Avertinus

ON SAINT AVERTINUS

DEACON IN THE TERRITORY OF TOURS.

ABOUT THE YEAR MCLXX.

Avertinus the Deacon, in the territory of Tours (S.)

By the Author D. P.

[1] An extract from the ancient Tours Martyrology exhibits to us, on this day V May, S. Avertinus the Confessor. Name in Martyrologies. Grevenus in the Auctary of Usuard printed in the year MDXV and MDXXI, with the place of cult omitted, has these things: Likewise of S. Avertinus the Deacon and Confessor. Following are Molanus in his additions to Usuard and Canisius in the Martyrology edited in German. Philippus Ferrarius in the general Catalog of Saints, who are not in the Roman Martyrology, brings forth these things: In the territory of Tours of S. Avertinus the Deacon, and in the Notes adds: There is at Tours a village with a church, called by the name of this Saint. Finally Saussay in the Supplement of the Gallican Martyrology, At Tours, he says, of S. Avertinus the Deacon, to whom a village and a church in that tract is sacred, expends perennial veneration. In the general Register of benefices of the Archiepiscopate of Tours printed in the year MDCXLVIII page 32 the parish of Venzay is indicated, and the Parish church otherwise of S. Avertinus, of which the patronage is with the Chapter of S. Martin, the collation with the Archbishop, and the annual revenues are MCC pounds. All which things since to us confirmed the sacred veneration of S. Avertinus, I wrote to Tours to P. William Quirinus, most zealous of promoting our work; who about to seek more on the same Saint, immediately ran out to the said Parish, in which his image one mile distant from the city; and there found, not the sepulcher of the Saint, not bones preserved for veneration (for all these things seems to have taken away and abolished that deadly Huguenot whirlwind, of which on II April after the Acts of S. Francis of Paola was said more amply) but a statue set forth for veneration, and around it many ex-votos, especially heads of wax, because

he is invoked especially for mitigating headaches.

[2] and proper Lessons, in which He found there an ancient Office of the same Saint described on parchment, but with one or another folio torn out mutilated, where his life distributed in Lessons is read thus: The most blessed Confessor of Christ Avertinus, in greater Britain, of very noble and religious parents, was born, the disciple of the most blessed Martyr Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury: whose Birthday celebrating, we have judged worthy, according to ecclesiastical custom, to the praise of the Divine majesty and the honor of the same Saint and to our instruction to explain some things, whence so many and great praiseworthy things, which of him from everywhere occur. Who indeed Avertinus to the Sacerdotal grade, with the Lord disposing, called, that irreproachably he might fulfill the ministry, and first proven in himself, disciple of S. Thomas of Canterbury should eat the sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord for himself for merit, and for others for remedy; his own body, as a host living and pleasing to God, crucified to the world and to vices and concupiscences, of prayers with arms and victims of lips continually he immolated.

After these were torn folios, as it seemed two, but the next had these things… and of the weak to natural functions reformed. What more? is said to come to the aid of headache: Many and innumerable detained by various infirmities through his suffrages the Lord freed. But especially to those sustaining pain or infirmity of the head, devoutly visiting the temple of the glorious Confessor, from the entering times to now, the same our Lord Jesus Christ does not cease to help. After it had pleased the Most High that he should depart from this world, on the third Nones of May, which is the fifth day of the same month, his most holy soul was received into heaven by the Angels.

[3] Among the aforesaid two fragments, were noted Lesson II, III, IV, V (and verisimilarly also VI unless a folio was lacking) to be taken from the Sermon of S. Maximus the Bishop, that, I believe (although P. Quirinus did not express it), which is recited in the common of a Confessor Pontiff with this beginning: The merits of the Blessed Father N., now placed in safety, secure let us magnify: the context of that Sermon excellently fits with the prefaced fragments, which is wholly about spiritual and corporal miracles, with which this Saint is indicated to have shone. There followed perhaps in the lacking folios a congruous Gospel, with a Homily on the same, through two lessons; so that the last Lesson, just as had been the first, was again proper of the Saint; of which accordingly only a few lines seem to be lacking. For the rest of the parts of the divine Office these moreover proper there were read:

At Magnificat for I Vespers Antiphon

Our God exalts the humble of Avertinus thus makes glory,

By many and noble virtues showing his magnificence,

The sick he heals, comforts the weeping, brings gladness to heads,

So aids the infirm weak, by obtaining pardon for faults. proper likewise the Antiphon

At Benedictus the Antiphon.

Avertinus while we set forth the great things of your praise,

We ask the suffrages of your prayer to be repaid to us.

Therefore may things pleasing to you be what we devout sing,

And may sacrifices to God be the grace which we offer.

At Magnificat for II Vespers.

In the solemnities of Avertinus let our spirits exult,

Asking with pious prayers that he aid us, from heaven

With remedies obtained, and free us inwardly

From the molestations of the head, to which the world is subject.

Prayer.

Incline the ears of your piety we ask, and Prayer. Lord, to our supplications: that we who are struck by the outrages of our sins, with B. Avertinus your Confessor interceding, from all pains of head, of the whole body, and of the soul, and from all adversities, may be freed by the grace of your mercy.

[4] The statue, which we have said is exposed, represents the Saint vested in a Dalmatic, by Diaconal rite, and that he was such indicate the foresaid Calendars. What therefore in the first Lesson is said called to the Sacerdotal grade, indicates the intention with which he came to receive the sacred Orders; He seems to have come into Gaul in the year 1164 although to its principal one, to which he aspired, he did not come, prevented first by exile, then by death in the parts of Gaul: where he seems to have arrived in the year MCLXIV, when the holy Archbishop, fleeing from the face of the angered King from England, betook himself there. We have the Life of that great Martyr, described by various ones. One, which from the Manuscripts of the San-Gisleni monastery we received, says, that on the night he undertook flight, alone with 2 Sacerdotes as companions of flight to the Saint with only one Brother bringing solace; and lying hidden by day and journeying by night, after the sixteenth day arrived at the port of Sandwich: and when he did not have better conveyors at hand, in a fragile little boat, by two Sacerdotes was conveyed across to Flanders. This was the whole company of so great a Prelate; about which speaking John the Bishop, in the Life of the same Saint, which the MS. Codex of the Queen of Sweden supplied to us, accompanied by few, he says, found the Most Holy Pope Alexander III at Sens: namely with the two said Sacerdotes and that one Brother. About this however John Bishop of Exeter, in the more prolix Life from the same Codex of the Queen described to us, from the Order of Sempringham, testifies that he was of the Order of Sympringham. This Order was of Canons Regular under the Rule of S. Augustine instituted in the Lincoln country, and confirmed by Pope Eugene III in the year MCXLVI, of which more on IV February at the Life of the Founder S. Gilbert; full notice of all the Constitutions, both concerning men and women, will be supplied by Tome 2 of the English Monasticon, from page 699 to 791, and the foundations of the individual monasteries thereafter up to page 829, where also pages 755 and 783 will be found the proper habit of the Sempringham Canon and the Gilbertine Nun.

[5] worn out by the troubles of exile and journeys. The name of that Brother, who alone clung to the Saint, no one expressed; from this however that at Tours we already know it celebrated, just cause is given of conjecturing that he was called Avertinus; whom we can suspect to have been wont to go back and forth as the messenger of his Archbishop to the Pontiff, after he in the year MCLXVI departed from the Gauls; and on some such occasion, before in the year MCLXX Thomas returned to England, to have found the end of his life in that village of the Tours diocese, and there entombed to have shone with miracles. Who because for justice and ecclesiastical liberty he followed the seven-year exiled Archbishop, in his many troubles communicated in many ways, and contracting verisimilarly from these and the labors of journeys ill-health he died, by the title of Confessor he is rightly honored.

ON S. ANGELUS THE MARTYR

PRESBYTER FROM THE ORDER OF CARMELITES

AT LICATA IN SICILY.

In the year MCCXXV.

Angelus, Presbyter of the Carmelite Order, Martyr at Licata in Sicily (S.)

By the Author D. P.

CHAPTER I.

S. Angelus's homeland, Martyrdom and sacred cult.

[1] John Grossi of Toulouse, Master General of the Carmelites from the year MCCCLXXXIX to MCCCCXXX, Encomium from John Grossi wrote the Viridarium of his Order, distinguished into three books, of which the most ancient copy is extant in MS. in the library of the Carmel of Frankfurt, whence a copy accurately taken once was sent to us by Segerus Pauli, Carmelite of Cologne, and a collation made with the Venetian edition of the year MDVII, he attested that the MS. context was much more integral than the printed. Of this Viridarium the second book treats of some Saints of the said Order, among whom the tenth was numbered S. Angelus of Sicily, glorious Martyr of the Lord, who among the Brothers of mount Carmel, first applying to the kingdom of Sicily, held the primacy. This Saint, while fervidly preached the faith of Christ in a certain house of the town of Licata, fell by the swords of impious infidels: where in honor of the Holy Martyr a church was constructed and dedicated, in which his glorious body upon the great altar honestly rests, and in which by his glorious merits frequent miracles are done, and especially on day V May, which by his own blood he dedicated.

[2] After these things written by Grossi, a certain Henry of S. Ursius, edited at Vicenza in the year MCCCCXCIII a Catalog of Saints, and an Appendix to Petrus de Natal. collected by Petrus de Natalibus Bishop of Equilio, and after he came to the end of the book, It seemed, he says, to us, that it would not be useless to subjoin the deeds of certain Saints, which from their histories, as compendiously as we could, imitating the author of this, we have plucked. There among other things, on S. Angelus, from those things which then circulated as Lives, he wrote these things: Angelus Martyr and Confessor, by nation Sicilian, in the city of Licata of generous stock born, from infancy devoutly serving God, given to fastings and prayers, took up the habit of the Carmelite Religion, in which life with the greatest austerity leading, was made an outstanding preacher. This one, with a certain preaching finished, the Saints Dominic and Francis, with the frequent people hearing, prostrate on the ground, in a wonderful manner venerated: who after long embraces predicted to B. Francis the stigmata, and in turn Francis himself to him martyrdom: which the prophecy of each was fulfilled. This one while he had preached Christ to the infidels, seized by Pagans, committed to deadly prisons, and afflicted with punishments on every side, at length with his forehead struck by the sword, offered to God a holocaust of life, on III Nones of May. Whose body in a church, dedicated to his name, rests, decorated with miracles.

[3] So that Henry: whose Preface omitting those who recently put their hand to recasting the said Catalog of Equilino, and substituting in place of it these words, On the Saints most recently canonized, on account of which title changed Angelus is thought Canonized, persuaded those, of whose Saints subsequently was treated, both that the appendix itself was of Equilino, and that in his age the canonization of those Saints was made. Petrus de Natalibus began moreover his Catalog of Saints in the year MCCCLXIX on the day of S. Barnabas, still Plebanus of the SS. Apostles at Venice, and finished in the year MCCCLXXI now created Bishop of Equilio, as from the MS. Codex of D. Joannes Angelus Duke of Altaemps testifies Thaddaeus Domnolus, in his tract on the place of Martyrdom of S. Felix Bishop of Spalato edited at Venice 1620. Furthermore Lucas Castellius of the Order of Preachers, at the end of his Tractate on the certitude of the glory of the canonized Saints, weaving the Catalog of those Just men, who by public and solemn rite by the Roman church were inscribed in the Album of Saints (which catalog Francis Victon Minim, at the end of his similar little work on the Canonization of Saints, rendered in French) deceived by that fallacious title, thought that the canonization of Angelus was to be ascribed to Honorius III.

[4] Cult in the Carmelite Order, John Bale, in the Catalog of Writers of Britain Cent. 8 after §. 27, says of Pope Pius II, that he canonized Angelus the Carmelite Martyr, with John Sorethus as solicitor, but this should be understood only of the concession of the Office, or (as we now call it) beatification well advises Lezana on the year MCCCCLIX, and to it refers that the name is found written in the calendar of the year MCCCCLXII and the Breviary of the year MCCCCXCV. That however to full Canonization there should proceed says the same Lezana on the year 1220 num. 21 that in the General Chapter of Brescia of the year MCCCCLXXVIII it was provided, that any Provincial, when he should return to his own, should procure with the highest diligence from Kings and from Princes for Canonization

of S. Angelus the Martyr and S. Andreas. The same business that he should promote Nicolaus Audet General of the Order, in the year MDXXVII urges Thomas Bellorosius, concluding the Epistle subjoined to the Life edited by him. Nor afterwards anything else seems to have been done or at least completed, than that the proper Office taken from that Life, with others likewise proper, the sacred Congregation of rites permitted to be recited. Meanwhile in the year MCCCCXCVIII it had been decreed in the General Chapter of Naumacus of the Province of Narbonne that throughout the whole Order in Vespers and Matins should be made daily, unless an impediment occurred, the memory of SS. Albert and Angelus, as Lezana writes in the foresaid year.

[5] As regards the Martyrologies, the commemoration of S. Angelus to be made is prescribed in the anciently printed supplement of the Carmelite Martyrology, Name in Martyrologies and also in the Additions to Usuard of the Cologne Carthusians and of John Molanus, likewise in the Martyrologies of Maurolycus, Galesinius, and other more recent ones, recalling the memory of S. Angelus on V May. Their words however we judge not to be brought forth here, because the faith to be given to them or denied depends on the truth or falsity of his Life, which under the name of Enoch, as an eyewitness, and after the killed Angelus the Patriarch of Jerusalem, written, gave the foundation to the encomia there reported. Why the Life is omitted here. That Life however not to be given here, persuades the expectation of the great book on the Saints of the Carmelite Order, which for many years past R. P. Daniel of the Virgin Mary has under the press, and daily promises to bring into light. For since by many reasons we seem to be convinced, that it is not such as the title bears; and it can be that the said R. Father, conscious of our diffidence about it, has prepared some things either for its declaration or defense, which by us is fitting without prejudice to be weighed; the prepared tract on this argument it has pleased to transfer hence even to the Appendix of this tome, where perhaps we shall give it whole.

[6] This therefore for now omitted, lest it cause delays to the running press, I conclude this first Chapter on the cult of S. Angelus with the words of the present Roman Martyrology, as a seal and solemn approval of his cult, which up to now to the holy Martyr privately and publicly, without Pontifical Canonization, was deferred: Who were the authors of the slaying? At Licata in Sicily of S. Angelus the Presbyter of the Order of Carmelites, who by heretics for the defense of the Catholic faith was slain. There had gone before, to ascribe the crime of slaying to the Heretics, Galesinius; thinking it incongruous to make mention of Pagans for the time, in which long ago all paganism was extinguished, and from all Sicily the Saracens had been driven out. There crept however in the XIII century through Italy, and so through Sicily, a certain mixture of most pernicious opinions, by whose followers in Italy was killed, almost at the same time at which S. Angelus in Sicily, S. Peter of the Order of Preachers. We treated of those heretics on the said Acts of S. Peter on XXIX April: by the same right however the said heretics could be called Pagans and infidels by the authors of the Life of S. Angelus; by which the killers of S. Peter are called Manichaeans.

