|
Why, they say, are those miracles, which you affirm were wrought
formerly, wrought no longer? I might, indeed, reply that miracles
were necessary before the world believed, in order that it might
believe. And whoever now-a-days demands to see prodigies that he may
believe, is himself a great prodigy, because he does not believe,
though the whole world does. But they make these objections for the
sole purpose of insinuating that even those former miracles were never
wrought. How, then, is it that everywhere Christ is celebrated with
such firm belief in His resurrection and ascension? How is it that in
enlightened times, in which every impossibility is rejected, the world
has, without any miracles, believed things marvellously incredible?
Or will they say that these things were credible, and therefore were
credited? Why then do they themselves not believe? Our argument,
therefore, is a summary one, either incredible things which were not
witnessed have caused the world to believe other incredible things which
both occurred and were witnessed, or this matter was so credible that
it needed no miracles in proof of it, and therefore convicts these
unbelievers of unpardonable scepticism. This I might say for the sake
of refuting these most frivolous objectors. But we cannot deny that
many miracles were wrought to confirm that one grand and health-giving
miracle of Christ's ascension to heaven with the flesh in which He
rose. For these most trustworthy books of ours contain in one
narrative both the miracles that were wrought and the creed which they
were wrought to confirm. The miracles were published that they might
produce faith, and the faith which they produced brought them into
greater prominence. For they are read in congregations that they may
be believed, and yet they would not be so read unless they were
believed. For even now miracles are wrought in the name of Christ,
whether by His sacraments or by the prayers or relics of His saints;
but they are not so brilliant and conspicuous as to cause them to be
published with such glory as accompanied the former miracles. For the
canon of the sacred writings, which behoved to be closed, causes those
to be everywhere recited, and to sink into the memory of all the
congregations; but these modern miracles are scarcely known even to the
whole population in the midst of which they are wrought, and at the
best are confined to one spot. For frequently they are known only to a
very few persons, while all the rest are ignorant of them, especially
if the state is a large one; and when they are reported to other
persons in other localities, there is no sufficient authority to give
them prompt and unwavering credence, although they are reported to the
faithful by the faithful.
The miracle which was wrought at Milan when I was there, and by
which a blind man was restored to sight, could come to the knowledge of
many; for not only is the city a large one, but also the emperor was
there at the time, and the occurrence was witnessed by an immense
concourse of people that had gathered to the bodies of the martyrs
Protasius and Gervasius, which had long lain concealed and unknown,
but were now made known to the bishop Ambrose in a dream, and
discovered by him. By virtue of these remains the darkness of that
blind man was scattered, and he saw the light of day.
But who but a very small number are aware of the cure which was wrought
upon Innocentius, ex-advocate of the deputy prefecture, a cure
wrought at Carthage, in my presence, and under my own eyes? For
when I and my brother Alypius, who were not yet clergymen, though
already servants of God, came from abroad, this man received us, and
made us live with him, for he and all his household were devotedly
pious. He was being treated by medical men for fistulae, of which he
had a large number intricately seated in the rectum. He had already
undergone an operation, and the surgeons were using every means at
their command for his relief. In that operation he had suffered
long-continued and acute pain; yet, among the many folds of the gut,
one had escaped the operators so entirely, that, though they ought,
to have laid it open with the knife, they never touched it. And
thus, though all those that had been opened were cured, this one
remained as it was, and frustrated all their labor. The patient,
having his suspicions awakened by the delay thus occasioned, and
fearing greatly a second operation, which another medical man, one of
his own domestics, had told him he must undergo, though this man had
not even been allowed to witness the first operation, and had been
banished from the house, and with difficulty allowed to come back to
his enraged master's presence, the patient, I say, broke out to the
surgeons, saying, "Are you going to cut me again? Are you, after
all, to fulfill the prediction of that man whom you would not allow
even to be present?" The surgeons laughed at the unskillful doctor,
and soothed their patient's fears with fair words and promises. So
several days passed, and yet nothing they tried aid him good. Still
they persisted in promising that they would cure that fistula by drugs,
without the knife. They called in also another old practitioner of
great repute in that department, Ammonius (for he was still alive at
that time); and he, after examining the part, promised the same
result as themselves from their care and skill. On this great
authority, the patient became confident, and, as if already well,
vented his good spirits in facetious remarks at the expense of his
domestic physician, who had predicted a second operation. To make a
long story short, after a number of days had thus uselessly elapsed,
the surgeons, wearied and confused, had at last to confess that he
could only be cured by the knife. Agitated with excessive fear, he
was terrified, and grew pale with dread; and when he collected himself
and was able to speak, he ordered them to go away and never to return.
