle, to thank Him for the wonders that He has worked in
His saints,--for the beauty of the world of grace, of which that of the
visible world is but the type and the shadow; and then move from one
shrine to the other, wherever the lights upon the altars point the way,
and invoke the assistance, the prayers of the saints whose relics are
there displayed;--all this is one of those rare enjoyments which at once
feed the soul and awake the imagination, and which the devout Christian
can find in no place but Rome.

It was these "stations" that Francesca's mother frequented, and took her
little daughter with her. Sometimes she went to some church in the heart
of the city; sometimes to some lonely shrine without the walls. Then,
as now, the beggars (so we find it mentioned later in the life of the
Saint) congregated at the doors, and clamoured for alms. Then, as now,
the lights burned upon the altars, and the sweet smell of fragrant
and crushed leaves perfumed the air. During sermons the little girl's
attention never wandered; and on her return home she was wont to repeat
what she had heard with unction and delight.

Her mother's favourite church was that of Santa Maria Nuova; in our day
more frequently called that of San Francesca Romana. It stands in the
Toro Romano, close to the ruins of the ancient Temple of Peace. It was
served at that time by the Benedictine monks of Mount Olivet; and to
one of them, Don Antonio di Monte Savello, Jacobella de' Roffredeschi
intrusted the spiritual direction of her daughter. He was a man of great
learning and piety, and continued her director for five and thirty
years. Every Wednesday the little maiden came to him for confession. She
consulted him about her occupations, her religious exercises, and
her studies, and exactly obeyed his most minute directions, even in
indifferent things. Often she tried for his permission to practise
greater austerities; and such was her fervour, and the plain indications
of God's designs upon her, that he occasionally allowed her to perform
penances which might have been considered in ordinary cases too severe
for her tender age. At other times he forbade them altogether; and she
submitted cheerfully to his commands, without a word of remonstrance or
complaint, and resumed them again at his desire, with the equanimity
of one who well knew that the spirit of perfect obedience is more
acceptable to God than any works of devotion.

  "A celestial brightness, a more eternal beauty,
  Shone on her face, and encircled her form, when after confession
  Homeward serenely she walked, with God's benediction upon
  her.
  When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite
  music." [Footnote: Longfellow: _Evangeline_.]
Francesca's daily life was as perfect as a child's could be. No untrue
words sullied her pure lips; no gross thought dwelt in her mind. She
seldom laughed, though a sweet smile was often on her lips. Up to the
age of eleven, her life was one long continual prayer. Every little
action was performed with a view to the glory of God. Her trifling
failings she deplored with anguish; every stain on the pure mirror of
her conscience was instantly washed away by tears. It was not long
before it pleased God to vouchsafe to her extraordinary graces. Her
early and almost intuitive acquaintance with the mysteries of religion
was wonderful. Every day she meditated on the Incarnation and the
Passion of Jesus Christ; and her devotion to the Blessed Virgin
increased in proportion to her love for our Lord. Her face flushed with
delight, and a seraphic expression beamed in her eyes, when she spoke
of the sufferings of Jesus, and the glories of Mary. From the little
oratory where she held secret communion with heaven, she went out into
the world with the most ardent desire to serve the poor, to console the
afflicted, to do good to all. The affection of her young heart found
vent in numerous works of charity; and Francesca's name, and Francesca's
sweet voice, and Francesca's fair face, were even then to many of the
sufferers of that dark epoch a sign of hope,--a pledge that God was
still amongst them as of yore, and His Spirit at work in the hearts of
men.



CHAPTER II.

FRANCESCA'S EARLY INCLINATION FOR THE CLOISTER--BY HER FATHER'S DESIRE
SHE MARRIES LORENZO PONZIANO--HER MARRIED LIFE--HER ILLNESS AND
MIRACULOUS CURE.


From the time that Francesca had understood the meaning of the words,
her greatest desire had been to enter a convent; but with that spirit of
humility and reserve which so particularly belonged to her, she had kept
her desire concealed in her heart, and had manifested it to none but
God and her director. Don Antonio encouraged her to persevere in this
silence, and to prove her own resolution by secretly adhering to the
rules, and practising the austerities of one of the strictest religious
orders. She gladly assented to this, and persevered in it for a
considerable time. Stronger and deeper every day grew her inclination to
forsake the world, and to hold communion with God alone in the solitude
of the cloister; with that God whose love had already driven from her
heart all care for comfort, for pleasure, and for self. But not so
smooth was to be her path through life; not much longer was she to sit
in silence at the feet of her Lord, with no other thought than to live
on the words, which fell from His lips.

Though she concealed as much as possible the peculiarities of her mode
of life, they could not altogether escape the notice of her parents; and
they soon questioned her on the subject. When she informed them of her
wish to embrace the religious life, her father chose to consider her
vocation as a childish fancy, and informed her in return that he had
already promised her in marriage to Lorenzo Ponziano, a young nobleman
of illustrious birth, and not less eminent for his virtues and for his
talents than from his fortune and position. He reckoned amongst his
ancestors St. Paulianus, pope and martyr; his mother was a Mellini; and
his eldest brother Paluzzo had married Vannuzza, a daughter of the
noble house of Santo Croce. Francesca's heart sank within her at this
announcement, and falling on her knees she implored her father to alter
his determination, and allow her to follow what she believed to be the
will of God in her regard. She went even so far as to protest that
nothing should induce her to consent to this marriage; torrents of tears
fell from her eyes as she poured forth her supplications and urged her
request. But it was all in vain that she wept and prayed. Paul Bussa
turned a deaf ear to her pleadings; declared that his word was pledged,
that nothing should ever persuade him to retract it; and he insisted
that, as a dutiful daughter, she should submit herself to his will.
Seeing him thus immovable, Francesca rose from her knees, withdrew
in silence from his presence, and retiring into her little oratory,
prostrated herself before the crucifix, and asked counsel of Him at
whose feet she wished to live and to die; and implored Him, if such was
His good pleasure, to exert His Almighty Power, and raise obstacles to
the projected marriage. Then, strengthened by prayer, she was inspired
to seek direction from him who was the organ of the divine will to her,
and hurrying to Santa Maria Nuova, she requested to see Don Antonio
Savello.

Kindly and gently the good priest spoke to his afflicted penitent. He
promised to consult the Lord for her in prayer, and suggested some
devotions to be used by herself for that purpose. Then, seeing her
countenance assume a calmer expression, he endeavoured to prepare her
mind for what he doubtless already knew was the will of God, and the
true, though in one so minded, the singular vocation of Francesca. "If
your parents persist in their resolution (he said), take it, my child,
as a sign that God expects of you this sacrifice. Offer up to Him in
that case your earnest desire for the religious life. He will accept the
will for the deed; and you will obtain at once the reward of that wish,
and the peculiar graces attached to the sacrament of marriage. God's
ways are not as our ways, Francesca. When St. Mary Magdalene had sent
for the Lord Jesus Christ to come and heal her brother, it was no doubt
a severe trial to her that He came not; that the long hours of the day
and of the night succeeded each other, and that He tarried on the way,
and sent no message or token of His love. But when her brother rose from
the dead, when the shroud fell from his limbs, and he stood before her
full of life and strength, she understood the mystery, and adored
the divine wisdom of that delay. God indeed asks of you your heart,
Francesca; but He also claims your whole self as an oblation, and
therefore your will that He may mould it into entire conformity with
His own. For works may be many and good, my daughter, and piety may be
fervent, and virtues eminent, and yet the smallest leaven of self-love
or self-will may ruin the whole. Why do you weep, Francesca? That God's
will is not accomplished, or that your own is thwarted? Nothing but sin
can mar the first, and in this your trial there is not the least shade
of sin. As to your own will, bend, break, annihilate it, my child, and
take courage. Have but one thought--the good pleasure, the sweet will
of God; submit yourself to His Providence. Lay down your wishes as an
oblation on His altar; give up that highest place which you had justly
coveted; take the lower one which He now appoints you; and if you cannot
be His spouse, be His loving and faithful servant."

Francesca went home, and awaited in silence her father's further
commands. She was very pale, for the struggle was a painful one. She
prayed night and day, watched and fasted. When Paul Bussa renewed his
injunctions, she gently gave her assent, begged him to forgive her past
resistance, and henceforward gave no outward signs of the suffering
within, all the greater that it came in the form of rejoicing, and that
others deemed that to be happiness which cost her so many secret tears.
The family of Ponziano were overjoyed at the marriage,--the bride was so
rich, so beautiful, and so virtuous; there was not a young man in Rome
who did not look with envy on Lorenzo, and wish himself in his stead.
There was no end to the banquets, the festivities, the merry-makings,
which took place on the occasion; and in the midst of these rejoicings
Francesca left her father's palace for that of the Ponziani. It stood in
the heart of the Trastevere, close to the Yellow River, though not quite
upon it, in the vicinity of the Ponte Rotto, in a street that runs
parallel with the Tiber. It is a well-known spot; and on the 9th of
March, the Festival of St. Francesca, the people of Rome and of the
neighbourhood flock to it in crowds. The modern building that has been
raised on the foundation of the old palace is the Casa dei Esercizii
Pii, for the young men of the city. There the repentant sinner who longs
to break the chain of sin, the youth beset by some strong temptation,
one who has heard the inward voice summoning him to higher paths of
virtue, another who is in doubt as to the particular line of life to
which he is called, may come, and leave behind them for three, or five,
or ten days, as it may be, the busy world, with all its distractions and
its agitations, and, free for the time being from temporal cares, the
wants of the body provided for, and the mind at rest, may commune with
God and their own souls. Here they listen daily, nay hourly, to the
instructions of devout priests, who, in the manner prescribed by St.
Ignatius, place before them in turn the most awful truths and the most
consoling mysteries of the Kingdom of God. Resolutions are thus taken,
conversions often effected, good purposes strengthened in a way which
often seems little short of miraculous. The means are marvellously
adapted to the end; and though many a wave may sweep over the soul,
when it again returns to the world, a mark has been stamped upon it not
easily effaced.

Over the Casa dei Esercizii Pii the sweet spirit of Francesca seems
still to preside. On the day of her festival its rooms are thrown open,
every memorial of the gentle saint is exhibited, lights burn on numerous
altars, flowers deck the passages, leaves are strewn in the chapel, on
the stairs, in the entrance-court; gay carpets, figured tapestry and
crimson silks hang over the door, and crowds of people go in and out,
and kneel before the relics or the pictures of the dear saint of Rome,
and greet on each altar, and linger in these chambers, like kinsfolk met
on a birthday to rejoice together. The well-dressed and the ragged, the
rich and the poor, without distinction, pay their homage to her sweet
memory whose living presence once adorned the spot which they visit. It
is a joyous and touching festival, one which awakens tender thoughts,
and brings the world of memory into close connection with that of hope.
The mind is forcibly carried back to the day when the young bride of
Lorenzo Ponziano entered these walls for the first time, in all the
sacred beauty of holiness and youth--

  "Pure as the virgin snow that dwells
  Upon the mountain's crest,
  Cold as the sheet of ice that lies
  Upon the lake's deep breast."