[7] what year of Martyrdom As to the time of the martyrdom, generally now is believed from the faith of that Life not yet proven to us to have happened in the year MCCXX: but in this number there must be an error, if he who composed the Life did not invent everything, such as from the most ancient Vatican MS. is had in Benedict Gononus among the Lives of the Fathers of the West page 227 and following. For he says page 232 col. 1 about the middle, that fervent exhortation to penance, under which the woman publicly confessed her incest, whose conversion is narrated to have given cause to the Martyrdom, was had on day Friday, of S. Mark, in the Greater Litany. But in the year MCCXX (which was Bissextile and had Dominical letters E, D) the feast of S. Mark concurred with the day, not Friday, but Saturday. And by this perhaps moved Alegrius de Casanate, in the Paradise of Carmelite decoration, Statu 4 chapter 12, writes, that Angelus was killed in the year MCCXXXI, which had only Dominical letter E, and so the feast of S. Mark on Saturday. But because S. Dominic, with whom S. Angelus is said to have spoken, died in the year MCCXXI, neither does any authority or reason compel S. Angelus to be retained in Italy for so many years, the next year of the foresaid concurrence namely MCCXXV I preferred to assign to his Passion. For he is said under Pope Honorius III to have come from the Holy Land Angelus and in Sicily to have died: he indeed in his whole ten years of Pontificate, from the year MCCXXVI to MCCXXXVII, never on a Friday celebrated the feast of S. Mark, except in this year MCCXXV.

CHAPTER II.

Honor given to the sacred body; the church illustrated and handed over to the Carmelites: Patronage of Palermo.

[8] In that very, in which he had been slain, house entombed S. Angelus we believe John Grossi; and we think that by the authors of the slaying striving to hide their outrage, this final office was performed for the Martyr. From the mouth of the buried lilies are born, But God wished to make his glory known to the world, and from the place of the sepulcher, and as if from the mouth of the buried, suddenly a beautiful lily caused to be born, which as often as it was cut, immediately was reborn: and by this miracle moved the inhabitants of that town, dug up the place: where was found the holy body, fragrant with marvelous odor, which they honorifically reposited in a most honest ark. So Bellorosius in his final epistle to Nicolaus Audet the General, there having more certain faith with us, where not from the Life found under the suspect name of Enoch, but from notices received from elsewhere he begins to speak of S. Angelus. Therefore those words being expunged only, the place is converted into an oratory, by which he indicates that the place of burial was in a temple, just as he had learned from that Life, the rest as verisimilar we embrace, and with Grossi we hold, that with the body dug up again and miracles becoming frequent it happened, that first that house, in which the sacred blood had been poured out, was converted into an oratory; and at length in honor of the Saint there was constructed and dedicated a church: not however with the appellation of S. Angelus himself, and finally into a church. not yet canonized (for that would have been contrary to the ecclesiastical discipline of that age) but under the invocation of SS. Philip and James, that namely within the Octave of that solemnity recurring annually, could be had the commemoration of the Martyrdom there performed. Commonly however (as elsewhere we have seen often happen in similar case) it was called the church of S. Angelus, whose body there above the highest altar rested.

[9] His encomium John Grossi concludes with these words: A certain fountain springing in the same place, the miraculous fountain of S. Angelus, in which this glorious Martyr expended his blood for Christ, every year from first Vespers until second inclusive ministers oil to all, with which whoever shall have been anointed on the very day V May, by the merits of the holy Martyr, many oppressed by various languors are healed, to the praise of almighty God and glory, to whom be honor and glory in the ages of ages. Amen. The same, but on the springing of oil alone between both Vespers, writes at the end of Petrus de Natalibus Henry of S. Ursius. Thomas Bellorosius, in the epistle more fully explaining the matter, speaks thus: From the place, where first the body had lain, a living fountain of most clear water and most sweet odor flowed: from that part indeed, where the head of the Martyr rested, began to flow the liquor of medicinal oil: where afterwards by the hand of the artisan that water through steps of stone work was surrounded, which on the third Nones of May, on the anniversary day of the Martyrdom more than usual swells: and then also oil flows out, beginning the day before from the evening hour up to the setting of the sun of the following day, which is most diligently collected for healing the infirm: and many sick on that solemn day descend through the steps of the fountain, to wash their body, imploring the help of the Martyr; and gradually, with the people watching, receive health, especially those with hernia and paralytics.

[10] testimonies of authors on it, The same that they might be read also in the vulgar tongue Italian, Spanish, French, made the interpreters of Bellorosius's little books, John Baptist della Rosa, Canon of Palermo in the year MCCCCXCVII, with Lezana as witness; Leo Delicatus, in the Carmelite Garden, which printed in the year MDC I find praised in the Italian MSS. Licatae sent to Provincial Sebastian Sessa; Antonius Philippinus, Master General of the Order, in the Life printed at Rome and Palermo in the year MDCLVI, as from the same MSS. I have learned; John Pintus de la Victoria, in his Carmelite Hierarchy Tract. 6, an author, as I judge recent; and Irenaeus of S. Catherine, through whom the Spanish interpreter became known to us, and who his Life described in French printed at Paris in the year MDCLI; on the water moreover he has further, that it in little vessels, sealed accurately with the seal of the Magistrate of Licata, is exported to various cities and provinces. Diego Coria moreover, in the Chronicle of the Carmelites book 10 chapter 5, from the testimonies of John Rubeus and John Stephen Chyzola the Generals, and Bartholomew Ragusius and Alphius Matthiolus the General Procurators, confesses, that with the flow of oil now ceasing, only water flows.

[11] Roccus Pyrrhus in Notitia Ecclesiae Agrigentinae page 242 That fountain, and recent experiences. he says, which they call the well of S. Angelus, divinely flowed oil: its waters sometimes bubble up, sometimes also wash the pavement of the temple, as happened in the year MDCXXV, with the plague raging upon the citizens. Which overflowing was several times observed elsewhere by the faith of eyewitnesses transmit the prelaudate MSS. and add that the said well while the old church stood, was in its middle: and the water ordinarily, not indeed salt although the sea is most near, but yet bitter: but on the vigil of the feast it is often said to have been observed, that it became most sweet. Which tradition divine goodness approved in the year MDCLX, when D. Raphael Sitaiolus, secular Sacerdos of Licata, when on the Vigil of the Saint, the second hour after sunset, he had tasted a little of that water, and had recognized its taste changed; he made the matter manifest to all there present, who immediately took experience of the same sweetness: nor before on the next day, the third hour after sunset, all from the church had departed, did the water return to its pristine bitterness: which not a little inflamed the devotion of all citizens toward the Saint.

[12] the Carmelites obtain the place in the year 1599, On the church, which we have said was erected over the burial of S. Angelus, and we think was consecrated by Gottofred Bishop of Agrigentum, who both took out the body from the tomb and placed it above the altar, after the year MCCLXV; on this, I say, church Palaeonydorus writes, that Master John Soreth from Calixtus III the Supreme Pontiff acquired into the dominion of the Order, together with the holy body itself. But that he errs the Carmelites of Licata advise, and say in MSS. that that church from immemorial

time had Rectors, who finally were called Governors of the Society under the title of S. Angelus: and that on the fourth and fifth day of May, on the Vigil and feast of the same S. Angelus, divine offices there were performed by secular Sacerdotes. For the rest because the Carmelite Order with most ardent vows aspired to the possession of so great a treasure, with the consent and intercession of the Senate of Licata so much was accomplished with Clement VIII, that through a Brief given at Ferrara on XXV June MDXCVIII, regarding the right of that church to be transcribed to the Carmelite Fathers, an agreement was made between the Bishop of Agrigentum and the Provincial of the Carmelites on one part, and the Jurats and Clergy and Rectors of the said Society on the other part, under certain capitula, which presently in the following year on day IV May, were by another Pontifical Brief at Rome confirmed. Nonetheless the Provincial and Prior of this Convent had still to litigate at Rome, on the execution of the said capitula, with the Jurats of the foresaid Society; until in favor of the Order by two definitive sentences the suit was terminated, and power was given to the Carmelites of taking possession of the church, and of building a convent for themselves next to it, just as appears from the Brief of the same Pope Clement, given thereon at Rome at S. Peter in the year MDCV, XXVIII January, and from the Vice-regal executorial letters, obtained at Palermo almost one year after, on day XIV January.

[13] Therefore possession was taken on day II February, on the feast of the Purification of the most blessed Virgin Mary, and they take possession 1606. with P. M. Angelus Alfonsi, Vicar Provincial of the Province of S. Angelus accepting it: who there appointed as first Prior Fr. Sebastian Syracusan, from the town of Calatabellotta. He however after he had governed the convent of S. Angelus, with great approval of no vulgar sanctity, for the space of eight months and sixteen days; migrated to heaven on XVIII October, leaving many monuments of marvelous signs to this city, whose first Prior was a holy man both in life and after death wrought: of which information was taken in the year MDCXXIX juridically, by D. Michaelem Tavormina, Vicar and Delegate in the cause from the commission of the Bishop of Agrigentum D. Francis Trayna, by the mandate of the sacred Congregation of Cardinals: of which instrument the original copy is preserved in the archive of the Notaries de Fontibus, of this city: the bones however of the aforesaid Servant of God enclosed within a chest, adorned with a golden border, are guarded in the sacristy of this convent of S. Angelus.

[14] So far the words of the Italian MS., rendered into Latin: to which I add from the report of D. Angelus Ruyz secular Presbyter, taken on XI February of the year MDCXXVI, that the said Father Sebastian, seized by extreme infirmity, and given up by the physicians, said to the Reporter himself: Lord Angelus, I know that you are most devoted to our Religion, and therefore by the love of our Lord I beseech, that you take care to assist at my pillow, when from this life I shall depart. When therefore, he seemed to have S. Angelus as helper in death. said Angelus, on the evening preceding the death (he died however on Friday at the third hour of the night) I assisted at the bed, on account of the opinion of the greatest sanctity of him, whom I had had as spiritual Father, and the infirm one through individual moments gradually was failing; suddenly he sensed an impulse of a vehement spirit, as of a whirlwind entering through the small window of his cell, thence having a view into the church: and I saw the aforesaid Father Sebastian, with bronze cross seized, which he had been wont to wear from the neck, turn the same toward the small window, and I heard that with broken voice he whispered: Alas me! alas me! Jesus, Mary, Angelus: which thing vehemently terrified me, for the whole cell was being shaken. At this fragor moreover, ran the Fathers of the Convent, who had retired to bed, and lovingly inquired what was the matter with him: to whom he with already clearer voice and strength regained said, that he had been invaded by a multitude of demons attacking, in the form of his own subjects, who began to flog him: but he, the diabolical illusion recognized, trusting in God, had seen the glorious Virgin Mary with B. Angelus the Martyr; at whose presence the demons disappeared: and these things being said placidly expired.

[15] Furthermore the devotion of the faithful toward S. Angelus did not stop at Licata, but to other cities also was diffused, especially to the Palermitan Metropolis, in which when in the year MDCXXIV on the feast of S. John Baptist in the month of June pestilence had been published, Two of Licata in the Palermitan Lazaret are healed of the plague both many others by the benefit of S. Angelus were healed or preserved, and especially Master Nicolaus Bonellus citizen of Licata: who understanding himself contacted, with fever and vomiting with headache and two buboes under the left arm, opened the matter to officials; and was carried by them to the Lazaret, which then was in the conclaves of Zefonte called, next to the convent of S. Francis of Paola. He himself who recalled himself a Licatensian and one of the Confraternity of S. Angelus, and from his old wooden ark a particle some carried about; turned to his Saint hope of recovering health, the Saint being invoked: and quickly found himself healed. At the same time into the said Lazaret was led Master Balthasar de Scotia, also himself a Licatensian, struck by plague: whom when said Nicolaus had raised to certain confidence of preserving life, if to the patronage of S. Angelus he should commit himself, from that which he had a particle commodated to him some: and he to whom now a pestilential anthrax appeared under the left armpit, obtained quick health. So Nicolaus afterwards swearing at Licata deposited, in the order of witnesses, on which below, XCVIII. Therefore with the Palermitans' devotion daily growing toward S. Angelus, he was at length seen worthy that among the Patrons of the city he should be numbered, of which in MSS. is extant a document of this kind.

[16] on this occasion the Senate of that city On day IV May, of the ninth Indiction, MDCXXVI considering the Most Illustrious Senate of this happy city of Palermo, and having before its eyes the greatest miracles done through S. Angelus the Martyr of the Order of Carmelites, and not a few benefits exhibited through him to this city of Palermo; and especially that he had brought a certain image of the Mother of God, at present in the Metropolitan church of Palermo preserved and venerated, (I omit the rest done at Palermo, because received from the narration of the only pretended Enoch) beyond other great miracles through the same Saint in the whole world performed; and especially that in the past year he freed the city of Licata from the contagious disease; the Most Illustrious Senate decreed, for its devotion toward the said Saint, and at the instance of the Adm. R. P. Mag. Salvator Vinci S. T. D. and Vice-Provincial of the Order of Carmelites in this Sicily kingdom and city of Palermo, instant and asking both with the Most Illustrious Lord Cardinal de Auria the Archbishop of Palermo and Locumtenens for his Catholic Majesty in this Sicily kingdom, and with the Senate itself, that they should accept the said S. Angelus as Patron and Protector of the same city, that with the other Patrons already elected by the same Senate, in this most important necessity of contagious disease, in his perpetual tutelage, with God he should deign to intercede.

[17] Adds S. Angelus to its Patrons, Therefore the Most Illustrious Senate itself, by virtue of the present Act, elected and elects and named and names as Patron and Protector the said S. Angelus, whom most insistently asked and asks, that he deign by his clemency, under his patronage, protection and tutelage, the city itself, and its citizens and inhabitants to accept, and for the same city with God most good and great and with our Lord Jesus Christ to intercede, for the liberation from the contagious evil, that thoroughly it may be extinguished and to pristine health be reduced, just as it hopes. The Senate further established, that, in sign of this protection and patronage and devotion, every year in perpetuity, on the feast of S. Angelus the Patron, to be celebrated in the church of D. Nicolaus of the Order of Carmelites in the Plain, commonly called delli Bologni, with the obligation of an annual oblation. there be made and given four torches, of two rolls each torch of white wax, to the honor and glory of the said S. Angelus the Patron, at the expense of the University of the same city, from the sum of moneys which it can spend each year, according to the form of the capitula, pragmatica, and others made and to be made. Whence, that the underwritten may appear, by the mandate of the Most Illustrious D. Francis Agliata and Paruta, Prince of Villa-Franca and Duke of Sala, Praetor of this city of Palermo, Marc Antony Gascone, D. Simon Parisi Baron of Milocca, Caspar Agliata, D. Vincius Sandolina, and D. Charles de Termine, Jurats representing the Senate, orally to me Andreas Stanghetta the present Act was made.