Worn out with weeping, and driven by necessity, it occurred to him to
call in an Alexandrian, who was at that time esteemed a wonderfully
skillful operator, that he might perform the operation his rage would
not suffer them to do. But when he had come, and examined with a
professional eye the traces of their careful work, he acted the part of
a good man, and persuaded his patient to allow those same hands the
satisfaction of finishing his cure which had begun it with a skill that
excited his admiration, adding that there was no doubt his only hope of
a cure was by an operation, but that it was thoroughly inconsistent
with his nature to win the credit of the cure by doing the little that
remained to be done, and rob of their reward men whose consummate
skill, care, and diligence he could not but admire when be saw the
traces of their work. They were therefore again received to favor;
and it was agreed that, in the presence of the Alexandrian, they
should operate on the fistula, which, by the consent of all, could
now only be cured by the knife. The operation was deferred till the
following day. But when they had left, there arose in the house such
a wailing, in sympathy with the excessive despondency of the master,
that it seemed to us like the mourning at a funeral, and we could
scarcely repress it. Holy men were in the habit of visiting him
daily; Saturninus of blessed memory, at that time bishop of Uzali,
and the presbyter Gelosus, and the deacons of the church of
Carthage; and among these was the bishop Aurelius, who alone of them
all survives, a man to be named by us with due reverence, and with him
I have often spoken of this affair, as we conversed together about the
wonderful works of God, and I have found that he distinctly remembers
what I am now relating. When these persons visited him that evening
according to their custom, he besought them, with pitiable tears,
that they would do him the honor of being present next day at what he
judged his funeral rather than his suffering. For such was the terror
his former pains had produced, that he made no doubt he would die in
the hands of the surgeons. They comforted him, and exhorted him to
put his trust in God, and nerve his will like a man. Then we went to
prayer; but while we, in the usual way, were kneeling and bending to
the ground, he cast himself down, as if some one were hurling him
violently to the earth, and began to pray; but in what a manner, with
what earnestness and emotion, with what a flood of tears, with what
groans and sobs, that shook his whole body, and almost prevented him
speaking, who can describe! Whether the others prayed, and had not
their attention wholly diverted by this conduct, I do not know. For
myself, I could not pray at all. This only I briefly said in my
heart: "O Lord, what prayers of Thy people dost Thou hear if
Thou hearest not these?" For it seemed to me that nothing could be
added to this prayer, unless he expired in praying. We rose from our
knees, and, receiving the blessing of the bishop, departed, the
patient beseeching his visitors to be present next morning, they
exhorting him to keep up his heart. The dreaded day dawned. The
servants of God were present, as they had promised to be; the
surgeons arrived; all that the circumstances required was ready; the
frightful instruments are produced; all look on in wonder and
suspense. While those who have most influence with the patient are
cheering his fainting spirit, his limbs are arranged on the couch so as
to suit the hand of the operator; the knots of the bandages are
untied; the part is bared; the surgeon examines it, and, with knife
in hand, eagerly looks for the sinus that is to be cut. He searches
for it with his eyes; he feels for it with his finger; he applies
every kind of scrutiny: he finds a perfectly firm cicatrix! No words
of mine can describe the joy, and praise, and thanksgiving to the
merciful and almighty God which was poured from the lips of all, with
tears of gladness. Let the scene be imagined rather than described!