Pure from the least taint of worldly vanity, cold to all that belongs
to human passion; but with a heart burning with love to God, and
overflowing with charity to every creature of His.

She was received tenderly and joyfully by Lorenzo himself, by his father
Andrew, his mother Cecilia, and Vannozza, the wife of his elder brother.
Francesca smiled sweetly as she returned their caresses; but the noise,
and the gaiety, and the visiting, that attended a wedding in those
days weighed heavily on her spirits; and though she never complained,
Vannozza perceived that her little heart was oppressed with some secret
sorrow, and tenderly inquired into its cause. Francesca could not resist
the gentle appeal, and disclosed her grief to her kind sister. She told
her that the world had never given her pleasure, that her affections
were elsewhere set, that she longed to live for God alone, and felt
sad, in spite of all her efforts, at the tumult and dissipation, which
was now her portion. "If such are your feelings, my beloved little
sister," exclaimed Vannozza, "my sympathy may serve to console you; for
neither do I find any delight in the vanities of the world, but only in
prayer and meditation. Let us be friends, Francesca; I will help you to
lead the life you desire, and together we shall arrive at the end we
have in view."

These kind words filled Francesca's heart with joy; and from that day
forward there sprung up a friendship between these two young women,
which lasted for eight-and-thirty years, and was a source of the
greatest consolation to them through all the trials they had to
encounter, at the same time that it edified all those who beheld that
tender affection.

In her new home Francesca followed the same mode of life which she had
pursued in her father's house; but her zeal was tempered with so much
wisdom and prudence, that she offended no one, and contrived to win the
affection of all her relations. Her good sense, her sweetness of temper,
her earnest piety, charmed them all; and they were astonished that so
young a girl could at once assume the part and fulfil the duties of a
devoted wife and a noble matron. Anxious in every way to conform herself
to Lorenzo's wishes, she received the visits of the high-born ladies her
equals and companions, and returned them with punctuality. She submitted
to appear in public with all the state which belonged to her position,
and accepted and wore the costly dresses and the splendid jewels which
her husband lavished upon her; but under those gorgeous silks and rich
brocades a hair-shirt was concealed. Always ready to comply with any
observance which duty or propriety required, she at the same time
steadily abstained even from the innocent amusements in which others
indulged; and never danced or played at cards, or sat up late at night.
Her manner was so gentle and kind, that it inspired affection in all who
approached her; but there was also a profound and awful purity in her
aspect and in her demeanour, which effectually checked the utterance of
a free or licentious word in her presence. Faithful to her early habits
of piety, she continued every Wednesday her visits to Santa Maria Nuova;
and after confessing to Don Antonio, she went to communion with such
fervent devotion, that those who saw her at the altar absorbed in
adoration, foresaw that God would ere long bestow extraordinary graces
on her soul. Rising betimes in the morning, Francesca devoutly said her
prayers, made her meditation, and read attentively out of a spiritual
book. In the course of the day, whenever she had a moment's leisure
unclaimed by any of the duties of her state, she withdrew into a church
or into her own room, and gave herself up to prayer. Every Saturday she
had a conference with Fra Michele, a Dominican monk, the prior of San
Clemente, and an intimate friend of her father-in-law. He was a learned
theologian, as well as a man of great piety and virtue, and instructed
her with care in all the doctrines of religion.

At the same tune, so austere and devout a life in a young person of
twelve years old could not fail to attract the attention and draw down
the censures of the worldly. Many such began to laugh at Francesca, and
to turn her piety into ridicule. They intruded their advice on Lorenzo
Ponziano, and urged him to put a stop to what they termed his wife's
eccentricities. But happily for Francesca, he was not one of those men
who are easily influenced by the opinion of others. He formed his
own judgment, and pursued his own line of conduct undisturbed by the
comments and animadversions of his would-be advisers. His young wife was
much too precious to him, much too perfect in his sight, her whole life
bore too visibly the stamp of God's dealings with her, for him to dream
of interfering with the course she had taken. On the contrary, he looked
upon her with that affectionate veneration which the presence of true
sanctity always awakens in a noble and religious mind. His father and
mother were of the same way of thinking, and all but idolised the holy
child who had come amongst them as an angel of peace. They regarded
her as the blessing of their house, and the comfort of their old age.
Paluzzo, Lorenzo's brother, delighted in encouraging the intimacy that
had arisen between his young sister-in-law and his own wife Vannozza.
There was not a single member, friend, or servant, of that noble family,
that did not look with delight upon Francesca. She was the joy of every
heart, the sweet consoler of every sorrow, the link that bound them
all by the sacred cord of love. Day by day her influence--her tender,
noiseless, gentle influence--was felt, subduing, winning, drawing them
all to God.

The happiness which the family of Ponziano had enjoyed since Lorenzo's
marriage was interrupted by the sudden and dangerous illness of his
wife, which baffled all medical skill, and soon brought her to the verge
of the grave. The affliction of her husband and of his whole family was
extreme. Their pearl of great price seemed about to be taken from them.
No remedies afforded the slightest relief to her sufferings; she was
unable to rest, or to retain any nourishment; and every day her strength
declined. The consternation of her friends knew no bounds; her father
was inconsolable. He secretly reproached himself with the constraint he
had placed on her inclinations, and considered her illness as a Divine
chastisement. Francesca alone remained unmoved amidst the general
affliction. She placed her life in the hands of God, and waited the
event with perfect submission. Unable to speak, or even to move, the
sweet expression of her earnest eyes alone spoke her gratitude to those
who nursed her and wept over her sufferings. At other times they were
fixed on the Crucifix with an unutterable look of trust and love. Once
only she was disturbed, and indignation gave her strength to protest
against the guilty suggestions of some friends of the family, who,
according to the notions of that time, persisted in believing that a
spell had been cast upon her, and proposed to have recourse to some
persons in Rome who dealt, or pretended to deal, in magic arts.
Francesca declared herself ready to die, rather than countenance so
impious a proceeding. After all medical resources had been exhausted,
when despair had succeeded to hope, Almighty God restored her health for
a while; and the news of her recovery was hailed with rapture within and
without the palace.

Her sufferings, however, returned with double violence; she endured the
most excruciating pains; and was again considered to be at the point
of death. During a whole year she remained as it were on the brink of
eternity: her soul prepared to take its wing; continually sustained by
the Sacraments of the Church, her only remaining thought was to soothe
the anguish of her husband and parents. Once again, those persons who
had previously proposed to resort to magic arts for her cure, managed to
thrust into her room, on some pretence or other, a woman celebrated in
that line. Francesca, enlightened by a divine inspiration, instantly
detected the fraud; and raising herself in her bed, with a voice, the
strength of which astonished the bystanders, exclaimed, "Begone,
thou servant of Satan, nor ever venture to enter these walls again!"
Exhausted by the effort, she fell back faint and colourless; and for a
moment they feared that her spirit had passed away. But that very day
God was preparing a miracle in her behalf; and as she had refused to
hold any communication with the Evil One, He was about to send His young
servant a heavenly messenger, with health and healing on his wings. It
was the eve of the Festival of St. Alexis,--that noble Roman penitent,
who passed so many years at the threshold of his own palace, unpitied,
unrecognised by his own relations, who went in and out at the gate, and
stopped not to question the silent, lonely, patient beggar, who lay
there with his face hid in a poor cloak, finding peace in the midst of
bitterness.

The Ponziani had all withdrawn to rest for a few hours; the women
who attended on the dying Francesca had fallen asleep. She was lying
motionless on her couch of pain. Her sufferings had been sharp; they
were sharper than ever that night. She endured them in the strength of
the Cross, from which neither her eyes nor her thoughts wandered. The
whole house, and apparently the city also, was wrapt in slumber; for not
a sound marred the stillness of the hour,--that stillness so trying
to those who watch and suffer. Suddenly on the darkness of the silent
chamber a light broke, bright as the day. In the midst stood a radiant
figure, majestic in form and gracious in countenance. He wore a
pilgrim's robe; but it shone like burnished gold. Drawing near to
Francesca's bed, he said: "I am Alexis, and am sent from God to inquire
of thee if thou choosest to be healed?" Twice he repeated the words,
and then the dying one faintly murmured, "I have no choice but the good
pleasure of God. Be it done unto me according to His will. For my own
part, I would prefer to die, and for my soul to fly to Him at once; but
I accept all at His hands, be it life or be it death." "Life, then,
it is to be," replied St. Alexis; "for He chooses that thou shouldest
remain in the world to glorify His name." With these words he spread his
mantle over Francesca and disappeared, leaving her perfectly recovered.

Confounded at this extraordinary favour, more alive to the sense
of God's wonderful mercy than to her own sudden freedom from pain,
Francesca rose in haste, and prostrate on the floor, made a silent and
fervent thanksgiving; then slipping out of her room without awaking her
nurses, she hurried to the bedside of her friend and sister. Putting her
arm round her neck and her cheek next to her's, she exclaimed, "Vannozza
cara! Vannozza mia!" (My dear Vannozza, my own Vannozza.) And the
bewildered Vannozza suddenly awoke out of her sleep, and distrusting the
evidence of her senses, kept repeating, "Who calls me? Who are you? Am
I dreaming? It sounds like the voice of my Cecolella." [Footnote: The
Italian diminutive for Francesca.] "Yes, it is your Cecolella; it is
your little sister who is speaking to you." "My Francesca, whom I left
an hour ago at the point of death?" "Yes, the very same Francesca who
now holds you to her breast; you, you, my beloved companion, who day and
night have comforted and consoled me during my long illness, and who
must now help me to thank God for His wonderful mercy." Then sitting
upon her bed, with her hands clasped in her's, she related to her her
vision, and the instantaneous recovery that had followed it; and then,
as the light was beginning to break into the chamber, she added with
eagerness, "Now, now the day is come. Let us not delay a moment longer,
but hasten with me to Santa Maria Nuova, and then to the church of St.
Alexis. I must venerate his relics, and return him my thanks, before
others learn what God has done for me."

This pious purpose fulfilled, they returned home, where Francesca was
looked upon as one risen from the dead. The affection she inspired was
mingled with awe; every one considered her as the special object of the
Divine mercy, and venerated her accordingly. Not so joyfully had Lorenzo
received her on their bridal-day, as when she came to him now, restored
to his arms by the miraculous interposition of a merciful God.




CHAPTER III.

FRANCESCA PROCEEDS IN HER MORTIFICATIONS AND WORKS OF CHARITY--HER
SUPERNATURAL TEMPTATIONS AND CONSOLATIONS.