[18] and of the office of double in the Clergy. Conforming to this the Archbishop on IV May, edicted, that all Ecclesiastics, both secular and regular, on day V May should make the Office of S. Angelus each year, with the rite of double without Octave, just as of other Patrons. I think this Office differs in nothing from that, to which the whole Carmelite Order in its in the meantime printed and reprinted Breviaries has been accustomed, for laymen a small office composed. except as far as perhaps the proper rite of the Order differs from the common Roman. Wherefore on it I ask nothing further: only I note that in the use of the lay faithful was, and perhaps still is, a certain smaller Office sometimes printed, and finally in the year MDCXX proposed with this epistle. Notary James Murci, to his fellow citizens of Licata Greeting. The small Office of our Protector S. Angelus the Jerusalemite Martyr Carmelite, by whose relics our most beloved city merited to be decorated, by Fr. Simon Saliba once composed, and now printed in the office of B. Mary, according to the rite of the Carmelites, on this folio, for greater aptitude of reciting, anew to be printed I have taken care: that we daily reciting it, may have our devotion the more increased, and by the Martyr himself may be protected in the heavens. Receive it gratefully. Farewell. Given in the same city, on day III Nones of May, indiction III, MDCXX.

CHAPTER III.

Translation of the body from the old silver ark to a new.

[19] The Body, on the third day after burial dug up again Together with the foretasted superior Chapter MSS. came into our hands, by the benefit of R. P. Daniel of the Virgin Mary, the Act of new Translation celebrated in the year MCCXXIII, the tenor of which thus begins, The illustrious Sacerdos and Martyr of God and our Lord Jesus Christ Angelus the Carmelite; and after a brief synopsis of his Life, which under the name of Enoch is had, thus continues. Most ancient and most known is the fame, from the tradition of the ancients, that for three days consecutively over the sepulcher of S. Angelus three times a green lily appeared, and innumerable miracles by his merits shone. On account of which the citizens of Licata after three days dug up the sacred bones: and immediately water sprang where the body was, of which over the water of the fountain oil was wont to remain, with which those anointed were restored: and they honorifically placed them in a wooden ark, covered with red color and decorated with golden brocade.

And so with not a few years elapsed (until the year namely MCCCCLXXXVI) the later citizens, moved by devotion, the foretasted sacred relics translated into a silver ark, in the year 1486 transferred into a silver ark. with little silver gilded leaves (these were like fillets on the individual sides, both of the ark and of the cover rising pyramidally, as we have seen the ark delineated) in the manner of a Cross adorned, in which up to now they remained.

[20] In the year 1615 it is decreed that another more splendid be made, But the present citizens, having before their eyes the present-day benefits… wishing in a smaller part to such and so great a Martyr to repay, that his Relics with greater honor and veneration may be venerated; decreed, now eight years ago, the foretasted silver ark, in which the foretasted venerable body rests, to illustrate: and on this account elected as Deputies of this fabric Francis Grugno, and Baldassar Celestri and Prades, and as Depositary of the silver Joseph Serravilla, upright and noble citizens, as appears by the Act celebrated IX June, XIII Indiction, MDCXV. And it is now a year and months, with the grace of the Holy Spirit breathing, a certain Master Lucius de Anizi, silversmith of the land of Ragusa, in the territory of the peoples of the city of Mohac, of this Sicily kingdom, offered and obligated himself to fabricate that goddess silver ark, as in the same Acts is read, Acted VI December, V Indiction, MDCXXI; just as he fabricated it in the home of the same Serravilla.

[21] With which ark dispatched, the citizens themselves wishing to make the translation of the foretasted holy Relics, within which in the year 1623 came to these things, in whose perpetual memory and effect of their piety, in the name of D. N. Jesus Christ we make plain, that in the year from the salvation restored to mortals MDCXXIII, Indiction VI, in the month of May, on the day V, on Friday and the feast of the same Martyr, at the hour about XX, of the Pontificate of the most holy in Christ Father and our Lord Gregory, by divine providence Pope XV, in the year of the same III, with the most Serene, most invincible and Catholic our Lord reigning, D. Philip, by the grace of God King the fourth of the Spains of both Sicilies, of Jerusalem &c happily amen, in the presence of us the Notary and the underwritten witnesses personally constituted, in the venerable church of the same Martyr, the same Francis Grugno, D. Antony de Caro, D. Philip Celestri, and Francis the late Joseph de Averna, Magnificent Jurats of this most beloved city of Licata, as fathers and first of the University, in the presence of the Lords Vicars, to which alone competes the right of Patronage of the foretasted holy Relics, known to us by names and surnames, with prompt soul and entreaties and pious supplications, asked the benediction from R. D. Michael Tavormina, citizen and Vicar of this city, on whom was conferred the power of this kind of translation by the Adm. Ill. and Rev. D. Gabriel Salerno, S. T. D. Cantor and Vicar General of the Cathedral church of Agrigentum of the Most Illustrious and Reverend D. Octavius Ridulfi, S. R. E. Cardinal, Bishop of Agrigentum, also known to us by name and surname, there present and by the foretasted authority in spiritual matters blessing, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

[22] With which benediction had, was by R. D. Carlo Giliberto, J. V. D. Archpriest of this greater Licata church, intoned the hymn, Deus tuorum militum. And R. D. Angelus Ercolo, Chaplain of the said church and Society of the said Martyr, and P. Mag. Fr. Angelus Gatti S. T. D. Carmelite, Prior of the sacred Convent of the same Saint, and other secular and regular Sacerdotes, vested in ecclesiastical paraments, singing took the old silver ark from the major altar, on which it had been placed, on the previous day, vigil of the feast, at the hour about XX at Vespers before the Office. At which hour, with the Clergy and people on this day in past years, the older citizens were accustomed to bring it forth from the chancels and iron enclosures of the sacred chapel of the foretasted holy Relics; and processionally, passing through the church of S. Andrew, then through the way which is called Arcus, carrying it on shoulders, under a baldachin, under an altar erected for this, on a wooden platform distinguished by ornaments, in the middle of the way which is near the cemetery of the foretasted greater church, beneath the windows of the secular Sacerdos D. John de Caro, and the house of D. Diego la Ferta, devoutly standing in the form of a circle the presbyters and Clerics of the said Greater church, the Brothers of all the Convents, and the Confraters of all the Societies and Confraternities of this city, and a copious number of citizens about ten thousand, beyond the very great crowd which had come out for this feast day.

[23] and the magistracy, On which platform indeed piously presided the spectabilis Captain D. Garcia Sarmiento and Avigna, Captain of arms; and the Magnificent John Antony Montagudo Captain, Angelus de Accolla Praefectus; and the said Jurats of the same city: and round about reverently standing with lit candles, Angelus Drogo Governor, Joseph Buxia, and Joseph Bonello Counselors, and John Martin Passaviti, Procurator of the said Society and church. And after the prayer was said by the same Archpriest, the old ark was placed, Grant we ask almighty God, that we who of B. Angelus your Martyr &c, with first the name of Christ invoked and the help of the said Martyr implored, it was by the same Vicar and Jurats ordered to Mag. Philip de Anizi, son of the said Mag. Lucius and to the same John Martinius as artisan: who first kneeling, with great devotion, with head bared, diligently with iron instruments, still with tears the people exclaiming Mercy, plucked from the foresaid old ark * silver plates, so that the foresaid Relics could in no way be seen; and that one into the foresaid new, which on the altar in the middle of the said Officials of the City stood, humbly placed. Which carefully closed, and the key affixed, and a just Act in the vulgar tongue with clear voice issued, there the Archpriest intoned the hymn saying, Te Deum laudamus, with the Clerics chanting, the bells ringing, the timpani and trumpets sounding, and the fire-works thundering. After these things finished by the same Archpriest with the prayer, Lord Jesus Christ good Pastor, was begun the annual Procession, toward the royal castle, by the customary and ancient way, but converted; that is what was first the end of the way, now was the beginning.

[24] But God is wonderful in His Saints: for in the very procession, and brought back to the church not without miracles. by the merits of the same Martyr, four little ones, infirm with rupture, received health, namely Julius Spata, Joseph Zarbo, Angelus Vaccaro and Sebastian Bono. At length applying to the foresaid church, they placed the said venerable silver new ark on the major altar, with the piety which befits, that there through the octave it might be venerated as is the custom. And there was made in this triumph of the Martyr great gladness in the people, all saying:

Rejoice holy Jerusalem, sacred with the blood of Christ:

Rejoice city of Licata enriched with the holy Martyr,

With the Relics of Angelus.

Whence as much at the instance of the said city and the said its citizens as of others whose interest it is, will be or could be, was made the present Act, on its day, place, and time about to be valid, with these present as witnesses, the secular Sacerdos D. Angelus Mamuxia. Cl. D. Michael Caci, Notary Antony de Fragaro, J. V. D. Peter de Casi, Doctor of Arts and Medicine D. Francis Perconti, Alexander Formica, D. Vincent and D. Mario Serravilla brothers sons of the foresaid Joseph Serravilla, John Baptist de Ognibene, Antony de Caci, Alexander Articalupo, John Philip Fontana, Joseph Collura late of Francis.

[25] Then a new wooden one being prepared, With the Translation of the holy and venerable Body of our Martyr Protector accomplished, as we have prescribed, by the common counsel of the spiritual and temporal Court of the prelibate Officials, for re-edifying the wooden ark, in which the sacred bones remained, on account of the destruction of the inveterate wood, for perpetually preserving the relics, by the piety of the most beloved city and its citizens, was perfected a new wooden ark, with red satin within adorned, and with various colors with the needle distinguished, by the genius and outstanding hands of the holy Virgins of Licata of the holy monastery of S. Maria succursus, of the Cistercian Order of D. Bernard: into which the glorious body was translated from the said old wooden ark, the old is opened, and the body is found, on the past night privately in the sacred chapel. That however was found in it placed thus. First in the middle of the ark was a tablet, which would be esteemed the bottom of the ark, then a hand-cloth of green silk, with white and red colors lined: thence the sacred bones of the body and the holy head or skull broken, wrapped in cotton or bambace. Above fifteen little bronze coins, impressed with the insignia of the kingdom of Aragon, and below some fragments and ashes of the glorious body, and finally a parchment we saw to be contained, written with these words.

[26] Be it known and manifest to all Christian people, that today on day VII August, with an instrument of translation of the year 1486. of the fourth Indiction MCCCCLXXXVI, with the Most Blessed supreme Pontiff Innocent Pope the Fourth and the Most Serene Prince and Most Illustrious our Lord D. Ferdinand reigning, illustrious King of Castile, Aragon, Leon, Sicily, Toledo, Valencia, Portugal, Galicia, the Majorcas, Seville, Sardinia, Corsica, Murcia, Jerusalem, Algarve, Algeciras and Gibraltar, Count of Barcelona, Lord of Biscay and of Medina, Duke of Athens and Neopatras, Count of Roussillon and Cerdagne, Marquess of Oristano, and Count of Goreani: with the Captain of arms of the land of Licata being, the magnificent and spectabilis Gascerandus de Caro, Lord of the castle of Mons-clarus; and the Captain of the said land, the noble Macciotta de Amato; the Praefectus, Peter Cannizano; the Jurats, the noble Moraclusio de Sotto, Berengar Seroria, Antony Perconti, and Christopher la Caudarera: to the praise of the holy and individual Trinity, the glory and honor of the most glorious Martyr S. Angelus of the Order of Carmelites, the most glorious body was translated into the present silver ark by Vener. D. Leonard de Capransano, Canon of Agrigentum, commissioned for this by the Vicars General of the Most Reverend in Christ Father and Lord D. John de Castro Bishop of Agrigentum, with the Venerable Lords intervening in the same Translation, John Gravina Vicar of the Land of Licata and Presbyter, Gascerandus Guglismotta Archpriest, and D. Antony de Sotto Chaplain and Beneficiarius of the church of S. Angelus: in which Translation also intervened many notable, magnificent and outstanding men of the Kingdom. Whence, to the praise and glory and honor of the said most glorious Saint and the future memory of the matter, the said noble Officials caused to be made the present writing of the foretasted Translation, by the hands of me Fr. Peter Bancellis of the Order of Minors of the city of the Majorcas, and with the seal of the foretasted University, and the protection of the subscription of the said D. Leonard strengthened: which is acted at Licata in the year, month, day and Indiction premised, before the said church of the house of the Confraternity, of which Rectors are at present the Magnificent D. Angelus Gaëtano, and the noble John de Anello; and Governors the Magn. D. Michael de Chilestro, and Antony de Sotto; Procurators, Antony de Sancto and Bernard de Mundo.

I Lord Leonard de Capransano.

[27] And in the said adorned ark on the same night was placed; first the ark surrounded with cotton corporal, Into the new the sacred bones are transposed; with a fringe of white thread fringed, and the same Relics wrapped in new cotton. Then in the corner of the ark itself were placed the said fragments and ashes, in a silk veil of violet color surrounded with golden fringes: thence a sack of white cloth integral, full with the said old cotton with the said hand-cloth wrapped: then above with eight palms of silk damask cloth of green color, and a quantity of new cotton, all are covered. Hence it is that today XIV of the same month and Sunday after the Octave of the foretasted feast, at the hour, indiction, year, pontificate and government premised, we notify how from the foresaid church of the Martyr the Procession went out, in place of the Octave for the concourse of the people on Sunday, by the customary and ancient way, as above, with the ark adorned, and for the decoration of the Martyr surrounded with golden necklaces. which processionally carried about Which arriving at the said monastery, the same Vicar as above, delegated by the same Vicar General of the said Cardinal of the title of S. Agnes in Agone Bishop of Agrigentum, and the same Archpriest showed the sacred bones to the foresaid Holy Virgins weeping.

[28] With the procession following and arriving in the same place near the cemetery, the ark itself was supported, and with greater fitness placed on a wooden platform, with the said Officials kneeling and the said almost innumerable crowd of citizens and visitors round about in this manner standing, with the ark opened, with the office observed as we said in the superior Act, are shown to the people, the Vicar and Archpriest weeping and kissing the sacred bones kneeling demonstrated the same to the devoted people, exclaiming often and again, Mercy, with the highest tears saying:

O strong shield of faith, O best preacher,

Sower of the eloquence of Christ O Angelus most dear,

Dire death you bore,

While you forbade incest,

Drove away depraved morals

Thus you sent forth your spirit.

For your citizens pray.

[29] Adoration being made and the said spectacle being completed, the said ark, wrapped in clean linen, and again the silver are enclosed, with the said golden necklaces taken from it, they placed in the foresaid silver, which on the same platform remained, with first placed in the middle of them the said parchment and three others, namely one of the present and the upper and two of the other said Acts in the upper noted: and the foresaid arks the foresaid silversmiths with iron keys and screws strongly together affixed and covered, so that without violence and their destruction the foresaid sacred body in the future could in no way be seen. Which being closed and the hymn Te Deum laudamus with the prayer being said, with the procession following, finally arriving at the foresaid church of the holy Protector the Jurats, the foresaid venerable ark for the year in the sacrarium closed, with the customary iron and wooden enclosures, as is the custom; the citizens rejoicing and saying, O fortunate age! O happy people we! who have merited to see the glorious body of our Angelus.