In the same city of Carthage lived Innocentia, a very devout woman
of the highest rank in the state. She had cancer in one of her
breasts, a disease which, as physicians say, is incurable.
Ordinarily, therefore, they either amputate, and so separate from
the body the member on which the disease has seized, or, that the
patient's life may be prolonged a little, though death is inevitable
even if somewhat delayed, they abandon all remedies, following, as
they say, the advice of Hippocrates. This the lady we speak of had
been advised to by a skillful physician, who was intimate with her
family; and she betook herself to God alone by prayer. On the
approach of Easter, she was instructed in a dream to wait for the
first woman that came out from the baptistery after being baptized, and
to ask her to make the sign of Christ upon her sore. She did so, and
was immediately cured. The physician who had advised her to apply no
remedy if she wished to live a little longer, when he had examined her
after this, and found that she who, on his former examination, was
afflicted with that disease was now perfectly cured, eagerly asked her
what remedy she had used, anxious, as we may well believe, to
discover the drug which should defeat the decision of Hippocrates.
But when she told him what had happened, he is said to have replied,
with reli gious politeness, though with a contemptuous tone, and an
expression which made her fear he would utter some blasphemy against
Christ, "I thought you would make some great discovery to me."
She, shuddering at his indifference, quickly replied, "What great
thing was it for Christ to heal a cancer, who raised one who had been
four days dead?" When, therefore, I had heard this, I was
extremely indignant that so great a miracle wrought in that well-known
city, and on a person who was certainly not obscure, should not be
divulged, and I considered that she should be spoken to, if not
reprimanded on this score. And when she replied to me that she had not
kept silence on the subject, I asked the women with whom she was best
acquainted whether they had ever heard of this before. They told me
they knew nothing of it. "See," I said, "what your not keeping
silence amounts to, since not even those who are so familiar with you
know of it." And as I had only briefly heard the story, I made her
tell how the whole thing happened, from beginning to end, while the
other women listened in great astonishment, and glorified God.
A gouty doctor of the same city, when he had given in his name for
baptism, and had been prohibited the day before his baptism from being
baptized that year, by black woolly-halted boys who appeared to him in
his dreams, and whom he understood to be devils, and when, though
they trod on his feet, and inflicted the acutest pain he had ever yet
experienced, he refused to obey them, but overcame them, and would
not defer being washed in the layer of regeneration, was relieved in
the very act of baptism, not only of the extraordinary pain he was
tortured with, but also of the disease itself, so that, though he
lived a long time afterwards, he never suffered from gout; and yet who
knows of this miracle? We, however, do know it, and so, too, do
the small number of brethren who were in the neighborhood, and to whose
ears it might come.
An old comedian of Curubis was cured at baptism not only of
paralysis, but also of hernia, and, being delivered from both
afflictions, came up out of the font of regeneration as if he had had
nothing wrong with his body. Who outside of Curubis knows of this,
or who but a very few who might hear it elsewhere? But we, when we
heard of it, made the man come to Carthage, by order of the holy
bishop Aurelius, although we had already ascertained the fact on the
information of persons whose word we could not doubt.
Hesperius, of a tribunitian family, and a neighbor of our own, has a
farm called Zubedi in the Fussalian district; and, finding that his
family, his cattle, and his servants were suffering from the malice of
evil spirits, he asked our presbyters, during my absence, that one of
them would go with him and banish the spirits by his prayers. One
went, offered there the sacrifice of the body of Christ, praying with
all his might that that vexation might cease. It did cease forthwith,
through God's mercy. Now he had received from a friend of his own
some holy earth brought from Jerusalem, where Christ, having been
buried, rose again the third day. This earth he had hung up in his
bedroom to preserve himself from harm. But when his house was purged
of that demoniacal invasion, he began to consider what should be done
with the earth; for his reverence for it made him unwilling to have it
any longer in his bedroom. It so happened that I and Maximinus
bishop of Synita, and then my colleague, were in the neighborhood.