Not in vain had Francesca been brought so near to death, and so
wonderfully restored to perfect health. A favour such as she had
received could not fail of producing signal results in one who so
well corresponded with every degree of grace vouchsafed to her. This
last manifestation of God's mercy disposed her to meditate deeply and
earnestly on the designs of Providence in her regard. She seemed now
to discern, in a clear and overpowering manner, the nature of the
particular judgment which she had been about to undergo, the amount of
responsibility incurred by every grace conferred on her soul, the severe
account which would be demanded of every talent committed to her charge;
and at the sight she shuddered, as a man draws back affrighted at the
distinct appearance of a precipice which he has skirted in the night, or
at the waves dashing wildly on a beach on which he has been landed in
safety. Her meditations at that time assumed a very solemn character;
every moment that she could spare was spent in the neighbouring church
of St. Cecilia or in her own oratory, and employed in a minute review of
her past life, and in forming heroic resolutions for the future.

The government of the tongue is one of the most difficult and important
points in the spiritual life. From this time forward Francesca avoided
all unnecessary conversations, and became habitually silent. There was
no moroseness in her silence; it never interfered with the kindnesses or
the courtesies of life; but as in childhood she had been remarkable
for it, so in womanhood it distinguished her, and especially since her
illness and miraculous recovery. Vannozza inquired of her one day what
it was that made her so habitually silent, and she answered, "God
expects more of us than heretofore;" and then she proposed to her
a still stricter mode of life than they had yet adopted. Vannozza
willingly assented, and they agreed to give up all useless amusements,
fashionable drives, and diversions, and to devote to prayer and to good
works the hours thus withdrawn from the service of the world. They
resolved to observe with the most exact punctuality every law of God,
and every precept of the Church; to obey their husbands with the most
attentive and Christian-like submission; to be invariably docile to
their ghostly father, and submit to him their actions, their words, and
even their thoughts; and thus to secure themselves against the deceits
of the evil one. They then proceeded to arrange for themselves a place
of retreat, where they could withdraw to pray at any hour of the day or
of the night. It was not easy to accomplish this in a palace inhabited
by a numerous family and a large number of servants; but in a sort of
cave at one end of the garden, and in a little room that happened to be
unoccupied under the roof of the house, they established two oratories,
which they furnished with crucifixes, images of our Blessed Lady, and
pictures of saints, as well as with various other objects of devotion
and with instruments of penance. These two little cells became their
comfort and delight; whenever their domestic duties or their religious
observances out of doors left them at liberty, they were in the habit
of retiring into the garden oratory, and at night they frequently spent
whole hours in prayer in the upper chamber. The first dawn of day often
found them at their orisons. The hours that were not devoted to prayer
or to the duties of their state, they employed in works of charity.
Almost every day they went to the hospital of San Spirito, and nursed
the sick with the kindest attention; consoling them by their gentle
words and tender care, bestowing alms upon the most needy, and above
all, tending affectionately the most disgusting cases of disease
and infirmity. Throughout their whole lives they never omitted this
practice. To serve Christ in His afflicted brethren was a privilege they
never consented to forego.

Francesca was at this time very anxious to lay aside the insignia of
wealth and rank, and to dress as simply as the poor she so much loved;
but, always obedient, she would not attempt to do so without the
permission of her spiritual guide. Don Antonio Savello would not give
her leave to relinquish the splendid robes then worn by persons of her
rank; he feared it might annoy her husband, and that there might be
danger of ostentation in any thing that attracted public attention; but
he allowed both the sisters to wear a coarse woollen garment under
their magnificent dresses, and to practise in secret several other
austerities. Their fasts and abstinences became more rigid than ever;
but were carried on with so much simplicity, and such a total absence
of display, that the very persons who habitually took their meals in
company with them, scarcely remarked their mortifications, or else
attributed them to a peculiarity of taste or the observance of a
regimen. Disciplines and other bodily penances of a very severe nature
were by this time habitual to Francesca, and she persevered in them to
the end of her life. With whatever care they concealed all these things,
it was not possible that the city of Rome should remain ignorant of
their piety and their generosity to the poor. The common people looked
upon Francesca and Vannozza as two saints; and their example began to
tell beneficially upon the women of their own class. Several noble
ladies were inspired with the desire to walk in their steps, and to
imitate their virtues. But it was not likely that Satan should behold
unmoved the work of grace thus advancing in the hearts of these two
young servants of God, and through them on many others. He chafed at the
sight; and now began that long series of attacks, of struggles, and of
artifices, by which he endeavoured to mar the glorious progress of
these heroic souls. Almighty God seems to have granted to the prince of
darkness, in San Francesca's case, a permission in some respects similar
to that which He gave him with regard to His servant Job. He was allowed
to throw temptations in her way, to cause her strange sufferings, to
persecute her by fearful manifestations of his visible presence, to
haunt her under various shapes, some seductive in their appearance,
others repulsive and terrific in their nature; but he was not permitted
(as, thanks be to God, he never is permitted,) to deceive or to injure
His faithful servant, who for every trial of the sort obtained some
divine favour in compensation; who for every vision of diabolical
horror, was allowed a glimpse into the world of glory; and to whom at a
later period was appointed a heavenly guardian to defend her against the
violence of her infernal foe.

The first time that Satan presented himself in a visible form to
Francesca's sight, God gave her an earnest of His protection in the
strife about to be waged between her and the old serpent by miraculously
revealing to her the character of her visitor. It was under the aspect
of a venerable hermit, emaciated with fasts and watchings, that he
entered the Ponziano palace: his intention was, by some artful words, to
inspire Francesca with aversion and disgust for the solitary life, and
at the same time for that hidden life which she so zealously practised
in the midst of the world. He was shown into a large room, where the
assembled family were sitting and conversing together. No sooner had
Francesca set her eyes upon him, than she was supernaturally enlightened
as to his true character; she knew at once the dreadful enemy, thus
for the first time made manifest to her sight; and, suddenly changing
colour, she rose and left the room. Vannozza followed (alarmed at her
hasty departure), and found her in the oratory kneeling before the
Crucifix, and as pale as death. She inquired into the cause of her
emotion; but Frances simply desired her to return to the sitting-room,
and request Lorenzo to dismiss the hermit. As soon as he was departed,
she re-appeared amongst them as serene and calm as usual; and to no one
but to her confessor did she mention the circumstance. Yet it was a most
awful moment, that first initiation into the supernatural world, that
first contact with the powers of darkness, that opening of the visible
war between her and the great enemy. No wonder that she was habitually
silent; her soul must have lived in very close communion with the
invisible world, and the presence of God must have been realised in
an extraordinary decree by one whose spiritual discernment was so
miraculously keen.

A more ordinary snare was the tempter's next resource, and he chose as
his instrument a person of piety and virtue, but whose human fears and
affections were too strong for her faith. He suggested to Cecilia, the
mother-in-law of the two saints, who was most fondly attached to them,
and maternally solicitous about their healths, that the ascetic life
which they led must necessarily impair it; that amusements were
essential to young persons; and that the singularity of their conduct
reflected discredit on the family. Under this impression, she strove by
every means in her power to counteract their designs, to thwart them in
their devotional and charitable practices, and to induce them to give up
more of their time and of their attention to the world. She thus gave
them occasion to practise a very peculiar kind of patience, and to gain
the more merit in the eyes of God, in that they had daily to encounter a
sort of opposition particularly trying to young and ardent spirits. It
is related, that one day, when they had gently but steadily refused
to pay some visits which, far from being absolute duties, were only
pretexts for gossip and the most frivolous conversations, Francesca and
Vannozza had retired into the garden oratory; and after spending some
time in prayer, began conversing together on the life which the early
Fathers were wont to lead in the deserts, and of the happiness it must
be to live entirely devoted to the service of God, and to commune with
Him above, far from the distracting thoughts and cares of the world.
They went on picturing to themselves the manner in which they would
have divided their time and arranged their occupations under similar
circumstances, and together they made out a complete rule of life.

Absorbed in the subject, Vannozza exclaimed, with childlike simplicity,
"But what should we have to eat, sister?" and Francesca replied, "We
should search for fruits in the desert, dearest; and God would surely
not let us seek in vain." As she said these words they rose to return
home, and from a tree which grew out of a ruined wall on one side of
the garden there fell at her feet a quince of the largest size and most
shining colour, and another similar to it was lying in Vannozza's path.
The sisters looked at each other in silent astonishment; for the time of
the year was April, and nothing but a miracle could have brought these
apples to maturity at this unwonted season. The taste of the fruit was
as excellent as its colour was beautiful. They were divided amongst
the members of the family, who wondered at the marvels which seemed
continually to attend the steps of Francesca. She was profoundly
grateful for such favours, but probably marvelled less than others at
their occurrence. Her youth; the simplicity of her faith; her total
abstraction from worldly thoughts; her continual study and meditation
of the Holy Scriptures and of the lives of the Saints,--must have
necessarily familiarised her mind with such ideas. It could not seem
incredible to her, that the God who in less favoured times, and under
a severer dispensation, had so often suspended the laws of nature, in
order to support, to guide, and to instruct His people; that the Saviour
who had turned water into wine by a single word, and withered the
unprofitable fig-tree by a look,--should at all times display the same
power in favour of His children, in ways not a whit more marvellous or
mysterious.

Cecilia made one more effort to check what she considered exaggeration
in the mode of life of her daughters-in-law. She urged their husbands to
interfere, and by their authority to oblige them to mix more with the
world. But Paluzzo and Lorenzo had too deep an esteem for their wives,
and too great a sense of the advantages they derived from their singular
virtues, to be persuaded into putting a restraint on their actions.
Since they had come into the family, and united their pious efforts for
their own and others' spiritual improvement, disputes and quarrels had
given way to the most edifying concord. The servants, moved by their
example, performed their duties with exemplary zeal, frequented the
churches and the sacraments, and abstained from profane or idle words.
They accordingly entreated their mother to give up her fruitless
attempts, and allow the two young women liberty to follow the rule of
life they had adopted; and thus put an end to the kindly meant but
trying persecution they had gone through.

About this time the devil, thwarted in his designs, but always on
the watch, was permitted to vent his anger against Francesca and her
sister-in-law in a way to which he often had recourse, and which, while
it seemed to display a momentary power over their bodies, only proved
in the end that a stronger one than he was always at hand to defeat his
malice, and snatch from him his prize. Francesca and Vannozza had gone
to St. Peter's on an intensely hot day in July, in the year 1399.
Absorbed in prayer, they had hardly noticed the lapse of time, and
twelve o'clock had struck when they set out on their way home. In order
to avoid observation, and the marks of veneration which the people
lavished upon them as soon as they set eyes on the two saints (as they
always called them), they chose the most unfrequented streets they could
find. The heat grew intolerable. The sultry air seemed on fire, and not
a breath stirred it. Exhausted with fatigue, their mouths parched with
thirst, they reached the church of St. Leonardo; and holding each
other's hands, approached the brink of the river, in order to cool their
burning lips and throbbing heads with a little water. As they bent over
the stream for that purpose, a violent blow from an invisible arm was
aimed at Francesca, and hurled her into the Tiber. Vannozza fell with
her; and, clasped in each other's arms, they were rapidly carried away
by the current, and saw no means of escape. "They were lovely in their
lives, and in their deaths they were not divided," might well have been
said of them, had the watery grave, which seemed inevitable, swallowed
up on that day the two brides of the Ponziani. But it was not the will
of God that they should perish. Human aid was not at hand; the stream
was rapid, the current deep, and the eddies curled around them; but they
called upon God with one voice, and in an instant the waters, as if
instinct with life, and obedient to a heavenly command, bore them gently
to the shore, and deposited them unhurt on the green margin of the
river.