[30] Whence in the future may appear &c as in the upper; with these present as witnesses the secular Sacerdos Don Joseph Bruione, together with the Instruments thereon made. secular Sacerdos D. James Perconti, secular Sacerdos D. Joseph lo Blundo, P. Fr. Bonaventura Bracuzzo Sacerdos of the Conventual Minors, P. Fr. Melchior Labizo Sacerdos Carmelite, John Bapt. Formica Vice-portulano of the Loader of this city; Hieronymus Formica, father and son, and father of the above-said Alexander Formica witness in the Upper; J. V. D. Joseph Bonello, Francis de Milazzo, Peter Cosso, Diego Greek, Joseph Ricciardo late of Gascerandus, and Nicolaus Cavaleri. Each Act subsigned D. Michael Tavormina Vicar and delegate as above: and concluded with the notarial sign Jacobus Murci, of the most beloved city of Licata, by Royal authority through the whole Sicily kingdom on this side the Strait and its adjacent islands, ordinary Judge and public Notary. Finally faith for the same Notary being made by the Jurats four of the same most beloved city, above num. 50 named, each Act consigns Antony Mallia, Royal master Notary, with the customary Seal of the University added.

* whether plates or bands?

CHAPTER IV.

Institution of a new festivity for day XVI August.

[31] With the same faith and authentic certainty as the above-placed instrument, we received from the foresaid P. Daniel another instrument, made two years after, worthy to be added also to this tract, which is such: D. O. M. Innumerable indeed and almost infinite are, The city of Licata bound to S. Angelus by many titles, the things which from the universal craftsman of things to the human race, and especially to the Christian commonwealth, which by the light of His face (we mean of faith) liberally distinguished, were both conferred benefits and are conferred daily: on account of which there is no doubt that we are bound by ineffable and perpetual knots, for thanks to be rendered to Him. For the rest the chief of all, by which from almost all evils, plague, hunger and war we of this most beloved city are freed, without doubt that seems to be, that He has deigned to decorate our city with the most holy body of the Sacerdos Virgin and Martyr Angelus the Carmelite, as an incomparable treasure: of whom indeed it has been and perpetually will be such singular protection toward us, that supported by such great patronage, we have escaped very many evils, which infested others…

[32] and especially on account of the pestilence assuaged, Let us pass over the innumerable miracles, which thus with God's grace nodding and helping, both living and after death he gloriously performed: and let us come to that, which on account of its magnitude can neither be passed over in silence, nor be celebrated with equal praises: that miracle we mean, which in these more recent times to this city he most evidently demonstrated. For when through very many parts of this province (so willing God) on account of our crimes a certain lethal and most hostile disease… everywhere was raging; and now in the month of June here to us the pestiferous plague had arrived, and most firm roots and foundations, as we beheld, in this city had cast, so that without doubt in the hand of most foul death we all to be we held for certain; the most holy Martyr of God took up our parts, and our cause, although unmerited, was strongly patronized. The pestiferous disease attacked at first entry that part of the city, in which the church of the most holy Preacher is situated; and that house, which among others the society of the Saint possessed. Which thing taking ill (if it is permitted thus to speak) the most holy Martyr, suddenly for his city poured out strong prayers, as it is right to believe, and rooted out every venom and put it to flight to the foundations: just as also from innumerable evils his own city daily he frees, and the work of divine justice averts. And because we have judged ourselves sufficiently certain, wishing to show himself grateful, that by his prayers we escaped unharmed and the deadly plague was driven away; lest so great a benefit ungratefully we dissimulate and deservedly of crime are accused, we wish that by posterity, even to the last day of the world, so great a benefit be held in memory. And therefore, in virtue of the present, with true confession and solemn testification we profess this very thing.

[33] And desiring however to render ourselves grateful, on account of so memorable a benefit, to the most holy Martyr according to the strength of mortals; the feast, not on the fifth day of May (as is the custom) but on the sixteenth of August perpetually to celebrate (namely in memory of the eminent love and immense benefit at that time conferred on us); and his temple, in which now the sepulcher of his body is, to amplify we have established and decreed. Which thing that it may have a happy and efficacious outcome; in the year 1625 on August 7, in the name of D. N. Jesus Christ we make known to anyone about to read this writing, how in the year from the world's reparation MDCXXV, eighth Indiction, in the month of August on the seventh day which is Thursday, at the hour about XXIII now with the sun setting (a day indeed to be marked with a white pebble, as they used to say, on the festivity of the holy Confessor of God Albert from the Religion of the foresaid Martyr, on this day we say, on which on Indiction IV in the year from the nativity of Christ MCCCCLXXXVI our predecessors transferred the glorious body from the old ark, with silken cloth clothed, to the silver) at the time of the Pontificate of our in Christ Father and Lord Urban by divine providence supreme Pontiff, by this name the eighth, in the year of his assumption second, with the most serene most invincible and Catholic our Lord D. Philip reigning, by the grace of God King of this name fourth of the Spains, of both Sicilies, of Jerusalem and of other kingdoms happily as always: We D. Francis Figueroa, Francis d'Averna son of the late Joseph, and D. Hieronymus de Caro, three of the spectabilis Jurats of this most beloved city of Licata, by common consent, as Fathers of the University to which pertains the right of Patronage of the foresaid Relics and feast, by the underwritten Notary by names and surnames known, with the absence within the city's territories of Nicolaus Serravilla the other Jurat standing, before a great part of this people in the foresaid church, and first on this with diligent and mature consideration had, with the vow and counsel of D. Diego de Giglia Royal Captain, and Francis de Averna son of the late Vincent Praefectus and Syndic, and not a few of nobler and prudent men and citizens present, with no one disagreeing, by virtue of the present (yet reserved, if necessity should compel and reason demand, the benediction of the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Bishop of Agrigentum, and the license of the Most Illustrious and Excellent Pro-rex of the kingdom and of its royal patrimony) we transfer the feast of our holy Protector from day V May to XVI August.

[34] So namely, that just as hitherto every year was the custom on the feast of S. Mark the Evangelist publicly to make known free fairs from the obligation of taxes, lasting until the entry of the foresaid Relics; [it institutes, that as before was celebrated the feast on May 5 with fairs and games,] and on the fourth day of May at Vespers to take the said glorious body from the iron locks of the chapel, carrying it as far as the major altar of the foresaid church; and then on the fifth day following of the same month, which was the day of the glorious death, in the morning, was made the sacred procession of the said Relics, and on the same day toward Vespers, on land and sea, to those preceding the prize was given; and the said Relics through the following Octave were venerated upon the said major altar: and on the last day of the same Octave in the evening, was made a procession: and at length the same Relics in the above-said chapel were enclosed. After this memory of so glorious a miracle, the liberation of the homeland from the pestiferous plague, with the same and far greater more worthy solemnities, every year perpetually to be celebrated the said feast we direct and command, taking the beginning from today's day until the future time, with free fairs until they enter their proper chapel the foresaid Relics, so let it be celebrated henceforth on August 16; which will be through the whole Octave of the feast and consequently. On day XV of the foresaid month before Vespers begin, let go forth the foresaid Relics from the chapel, and let them be carried upon the major altar, and let celebrate both Vespers of the feast with Mass the Rev. Archpriest of this matrix church or the Rev. Vicar of the city with his Clerics, according to

the tenor of the Apostolic Brief on this matter. And on the same day, whether morning or evening, according to the opportunity of time, ought to be made through the whole city, just as is wont to be made, the sacred procession of the glorious body: and after Vespers on the same day, let there be run, as is the custom, to the foresaid prize; and through the whole Octave let the said Relics be venerated on the major altar; and on the day of the Octave let a procession be made through the customary streets of the city. And at the end of the said procession, with the Relics now reposited in their proper chapel, the foresaid Archpriest or Vicar let intone the Hymn, Te Deum laudamus: which completed let follow the Prayer, giving thanks to God most good and great and to our glorious Martyr, on account of so great a benefit conferred on us. With these things performed let them be closed with the customary locks, and let the Relics be preserved in their proper sacrarium.

[35] We wish also that on the fifth day of May, which is the proper day of the holy Martyr, and nonetheless let the feast of May 5 be kept, perpetually be celebrated also the feast: that is from the twenty-fifth day of April let begin the ancient devotion of visiting the Relics, which lasts until the fourth day of May the vigil of the feast: on which day before Vespers let the above-said Relics go forth from the chapel, and be placed upon the major altar of the same temple: where through the whole fifth day of May until sunset let them dwell, and lastly let them be enclosed in their proper place or chapel with the customary locks. And so in perpetuity ought to be observed exactly, not intending to alter the old custom in anything: but only in this first feast we wish that the foresaid Relics be brought forth from their proper sacrarium on the seventeenth day, which will be the day of Saturday before Vespers; that on the following Sunday day, on account of the greater convenience of the peoples, they may be found morning present. And let the foresaid procession be made through the way which surrounds the church, and make its way through the temple of S. Andrew and through the way which is called del Arco, but the procession be made in August, and lastly let the Relics be placed on the major altar of the matrix church, where solemn Mass let be celebrated, and at the end let be said the Hymn, Te Deum laudamus, with the Prayer as above. Which Relics let dwell through the whole day in the matrix church, and in the evening let follow the said Procession, toward the royal castle, by the customary and old way, in inverse order however; and let the said Procession make its way through the way which is called Bombardella, and let it pass before the foresaid house, in which the plague had its beginning, that those places may obtain the holy benediction from the Saint: then let it proceed through the plaza of the said Bombardella, and through the way toward the church of S. Saviour let it be led back to its proper temple.

[36] Exhorting all posterity and devout citizens, that after this every year, to which all are invited. with the greater solemnity which they shall be able and joy, through the whole Octave the feast of so glorious a Patron not cease to celebrate, as we now in this first feast give the beginning: which all things be in honor of God O. M. and of His foresaid Martyr and in memory of such and so great a miracle. Exhorting also that all, with whole heart, and with the whole effort of devotion and obediences of so glorious a Martyr, to his prayers, help and patronage in their necessities fly. Promising them in the Lord, that just as our predecessors and we, by this Martyr's intercession, from all occurring evils were freed, so they also will be freed. And always for the beginning of this solemn feast let us spend a glad day, giving thanks to God and to His Martyr, who be praised in perpetual eternities. Amen. Whence that in the future may appear, and as much at the instance of the said city and the said citizens, as of others whose interest it is, will be or could be in any way in the future, was made the present Act; on its day, place and time about to be valid: with these present as witnesses the secular Sacerdos D. Angelus Mamuxia, secular Sacerdos D. Diego la Ferla, J. V. D. Francis Brissi, Archangel d'Onolfo, John Antonin de Caci, Peter Cosso, and John Philip Fontana. There followed the ratification of Nicolaus Serravilla the Jurat then absent and on VIII August present, with the subscription of James Murcius the Notary as above, and the attestation of the Jurats on his notarial authority on day 1 September.

[37] One of the keys is granted to the Bishop of Agrigentum. From these moreover it appears that the city of Licata to itself alone reserved the right of Patronage, as they call it, on the holy body: in testimony of which right also it wished to communicate to none the keys of so great a treasure, which were seven different ones, and to D. Bon-incontro Bishop of Agrigentum, as is had in MSS. demanding one of them, generously resisted, even in judgment before the Tribunal of the royal Monarchy, where according to the city sentence was pronounced. Afterwards however, uncertain whether by zeal of gratifying or from another cause, the Jurats spontaneously offered the Bishop one of the three keys, with which is closed and opened the iron grate of the sacred ark prefixed; with two others, and likewise those four which pertain to the cover of the ark, retained with themselves; and that under condition, that the Bishop never or in any case can deny it, from whatever cause he should be required by the Jurats.

[38] Miracles ancient, As regards the miracles, that they may be believed, immediately from the first revelation of the holy body, to have been most frequent, we have testimony beyond all exception from the erection of the church, and the solemnity of perpetual cult, bearing forth no other beginning than the multitude of benefits divinely received, and to the Saint Martyr's intercession by the faithful invoking him piously ascribed. That no more ancient ones are extant consigned to letters, the authors of the often cited MSS. excuse through the destruction and burning of the city, in the year MDLIII by the Turks and French made, in which all public and private writings perished. Thomas Bellorosius who divulged his little book in the year MDXXVII, But those written by Notary long since perished. all twenty-four years sooner than the prefixed calamity should come upon the city; while no mention of such books does he make makes us suspect, that this loss is somewhat older. Doubt meanwhile of the diligence of the elders we cannot; since Arnoldus Bostius who lived up to the year MCCCCXCIX, in the Speculum historiale book 8 chapter 9 treating of Angelus, thus ends: What miracles God daily in the place of the burial of the same Martyr operates, by the Notaries of the town in great volumes are recorded. And in the MS. Codex of the Mechlin Convent, where among other monuments of the Order folio 184 is extant the Life itself of S. Angelus, these things are read at the end: The miracles which continually God works in the place of his burial, by the Notaries of the town in great volumes are shown written, nor can be easily recited.

[39] It is indeed greatly to be lamented their loss; the diligence however of posterity in this century, excited by new benefits, the same to some extent has striven to supply: In the 16th century the names of the cured were wont to be described: for, as will be established from the following tract num. 72, 97 and 103, about the year MDC indeed and MDLXXV the custom was, in a book to be reported the names and surnames of those, who professed themselves relieved of some disease through the intercession of S. Angelus. But this book although still in hands had been, then when more authentically were excerpted the miracles to be commemorated below; and perhaps also now survives, begun by the Chaplains of the church of S. Angelus, and by the Officials of the Sodality continued; no one however from it has brought forth anything, on account of which we should think it worth the trouble to require its copy, indeed no one hitherto has been found, who simply has named it. Of greater account altogether is to be made, that, as Irenaeus of S. Catherine writes, in the year MDCXXV, VI and VII, at the instance of the Magistracy of Licata and with the license of the Bishop of Agrigentum, in the year 1625 and following through the Notary many things are collected. by Officials and public Notaries was taken and in writings excepted information of more than one hundred sworn witnesses, who faithfully deposed a great number of miraculous cures; from certain knowledge, had through experience in persons either their own, or most known to themselves. Then the same Irenaeus tastes them in the last chapters of the Life written by him. We by the benefit of the often praised Daniel of the Virgin Mary having received from the Convent Transpontine of Rome the authentic copy of the original Process itself, from it we have compiled the following tract; whose accurate prolixity will be an argument to the Carmelite Fathers, that we when we treated more briefly than they wished of the holy men of their most sacred Order in March, were so meager only by the lack of suitable matter.

MIRACLES AND BENEFITS

from the depositions of sworn witnesses

in the year especially 1625 from 2 October to 25 November in public tablets reported,

into Latin rendered and more aptly digested.

Angelus, Presbyter of the Carmelite Order, Martyr at Licata in Sicily (S.)

FROM THE MS. PROCESS.