Hesperius asked us to visit him, and we did so. When he had related
all the circumstances, he begged that the earth might be buried
somewhere, and that the spot should be made a place of prayer where
Christians might assemble for the worship of God. We made no
objection: it was done as he desired. There was in that neighborhood
a young countryman who was paralytic, who, when he heard of this,
begged his parents to take him without delay to that holy place. When
he had been brought there, he prayed, and forthwith went away on his
own feet perfectly cured.
There is a country-seat called Victoriana, less than thirty miles
from Hippo-regius. At it there is a monument to the Milanese
martyrs, Protasius and Gervasius. Thither a young man was carried,
who, when he was watering his horse one summer day at noon in a pool of
a river, had been taken possession of by a devil. As he lay at the
monument, near death, or even quite like a dead person, the lady of
the manor, with her maids and religious attendants, entered the place
for evening prayer and praise, as her custom was, and they began to
sing hymns. At this sound the young man, as if electrified, was
thoroughly aroused, and with frightful screaming seized the altar, and
held it as if he did not dare or were not able to let it go, and as if
he were fixed or tied to it; and the devil in him, with loud
lamentation, besought that he might be spared, and confessed where and
when and how he took possession of the youth.
At last, declaring that he would go out of him, he named one by one
the parts of his body which he threatened to mutilate as he went out and
with these words he departed from the man. But his eye, falling out
on his cheek, hung by a slender vein as by a root, and the whole of
the pupil which had been black became white. When this was witnessed
by those present (others too had now gathered to his cries, and had
all joined in prayer for him), although they were delighted that he
had recovered his sanity of mind, yet, on the other hand, they were
grieved about his eye, and said he should seek medical advice. But
his sister's husband, who had brought him there, said, "God, who
has banished the devil, is able to restore his eye at the prayers of
His saints." Therewith he replaced the eye that was fallen out and
hanging, and bound it in its place with his handkerchief as well as he
could, and advised him not to loose the bandage for seven days. When
he did so, he found it quite healthy. Others also were cured there,
but of them it were tedious to speak.
I know that a young woman of Hippo was immediately dispossessed of a
devil, on anointing herself with oil, mixed with the tears of the
prebsyter who had been praying for her. I know also that a bishop once
prayed for a demoniac young man whom he never saw, and that he was
cured on the spot.
There was a fellow-townsman of ours at Hippo, Florentius, an old
man, religious and poor, who supported himself as a tailor. Having
lost his coat, and not having means to buy another, he prayed to the
Twenty Martyrs, who have a very celebrated memorial shrine in our
town, begging in a distinct voice that he might be clothed. Some
scoffing young men, who happened to be present, heard him, and
followed him with their sarcasm as he went away, as if he had asked the
martyrs for fifty pence to buy a coat. But he, walking on in
silence, saw on the shore a great fish, gasping as if just cast up,
and having secured it with the good-natured assistance of the youths,
he sold it for curing to a cook of the name of Catosus, a good
Christian man, telling him how he had come by it, and receiving for
it three hundred pence, which he laid out in wool, that his wife might
exercise her skill upon, and make into a coat for him. But, on
cutting up the fish, the cook found a gold ring in its belly; and
forthwith, moved with compassion, and influenced, too, by religious
fear, gave it up to the man, saying, "See how the Twenty Martyrs
have clothed you."
When the bishop Projectus was bringing the relics of the most glorious
martyr Stephen to the waters of Tibilis, a great concourse of people
came to meet him at the shrine. There a blind woman entreated that she
might be led to the bishop who was carrying the relics. He gave her
the flowers he was carrying. She took them, applied them to her
eyes, and forthwith saw. Those who were present were astounded,
while she, with every expression of joy, preceded them, pursuing her
way without further need of a guide.