About this time also a supernatural favour of the most extraordinary
nature was vouchsafed to Francesca. Her guardian angel, who was one day
to accompany her, not by an invisible presence only, as in the case of
all Christians, but, by a rare privilege of grace, in a visible form,
ever manifest to her spiritual sight, now began to reveal himself to her
by the most watchful observance of her conduct. At all times and in
all places, by day and by night, her slightest faults were noticed and
punished by this still invisible, but now evidently present monitor. At
the least imperfection in her conduct, before she had time to accuse and
to condemn herself, she felt the blow of a mysterious hand, the
warning of an ever-attentive guardian; and the sound of that mystical
chastisement was audible to others also. Great was the astonishment
of those who could thus discern something of God's dealings with this
chosen soul. Once, when she had abstained through human respect from
interrupting the course of a very frivolous and useless conversation,
the warning was inflicted with such severity that she bore the mark of
the blow for several succeeding days.

Such a rapid advance in holiness, such new and ever-increasing virtues,
were the results of this supernatural tuition, that Satan now attempted
to seduce her by the wiliest of his artifices, the master-piece of
his art, his favourite sin,--"the pride that apes humility." So many
miracles wrought in her favour, such strange revelations of God's
peculiar love for her soul, awakened in Francesca's mind, or rather the
devil suggested to her the thought, that it might be better to conceal
them from her director, or at least to acquaint him with only a portion
of the wonders that were wrought in her behalf; and accordingly, the
next time she went to confession she refrained from mentioning the
signal grace which had been vouchsafed to her. At the very instant she
was thrown prostrate on the ground, and recognised the hand of her
heavenly monitor in the blow which thus warned her of the grievous
error into which she was falling. In that short moment she had time to
perceive and acknowledge it; and with intense contrition she confessed
to her director the false humility which had beguiled her into a
dangerous reserve, with perfect openness revealed to him the whole of
God's past and present dealings with her soul, and explained to him
the meaning of what had just taken place. Don Antonio listened with
astonishment and gratitude, and thus addressed her: "You have just
escaped from a great danger, my daughter; for those who aim at
perfection cannot conceal any thing from their spiritual guide without
running the risk of delusion. By your mistaken silence you were
complying with the suggestions of Satan, who, under the semblance of
humility, was seeking to awaken in you a secret and baneful pride. You
would have been led by degrees to over-estimate these supernatural
favours, to deem them not merely means of grace, but rewards due to your
merits; to despise those to whom God does not grant them; and to give
yourself up to extravagant and unauthorised austerities in order to
secure their continuance, and to distinguish yourself in your own and
others' sight. I should have forbidden you to practise them; you would
have been tempted to renounce my guidance, to take one confessor after
another, until you had found one weak or blind enough to approve your
self-will; and then the arch-enemy of mankind, under the garb of an
angel of light, would have made you the prey of his delusions, till
at last you might have fallen from one error into another, and made
shipwreck of your faith. Such has been the downward course of many a
soul, that has begun by yielding to a false humility--the offspring of
pride--and has ended in sin and perdition."

From that time forward, Francesca was on her guard against every species
of pride and self-reliance, however disguised and refined. She related
her faults and temptations, the graces she received and the favours she
obtained, with the same childlike openness and simplicity. It was at the
age of sixteen that she was thus advanced in the science of the saints;
and every day her virtues and her piety increased.




CHAPTER IV.

THE BIRTH OF FRANCESCA'S FIRST CHILD--HER CARE IN HIS EDUCATION--SHE
UNDERTAKES THE MANAGEMENT OF HER FATHER-IN-LAW'S HOUSEHOLD--A FAMINE
AND PESTILENCE IN ROME--FRANCESCA'S LABOURS FOB THE SICK AND POOR--THE
MIRACLES WROUGHT IN HER BEHALF.

The year 1400 was opening under melancholy auspices. Boniface IX. was at
that moment in possession of the pontifical throne, and celebrating the
jubilee, the periodical recurrence of which at the end of every fifty
years had been decreed by Clement VI. in 1350; but Rome was even then
in a lamentable state, and presages were not wanting of still more
disastrous times. The wars for the succession of the kingdom of Naples,
between Louis of Anjou and Ladislas Durazzo, were agitating the whole
of Italy; and the capital of the Christian world was exposed to all the
fury of the contending parties. The powerful faction of the Colonnas,
in arms against the Pope, invaded the Capitol at the head of a numerous
body of insurgents on horseback and on foot; and the air resounded with
the cries of "Long live the people! Death to the tyrant Boniface IX.!"
On that day the signal was given for a division of parties, which led
shortly afterwards to the appalling tragedy which decimated the nobility
of the Eternal City and deluged her streets with blood.

Lorenzo Ponziano, from his rank and his great possessions, as well
as from his fidelity to the Church and the Sovereign Pontiff, was
especially marked out as an enemy by the adverse faction. But while on
every side the storm was brewing, and the aspect of public affairs each
day more gloomy, a blessing was granted to him which for the last five
years he had ardently desired. The expectation of an heir to the family
of Ponziano filled him and his parents with inexpressible delight.
Francesca, in the meantime, was incessantly occupied in recommending to
God the child she was about to bear; and offered up her every little
act of devotion in its behalf, with the hope of drawing down the Divine
blessing on its future existence. In the same year she was happily
delivered of a son, who was immediately baptised in the church of Santa
Cecilia in Trastevere, and received the name of Giovanni Baptista.
It was not at that time the custom for ladies of rank to nurse their
children; but Francesca set aside all such considerations, and never
consented to forego a mother's sacred privilege. She did not intrust her
child for a moment to the care of others, afraid that, in her absence,
the utterance of unworthy sentiments, bad manners and habits, which even
in infancy may cause impressions not easily eradicated, should taint
with the least evil the heart and mind of her son. It is remarkable how
careful the holy mothers which we read of in the lives of the Saints
appear to have been of the circumstances attending the infancy of their
children,--that period during which we are apt to suppose that no
impressions can be given or received. Are we not perhaps in error
on that point?--As much that we read and apparently forget leaves
notwithstanding a certain deposit in our minds, which comes into play
when called forth by association, so, may not certain sights, sounds,
and words, not understood at the time, impart a certain colour, stamp
certain images on the mind of an infant, which, however dim and
confused, deepen and grow with it as it expands? There have been
curious psychological instances of names, of languages, of dormant
recollections, reawakening as it were under a peculiar condition of the
nervous system, and which could only be traced to impressions received
in the earliest stages of existence.

Francesca, in obedience to her director, as well as guided by her own
sense of duty, modified for the time being her usual mode of life, and
occupied herself with the care of her child in preference to all other
observances of charity or of devotion. She did not complain or regret
that she had to give up her habitual religious exercises, in order to
tend and to nurse the little creature whom she looked upon as the gift
of God, and whose careful training the best offering she could make in
return. The joy which she had felt in her infant's birth was marred by
the death of her father, who, when his grandson was placed in his arms,
exclaimed in the words of St. Simeon, "Lord, now lettest Thou thy
servant depart in peace;" and the words seem to have been prophetic, for
he died almost immediately afterwards, and was buried in the vaults of
Santa Agnese, in the Piazza Nuova. At a later period, when that church
was reconstructed, his remains were transported to the cloisters of
Tor Di Specchi, where the simple inscription, "Here lies Paul Bussa,"
remains to this day. Francesca, in pursuance of her desire, not only to
exclude evil, but to infuse good dispositions at the earliest possible
period into her baby's soul, lost no opportunity of imparting to him the
first notions of religion. Before he could speak, she used to repeat
to him every day the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary, clasp his little
hands together, and direct his eyes to heaven, and to the images of
Jesus and Mary, whose names were of course the first words he learned to
utter. She checked in him by grave looks, and slight punishments fitted
to his age, every ebullition of self-will, obstinacy, and anger; and
later, of deceit, envy, and immodesty. Though she had the most tender
mother's heart, she seldom indulged in passionate caresses, and never
left unchastised any of his faults, or gave way in any instance to his
tears and impatience. When others objected that it was absurd to expect
self-command from a creature whose reason was not developed, she
maintained that habits of self-control are to be acquired at the
earliest age, and that the benefit thus obtained extends to the whole of
life. The child thus trained lived to prove the wisdom of her views, and
became in difficult times the support of his family and an honour to
their name.

About a year after the birth of Giovanni Baptista, Cecilia, Lorenzo's
mother, died. Andreazzo Ponziano, and both his sons, fully conscious of
the prudence and virtue of Francesca, resolved to place her at the head
of the house, and to commit to her alone the superintendence of their
domestic affairs and the whole management of the household. Distressed
at the proposal, she pleaded her youth and inexperience, and urged that
Vannozza, as the wife of the eldest brother, was as a matter of course
entitled to that position. Vannozza, however, pleaded with such
eagerness that it was her most anxious desire not to occupy it, and
that all she wished was to be Francesca's disciple and companion, that,
overcome by the general importunity, she found herself obliged to
comply. Now it was that her merit shone conspicuously. Placed at
the head of the most opulent house in Rome, no symptom of pride, of
haughtiness, or of self-complacency, ever revealed itself in her looks
or in her actions. She was never heard to speak a harsh or impatient
word. Firm in requiring from every person in her house the proper
fulfilment of their duties, she did it in the gentlest manner. Always
courteous to her servants, she urged them to serve God with diligence,
and watched over their souls redeemed by His precious blood. Her address
was so winning and persuasive, that it seldom failed of its effect. She
contrived to arrange the hours of their labour with so much order and
skill, that each had sufficient leisure to hear Mass, to attend the
parochial instructions on Sundays and holidays, to frequent the
Sacraments, and join every day in family prayer,--fulfilling the whole
of a Christian's duty. If by any chance (and it was a rare one in a
house thus governed) a quarrel arose between any of the servants, she
was always ready to come forward, appease angry passions, and reconcile
differences. If, in so doing, she had occasion to speak with what she
considered undue severity to one of the parties, she would immediately
apologise with tears, and in the humblest manner entreat forgiveness.
This extreme sweetness of disposition, however, did not degenerate into
weakness; and she could testify the utmost displeasure, and reproved
with energy when offences were committed against God. It was intolerable
to her that His Divine Majesty should be insulted in her abode; and
she, the gentlest and most unassuming of women, could display on such
occasions the greatest firmness.