[1] At the request of the Magistracies Witnesses received and examined by the spiritual court of this most beloved city of Licata, and by me Notary James Murci, deputed commissary for these things, and by the order and mandate of the Illustrious and adm. Rev. Sacerdos Don John la Cartia, Canon of Agrigentum, general Visitator of the Illustrious and Most Reverend V. J. D. Don Conrad Bonincontro, Sacerdos Canon of Agrigentum, Abbot of Potenti and Vicar General of the Diocese of Agrigentum, with the See vacant, by virtue of letters given at Agrigentum on day XIX July, VII Indict. MDCXXIV; at the petition and instance of the spectabilis Don Francis Figueroa, Francis de Averna late of Joseph, Nicolaus Serravilla and Don Hieronymus de Caro, Jurats, and Francis de Averna late of Vincent, Praefectus and Syndic of this foresaid city, by virtue of the memorial of the spectabilis men themselves, with the license of the Vicar of Agrigentum, decreed by the same Illustrious and adm. Rev. Visitator General, that witnesses be received, on day XXVIII of the month of August next past, with the presence and intervention of the Reverend Sacerdos J. V. D. Don Julius Bennici, Vicar foraneus of this foretasted city, and delegate to the within of the same illustrious and adm. Rev. Visitator Gen. by virtue of an Act made in the Acts of the foresaid Court, on day XXX of the same August next past; and with the presence and intervention of Rev. Sacerdos Don Andrew Lombardo, Fiscal Advocate of the said Court: and this for verifying within for the greater glory of God, and of His Sacerdos, Virgin and Martyr, S. Angelus the Carmelite, Protector of this foresaid city.

[2] The above-cited letters, Memorial, and public Acts are described integrally in the front of the Codex itself: which it was not worth the trouble to describe, because in substance they contain nothing, except an argument of zeal for promoting the devotion toward the Saint very well deserving of the city, and the common formulas of the present time used in the Sicilian Courts. Rather from the Relation of the above-named Notary (who on the last day, also himself came to testify) take these few things, more pertaining to the prior notice. Because in the time

of the plague there were very many, on the occasion of the plague extinguished who through the intercession of the Saint various miracles, graces and benefits received, that of them more distinct memory to posterity may stand… by me deputed for this the foresaid witnesses up to one hundred were excepted; at the same time also for resuscitating the memory of more ancient miracles and benefits, the notice of which had perished with the books in which they were wont to be described consumed. daily two witnesses are heard up to 100. Which indeed witnesses… were heard with that disquisition and examination as the gravity of the business requires: that however more exactly all things should be done, and more maturely the testimonies could be examined, only two on each day were received to testify. The said Most Reverend Vicar General decreed moreover, and by enjoining commanded the Officials of the Sodality of the Saint himself, that as often henceforth before them should appear persons worthy of faith, asserting that they had received some miracle or benefit from the Saint, the same should reveal to the spiritual Court, that of them might be taken and described authentic testimonies after fitting and diligent discussion of the fact.

[3] Extant also is this mandate among the foresaid preliminaries of the MS. Codex itself under day I September MDCXXV. And so were heard besides the hundred already indicated, eleven others, within day IX December of the said year and day XV March of the year MDCXXVII. Few, you will say, with respect to the multitude, and afterwards still few others. within LIV days previously received. But hear what Don Francis Attardo Mag. Notary, of the Spiritual court of Licata says, who on day XV September MDCXXV by an Act, in the preliminaries of the MS. Codex expressed, had substituted for himself Notary James Murcius, as one who could not personally watch over the taking of the foresaid witnesses. He, I say, the last giving testimony in the year MDCXXVII on day XV March, among other things asseverates, that if as Master Notary of the foresaid Court he had wished to describe all the miracles and benefits which daily were divulged, he could not have devoted himself by office to other businesses of the same Court. If however in the year MDCXXV more testimonies up to one hundred were excepted; that was not done because in other years there abounded less graces obtained through S. Angelus; but because in that year the Jurats of the city recognized themselves more specially obligated to the same, on account of the plague driven away in the previous year, and that monument of their gratitude they wished to stand to posterity.

[4] The depositions of these in what form written, Furthermore the form of the Reports or Depositions was the same to all, such as below from the first will appear; beginning from the note of the day, Indiction, and Christian year; at the end however of each was added in the Margin, Read it she/he confirmed: and under the same Report was read either the very name of the deponent, written with proper hand; or of another subscribing himself, for and from the will of witnesses not knowing how to write. To the Reports indeed of certain Presbyters, or otherwise lettered men, of whom not only the mind but also the very words the Notary expressed, in the beginning at the margin is found written, He himself dictated: and these were, witness I, II, XIII, XIV, XXIII, XXIV, XXXIII, XLII, and XLIV, and the last and CI the Notary himself, adds, By writing I dictated. The same indeed at the end of the whole Roman codex, to the transcription made by him added this faith, I James Muni, of the most beloved city of Licata, by Apostolic authority through the whole world, by what faith transcribed and sent to Rome, but by Royal authority through the whole of this Sicily kingdom on this side the Strait and its adjacent islands, ordinary Judge and public Notary, all the prefixed testifications I received, wrote, and exemplified them from the Original existing with me, and extracted them on common and unsealed paper, at the instance of the Most Reverend Doctor of sacred Theology Father Master Fr. Theodore Stratius, Prior General of the whole Order of Carmelites, with his exemption standing with my hand here I subscribed myself, and with my customary and accustomed seal signed, in faith and testimony of all and singular the prefixed, today I of the month of March, VIII Indiction MDCXL. There followed the subscription of the Jurats of Licata, Alexander Formica, Franc Foglietta, Francis Grugno, and Don Calcerandus de Caro, making faith for the legality of the said Notary; and there again exemplified? and of the Senate of Palermo, with its great seal confirming all things: and also subscriptions of Fr. Seraphim of Jesus Mary the Apostolic Notary, and Fr. Lewis Perez, in the year MDCLXXIII on days VIII June and XXXI August, asseverating, that the copy concords with the original existing in the archive of the Order of Brothers of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of mount Carmel in the Convent of S. Maria Transpontine in the city. And this is the copy, which sent into Belgium and to us benignly communicated by R. P. Daniel of the Virgin Mary, I said at the end of the preceding commentary.

[5] The matter is prolix, and almost two hundred pages of minute writing fills; how shall they be collected here? wherefore for the cause of avoiding tedium we shall excerpt from the individual reports, what in each is principal: and if anything is more often related by various, of him alone we shall use the words, whose beyond the rest either dignity of person, or certitude of knowledge will seem to merit the prerogative. The order also we shall not follow that, in which the individuals were heard: but the matters themselves related by them digesting into certain heads, so we shall study brevity, that to the firmness of authority nothing be lacking, nor shall anything abound to the nausea of readers. Because however from the day of the begun action, that is from day II October, until day XXV November inclusive, almost on individual days two were heard, it will not be necessary to add the day of the made report: for this whoever wishes to know, will easily attain, by considering as which Witness be said is he whose words are exhibited: and this will be valid in the first hundred Witnesses: in the rest eleven afterwards heard, until XV March of the year from the first action second, because the reason is not equal, the day will be inscribed. With which thus prefaced, let us come to the matter, and let us take the beginning from that plague which of the new feast to be constituted, of the church to be amplified, and of the graces to be described was the occasion: so however, that when this only the receivers cared, that how truly individual things were reported they should judge, but not the qualities of evident miracle to discern from grace, from the testifying one's opinion to the Saint's merits attributed; we also let it be reckoned to leave in the middle the discrimination, by the sentence of a higher tribunal to be established.

CHAPTER I.

At Licata in the year 1625 contagion is detected creeping, a Lazaret is instituted, the Saint's help is usefully invoked.

[6] Report of the reverend Sacerdos. J. V. D. Don Carlo Heriberto, Archpriest of the venerable greater church of this most beloved city of Licata, of age about LXVIII years, of this city a known citizen, made with oath, with breast touched in Sacerdotal manner, on the underwritten and the whole fact interrogating, said he knew, how a through the merits of the glorious Virgin and Martyr S. Angelus b… God our Lord always showed various signs, benefits and miracles, around various energumen, S. Angelus famous for miracles at Licata hernial, and others incurably laboring persons, in the procession, on the feast, on the Octave of the Saint himself, and at other times of the year; and also in various sick, who washed with water of the fountain, in the place where the burial existed, infinite benefits received: whence this city is very much obliged to God and to the said Saint Martyr, by daily graces through him helped and adorned c: and especially in the time of ancient pestilence, which was in the year MDLXXV or thereabouts: from plague once when this Sicily kingdom was most afflicted by that contagious disease, so that almost all cities were desolate, with the greater part of their citizens lost: for those who contracted the plague in this city, if compared with the most numerous sick of other cities, were quite few: which to the merits of S. Angelus all ascribed d.

[7] In this most recent time however, in which again with the same scourge certain cities of this kingdom God wished to be chastised, namely Trapani, Palermo, Castelvetrano, and again the city is freed, Castelnuovo, Cammarata; with the news of the spreading evil this city moved, in the most recently past month of June of this year MDCXXV, attempted to placate divine justice, and to avert indignation, through various processions, even with bare feet of those supplicating and the sacred Relics of the holy Martyr being carried about. It pleased nonetheless God to permit, that in that very month pestilence was kindled almost throughout the whole city, the suburb, and the surrounding territory. But the lifted hand of God S. Angelus sustained: and the evil at almost the same time was both made manifest and extinguished: and from then not only from epidemic, but also from any other vulgar disease the city was free, more than ever before. Was however the common sense of all, as from the common sense of the citizens that this was to be ascribed to the intercession of that Saint, to whose church all the people of this city ran, with true and firm faith of liberation soon to be obtained: just as also it obtained. Such persuasion moreover is founded on this, that the contagion first burned in the village of the church of the Saint, and in the atrium of certain houses pertaining to the Society of the Saint: and that so vehemently, that within a short time all generally were believed to be inspired with it: but, as said, the universal evil was most quickly dissipated through the merits of the Saint himself e.

[8] Furthermore these things says the Reporter foresaid from his certain knowledge; the Archpriest testifies. as one who for forty-three years has resided here, and is now Archpriest of the greater church, and in his own person always has been present at supplications, forty-hours, and other prayers indicted for the public necessity of the city: likewise who at the time of the foresaid contagion went around to hear the confessions of the infected, both in the lazaret and through the city: commending himself to God and to S. Angelus, by whose intercession he believes himself to have remained safe: likewise who tortured by pain of side and kidneys without faculty of solving urine, and afflicted at intervals by other infirmities, brought back health with the Saint invoked: and finally who with his own eyes saw miracles wrought, especially in the translation of the Relics, the Saint's work also in himself experienced. which he with his hands brought forth one by one and showed to the people, in the year MDCXXIII, of Indiction VI, on the feast of the same Martyr day V May, on Friday, at the hour about eleven, near the cemetery of the greater church; and there he learned of benefits at the very same time conferred on various ones through the intercession of the Saint, to whom always be glory f. Asked of the cause of knowledge he said, that he knows the foresaid by the manner above, because he was present, saw and heard: of the place and time he said as above.

[9] So far the first Witness, whose whole report, that a specimen may be taken of the form of the rest, it has pleased to represent verbatim. The manner by which the contagion was brought in and propagated, and suddenly extinguished, more distinctly explained witness XLII, Don Horace Contreras secular Sacerdos, Doctor of arts and medicine, deposing, that when the plague had been brought into the city through one boy

a parochial church, who dwelt in the courtyard ^g of the district named after St. Angelus, not far from his own church and from the patrimony of the venerable society gathered together for his honor; The last plague brought in by a boy near the church of St. Angelus the boy's parents, from fear of justice and of the magistrates, concealed the nature of the sickness, withdrawing every indication of it from the physician; and lest they should give any suspicion concerning their house, admitting into it the remaining companions of their courtyard. But the boy having died of the plague, they summoned the parishioners and the confraternity-brothers, to lend their aid in caring for the funeral: whereby it came about that not only was the evil spread abroad, but it so far prevailed, that out of the whole company of that courtyard, in which twenty souls were numbered, only two remained among the living: and at once the evil was diffused to four or five other places of the city, which was soon recognized to be pestilential. it being concealed, it is scattered abroad, The people therefore rushed together with most ardent prayer to implore the Saint's aid, and it was decreed among other things, that each one should sprinkle his house with water drawn from the blessed fountain of the holy Protector: and a sure grace followed the suppliants. For no one outside that company was destroyed by the plague, although in the city and suburb it had seized many: of whom, however, various ones concealed the evil, lest their household goods should be burned according to custom; and they only washed the pestilential carbuncles with the aforesaid water, and these vanished without contagion of others, which is altogether marvelous, nor to be ascribed to any human means. it being revealed, it increases the people's concourse to the Saint And these things he himself knew as a physician, diligently attending to and inquiring into accidents of this kind for the care of the public health.

[10] The XVI witness adds, Fr. John Antony Marchi, a Carmelite Priest, then and even now Sacristan in the church of the Saint himself… that so great was the throng of those coming to the Saint to propitiate him for themselves and their own, and afterward carrying water with them, that he found no time either for taking food or sleep, while he strove to satisfy all, both those who sought water, and those who brought alms for Masses, oil, wax: of many of whom he afterward understood, that being secretly stricken, before they were noted, they recovered health and remained beyond suspicion of contagion. Of this matter we shall presently see many witnesses: now let us see how the evil which was secretly growing was detected, before it should make a more numerous slaughter. This will be told us by the IV witness, it is revealed however through a Priest Don Joseph Perconti, a secular Priest… then and now one of the Chaplains of the greater church: who being asked to come to hear in confession the wife of Thofanus Bellavia, heard her twice, since the first time, being sick and burdened with excessive fevers, she was less fit for that business. But on the next day he was again called to hear likewise the sister of the said woman: who had administered to two dying women, when from certain signs he perceived, not only that the disease of both was one and the same, but he also came into suspicion of contagion. Therefore, since those houses were in the district of the Saint himself, and in a courtyard belonging to his Confraternity; he ardently commended himself to his intercession.

[11] But when he had conferred upon the aforesaid sick women the last Sacraments of the Viaticum and the holy Oil, he was called to absolve from sins a third sister of theirs likewise sick: and finding most certain signs of the pestilential disease, he reported the whole matter to the Doctor Don Charles Gilibertus the Archpriest and to the Jurats of the city: and he ascribes to the Saint that he himself was not stricken: who together with the physicians diligently searching out all things, found that these sick women were held by the plague together with Thofanus himself, the indicators of the evil, the buboes, openly showing themselves on the bodies of the dead. He judges altogether, that unless the Saint himself had helped the witness, he would most certainly have been seized by that evil, not only because from the aforesaid sick the evil was scattered to many, who had scarcely lightly dealt with them through the city and territory; but especially because at that time he often and more familiarly dealt with d. Thofanus, who in his own house presented to him certain stipends, by reason of certain sick persons dead of the plague, yet buried in the greater church, before anyone suspected anything of contagion.