Lucillus bishop of Sinita, in the neighborhood of the colonial town
of Hippo, was carrying in procession some relics of the same martyr,
which had been deposited in the castle of Sinita. A fistula under
which he had long labored, and which his private physician was watching
an opportunity to cut, was suddenly cured by the mere carrying of that
sacred fardel,, at least, afterwards there was no trace of it in his
body.
Eucharius, a Spanish priest, residing at Calama, was for a long
time a sufferer from stone. By the relics of the same martyr, which
the bishop Possidius brought him, he was cured. Afterwards the same
priest, sinking under another disease, was lying dead, and already
they were binding his hands. By the succor of the same martyr he was
raised to life, the priest's cloak having been brought from the
oratory and laid upon the corpse.
There was there an old nobleman named Martial, who had a great
aversion to the Christian religion, but whose daughter was a
Christian, while her husband had been baptized that same year. When
he was ill, they besought him with tears and prayers to become a
Christian, but he positively refused, and dismissed them from his
presence in a storm of indignation. It occurred to the son-in-law to
go to the oratory of St. Stephen, and there pray for him with all
earnestness that God might give him a right mind, so that he should
not delay believing in Christ. This he did with great groaning and
tears, and the burning fervor of sincere piety; then, as he left the
place, he took some of the flowers that were lying there, and, as it
was already night, laid them by his father's head, who so slept.
And lo! before dawn, he cries out for some one to run for the
bishop; but he happened at that time to be with me at Hippo. So when
he had heard that he was from home, he asked the presbyters to come.
They came. To the joy and amazement of all, he declared that he
believed, and he was baptized. As long as he remained in life, these
words were ever on his lips: "Christ, receive my spirit," though
he was not aware that these were the last words of the most blessed
Stephen when he was stoned by the Jews. They were his last words
also, for not long after he himself also gave up the ghost.
There, too, by the same martyr, two men, one a citizen, the other
a stranger, were cured of gout; but while the citizen was absolutely
cured, the stranger was only informed what he should apply when the
pain returned; and when he followed this advice, the pain was at once
relieved.
Audurus is the name of an estate, where there is a church that
contains a memorial shrine of the martyr Stephen. It happened that,
as a little boy was playing in the court, the oxen drawing a wagon went
out of the track and crushed him with the wheel, so that immediately he
seemed at his last gasp. His mother snatched him up, and laid him at
the shrine, and not only did he revive, but also appeared uninjured.
A religious female, who lived at Caspalium, a neighboring estate,
when she was so ill as to be despaired of, had her dress brought to
this shrine, but before it was brought back she was gone. However,
her parents wrapped her corpse in the dress, and, her breath
returning, she became quite well.
At Hippo a Syrian called Bassus was praying at the relics of the
same martyr for his daughter, who was dangerously ill. He too had
brought her dress with him to the shrine. But as he prayed, behold,
his servants ran from the house to tell him she was dead. His
friends, however, intercepted them, and forbade them to tell him,
lest he should bewail her in public. And when he had returned to his
house, which was already ringing with the lamentations of his family,
and had thrown on his daughter's body the dress he was carrying, she
was restored to life.
There, too, the son of a man, Irenaeus, one of our
tax-gatherers, took ill and died. And while his body was lying
lifeless, and the last rites were being prepared, amidst the weeping
and mourning of all, one of the friends who were consoling the father
suggested that the body should be anointed with the oil of the same
martyr. It was done, and he revived.
Likewise Eleusinus, a man of tribunitian rank among us, laid his
infant son, who had died, on the shrine of the martyr, which is in
the suburb where he lived, and, after prayer, which he poured out
there with many tears, he took up his child alive.