One day, it is recorded, several gentlemen had been dining with Lorenzo;
and one of them after dinner drew from his pocket a book which contained
a treatise on magic. Lorenzo took it up, and was examining it with some
curiosity, when his wife stole noiselessly behind him, took it out of
his hands, and threw it into the fire. Nettled by this proceeding, her
husband reproached her in rather bitter terms for her incivility to
their guest; but she, who was habitually submissive to his least word,
only replied that she could not regret the destruction of what might
have proved to many an occasion of sin. She inexorably consigned to the
flames in the same manner every bad book that came in her way.

Her tender charity was evinced when any of the inmates of the palace
were ill. She was then the affectionate nurse of the sufferers, and
spent whole nights by their bedside. Nothing ever discouraged or wearied
her; the lowest servant in the house was attended to, as if she had been
her own mother or sister. More anxious still for their soul's health
than their body's, she was known to go out herself alone at night in
search of a priest when a sudden case of danger had occurred beneath her
roof. Her charity was in one instance miraculously rewarded by a direct
interposition of Providence, in a matter apparently trifling, but on
which, humanly speaking, her dear sister Vannozza's existence seemed to
turn. She was dangerously ill, and had been for days unable to swallow
any food; the very sight of it caused her intolerable nausea; and from
sheer exhaustion her life was reduced to so low an ebb, that the worst
was apprehended. On Francesca's inquiring if she could think of any
thing which she could imagine it possible to eat, she named a certain
fish, which was not in season at that time. The markets were scoured by
the servants, but naturally in vain, and they returned empty-handed to
the dejected Francesca, who, kneeling by the bedside of her friend,
betook herself, with arduous faith and childlike simplicity, to prayer.
When she raised her head, the much-wished-for article of food was lying
before her; and the first morsel of it that Vannozza eat restored her to
health.

She had been about a year at the head of her father-in-law's house,
when Rome fell under the double scourge of famine and pestilence. The
Ponziani were immensely rich, and their palace furnished with every kind
of provisions. Francesca forbade her servants to send away a single poor
person without relieving their wants; and not content with this, she
sought them out herself, invited them to come to her, and made them
continual presents of corn, wine, oil, and clothing. She exhorted them
to bear their sufferings with patience, to return to God and to their
religious duties, and to strive by fervent prayer to appease the Divine
wrath, provoked by the crimes of mankind. Vannozza and herself were
indefatigable in their visits to the hospitals and the out-of-the-way
corners of the city.

Andreazzo Ponziano, a good man, but not a saint, was alarmed at the
excessive liberality of his daughter-in-law, and feared that it would
end in producing a famine in his own house. He began by prudently
withdrawing from their hands the key of the granary; and then, for
greater security, afraid perhaps of yielding to their entreaties, which
he was not accustomed to resist, he took to selling whatever corn he
possessed beyond what was required for the daily consumption of the
family. Nothing, therefore, remained in the corn-loft but a huge heap of
straw. The provident old man followed the same plan with his cellar, and
sold all the wine it contained, with the exception of one cask, which
was reserved for his own and his children's use.

Meanwhile the scarcity went on increasing every day, and the number
of starving wretches in proportion. Franceses, unable to meet their
demands, and still more incapable of leaving them to perish, braved at
last all false shame and repugnance, and resolved with Vannozza to go
into the streets and beg for the poor. Then were seen those two noble
and lovely women standing at the doors of the churches, knocking at the
gates of the palace, following the rich in the public places, pleading
with tears the cause of the sufferers, gladly receiving the abundant
alms that were sometimes bestowed upon them, and not less gladly the
sneers, the repulses, the insulting words that often fell to their share
in these pilgrimages of mercy. At last the famine reached its height. At
every side,--on the pavement, in the corners of the streets,--were lying
crowds of persons, barely clothed with a few tattered rags, haggard
with hunger, wasted with fever, and calling upon death to end their
sufferings. It was a grievous, a horrible sight,--one that well-nigh
broke the heart of our saint. The moanings of the dying were in her
ears; the expression of their ghastly faces haunted her day and night.
She would have gladly shed her blood for them, and fed them with
her life. A sudden inspiration came over her one day: "Come to the
corn-loft," she exclaimed, turning to Vannozza, and to Clara, a
favourite and pious servant of theirs; "Come with me to the corn-loft;
let us see if amongst the straw we may not succeed in finding a few
grains of corn for the poor." And on their knees for several hours those
patient, loving women sifted the straw, and by dint of labour collected
about a measure of corn, which they were bearing away in triumph, when
the God who caused the widow's oil not to fail, and made her barrel of
meal last through a scarcely more grievous famine, was preparing their
reward. Lorenzo had entered the granary just as they were carrying off
their hard-earned treasure, and, looking about him, beheld in place of
the straw which was lying there a moment before, 40 measures of
bright yellow corn, so shining and so full, says Francesca's earliest
biographer, that it seemed as though it had been raised in Paradise, and
reaped there by angels. In silent astonishment he pointed out to them
the miraculous supply, and must have felt in that hour what such virtue
as his wife's and his sister's could even in this world win of mercy at
God's hands. But corn was not enough; the sick wanted wine. They came,
poor pallid ghosts, just risen from their beds of suffering, to beg it
of Francesca; aged men and delicate children, mothers with infants at
their breasts, poor worn-out priests sinking with exhaustion, and yet
willing to assist others, they had recourse to her for a little wine to
strengthen them in their works of mercy, and she had no wine to give,
save out of the single cask in the cellar. She gave it, nevertheless;
and day after day drew from it, till not a drop was left. Andreazzo,
provoked, waxed very wroth; he had never before been angry with
Francesca, but now he stormed and raved at her; he had been to the
cellar to see the wine drawn for that day's use, and not a drop was in
the cask. "Charity indeed!" he exclaimed, "charity begins at home;
a pretty sort of virtue this, which, under the pretext of assisting
strangers, introduces penury and privation into the midst of a person's
own family." He vented his anger in bitter reproaches; Lorenzo and
Paluzzo were also inclined to take his part, and joined in severely
blaming Francesca. She the while, with a gentle voice and quiet manner,
breathing most probably a secret prayer to her who at the marriage-feast
of Cana turned to her Son and said, "They have no wine," doubtless with
an inward assurance that God would befriend her in an extraordinary,
but not to her an unprecedented manner, thus addressed them: "Do not be
angry; let us go to the cellar; may be, through God's mercy, that the
cask may be full by this time." They followed her with an involuntary
submission; and on reaching the spot, saw her turn the cock of the
barrel, out of which there instantly flowed the most exquisite wine,
which Andreazzo acknowledged to be superior to any he had ever tasted.
The venerable old man turned to his daughter-in-law, and, with tears in
his eyes, exclaimed,

"Oh, my dear child, dispose henceforward of every thing I possess, and
multiply without end those alms that have gained you such favour in
God's sight."

The report of this miracle spread far and wide; and, in spite of
her humility, Francesca did not object to its being divulged, as it
testified to the Divine virtue of almsgiving, and encouraged the rich to
increase their liberality, and minister more abundantly to the suffering
members of Christ.

A kind of religious awe seems to have taken possession of Lorenzo's
mind, at the sight of so many wonders wrought in his house. The great
esteem in which he had always held his wife, now took the form of a
profound veneration. He recommended her to follow in every respect the
divine inspirations she received, and left her entirely free to order
her life and dispose of her time in any way she thought fit. Francesca,
after consulting with her director, took advantage of this permission to
execute what had been her long-cherished desire. Selling all her rich
dresses, her jewels, and her ornaments, she distributed the money
amongst a number of poor families, and from that time forward never
wore herself any other gown than one of coarse dark-green cloth. Her
mortifications became so continual and severe, her fasts so rigid, that
it is difficult to conceive how her health could have sustained them
without miraculous support, or how she can have found time for all
her duties, and the incredible number of good works which she daily
performed. When we consider that she was unremitting in her attention
to her children, that she was never known to neglect the diligent
superintendence of household affairs, that she repeatedly visited the
hospitals and the poor sick in their houses, that morning and evening
she went to the churches where indulgences were to be gained, recited
numerous vocal prayers, often spent hours in contemplation, and in the
garden oratory, where with Vannozza, Clara, and Rita Celli, a devout
young person who was admitted into their intimacy, she read spiritual
books or conversed on religious subjects,--our admiration is
quickened; for that zeal and strong will could work wonders all but
incomprehensible to those who have not put their shoulder to the wheel
in good earnest, or learnt to appreciate the priceless value of every
minute of this short life.




CHAPTER V.

THE BIRTH OF FRANCESCA'S SECOND SON--HIS SUPERNATURAL GIFTS--THE
BIRTH OF HER DAUGHTER--SATANIC ATTACKS UPON FRANCESCA---TROUBLES OF
ROME--FRANCESCA'S HUSBAND IS SEVERELY WOUNDED--HER ELDEST SON, WHEN
GIVEN UP AS A HOSTAGE TO THE NEAPOLlTANS, IS MIRACULOUSLY RESTORED TO
HER.

FRANCESCA had just attained the age of twenty when her second son was
born. He was baptised on the day of his birth, and received the name
of Giovanni Evan--gelista. The contemporary biographer, some of whose
sayings have been already quoted, mentions of this child that he was
endowed with wonderful gifts of grace, and that the love of God was
manifested in him even before he could speak. In his quaint language he
thus describes him: "Evangelista was old in sense, small in body, great
in soul, resplendent in beauty, angel-like in all his ways." He might
well have been termed, in familiar language, his mother's own child;
for in his veriest infancy his only pleasure was to be carried into
churches, or to give alms to the needy, especially to the poor
religious, for whom he had a special predilection. Francesca's delight
in this lovely little infant was indescribable. He was to her as one of
God's own angels, and tears of joy filled her eyes as she mused on the
extraordinary signs of grace which he daily evinced. Supernatural had
been the mother's virtues, supernatural were the qualities of the child;
at the age of three years old he was endowed with the gift of prophecy,
and the faculty of reading the un-uttered thoughts of men's hearts.

Singular instances of this power are on record. He was in his mother's
arms one day, when two mendicant friars approached the Ponziano Palace.
Instantly stretching out his little hands, Evangelista took from
Francesca the alms she was wont to bestow on such visitors, and held
it out to them; but at the same time looking steadfastly at one of the
monks, he said to him, "Why will you put off this holy habit? you will
wear a finer one; but woe to you who forget your vow of poverty."