[12] Thus this pious Priest, whom the Clerk Archangelus Bono, the LXV witness, served in carrying the Sacraments to the aforesaid sick women, and in performing certain other things about them, as also his minister the Clerk, said that he himself, together with the same Chaplain, accompanied the wife of Thofanus Bellavia to be given burial in the church of S. Salvator: but two others having died there after her, when the whole city was disturbed from the suspicion and fear of the pestilence, the Officials and Deputies appointed for preserving the public health ordered, that they should be buried in a certain little ruined house of that courtyard. who also buried the dead women, Afterward, that is on the XIII of June, the Doctor-Physicians and Officials judged that these women had been destroyed by the plague: and because the Witness himself with his own hands had also buried Antonina of Palermo, the widow of the late Frederick and mother-in-law of Thofanus, who had died on the XXXI of May in the very house of her daughter (this Antonina moreover was said to have contracted the plague from Peter Balthasar her nephew, who had brought it from the town of Cambarata ^h) ⁱ he was shut up within his own house by the Officials: nor did he himself doubt but that the contagion had also stricken him, inasmuch as he had been engaged much more frequently and more intimately with that family, than most others stricken thereafter. It also troubled him that the rope, and he had dealt more familiarly with the infected which he had used in lowering the coffin of the infected woman, he had applied to the bell, to be rung during the octave of the most holy Sacrament; and that during the same octave he had handled very many ecclesiastical vestments, belonging to various Masters; whence he feared lest he had been the cause of infection to very many. Nevertheless, having recourse to Our Lady of Trapani his mother, and to St. Angelus his patron, daily not only he himself, but also his whole household, completed the forty-day enclosure without harm.

[13] as also a certain maidservant. When the aforesaid Antonina, the first victim of the deadly disease, before she knew herself to be sick, Angela Occhipinti, daughter of Beatrice, maidservant of Francis Grugno, the LXXXIV witness, had washed linen cloths at the sea; and had afterward helped her in arranging the cloths: which the witness himself knowing, ascribed the preservation of his house from contagion to the benefit of St. Angelus; for the reason that he had in it, with singular devotion, one whole board, from the old chest of the Relics, which had fallen to him as one of the Jurats in the translation of the same.

[14] If those two Witnesses rightly referred their own preservation as received by the merits of S. Angelus, with so much greater right could the XII witness do this, by how much the more evident the danger of contracting the plague to which he of his own accord exposed himself out of charity, relying on the Saint's aid, Augustinus Infrigola, The infected being carried off to the lazaret aged about LIII years, a citizen of Licata, who said, that when the creeping disease had been judged a true plague (this moreover, as far as he recalls, was judged on the XIII of June, the VI Feria on the feast of S. Anthony of Padua) certain ones suspected of contagion, from the district of the church of the glorious Martyr, and from the courtyard of the houses belonging to his Society, where the plague had its beginning within the house called della Giarretta beside the river; when they had been kept in that house for two days and as many nights, at length by the Officials of the city they were translated to lodgings ^k and the church of S. Maria de Ritu, for the reason that in the aforenamed house both the sick and the suspected were dwelling too inconveniently. But when both there continued without medicines and the help of any expert man (for none of the physicians was willing to go to the place now destined for the Lazaret) the witness himself decreed, and what is more committed to execution, for the love of God and out of compassion for his fellow-citizens thus abandoned, an expert man in curing the plague offers his service of his own accord, to expose and offer his own head to the worshipful Jurats and the Deputies for health, for the service and governance of the said place: inasmuch as he, skilled in the surgical art, had for about twenty years in Barbary and the city of Algiers been bound in the service of Morat Rayz, and there had exercised the said art, especially upon those infected with plague: which disease in that region was frequent, and that not only in the city but also in the galleys. This will being gratefully received by the Officials and the whole city; he, after having used in the greater church the Sacraments of Confession and Communion, commending to God and to Our Lady of Montserrat, to St. Roch, and more specially to S. Angelus, and he found all well disposed: both himself and his house and children; and receiving from the Officials the necessaries for sustenance, entered into the Lazaret; and having lovingly embraced all the sick and suspected, began not only to heal their diseases, but also to serve every other need of theirs. He saw moreover that there was none of them, who did not have a sure hope of preserving life, leaning upon the patronage of Mary the Virgin, S. Roch, and St. Angelus: which was by no means useless to them: because that sequestration had a most happy and speedy end.

[15] He then adds a wholly stupendous miracle, which he saw to have happened there. But the XXVI witness, Agatucia, a widow woman, relict of the late Vitus Scollo, otherwise Rovetto, aged LIV years, a citizen of Licata, will better tell it to us, what she experienced, relating how her daughter Gratia, among whom one of 54 years wife of Antoninus Maius, was perceived to labor with the contagious disease; and when both she with the said daughter and her other domestics had been carried out of the city to the house della Giaretta on the XIII day, there on the XIV day Gratia died and was buried, leaving a posthumous little daughter of fourteen months, Angela by name, still nursing. Then on the same day the sick and the suspected were ordered to pass to the Lazaret, established one mile from the city in the lodging and church of S. Maria de Ritu. Here she, not knowing by what means she might rear the little one, with many tears had recourse to divine aid, imploring it through the merits of all the Saints and especially of S. Angelus. she was seen to nurse her little granddaughter bereft of her mother, But on the next day, which was Sunday, the XV of June at the hour of vespers, she felt her breasts moistened with a certain dampness; and uncovering them she saw them dripping with milk: which understanding to have been miraculously granted her as a remedy for the present need (for now for twenty-three years, namely since the death of her husband, she had lacked milk, and her monthly purgations had never been restricted to her) she began to nurse the little one and nurses her even now, so copiously, that she could suffice for nursing another infant likewise: and therefore she ceases not daily to give thanks to S. Angelus, who bestowed this upon them, by a miracle no less than that of life itself, preserved for her and the little one, because the dying Gratia had often embraced them.

[16] by a great and most attested miracle of S. Angelus. By a miracle and altogether done above the order of nature it was attested, and judged, by the XIII witness, Doctor of Both Laws

Peter de Calii; and the witness Doctor of Arts and Medicine Joseph de Raymundo; both professing that the most honorable repute of the said woman was known to them. But the XVIII witness, Doctor of Arts and Medicine Francis Safilla, added besides, that he had considered her milk itself, and found it to have all the conditions of true milk; inasmuch as he saw with his own eyes flow forth from the breasts of Agatha, in that abundance which has been said, that which was whitest in color, sweetest in taste, and endowed with a proportioned consistency. The first of these three had been the Rector or Governor of the Lazaret deputed by the Magistrate, and therefore by his office knew more quickly and more certainly what things were done, and he testifies that all those shut up there had a firm hope placed in the aid of the Lady Virgin and B. Angelus, confessing their sins weekly to the secular Priests appointed for that purpose; through whom the witness himself caused the Marian Litanies to be chanted there every Saturday, with the invocation of S. Angelus at the end of the same.

ANNOTATA.

CHAPTER II.

From the first contagion of the infected many more are infected and all are helped by the Saint.

[17] The houses of those being shut up who had associated with the infected. That it was a true plague, which compelled the citizens of Licata to invoke S. Angelus more instantly, is sufficiently clear from the aforesaid: let us see how contagious it was, and let us consider how efficacious help the Saint brought against it. Francis la Rocca, son of the late Lawrence, on the XXII day of June, together with his wife Rofella and his children, was shut up by the Officials in his house, in the place called Quatuor-Angulorum (Four Corners), for the reason that on occasion of gathering his crops, he had for some days associated in the house of Thofanus, in which the plague had its beginning, and whose master, having died in the same with all his domestics, was buried outside the city. in one of which a boy is recognized to labor with the plague And when on the sixth day after the shutting up of his house Rofella his wife was unwrapping the swaddling clothes of Angelus their four-month-old infant son, she found both his knees ruddy and vehemently swollen: soon also two buboes appeared on the same little body, and a most vehement fever, which in a short time brought the little one to such a state, that he was nearer to death than to life, nor any longer sucked any milk. The woman holding him for some while thus prostrate in her lap, and showing him to her husband, neither she nor he doubted at all but that the boy had drawn the contagion. Wherefore having no remaining hope of saving him, with so much the greater confidence they had recourse to imploring the aid of S. Angelus, by how much the more devoutly they had offered this offspring to him from the very beginning of his birth. The father moreover, recollecting that he had a little fragment of the old wooden chest, he is healed by the application of wood from the chest of the Relics. in which the bones of the Saint had so long lain, received from his godfather Jacobus Murci the Notary; divided it in two, and applied each to a knee of the little son with tears and the invocation of the Saint: then through Marius Sapio, his nephew, who was outside, he sent alms to the church of S. Angelus for a holy Mass to be sung: finally about the hour of vespers, when they again unwrapped the boy, to whom in the morning they had applied the said little fragments of wood, they found him free from all redness, swelling, fever and buboes wholly wiped away; and they cease not to give thanks to the Saint, by whose benefit they rejoice that from that hour their son is whole, as if he had never suffered any evil.

[18] Antonella, wife of Master Jacobus de Mayo, the XCI witness, elsewhere other things, who had put on a garment worn by an infected woman says that she knows how her own house was barred, herself with her husband and children, for the reason that in the house of Thofanus Bellavia the plague had been manifested, and beside it dwelt her son Antoninus de Mayo with his late wife Gratia; and Marutia, likewise the witness's daughter, with her late husband Didacus Scollo: of whom the aforesaid Gratia and Didacus died of the contagion, but the rest were in peril, who equally as those had had much association with the infected house, and especially the witness herself: For she had lent to Angelutia, the wife of Thofanus, a black tunic: which afterward being returned to her she had put on, nor did she doubt but that the contagion was to be manifested in her own body also, when she heard of the aforesaid deaths, and saw the city carried up and down on account of the dread of the pestilence. And indeed on the same day on which her house was closed, which was Wednesday and the XI of June, being seized with a grave fever, she saw a large pustule had boiled up on her right arm: she is healed using water from the fountain of S. Angelus. but fearing lest she should be carried off to the Lazaret where now her daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren were, as best she could, she concealed the evil: and turning to the patronage of S. Angelus, she washed herself with the water of his fountain, and suddenly was free of the fever, and the pustule itself was healed.

[19] Likewise the XXXVIII witness Paulinus Lamendula, when with other people of Licata he was ordered to go out of the town of Ramolia, on account of the plague raging at Licata, as soon as he came to the fountain of his city, by order of the Officials together with his companions was shut up for four days beside the church of the Lady Virgin de Gratia, and with twenty others in the houses of Master Francis Picus outside the city, beside the garden of the convent of S. Francis; likewise another concealing the plague. because both he and his companions had reaped and associated with Antoninus Mayo who had died of the plague. But these days having passed, when those freed had been dismissed by the Officials each to their own houses, the said witness had scarcely spent two days in his when he felt a fever with pain of the head, and two buboes, breaking out under the left armpit, and behind the right ear: whence recognizing himself seized, yet fearing harm would come to him if he made it known, by his wife's counsel he resolved to be silent, and, by the common example of the rest of the citizens, to commend himself to S. Angelus the Martyr; and water of his fountain being sought, he washed the buboes, and within twenty-four hours recognized himself whole and free, and rendered thanks to his benefactor the Saint.

[20] Angelus Bisco, the LXVI witness, aged about XXII years, said that he knows how at the beginning of the month of June, when being in the service of Lord Francis Fuigeroa, he was dwelling on a certain estate of his in the territory of this city, together with other servants turning over the reaped crops; there was there among the rest Jacobus Graecus, another sequestered on account of pestilential contact, who complained of a great pain about the groin, and thought that the hernia which he had once suffered had been renewed in him: to whom the witness himself said, Let me see, for I know, inasmuch as not so long ago I was cured of a hernia through the Lady Virgin of Trapani. But when he had seen and touched it, he said: Away, that is not a hernia; and on account of the suspicion of plague, then growing among the citizens, he feared lest Jacobus were held by it: to seek out whom after a few days came the procurator of that estate Francis de Guelis; for they had reported concerning him to the Deputies for safeguarding health, that a pestilential carbuncle appeared on him. The same evening came also Master Andreas lo Vasco, and another concealing the evil breaking out in himself, and translated the witness himself to the borough of this city beside the garden of S. Francis; where with others likewise shut up he was ordered to remain, for the reason that he had touched Jacobus, who had died in the Lazaret of the plague, which he had contracted from the house of Thofanus Bellavia, under which he himself dwelt in a certain cellar. The said witness therefore now feared lest that plague had stricken him too, nor did the XVI day of June prove the fear vain, when after a sudden chill he was pervaded by a vehement fever and aching in the head, and began to be provoked to vomiting; which however did not succeed, but the pain went into the left groin, in which on the next day a perilous tumor appeared. Wherefore doubting nothing but that he was held by the plague, he invokes S. Angelus and is healed. and yet fearing to manifest himself, he began to invoke God, S. Roch and S. Calogerus, whose vigil was then being kept, and chiefly S. Angelus: but on the XVII day not only did he wonder at himself being free from the fever, but also that the carbuncle, which seemed to have announced approaching death, had vanished: and therefore giving many thanks to S. Angelus, after the completed enclosure he often visited his Relics, and caused one Mass to be celebrated.

[21] Don Angelus de Labiso, a secular Priest, aged LVI years, the V witness, said that he knows how at the beginning of the month of June last past, the Chaplains of the greater church being unwilling to administer the Sacraments to the sick in the district of S. Angelus on account of the suspicion of plague, A Priest who had ministered the last rites to the infected, he himself was called by the Doctor Don Julius Bennici, Vicar of this city, that he would be willing to go and hear in confession Constantia Gaeta suspected of contagion, since the evil itself was not yet

judged contagious by the Physicians. He went therefore to the house, neighboring the courtyard above named: where after he had received Constantia's confession, the sick woman kissed his hand, saying that she, having associated with the women of the house of Thofanus, scarcely doubted but that she labored with the plague, since she felt the carbuncles themselves under her armpits. At this the witness being indignant, and complaining that she had not indicated it before; she excused herself that she had not dared to do so, lest perchance confession be denied her. Afterward, the Chaplains persevering in refusing the last offices to the sick woman, the witness himself was constrained by the Vicar to return thither: and although he had employed every preservative caution that he knew, he himself also being seized he could not so beware for himself, but that he should approach somewhat near the sick woman, and thence he himself also came into the greatest suspicion. When therefore it became openly known, that both Constantia herself, and all of the family of Thofanus had died of the plague, and the whole city was thrown into confusion by the dread of contagion, the witness himself was shut up in his house on the XIII of June: but on the next day, that is the XIV of June, he felt a most ardent fever with grave pain of the head, buboes consequently breaking out at the groin: he recovers by the use of the said water from which being certain of the contracted plague, he suddenly turned to invoking the aid of S. Angelus with a firm hope of recovering health: and water of his fountain being sought from the church, he washed himself with the same and vowed six rotuli to be offered at the altar: and so, by the benefit of the Saint himself, as he believes, he quickly obtained health.