What am I to do? I am so pressed by the promise of finishing this
work, that I cannot record all the miracles I know; and doubtless
several of our adherents, when they read what I have narrated, will
regret that I have omitted so many which they, as well as I,
certainly know. Even now I beg these persons to excuse me, and to
consider how long it would take me to relate all those miracles, which
the necessity of finishing the work I have undertaken forces me to
omit. For were I to be silent of all others, and to record
exclusively the miracles of healing which were wrought in the district
of Calama and of Hippo by means of this martyr, I mean the most
glorious Stephen, they would fill many volumes; and yet all even of
these could not be collected, but only those of which narratives have
been written for public recital. For when I saw, in our own times,
frequent signs of the presence of divine powers similar to those which
had been given of old, I desired that narratives might be written,
judging that the multitude should not remain ignorant of these things.
It is not yet two years since these relics were first brought to
Hippo-regius, and though many of the miracles which have been wrought
by it have not, as I have the most certain means of knowing, been
recorded, those which have been published amount to almost seventy at
the hour at which I write. But at Calama, where these relics have
been for a longer time, and where more of the miracles were narrated
for public information, there are incomparably more.
At Uzali, too, a colony near Utica, many signal miracles were, to
my knowledge, wrought by the same martyr, whose relics had found a
place there by direction of the bishop Evodius, long before we had
them at Hippo. But there the custom of publishing narratives does not
obtain, or, I should say, did not obtain, for possibly it may now
have been begun. For, when I was there recently, a woman of rank,
Petronia, had been miraculously cured of a serious illness of long
standing, in which all medical appliances had failed, and, with the
consent of the abovenamed bishop of the place, I exhorted her to
publish an account of it that might be read to the people. She most
promptly obeyed, and inserted in her narrative a circumstance which I
cannot omit to mention, though I am compelled to hasten on to the
subjects which this work requires me to treat. She said that she had
been persuaded by a Jew to wear next her skin, under all her clothes,
a hair girdle, and on this girdle a ring, which, instead of a gem,
had a stone which had been found in the kidneys of an ox. Girt with
this charm, she was making her way to the threshold of the holy
martyr. But, after leaving Carthage, and when she had been lodging
in her own demesne on the river Bagrada, and was now rising to
continue her journey, she saw her ring lying before her feet. In
great surprise she examined the hair girdle, and when she found it
bound, as it had been, quite firmly with knots, she conjectured that
the ring had been worn through and dropped off; but when she found that
the ring was itself also perfectly whole, she presumed that by this
great miracle she had received somehow a pledge of her cure, whereupon
she untied the girdle, and cast it into the river, and the ring along
with it.
This is not credited by those who do not believe either that the Lord
Jesus Christ came forth from His mother's womb without destroying
her virginity, and entered among His disciples when the doors were
shut; but let them make strict inquiry into this miracle, and if they
find it true, let them believe those others. The lady is of
distinction, nobly born, married to a nobleman. She resides at
Carthage. The city is distinguished, the person is distinguished,
so that they who make inquiries cannot fail to find satisfaction.
Certainly the martyr himself, by whose prayers she was healed,
believed on the Son of her who remained a virgin; on Him who came in
among the disciples when the doors were shut; in fine, and to this
tends all that we have been retailing, on Him who ascended into heaven
with the flesh in which He had risen; and it is because he laid down
his life for this faith that such miracles were done by his means.
Even now, therefore, many miracles are wrought, the same God who
wrought those we read of still performing them, by whom He will and as
He will; but they are not as well known, nor are they beaten into the
memory, like gravel, by frequent reading, so that they cannot fall
out of mind. For even where, as is now done among ourselves, care is
taken that the pamphlets of those who receive benefit be read publicly,
yet those who are present hear the narrative but once, and many are
absent; and so it comes to pass that even those who are present forget
in a few days what they heard, and scarcely one of them can be found
who will tell what he heard to one who he knows was not present.