The friar coloured and turned away; but it was soon evident that the
words were prophetic, for within a short time, and after obtaining a
bishopric through a simoniacal act, the unhappy man died a violent
death. That same year, Evangelista was in his parent's room one day;
and his father taking him up on his knees, was playing with him, and
devouring him with kisses. In the midst of his sport, the child turned
suddenly pale, and laying hold of a dagger which had been left on the
table, he placed the point of it against Lorenzo's side, and said to him
as he looked up into his face with a strange melancholy smile, "Thus
will they do to you, my father." And it so happened that at the time
of the invasion of Rome by the troops of Ladislas Durazzo, the lord of
Ponziano was dangerously wounded in the exact place and manner which his
little son had pointed out.

Evangelista was not quite three years old when his little sister Agnese
was born, who in beauty, heavenly sweetness of temper, and precocious
piety, proved the exact counterpart of her brother. Soon after her
confinement, Francesca had a vision which impressed her with the belief
that God would one day claim this child as His own. She saw a dove of
dazzling whiteness, bearing in its beak a tiny lighted taper, enter the
room; and after making two or three circles in the air, it stooped over
Agnese's cradle, touched her brow and limbs with the taper, gently
fluttered its wings, and flew away. Looking upon this as a sign that the
little maiden would be called to the monastic life, she brought her up
as a precious deposit only lent her for a time, and to be delivered up
at no distant period. With even stricter care than she had used with her
brother, if that were possible, she watched over the little girl; never
leaving her for a single moment, and performing towards her the
offices of a servant as well as of a mother. She kept her in complete
retirement, never taking her out of doors except to church; teaching her
to love Jesus supremely--better even than her parents--and entertaining
her with descriptions of that dear Saviour's adorable perfections. She
encouraged her to observe silence, to work with her hands at stated
times, and taught her to read in the lives of the saints of holy virgins
and martyrs. Agnese's character and turn of mind answered precisely to
her mother's wishes; and the perfection of her conduct was such, that
she was generally designated by all who knew her as the little saint or
the little angel.

The years of Evangelista's and Agnese's infancy had been most disastrous
ones to the unhappy inhabitants of Rome. The factions which had arisen
in consequence of the schism, and of the intrigues of Ladislas of
Naples, had banished all security, and converted the town into a
field of battle, where bloody conflicts were daily taking place. The
principles of union seemed banished from the world. The nations and
sovereigns of Europe, given up to the most selfish policy, ceased to
acknowledge the chief pastor of the Church; and the Eternal City,
beyond any other place, had become an arena for ferocious struggles
and sanguinary conspiracies. The year 1406 brought with it a momentary
semblance of peace, and Francesca and Vannozza availed themselves of
that breathing-time to revisit some of the distant churches, and attend
the Italians as before. They used to walk to them on foot at the
earliest break of day, accompanied by Rita Celli, the young person
already mentioned, and Lucia degli Aspalli, a devout married woman
nearly related to the Ponziano family. They repeated psalms and litanies
on their way, or spent the time in pious meditation, and remained some
hours in prayer before the altars which they visited in turn,--taking
care to be at home again by the time that their presence was required.
In that troubled epoch the voice of the preacher was seldom heard;
sermons, however, were occasionally delivered by the Franciscans and the
Dominicans in the churches of Ara Coeli and Santa Maria sopra Minerva;
and at these our saints never failed to assist. Their spiritual guide
had given them leave to go to communion several times a week. This was
a privilege seldom granted and seldom sought for in those distracted
times. The blessed practice of daily communion, which universally
prevailed amongst the early Christians,--that practice which turns earth
into heaven, and converts the land of exile into a paradise of peace
and joy,--was all but entirely neglected, or only kept up in some few
cloisters. The two sisters habitually communicated in the church of
Santa Cecilia, the nearest to their house. One of the priests of that
parish was scandalised at the frequency of their communions, and
persuaded himself that it was incredible that young women of their age,
and in such a position of life, could possibly be in possession of
the requisite dispositions. This unhappy man ventured one day to give
Franeesca an unconsecrated wafer; God instantly revealed to the saint
the sin of the priest, and she informed her director of the fact. Don
Antonio disclosed to the astonished offender the secret which had been
confined to his own breast. He confessed his fault with the deepest
contrition, implored God's pardon, asked forgiveness of the saint, and
received the humiliation as a warning against rash judgments.

The warfare which Satan was permitted to carry on against Francesca
became more and more violent at this period of her life. In actual
outrages, in terrific visions, in mystical but real sufferings, which
afflicted every sense and tortured every nerve, the animosity of the
evil spirit evinced itself; and Almighty God permitted it, for she was
of those chosen through much tribulation to ascend the steep path which
is paved with thorns and compassed with darkness, but on which the ray
of an unearthly sunshine breaks at times. She was to partake of the
miraculous gifts of the saints; to win men's souls through prayer, to
read the secrets of their hearts, to see angels walking by her side, to
heal diseases by the touch of her hands, and hold the devils at bay,
when they thought to injure the bodies of others or wage war with
her own spirit. But such heights of glory are not gained without
proportionate suffering; the cup of which Jesus drank to the dregs in
His agony she was to drink of, the baptism of horror with which He
was baptised was to be her's also in a measure; and that mysterious
weakness, that divine helplessness of His, which allowed Satan to carry
Him, the Lord of all, to the pinnacle of the temple or the brow of the
mountain, was not unshared by His servant. Strange and bewildering were
the assaults she endured, but still more wonderful the defeats of the
evil one. Of her triumph, as of those of her Lord, it may be said, "that
when the devil left her, then angels came and ministered unto her."
Strange, that those who believe the history of Jesus should turn
incredulously away from that of His saints; for did He not expressly
say, that what He suffered, they should suffer; that where He had
overcome, they would triumph; and that the works that He performed, aye
and greater works still, they should accomplish?

On one occasion, when on the point of setting out for the Basilica of
St. Peter's, Vannozza was violently precipitated down the stairs of the
palace by the power of the evil spirit, and fell at her sister's feet,
who at that instant heard a voice whispering in her ear, "I would kill
thy sister, and drive thee to despair;" but at the same moment an inward
revelation bade Francesca raise up the prostrate form of her friend,
and apply to her bruised limbs an ointment which instantly relieved the
pains of her fall. Another time our saint was lifted up by the hair of
her head, and suspended over a precipice for the space of some minutes;
with perfect calmness she called upon Jesus, and in a moment found
herself in safety within her room. Her first act was to cut off her
beautiful hair, and, offer it up as a thank-offering to Him who had
saved her from the hands of the infernal enemy. These are only specimens
of the trials of this nature to which Francesca was more or less
subjected all her life, but to which it will not be necessary again to
make more than casual allusion.

In the year 1409, when she was about twenty-seven years old, her
temporal calamities began. After Ladislas of Naples, befriended by the
enemies of the Pope, and in 1408 gained possession of Rome by fraudulent
means he left behind him as governor of the city the Count Pietro Traja,
a rough and brutal soldier, well fitted to serve the fierce passions of
his master. He was continually looking out for occasions to persecute
those Roman nobles who remained faithful to the cause of the Church.
He was abetted in this by the faction of the Colonnas, and some other
powerful families, who supported the pretensions of the anti-Popes
Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII. against the legitimate pontiff Alexander
V., recently elected by the Council of Pisa. The troops of Lewis of
Anjou, the rival of Ladislas in the kingdom of Naples, had in the mean
time entered that portion of Rome which went by the name of the Leonine
City, and gained possession of the Vatican and the castle of St. Angelo.
Several skirmishes took place between the forces of the usurper and the
troops of the Pope and of Lewis of Anjou. Lorenzo Ponziano, who from
his birth and his talents was the most eminent man of his party, and an
ardent supporter of the legitimate cause, commanded the pontifical army
on one of these occasions, and was personally engaged in a conflict
with the Count of Traja's soldiers. In the midst of the fray he was
recognised by the opposite party, and became the special mark of their
attacks. Fighting with heroic courage, he had nearly succeeded in
dispersing his assailants, when, as Evangelista had foretold the year
before, a dagger was treacherously thrust into his side, and inflicted
so deep a wound that he fell to the ground, and was taken up for dead.
The terrible news was carried to the Ponziano palace, and announced
to Francesca. The anguish that her countenance revealed filled the
bystanders with compassion; but it was only for an instant that she
stood as if transfixed and overwhelmed with grief.

Repressing by a strong effort her bursting sobs and the cries that were
breaking from her heart, she soon raised her eyes to heaven with a
steadfast gaze, forgave the assassin, offered up Lorenzo's life and her
own, and murmured the words of Job, "The Lord had given him, the Lord
has taken him away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Then, calm,
composed, braced for endurance, she courageously advanced to meet the
slow approach of those who were bringing back to his home the body of
her murdered husband. As they laid him in the hall of the palace, she
knelt by his side, and putting her face close to his, she discerned in
the apparently lifeless form the faint symptoms of lingering vitality.
The sudden revulsion of hope did not overcome her presence of mind. She
instantly desired those about her to send for a priest and for a doctor;
and then, bending over Lorenzo, she suggested to him, in words which
found their way to the understanding of the dying man, whatever the most
affectionate tenderness and the most ardent piety could devise at such a
moment,--to prepare the soul for its last flight, pardon for his foes,
and especially for his assassin, a firm trust in God, and the union of
his sufferings with those of his Lord.

The palace presented a scene of wild confusion. Armed men were moving to
and fro; the clash of arms was mingled with the groans of the servants:
the weeping and waitings of the women and of the children, vows of
vengeance, curses deep and loud, frantic regrets, were heard on every
side. Francesca alone was as an angel of peace, in the midst of the
uproar of passion and the outpouring of grief. Her's was the keenest
sorrow of all; but it was kept under by the strength of a long-practised
faith, and thus it interfered with no duty and staggered at no trial.
Day and night she watched by Lorenzo's couch. Her experience in nursing
the sick, and in dressing wounds, enabled her to render him the most
minute and efficacious assistance. Her watchful love, her tender
assiduity, received its reward; God gave her that life, far dearer to
her than her own. Contrary to all expectation, Lorenzo slowly recovered;
but for a long time remained in a precarious condition.