[22] Jacobella, relict of the late Francis Cavalieri, the LXI witness, said that she knows how at the beginning of the month of June last past, when a certain little son of hers, named Raphael, about nine years old, clothed in the habit of the Carmelite order, and a scholar of Fr. Antoninus Marchi the Carmelite, and a boy who had handled alms brought by an infected woman, returning home complained to her of an unusual pain of the head: whence she coming into suspicion of contagion, afterward understood, that Fr. Raphael her son had received from the hands of Constantia Gaeta, in the church of S. Angelus, a woolen apron, wrapped about a piece of cheese, which she was carrying to the convent as alms. She therefore vowed that for eight days continuously she would go barefoot to visit the Relics of the Saint and to offer one altar-cloth, which also she did: because not only was her son safe to her, but also her house remained immune from that vexation, which is wont to follow those suspected of contagion: of which matter she also had a votive tablet hung up in the chapel of the said Relics: But what had been done in the church before, the said Fr. Antoninus, the XVI witness, explaining at length, added, that Constantia had come to the witness himself that she might confess to Fr. Gaspar Gallutius, For, she said, I feel myself ill, and my head aches. But he denying that the said Fr. Gaspar was in the convent, and bidding her return, Constantia delivered the said apron with the cheese, which at his command his most dear disciple Raphael carried in, and the cheese being taken out, returned it to Constantia. But afterward Raphael appearing no more, he asked after the absent one, and at length, the contagion ceasing, understood from the domestics, that besides fever and vomiting very many black spots had appeared on the boy's body, manifest indications of the pestilential evil.

[23] Francis Perconti, son of the late Master Jacobus, an apothecary, the LXII witness, said that he knows how in the first days of the month of June, Another whose maidservant had been infected and carried off to the Lazaret. when there was a murmur among the people about the contagious disease, the quarter of the church of S. Angelus having been entered, Margarita Juvara his maidservant fell sick: whom suspecting himself to be stricken with contagion, he asked what pained her. She answered, that she felt two tumors, one under the right armpit, the other in the groin likewise on the right: but exploring the sick woman's arm and forehead by touch, he perceived her to be held by a very great fever. Who being further asked by her master, with whom she had spoken that day; she answered with Constantia, that I might ask of her, why Vitus Gaeta (this was the son of Constantia and his own servant) had not returned from the field. Wherefore when it became known that Constantia, destroyed by the plague, had by order of the officials been buried outside the city; and the witness himself was certain that his house was infected, of his own accord he reported the matter to the Deputies of his quarter: by whose order he himself with the rest of his household was shut up at home, but Margarita, in whom now, she being almost out of her mind, livid spots were sprouting, certain indications of the plague, was carried off to the house della Jarretta, about the evening of the XIV day, whither the Officials had ordered the other infected also to be transferred.

[24] The said witness therefore seeing in how present a peril his own and his whole family's safety was, he is twice healed of the plague appearing in himself commended himself and his to God, the B. Virgin of Trapani, and St. Angelus; and when the same evening he felt his left armpit pain him, he sought a Confessor; and there came to him D. Antoninus Collura, Chaplain in the parochial church of S. Paul; and he received the confessions of him and his wife and the rest of the domestics: there came also the Notary Jacobus Murci, to whom the sick man dictated his testament; who then all that night did not sleep himself, nor anyone of the family, partly from fear, partly from the pain of the disease, to which on the next day was added a fever, which the carbuncle formed under the left armpit showed to be pestilential. Nevertheless, the Officials asking how the inhabitants of that house were, desiring to lie hidden, and dissimulating as best they could, they answered, that then indeed all were well enough: and the Deputies acquiescing in the answer, by a little fragment of wood from the chest; divided to each a certain little fragment of the old wooden chest of S. Angelus. But they ate their portion one by one, and made a vow of visiting his body barefoot, and of having a solemn Mass cared for there: and at the same instant the fever ceased for the witness, and the tumor disappeared. Then on the XXI day of June, again the aforesaid witness felt pain on both sides at the armpits and groin with some fever: and therefore having recourse to the aforenoted devotion, with the whole affection of his heart he renewed the former vow: and on the next day being relieved, he perceived in the aforenamed places four ripe pustules, like as many heads of needles, without other alteration: and he knew, that God, and his Mother, and S. Angelus had wished to show him his evident peril, that thenceforth he and his domestics might be the more grateful for so great a benefit.

[25] Among these was Lucas Perconti, twenty-one years old, brother of the aforenamed Francis, the LXVII witness, as also his brother: who said, that the same evening on which he was shut up in his brother's house with the others, after the Saint was invoked with common vows, he felt a pain in both groins: and fearing lest the evil, almost always mortal, should betray itself in his person, he did not dare to manifest it: but using with the rest of the house the little pieces of the old chest brought by the Deputies, he often signed the affected members with one of them: from which all the pain departed within a few days: it passed however to the armpit, to which likewise applying the same little fragment of wood, again within a few days the evil yielded, and returned to the groins. When therefore at almost every hour he expected that in some part of him pestilential carbuncles should break out, he made a vow with the rest of visiting the church barefoot, and fulfilled it, save that he was shod: which defect he afterward took care to supply, in the octave of the days before the new feast to be celebrated on the XVI of August, when, men eagerly carrying stones for the enlargement of the church, he mingled himself among them, and lifted up as great a one as his shoulders were able to bear, and then unshod again went to the church, to give thanks to his holy deliverer.

[26] and the son of a woman who had associated with them, Caternutia, wife of Marcus Pirrello, the LXIII witness, said that she knows how she, with her mother-in-law Phrasia Pirrello, was shut up at home by the Deputies for safeguarding health, for the reason that they had associated more familiarly in the house of the said Perconti, and signally with the said Margareta: and at the same time on a certain evening the witness herself perceived a black pustule, of the size of a tarus, in the left hand of her four-year-old son Angelus, by a vow made to the Saint Protector of the city of Licata already then clothed in the habit of the Carmelite order; and likewise a tumor under the right armpit with a most grave fever and stupor of the head. Therefore, both by her own affection toward the Saint and by the public example of the whole city having recourse to him urging her, she sought a little of the oil of the lamp burning before the chest of the Relics, anointed with the oil of the lamp he recovers, and with it anointed her son's hand and armpit: nor did she and her mother-in-law cease, all that night, to implore the aid of the Saint, with this fruit, that on the next day in the morning the boy, freed from the fever, neither presented the tumor any more, then she herself also. and exhibited a dry pustule. On the fourth day after, the witness herself felt a pain with a large tumor under the right armpit not without fever. She took care therefore that her mother-in-law should anoint the place of the evil with the same oil: which bursting within three days, left her wholly whole, and therefore referring the received grace to the Saint, the contagion ceasing, they both came to the church of S. Angelus, and there asked for two Masses to be said, and most devoutly offered one altar-cloth. All which Sister Euphrasia Pirrello, a Carmelite Tertiary Nun, the LXIV witness, confirmed by her testimony, adding nothing or detracting from the relation of her daughter-in-law.

[27] Antoninus de Amato, the LXXVI witness, had been shut up in his house with his wife Joannella, for the reason that they had been engaged in those dwellings, in which the witness's own mother-in-law, the aforesaid Constantia Gaeta, had been perceived to labor of the plague, whence also she died. They expected therefore at each moment that in their own house also the evil should disclose itself: a woman in childbed suspected of plague is helped: and they invoked the Saint to their aid, so much the more solicitously, by how much Joannella herself was nearer to childbirth, with no small consternation of herself and her husband, that no midwife was willing to lend her aid to the woman in labor. Meanwhile on the V day of the following July the pains of childbirth came to the woman: in which being caught, she and her husband, with knees set on the ground, invoked the Saint: and asked that in the church of S. Angelus the bell be rung for the Ave-Maria, in the manner in which in this city it is wont to be done for seeking solace for women in labor. At the first sound of the bell Joannella brought forth a son: whom, because the house was closed, nor could he be carried to be baptized to the church, she herself baptized, and gave him the name Roch-Angelus.

[28] Afterward on the XX day of July there disclosed itself to the witness himself under the left armpit a pestilential tumor, and another in the arm likewise on the left, and her husband is healed through water. soft however like a very great pustule. Feeling therefore that it was the plague, nor daring to have the matter altogether secret, he declared it to Master Joseph de Gueli, custodian of the closed houses in his district. Who having summoned to himself Balthasar Celestre and Prades, one of the Deputies of the same district, consulted with him what was needful to be done: for now it was being treated of restoring promiscuous association to the citizens, for the reason that

no more infection was believed to remain. Then, for the sake of avoiding new commotions, they decreed that the case should be held secret: but the witness himself, the Officials having departed, ordered water to be sought from the Saint's fountain, and washing himself with it made a vow of visiting barefoot the chest of the relics, and of conferring one ounce of denarii in the name of alms toward the fabric of the new church: and that very evening he felt himself whole, and the Deputies returning to the knowledge of the matter, he declared himself to be whole: rendering thanks daily together with his wife to the Saint, to whom they fulfilled their vow, the term of the enclosure being elapsed, and carried their son to the church that in it the baptismal anointings might be supplied. These things he, wholly consonant with which the aforesaid Deputy Balthasar, the LXVIII witness, had before deposed.

CHAPTER III.

Others likewise infected and freed: likewise others who dissembled themselves to be infected.

[29] Joseph de Labiso, son of the late Feus, the LXXVII witness, after the feast of S. Anthony of Padua went out into his threshing-floor outside the city, Stricken with plague outside the city where on the same day about evening he felt himself seized first by a vehement chill, then by a most sharp fever, and his head's senses dulled: in which state when he had lain all night, there came on the next day from the city itself Thofanus Triona, and said to the aforesaid witness, that the plague had been published in the city, and by the Officials' order the witness's own house barred, in which his mother and wife were, the former named Angeluzia, the latter Antonella, for the reason that in the house of Antonina of Palermo neighboring them the evil had been perceived. The day having passed, the sick man found in the left groin an enormous bubo; and now doubting nothing but that the disease was pestilential, for the reason that Antonina, presenting to his house the service of a laundress, had associated more familiarly in the same; he told the aforenamed Thofanus, that he too was held by a like plague, and ordered this to be announced to the Deputies of health. These commanded that he should betake himself to the house della Garretta, and now in the Lazaret nearest to death where he found many men and women, likewise infected or suspected of infection; with whom on the following Sunday he was led to the Lazaret designated for this end, nearer to death than to life. Therefore seeing himself set in such a strait, with prayers often repeated he invoked the aid of God, the B. Virgin and S. Angelus: and because certain devout persons had sent thither water from the fountain of S. Angelus, with some little pieces of the old chest; the witness himself with the same often touched the affected members, having a firm confidence of saving life in the merits of so glorious a Saint. Nevertheless the evil was tending for the worse, wherefore, he suddenly recovers, for the slight use of mind which still remained to him, he asked Augustinus Infrigola, who had devoted his service to the Lazaret out of charity, that he would suggest to him the Saint's name again and again: which while it is devoutly done on both sides, on the XVI day of the aforesaid June the carbuncle burst, and the sick man was suddenly freed from all the disease.

[30] Meanwhile to Angeluccia his wife (as she herself related, the XXX witness in the order of witnesses) is told the extreme strait of her husband, believed to be giving up the ghost: which to his solicitous wife she therefore began to lament, and to invoke God and the Mother of God with S. Angelus. While she does this, wearied with grief, she composed her head to some kind of sleep; and it seemed to her that she saw a certain little Brother of the Carmelite Order, who in the name of alms was asking for bread, saying, Lady, give alms for the convent of S. Angelus. When therefore she seemed to hold out bread to him, in the manner she and her mother-in-law, singularly devoted to S. Angelus, are wont to do weekly; that little Brother seemed to ask the cause of the grief appearing in their faces, and to receive answer from each, that her son and husband Joseph was either already dead or very near to death. it is revealed in sleep through S. Angelus himself: Then truly he who appeared seemed to console them, saying, Fear not: for through the merits of S. Angelus he will escape safe. At these things Angeluccia awaking from sleep, felt herself consoled: nor that the solace was vain the next day, which was Monday and the XVII of the month of June, disclosed: for the Deputies for safeguarding health, passing through that house, announced, that Joseph, the carbuncle having burst, was whole or at least out of danger.

[31] who also, to purge afterward her house, Afterward on the XXIV day of June when the said women were about to purge their house, in which no contagion had appeared, according to custom, and had all things prepared for making the lye ordered by the Deputies except water; nor yet dared to indicate that lack to the Deputies, lest perchance they should be ordered to go out of the house to seek it from the sea, which for the sake of modesty they were too ashamed to do; they hoped it might be possible that someone should bear it for them: but no one whom they might use for this appearing, they were exceedingly confounded. But recollecting that in their house there was a well, dry indeed, but from which the Saint, their Angelus, whose image they had at home, could furnish water to them: before it, kneeling before the well, they began to ask for water. Then about to make trial whether the Saint had heard their prayers, they let down the bucket, and brought it back full of clearest water: and trying again, she obtains the necessary water by the Saint's miracle. they saw the water had risen in the well to the height of two palms and more. Again therefore with knees bent on the ground, they gave thanks to their Saint Protector, and made the lye: and that they might understand more clearly that they had been succored by a miracle, when after eight days they wished to draw water for their other needs, the well was found, as before, dry to the bottom. So deposed the XXIX witness, Antonella relict of the late Feus de Labiso, whose relation the aforesaid Angelucia her daughter-in-law professing to confirm word for word, set forth concerning the dream offered to her, those things which we have described a little before.

[32] The son of a man tarrying outside for the sake of avoiding contagion Joseph Ferro, son of the late Andreas, aged XLVII years, the LXXXIII witness, said that he knows how about the end of June he tarried in a certain vineyard of his, situated on the mountain of this city, with three sons, for the reason that his wife Catarinella with his remaining children was shut up in the house, in the courtyard called that of Master Paul Ferisus in the suburb of the city, in which same courtyard in the previous week the plague had been perceived, in the persons of Antony Scarlata and his wife: who also died of the same, and were buried in the midst of the fields, but had had familiar acquaintance with the witness's own domestics, as with neighbors. While he remained thus in the vineyard, to one of the sons, Antoninus, twelve years old, a grave fever with stupor of the head supervened, he is seized and healed by invoking S. Angelus: then also two carbuncles appeared under the armpits. Since therefore the father doubted nothing but that it was the plague, considering the prior familiarity with the infected, and because he was moved by the magnitude of the danger, he had recourse to most devoutly imploring the help of S. Angelus: and before his image, which was in the same vineyard, often kneeling with his sons, he urged with supplication, that he might be freed from that evil, adding a vow of caring for a Mass: which he did, returning into the city from the vineyard with two whole sons. But as soon as he returned thither, he found the third, who had been left sick in the vineyard, much better, and the carbuncles quickly disappeared from him, and left the boy perfectly whole. likewise another, who had carried back a sick servant into the city.