One miracle was wrought among ourselves, which, though no greater
than those I have mentioned, was yet so signal and conspicuous, that
I suppose there is no inhabitant of Hippo who did not either see or
hear of it, none who could possibly forget it. There were seven
brothers and three sisters of a noble family of the Cappadocian
Caesarea, who were cursed by their mother, a new-made widow, on
account of some wrong they had done her, and which she bitterly
resented, and who were visited with so severe a punishment from
Heaven, that all of them were seized with a hideous shaking in all
their limbs. Unable, while presenting this loathsome appearance, to
endure the eyes of their fellow-citizens, they wandered over almost
the whole Roman world, each following his own direction. Two of them
came to Hippo, a brother and a sister, Paulus and Palladia,
already known in many other places by the fame of their wretched lot.
Now it was about fifteen days before Easter when they came, and they
came daily to church, and specially to the relics of the most glorious
Stephen, praying that God might now be appeased, and restore their
former health. There, and wherever they went, they attracted the
attention of every one. Some who had seen them elsewhere, and knew
the cause of their trembling, told others as occasion offered. Easter
arrived, and on the Lord's day, in the morning, when there was now
a large crowd present, and the young man was holding the bars of the
holy place where the relics were, and praying, suddenly he fell down,
and lay precisely as if asleep, but not trembling as he was wont to do
even in sleep. All present were astonished. Some were alarmed, some
were moved with pity; and while some were for lifting him up, others
prevented them, and said they should rather wait and see what would
result. And behold! he rose up, and trembled no more, for he was
healed, and stood quite well, scanning those who were scanning him.
Who then refrained himself from praising God? The whole church was
filled with the voices of those who were shouting and congratulating
him. Then they came running to me, where I was sitting ready to come
into the church. One after another they throng in, the last comer
telling me as news what the first had told me already; and while I
rejoiced and inwardly gave God thanks, the young man himself also
enters, with a number of others, falls at my knees, is raised up to
receive my kiss. We go in to the congregation: the church was full,
and ringing with the shouts of joy, "Thanks to God! Praised be
God!" every one joining and shouting on all sides, "I have healed
the people," and then with still louder voice shouting again.
Silence being at last obtained, the customary lessons of the divine
Scriptures were read. And when I came to my sermon, I made a few
remarks suitable to the occasion and the happy and joyful feeling, not
desiring them to listen to me, but rather to consider the eloquence of
God in this divine work. The man dined with us, and gave us a
careful ac count of his own, his mother's, and his family's
calamity. Accordingly, on the following day, after delivering my
sermon, I promised that next day I would read his narrative to the
people. And when I did so, the third day after Easter Sunday, I
made the brother and sister both stand on the steps of the raised place
from which I used to speak; and while they stood there their pamphlet
was read. The whole congregation, men and women alike, saw the one
standing without any unnatural movement, the other trembling in all her
limbs; so that those who had not before seen the man himself saw in his
sister what the divine compassion had removed from him. In him they
saw matter of congratulation, in her subject for prayer. Meanwhile,
their pamphlet being finished, I instructed them to withdraw from the
gaze of the people; and I had begun to discuss the whole matter
somewhat more carefully, when lo! as I was proceeding, other voices
are heard from the tomb of the martyr, shouting new congratulations.
My audience turned round, and began to run to the tomb. The young
woman, when she had come down from the steps where she had been
standing, went to pray at the holy relics, and no sooner had she
touched the bars than she, in the same way as her brother, collapsed,
as if falling asleep, and rose up cured. While, then, we were
asking what had happened, and what occasioned this noise of joy, they
came into the basilica where we were, leading her from the martyr's
tomb in perfect health. Then, indeed, such a shout of wonder rose
from men and women together, that the exclamations and the tears seemed
like never to come to an end. She was led to the place where she had a
little before stood trembling. They now rejoiced that she was like her
brother, as before they had mourned that she remained unlike him; and
as they had not yet uttered their prayers in her behalf, they perceived
that their intention of doing so had been speedily heard. They shouted
God's praises without words, but with such a noise that our ears
could scarcely bear it. What was there in the hearts of these exultant
people but the faith of Christ, for which Stephen had shed his
blood?
|
|