Meanwhile the Count of Traja, pressed on every side, began to foresee
the necessity of leaving Rome; but, in his exasperation, resolved
previously to wreak his vengeance on the families most devoted to the
Pope, and especially on that of the Ponziani, which was especially
obnoxious to him. He accordingly arrested Paluzzo, Vannozza's husband,
and kept him in close confinement; and understanding that Lorenzo had a
son of eight or nine years old, he commanded that he should be given
up into his hands as a hostage, and swore that in case of a refusal
he would put Paluzzo to death. Now, indeed, is Francesca tried almost
beyond the power of endurance: now is her cup of anguish filled to the
brim. She can ask counsel of none: Lorenzo she dares not consult: it
might kill him to hear the fearful truth. Others would say, "Give up the
child;" and she looks at his fair face, at his innocent eyes, at the
purity of his spotless brow; and she cannot, she will not, she must not
give him up. Oh, that she had the wings of a dove to fly away and carry
him hence! She takes him by the hand, and, like a second Hagar, goes
forth, whither she knows not. It is an instinct, an impulse, an
inspiration. It is the mother's heart within her that bids her fly from
the horrible dilemma, and save her child from the tyrant who seeks more
than his life,--who would ruin his soul. Through out-of-the-way streets,
into the deserted corners of the city she goes, clasping the boy's hand
with an agonising grasp, with but one thought--to hide him from every
eye. Suddenly she stops short; before her stands Don Antonio, her
long-trusted director, who has led her through the green pastures
in which her spirit has found rest. He questions her, and hears the
incoherent account of her fears, her anguish, and her flight. By a
supernatural light he sees the drift of this trial, and puts her faith
to the test. "Francesca," he said, "you fly to save the child; God bids
me tell you that it is to the Capitol you must carry him--there lies his
safety; and do you go to the Church of Ara Cceli." A fierce struggle
rose in Francesca's heart--the greatest storm that had ever convulsed
it. "To the Capitol!" she is about to cry. "It is at the Capitol that
the tyrant awaits him!" But ere the words are uttered, they die away
on her lips. Grace has gained the mastery; the faith of the saint has
asserted its power. The wild expression passes away from her eyes; she
bows her head in silence, and with a firm step retraces her steps, in
obedience to him who has spoken in God's name. In the mean time the
report of the event had spread through Rome, and in the more crowded
streets which she had to pass through a cry of pity and of terror arose.
Crowds press about her, and bid her turn back; they tell her she is mad
to surrender the child, they try to take him from her, and to carry him
back by force to his father's palace; but in vain. She waves them
off, and pursues her way till she has reached the Capitol. She walked
straight up to the place where the Neapolitan tyrant was standing, and
surrendered up the boy to him; and then, without once looking back, she
hurried into the Church of Ara Coeli, fell prostrate at the feet of the
Mother of Mercy, and before that sacred image, dear to this day to every
Catholic parent, she made the sacrifice of her child, of her life, of
her soul, of all that in that hour she had felt to give up. Then, for
the first time, a torrent of tears relieved her tight-bound heart; and
gazing on the picture, she saw the dove-like eyes of the Blessed Virgin
assume the tenderest and most encouraging expression, and in her ears
were whispered words welcome as the dew to the thirsty ground; sweet as
the notes of the bird when the storm has subsided: "Be not afraid; I am
here to befriend you."

She was at peace; she felt sure that her son was safe; and on her knees,
in speechless prayer, she waited the event. Nor did she wait long. When
she had left the Count of Traja's presence, he had ordered one of his
officers to take the little Baptista on his horse, and carry him away to
a place he appointed; but, from the instant that the child was placed on
the saddle, no efforts could induce the animal to stir from the spot.
In vain his rider urged him with spurs and whip: neither the severest
blows, nor the accustomed voice of his master, succeeded in moving him
an inch from the place, where he stood as motionless as a statue. Four
of the knights of Naples renewed the attempt. Four successive steeds
were tried for the purpose, and always with the same result. There is a
strength greater than man's will; there is a power that defeats human
malice. Struck with a secret terror and dismay by the evident prodigy,
the Count of Traja gave up the unequal contest, and ordered the child
to be restored to his mother. Before the altar of the Ara Coeli, at the
foot of that image, where in her anguish she had fallen and found hope
when hope seemed at end, Francesca received back into her arms the
son of her love, and blessed the God who had given her strength to go
through this the severest of her trials.




CHAPTER VI.

SUFFERINGS OF ROME FROM THE TROOPS OF LADISLAS--DEATH OF FRANCESCA'S SON
EVANGELISTA--THE FAMINE AND PLAGUE IN ROME--FRANCESCA'S LABOURS FOR THE
STARVlNG AND SICK--HER MIRACLES.

POPE ALEXANDER V. died at Bologna in 1410. Sixteen cardinals assembled
in that city, and chose for his successor Balthazar Cossa, who took
the name of John XXIII. While they were proceeding with the election,
Ladislas seized the opportunity of the interregnum once more to advance
upon Rome; and from Veletri he threatened it with a second invasion. The
new Pope renewing the alliance with Lewis of Anjou, they combined their
forces against Ladislas, and endeavoured to drive him back from the
position he had taken. Their arms proved successful in a first battle;
but Lewis having withdrawn his troops immediately after the victory,
Ladislas deceived the Holy Father by a pretended peace, gained
possession of Rome, and gave it up to pillage. The horrors of this
invasion, and of the sack that followed it, surpassed in atrocity almost
all those which had previously afflicted the capital of the Christian
world. A number of palaces and houses were destroyed, the basilicas
were despoiled of their treasures and desecrated by the most abominable
orgies, the churches turned into stables, and many of the faithful
adherents of the Church subjected to the torture or barbarously put to
death.

The Ponziani were amongst the principal of the Pope's supporters; and
Lorenzo, scarcely recovered from his long illness, was persuaded by his
friends to withdraw himself by flight from the fury of the conqueror,
and conceal himself in a distant province. It had been impossible to
remove his wife and children; and Francesca remained exposed to a
succession of the most trying disasters. The wealth of the family
chiefly consisted in their country possessions, and the immense number
of cattle which were bred on those broad lands; and day after day
intelligence was brought to her that one farm-house or another was
burnt or pillaged, the flocks dispersed or destroyed, and the shepherds
murdered by a ruthless soldiery. Terrified peasants made their escape
into the city, and scared the inhabitants of the palace with dreadful
accounts of the death of their companions, and of the destruction of
property which was continually going on. A cry of despair rang from
Mount Soracte to the Alban Hill, extended to the shores of the
Mediterranean, and resounded in the palaces of Rome, carrying dismay to
the hearts of its ruined and broken-spirited nobles.

Francesca received the tidings with an aching heart indeed; for her
compassion for the sufferings of others did not permit her to remain
unmoved amidst such dire misfortunes. Still she never lost her habitual
composure; her only occupation was to console the mourners: her first
impulse on these occasions to bless God, and accept at His hands all
that His providence ordained. It was well that she was resigned, and
had learned the lesson of courage at the foot of the Cross; for, like
a flood at spring-tide, her afflictions were increasing every day,
threatening to overwhelm all landmarks but those of an indomitable
faith. One fatal morning, a troop of savage ruffians, drunk with rage,
and vociferating blasphemies, broke into the palace, clamouring after
Lorenzo, and threatening to torture the servants if they did not
instantly reveal his place of concealment; and ended by carrying away
Baptista, who clung in vain to his mother's neck, and was only parted
from her by force. When they had succeeded in tearing him away from
her arms, they proceeded to pillage, and all but to destroy, the
time-honoured residence of the Ponziani. In the space of a few hours
that gorgeous abode was turned into a heap of ruins. Bereft of her
husband, of her son, and of all the conveniences of life, Francesca,
with her two younger children, remained alone and unprotected; for her
brother-in-law, Paluzzo, who might have been a support to her in that
dreadful moment, was still a prisoner in the tyrant's hands, and her
innocent boy shared the same fate. It is not exactly known how long
his captivity lasted; but it may be supposed that means were found of
effecting his release, and sending him to Lorenzo; for it is mentioned
that, at the period when the troubles were at an end, and peace restored
to the city of Rome, the father and the son returned together.

In the mean time, Francesca took shelter in a corner of her ruined
habitation; and there, with Evangelista and Agnese, she managed to
live in the most complete seclusion. These two children were now their
mother's only comfort, as their education was her principal occupation.
Evangelista, as he advanced in age, in no way belied the promise of his
infancy. He lived in spirit with the angels and saints, and seemed more
fitted for their society than for any earthly companionship. "To be with
God" was his only dream of bliss. Though scarcely nine years old, he
already helped his mother in all the pains she took with Agnese's
education

The hour for another sacrifice was, however, at hand. It was not long
delayed. The second invasion of Rome had been succeeded by a dreadful
famine, which was followed in its turn by a severe pestilence. Already
one or two cases of the prevailing epidemic had appeared in the Ponziano
Palace, and then Evangelista sickened with it; and one morning Francesca
was told that the son of her love was dying. No sooner had he felt the
first symptoms of the plague, than he asked for a confessor. He never
doubted that his last hour was come; and she believed it too. Don
Antonio hurried to the bed-side of the boy, who, after he had made his
confession, sent for his mother, and taking her hand in his, addressed
her in some such words as follow:

"Mother mine, I have often told you that God would not leave me with you
long; that He will have me dwell with His angels. Jesus is my treasure,
my hope, and my joy. I have ever lived with Him in thought, in desire,
in unutterable longings. Every day I have said 'Thy kingdom come;' and
now He calls me to it. There is a crown prepared for me, my beloved
mother. The Lord is about to give it me, and we must part for awhile.
But bless His name, oh my mother. Praise Him with me; for He delivers me
from all that your love dreaded for me upon earth. There is no sin, no
sorrow, no sickness where I am going. Nothing but peace and joy and the
sight of God in that better land where the blessed are expecting me. I
must not see you weep. I will not have you grieve. Rejoice with your
child; for I see them even now, my holy advocates, St. Anthony and St.
Vauplerius. They are coming to fetch me away. Dearest mother, I will
pray for you. Evangelista will love you in heaven as he has loved you on
earth, and you will come to him there."

The dying boy then remained silent for a few moments. Then a sudden
light illumined his face; his features seemed transformed. Raising his
eyes with a look of rapture, he exclaimed, "Here are the angels come
to take me away. Give me your blessing, my mother. Do not be afraid. I
shall never forget you. God bless you and my dear father, and all who
belong to this house. Blessed be the name of the Lord." Then crossing his
little arms on his chest, he bowed down his head, a last smile passed
over his face--"she had her meed, that smile in death," and his young
spirit passed to the regions of endless bliss.

A touching prodigy, well adapted to cheer the heart of our saint, took
place that very day in a house adjoining her own. A little girl, who had
been dangerously ill for a long time, and had completely lost the power
of speech, at the very moment that Francesca's son had expired suddenly
raised herself in her bed, and exclaimed several times in a loud voice,
and in a state of evident rapture, "See, see! how beautiful! Evangelista
Ponziano is going up into heaven, and two angels with him!" The mortal
remains of the young boy were deposited in the family vault in the
church of Santa Cecilia, in Trastevere. A monument was erected there
with the simple inscription, "Here lies Evangelista Ponziano;" and a
figure in stone, clothed in a long robe, was carved upon it.

Francesca wept over the loss of her dearly-beloved child, but did not
grieve for him. How could she have done so? He was in bliss; and had
only preceded her to that heaven for which she was day by day preparing.
Nor was it a time for the idle indulgence of sorrow. Want and sickness
were turning Rome into a charnel-house. Wild voices were screaming for
bread on every side. The streets were encumbered by the victims of
contagious disease; their frantic cries and piteous moanings re-echoed
in each piazza and under every portico. Old men were dying surrounded by
the corpses of their children; mothers pressed to their milkless bosoms
their starving infants. Others crept about bereft of all their family,
and haunting like pale ghosts the scenes of their past happiness. No
carriages shook the public ways. The grass grew in the deserted streets;
one mournful equipage alone slowly pursued its course through the doomed
city, gathering as it passed the dead at every door; and when the
dreadful cargo was completed, bearing it away to the crowded cemetery.
The ruin of private property, the general penury occasioned by the
cruelties of Ladislas, and the sacking of Rome by his soldiers, had cut
off almost all the resources of private charity. Anxiety for self,
and the fear of contagion, had worked so deeply on the mind of the
multitude, that many persons abandoned even their near relatives and
friends when they were attacked by the plague. Nothing but the charity
which is of divine not of natural origin could meet such an emergency,
or cope in any degree with the awful misery of those days. Francesca,
bereaved of every thing but her one little girl, and lodged with
Vannozza and Rita in a corner of their dismantled house, had no longer
at her command the resources she had formerly possessed for the relief
of the poor. A little food from their ruined estates was now and
then supplied to these lonely women; and they scarcely partook of it
themselves, in order to bestow the greatest part on the sick and poor.
There was a large hall in the lower part of the palace which had been
less injured than any other portion of the building. It was at least a
place of shelter against the inclemencies of the weather. The sisters
converted it into a temporary hospital; but of the shattered furniture
that lay scattered about the house, they contrived to make up beds and
covering, and to prepare some clothing for the wretched creatures they
were about to receive. When all was ready, they went in search of the
sufferers. If they found any too weak to walk, they carried them into
the new asylum; there they washed and dressed their putrefying sores,
and by means which saints have often employed, and which we could hardly
bear even to think of, they conquered in themselves all repugnance to
sights and employments against which the senses and the flesh rise in
rebellion. They prepared both medicine and food; watched the sick by day
and by night; laboured incessantly for their bodies, and still more for
their souls. Many were those who recovered health through Francesca's
care, and many more who were healed of the worst disease of the soul,--a
hardened impenitence under the just judgment of God. She had the art of
awakening their fears, without driving them to despair; to make them
look upon their sufferings as a means of expiation (that great secret
of Catholic consolation), and bring them by degrees to repentance, to
confession, to the practice of long-forgotten duties, and of those
Christian virtues which her own example recommended to their hearts.

The example which the ruined and bereaved wives of the Ponziani had
given kindled a similar spirit among the hitherto apathetic inhabitants
of Rome. The magistrates of the city, struck at the sight of such
unparalleled exertions where the means were so slender, were roused from
their inaction, and in several parts of the city, especially in the
parishes of St. Cecilia and of Santa Maria in Trastevere, hospitals
and asylums were opened for the perishing multitudes. Often and often
Francesca and Vannozza saw the morning dawn, and not a bit of food of
any description did they possess for themselves or for their inmates.
They then went out to beg, as they had done before; but not merely as an
act of humility, nor dressed as heretofore as became their rank, or in
those places only where their names secured respect, and generally
a favourable answer; but in the garb of poverty, in the spots where
beggars were wont to congregate and the rich to bestow alms, they took
their stand, and gratefully received the broken bits that fell from the
tables of the wealthy. Each remnant of food, each rag of clothing, they
brought home with joy; and the mouldiest piece of bread out of their bag
was set aside for their own nourishment, while the best was bestowed on
their guests.

In our own time, in our own rich and luxurious city, there is a
counterpart to these deeds of heroic charity. There are young and
well-educated women, who in their homes never lacked the necessaries or
the comforts, nay perhaps the luxuries of life, who do the same; who
receive into their abode the aged, the maimed, the crippled, and the
deformed; lodging them in their best rooms, and themselves in cellars
or garrets; tending them as their servants, and feeding them as their
mothers; begging for them from door to door the crumbs from the tables
of the rich, and carrying along their basket, rejoicing when it is
heavy, even though their arms ache and their cheeks grow pale with the
labour; like Francesca, feeding upon the remnants of the poor feast
where the poor have sat before them.

Francesca was insulted in her career of mercy through the streets of
Rome, when civil war and anarchy were raging there in the wildest epoch
of lawless strife and fiercest passion; and the gentle sisters of the
poor, the servants of the helpless, who have abandoned home and friends
and comforts, and, above all, _respectability_, that idol of the English
mind, that wretched counterfeit of virtue, for the love which they bear
to Christ in His suffering members, have been insulted and beaten in the
streets of London in the face of day, and only because of the habit they
wore,--the badge of no common vocation,--the nun's black dress, the
livery of the poor. The parallel is consoling to them, perhaps also to
us; for is not Francesca now the cherished saint of Rome, the pride
and the love of every Roman heart? And may not the day come when our
patient, heroic nuns will be looked upon as one of God's best blessings,
in a city where luxury runs riot on the one hand, and starvation and
misery reign on the other? Will not the eye follow them with love, and
many rise up to call them blessed? Their course is like hers; may their
end be the same!

The historians of our saint relate that on one of the occasions above
alluded to, when her only resource was to beg for her sick charges, she
went to the Basilica of San Lorenzo without the walls, where was the
station of the day, and seated herself amongst the crowd of beggars who,
according to custom, were there assembled. From the rising of the sun
to the ringing of the vesper-bell, she sat there side by side with the
lame, the deformed, and the blind. She held out her hand as they did,
gladly enduring, not the semblance, but the reality of that deep
humiliation. When she had received enough wherewith to feed the poor at
home, she rose, and making a sign to her companions, entered the old
basilica, adored the Blessed Sacrament, and then walked back the long
and weary way, blessing God all the while, and rejoicing that she was
counted worthy to suffer for His dear sake.

Those who are well acquainted with Rome, who have frequented the
stations and love the basilicas, and especially that venerable old
pile of San Lorenzo, with its upper and lower chapel, its magnificent
columns, its beautiful pulpit, its wide portico with half-effaced
frescoes, and its rare mosaics--those paintings in stone which time
itself cannot destroy; those whose eyes have gazed with delight on the
glorious view as they approached it, and whose ears are familiar
with the sound of the mendicant's voice, to whom the remembrance of
Francesca's story may have won, perchance, an additional dole,--can form
to themselves with ease a picture of the scene; and when they visit it
again in reality, may be tempted to look out for some saintly face, for
some sweet, angel-like countenance, amongst the sordid and suffering
groups before them, and wonder if ever again such charity as Francesca's
will animate a woman's heart. Not long ago, for a few short years, in
Francesca's city, there was one who bade fair to emulate the virtues
of the dear saint of Rome; but as she was rapidly treading in her
footsteps, and her name was becoming every day more dear to the people
amongst whom she dwelt, death snatched her away. Her memory remains,
and the poor bless it even now. May God grant us such in our own land!
Saints are sorely needed in these busy, restless, money-loving times of
ours; as much as, or more than, in the wild middle ages, or the troubled
centuries that followed.

Francesca possessed a small vineyard near the church of St. Paul without
the walls; and in that time of scarcity, when every little resource had
to be turned to account for the purposes of charity, she used to go
there and gather up into parcels and faggots the long grass and the dry
branches of the vines. When she had collected a certain number of these
packets, she laid them on an ass, and went through the town, stopping at
various poor dwellings to distribute the fruits of her labours. On one
of these occasions her donkey stumbled and fell, and the wood which he
was carrying rolled to a considerable distance. Francesca was looking
about her in considerable embarrassment, not able to lift it up again,
when a Roman nobleman, Paolo Lelli Petrucci, a friend of her husband's,
chanced to pass by. Astonished at seeing her in such a predicament, he
hastened to her assistance; and she received it with as much serenity
and composure as if her occupation had been the most natural thing in
the world.

By this time her virtues were destined to receive a wonderful reward,
and God bestowed upon her the gift of healing to a miraculous degree.
Many a sick person given over by the physicians was restored to health
by the single touch of her hands, or the prayers which she offered up in
their behalf. More than sixty of these cases were well attested at the
time of her canonisation. Francesca was profoundly sensible of the
blessedness of this gift, and grateful for the power it afforded her of
relieving the sufferings of others; but at the same time her humility
prompted her to conceal it as much as possible. She endeavoured to do so
by making up an ointment composed of oil and wax, which she applied
to the sick, whatever their disease might be, in the hope that their
recovery would always be ascribed to its efficacy. But this holy
subterfuge did not always succeed. The physicians analysed the
ointment, and declared that it possessed in itself no healing qualities
whatsoever. One day, upon entering the Hospital of the Trastevere,
Francesca found a poor mule-driver, who had just been carried in, his
foot having been crushed by the fall of a scythe; it was in such a
horrible and hopeless condition, that the surgeons were about to
amputate the limb. Francesca, hearing the cries of the poor wretch, bent
over him, exhorting him to patience; and promising him a speedy relief,
applied some of her ointment to his mangled foot. The wounds instantly
closed, the pain vanished, and a short time after the mule-driver
returned to his customary occupation.

Some days afterwards, the two sisters were returning home from the
basilica of St. John Lateran; and passing by the bridge of Santa Maria,
now the Ponte Rotto, (the very ancient little church opposite to the
Temple of Vesta), they saw extended on the pavement a man whose arm had
been severed by a sword-cut; and unable to procure medical assistance,
the poor wretch had lain there ever since in excruciating tortures,
which had reduced him to the last extremity. Francesca, full of
compassion for his miserable condition, carried him with Vannozza's aid
into her house, put him in a warm bath, cleansed his wound with the
greatest care, and dressed it with her ointment. In a short time, and
without any medical assistance, the severed limb was restored to its
usual position, and a complete recovery ensued.

The bowl in which San Francesca compounded this miraculous remedy is
preserved in the convent of Tor di Specchi. During the novena of the
saint, when the doors are thrown open to crowds of devout persons, it
stands on a table in the entrance-chamber, and is daily filled by the
nuns with fresh sweet-smelling flowers--violets, primroses, anemones,
and the like. The visitor may bear away with him some of these fragrant
remembrances, and cherish them for her sake, the odour of whose virtues
will last as long as the seasons return, and the spring brings back to
our gladdened sight those

 "Sweet nurslings of the vernal skies,
  Bathed with soft airs and fed with dew."

A still more wonderful miracle than these occurred about this time.
Francesca and her faithful companion Vannozza had been visiting several
churches in that part of Rome which goes by the name of the Rioue de
Monti. Passing before a mean-looking dwelling, they heard the most
heart-rending sobs and cries. Stopping to inquire into the cause of this
despair, they found a mother frantically weeping over the body of a
child, who had died a few hours after its birth without having received
baptism. Francesca gently reproved the woman for the delay which had
endangered her son's salvation; then, taking the little corpse into her
arms, she uttered a fervent prayer, and in a moment gave back the baby
to its mother, fully restored to life and health. She des

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