[33] Hieronymus lo Vasco, the LXXX witness, about the end of the month of June was tarrying in the field, which he had in the district of Sabbucus within the precinct of this city. To help him there Lawrence la Rocca, the witness's own kinsman, sent his servant Antony Scarlata: who as soon as he came wished to lie down, saying that he was sick, and useless for doing any work. But because it was the sabbath day: and it was fitting for the witness himself to return into the city, he took the said Antony, not able to walk, behind himself on his horse and brought him home. But on the next day when he had returned to the field, and hoped Antony was perhaps better and would return; he understood Antony's house was barred for the reason that his wife had suddenly been destroyed by the plague, and he himself, seized by the same disease, had been carried off to the Lazaret, where also he died. Therefore doubting nothing but that he himself, who had been near the infection, would shortly experience the malignity of the poison in himself, he continually invoked S. Angelus: and lest he should infect his family, he withdrew into his vineyard existing in Ciccobriglio, a district of the city's territory. There while he acted with the utmost caution and implored the Saint, on the twentieth day of his sequestration a fever supervened, which the pain of the head with vomiting indicated to be pestilential. Nevertheless he continued to confide in the Saint's patronage, and on the next day sent four measures of wheat to the convent, all three days being vehemently sick. But after the third day when the boy who had carried the alms had returned, wondering that he was wholly whole, he gave thanks to his deliverer.

[34] from no one thus healed nor from their goods is the plague propagated. It is moreover marvelous, what Brother Vincentius de Alatto, a Carmelite Priest, the XXXVI witness, notes, that from none of those, who recovered health by the Saint's benefit, did contagion reach to others: and that from the whole of their goods no harm came to anyone: although there were many who for the sake of preserving them, when otherwise they ought to have been burned with fire, concealed their own or their domestics' certain disease and held it secretly: of whom we have already now seen some examples, the rest I proceed to gather in this chapter.

[35] A whole family sick and concealing the evil Philip de Sessa, the LXXXV witness, at the end of June was reaping crops in the estate of Marianus Bennici, within the precinct of this city, and there received the news of the plague revealed in the city; he remained however until the last day but one of the month, which was the sabbath, and then returned to his house which was situated in the courtyard called that of Master Paul Ferisus. But on the next day the wife of Antoninus Scarlata was found to labor of the plague, and then Antoninus himself also, having a house in the same courtyard. And so as many houses as were there were shut up: nor many days after, Antoninus and his wife Francischella being now dead, the witness's own wife was seized by the same evil, the indication of which was given by a very great carbuncle in the more secret parts, and a pustule on the right hip: two daughters also of theirs, Angelutia three years old and Viandra five years old, she is healed a vow being made to S. Angelus. sprinkled over the whole body with livid or black spots, and aching in the head, proved that they had drawn the contagion. Fearing therefore to be carried off to the common Lazaret, rather than indicate themselves, they preferred to commit their safety to S. Angelus: and a vow being uttered of a visitation of the relics to be made barefoot, all within four days were restored to health, no trace of so great an evil being left in their bodies: and therefore often with knees set on the ground they gave thanks to the Saint, and afterward acquitted themselves of their vow, together with the rest of the inhabitants of that courtyard.

[36] Master Tiberius Calcasola, the XXVII witness, said that he knows how on the XXXI of May last past, likewise another who had buried a woman dead of the plague, about the XXII hour, hearing the bell of the oratory of the Albati of this city, and running thither as one of the Confraternity-brothers, to learn the cause; he found other Brothers occupied in putting on their sacks, to bury a certain wretched poor woman, named Antonina, widow of the late Frederick de Palermo, according to the custom of those Confreres, who devote themselves to works of charity of this kind. He therefore also took up a sack: and since it fell to the witness himself to carry the bier, he went up by the stairs of the house, and bearing the dead woman's body between his arms, laid it on the bier at the door of the same house, the other Brothers helping: and the cloth of the Confraternity being cast over it, he put his shoulders to the corpse to be carried out, and bore it to the greater church. Eight days after a common report began through the city, that after Antonina four other persons in the same house had died; and thence he secretly held the plague drawn from it. and at length on the XIII of June it was judged, that they had died of the pestilence. He therefore began to fear lest into himself also, who had handled the said body, the evil had been transfused. But because his person was unknown to others, on account of the sack with which he had been clothed, he resolved to be silent, and to commit himself to God and S. Angelus. Because however he dwelt in the same house as his kinsman Angelus Gattutus, convicted of association with the infected or suspected, he was shut up together with him by the Officials, expecting at every hour the evil to appear in himself. At length on the XXI day of the month it betrayed itself through a tumor in the groin, and a fever and a pain of the heavy head: nor yet even to his own domestics, who noted some sickness in him and questioned him much, did he disclose anything of what he felt; and doubtful of counsel, because he foresaw harm would follow from the revelation, he turned all his hope to S. Angelus, for the conciliation of whose favor through the sacrifice of the Mass in his church he summoned his godfather Francis Traynito, and through him transmitted the alms appointed for it: meanwhile he himself at home began to tell the rosary-string as best he could. But scarcely had the said godfather returned from the church, and announced that he had taken care that the Mass should be said; when he felt himself relieved, and the bubo within a quarter of an hour wholly vanishing, gratefully recognized health restored to him by a miracle.

[37] Master John Matthew Bertulini, the LXXXI witness, and a third seized through a shirt washed by an infected woman: on the XXIX day of May, felt the sinews of his neck with both shoulders grow stiff, so that he could not move his head and neck; and the same evening began to suffer a fever with dullness of the head, and on the next day a large pustule raised itself on his neck: which when it persisted and the disease took increase, in the following week and the beginning of June, when the plague was published to have seized the house of Antonina of Palermo and of Thofanus her son-in-law, the witness's own wife Francischella said, that she (which thus far she had concealed from her husband, lest she should increase the evil and strike dread) as soon as she knew him to be sick had had recourse to the aid of S. Angelus, and had sought both the oil of the lamp and the water of the fountain; for the reason that the said Antonina had been her laundress, and had washed cloths on Wednesday, immediately before her husband felt the disease, who also from the same cloths had taken a shirt. And although Antonina had been buried in the greater church, the contagion not yet being made public, yet the rest of her domestics dying, the people began to murmur, and to suspect that which was: wherefore she ceased not silently to invoke S. Angelus, unwilling by the indication of her suspicion to sadden her husband. He truly hearing such things, and considering the pustule remaining on his neck, doubted nothing but that he too was held seized by that pestilential plague, and the more earnestly besought the Saint to succor him: which also he obtained, and on that account thereafter rendered great thanks.

[38] Sister Euphrasia, a Carmelite Tertiary nun, the LXIV witness, and a sick woman after the city was already purged. asserted that in the past August, one day after the octave of the new festivity, instituted for the recovery of the public health, while she was suffering something feverish with dullness of the head, there came forth in her right groin a bubo; which she suspecting to be pestilential, on account of the association which she had formerly had in the house of Francis Perconti, and the other things which had befallen her house, related at no. 23 and following, implored the aid of S. Angelus: and to his church creeping forward as she could, while the Relics still stood publicly exposed, which otherwise are kept on the greater altar; after prayers poured forth for the recovery of health, she held out the beads of her rosary, to be applied to the silver chest: and a little water being taken from the fountain she returned home, where she washed the pestilential carbuncle with that very water and rubbed it with the rosary: and suddenly feeling her strength restored to her, she wondered that in the twinkling of an eye that bubo had disappeared, and to the Saint, as she ought, referred her health as received.

CHAPTER IV.

The gratitude of the people of Licata for the plague removed honored by miracles: the more ancient benefits of the Saint himself toward the city.

[39] The city recognizing the benefit, As many as made mention of the aforesaid plague, appearing at Licata, who among the witnesses were several, but namely the II, III, VII, VIII, IX, XIV, XVII, XVIII, and XIX, hold it for a miracle, that this plague, as soon as it was detected, ceased to creep. But the II witness Don Julius Bennici; Priest, Doctor of Both Laws and Vicar of the city, noted expressly, that although those who had been touched by the evil needed some days for their cure, nevertheless the evil seems altogether to have been suppressed and extinguished violently and by a higher power. Therefore the City believed it to be of its duty, for so great a benefit, which was known to all, to return the offices of gratitude: and first the Jurats committed to Jacobus Murci the Notary, that, for his affection toward the holy Martyr, he should take care that his monument be set up, consigning the miracle itself to the perpetual memory of posterity, as he did in these words: To God, Best and Greatest, in the year of the Virgin's childbearing 1625, the VIII Indiction, in the month of June, the most beloved city, defended by the protection of its Martyr from a deadly plague, was drawn out unharmed: which that posterity may hold in living memory, it here professes by a true inscription, and decreed his temple to be enlarged according to its powers, lest by keeping silent so great and glorious a miracle it should be convicted of the crime of being ungrateful. This inscription was set in the chapel above the first grate, and there even now is beheld, as in his relation the Notary Jacobus himself asserts.

[40] and decrees the church to be enlarged: The counsel of enlarging the church being published, so great an ardor soon entered the minds of all that many of the citizens either themselves carried or caused to be carried by others great stones, to serve the said fabric, as Master Paul lo Judici, the LXXIX witness, affirmed: who while at one time for his devotion he assisted with the workmen at the carrying of this kind, which was most festive (for crowned oxen drew carts adorned with branches and foliage, amid the modulated sounds of flutes, drums and pipes) it happened at one time, that one cart entering with a certain very great stone, when it had come up to the gate of the church of the Hospital of S. James, on this occasion a boy about to be crushed under the wheel is preserved: an eight-year-old boy, son of Antoninus Rossellus, Horatius by name, noticed a nail spring out from the wheel of that cart: who running forward to lift it up fell, and the wheel passed over the left arm of him who had fallen. Which seen, the witness himself and the rest cried out, Jesus! S. Angelus; help him. But running up and lifting the boy up, they found the arm, which they believed to be crushed, whole without any injury, and held this for an evident miracle.

[41] About the same time and on the VII day of August, after the use of common association was restored to the citizens, a great concourse is made there was also published a decree concerning a new festivity to be celebrated on the XVI day of the same month then and thereafter: in which intermediate eight days the concourse of the people, which before had been great at the church of S. Angelus, became so great, that it nearly approached confusion, as Joseph de Labiso, son of the late Nicholas, the LIII witness, testifies, The feast, namely, he says, seemed perpetual, for eagerly bringing stones. while noble and ignoble, men and women, great and small proceeded in troops, nor after the evening Ave-Maria was the passage through the squares free for the multitude of those going to and fro. It was moreover to be seen even mothers carrying at once infant offspring in their arms, and a stone on their shoulders, and the little ones themselves bringing little stones with their own hands to the church, a spectacle so devout that easy tears flowed for the beholders. The witness himself moreover then saw on a certain evening a girl about three years old, whose name he does not know, not without a miracle, who while she lays down a stone brought by herself, a moved heap of larger stones poured several of them over the little one: for whose help the witness himself and the others standing around soon invoked the name of S. Angelus, and removing the stones themselves, found the girl wholly unhurt.

[42] a new festivity is instituted, The new festivity itself was not without new graces and miracles: for of himself Father Fr. Melchior Labiso, a Carmelite Priest, the VIII witness, confesses, that having been ruptured for five years, on the very day commending himself to S. Angelus, he obtained a sudden integrity of body. Confesses also of himself the Doctor of Both Laws Lord Francis de Caro, the XLV witness, that in the last past summer he incurred so grave a sickness, that within twenty-four hours four times altogether it recurred and wearied its sufferer. Don Horatius Contrera, a most experienced physician, denied that anything similar had ever been seen by him, under which one laboring of an incurable disease is healed, nor did he find a remedy. So when the sick man had lain abed for almost two months, and had been brought to the extreme strait of life, the XVI day of August destined for the procession arrived. Therefore, the chest of the sacred Relics passing his house, he, as best he could, raised himself on his knees upon the bed, and the Relics being beheld began to pray to the Mother of God of Trapani and St. Angelus, that they would succor him. The next day declared the prayers heard: for the accustomed sickness not only did not return at the fixed time, but neither thereafter any more, and left him in full health.

[43] the following eight days are kept festively, Further, during the first eight days after that festivity, according to the relation of the Notary Jacobus Murci, throughout the whole city and the surrounding districts every evening the joy of the XVI day was renewed through masquerades, cavalcades, quintains, illuminations, discharges of arquebuses, and other signs of public rejoicing, with so great a fervor that for most tears burst forth, without any certain author of so many novelties being known, who however is piously believed to have been God himself and the Saint. But that which before had begun to be done, was also continued with greater fervor, so that from the ringing of the Ave-Maria until the middle of the night, men of every age, condition and sex, even mothers with nursing little ones, brought together stones for the use of enlarging the church, and indeed most of them barefoot: some in order and processionally, others mixed together with lights, song and musical instruments,

leading dances and sporting, and everywhere sounding forth, May God and his Mother and S. Angelus our protector live. There were also those who brought very great stones on carts, with the same array as has been described above: of whom one,

[44] Joseph Zirafi, son of the late Jacobus, aged XXVII years, when a certain one was miraculously preserved the XXXVII witness, was ordered by his Master Gaspar de Labiso, son of the late Sebastian, to bring with another servant four oxen from the fields, which the said Gaspar said he wished to employ in carrying stones to the said end. Obeying therefore this command he and his companion, Didacus lo Russotto, went with the four oxen to the vineyards of the late Michael de Labiso, and loading two carts with as many very great stones, deposited them at the place of building the temple: but while they return unloaded, and pass near the fountain of the city, the witness wished to adjust something about the carts and oxen; which suddenly, struck with terror, began to run, and running, dashing against Joseph, falling under the running wheels. drove him to a fall, so that the wheels passed over his head, and soon the wheels of the other cart over his shin, he himself while he fell invoking S. Angelus. Who nevertheless rose from the ground, nor found anything but the skin on his head and shin moderately grazed, and therefore did not doubt to ascribe the matter to a miracle, since by that fall his head ought certainly to have been wholly bruised, his shin to leap apart in pieces, and he himself to be deprived of life.

[45] And these things indeed thus far have been done concerning the plague of the year 1625, or on its occasion: In the year 1587 the city stricken by a similar plague but concerning the plague of the year 1577, of which at the beginning the I witness testified, others testified, namely, the XVII, XXXII, XXXIV and XLIII, all from the common sense of the people, alleging this sole reason why then very few perished of that disease, that the whole city universally was poured out to invoking continually the help of S. Angelus, with a most firm hope of speedy deliverance. The XXXII witness, Joseph Serrovira, was indeed then still a boy, then when he gave testimony being about sixty years of age: yet he preserved a living memory as he says: on account of the things which he then saw and heard from his late father Nicholas, experienced a similar help who then was one of the worshipful Jurats and at the same time a Deputy for health. But the XXXIV witness, about eighty-eight years of age, Jacobus de Labiso, in the matter of his special knowledge adds, that when the plague had invaded the house of his late father Andreas, and he was therefore shut up in it: and afterward the evil itself disclosed itself in a certain little son of the witness himself, Joseph, a boy of three years, who had associated more familiarly in the house of a certain uncle of his; and when in him appeared all the signs of near death and a lividness diffused through the whole body; he and his wife Gesimunda, and one boy was healed by a miracle with Benedicta their bondservant, with knees bent on the ground began to invoke S. Angelus, and the boy in the twinkling of an eye recovered health.

[46] Finally the XLIII witness Don Joseph Rametta, about fifty-eight years old, a secular Priest, said that he knows, how in the eighth year of his age the plague infected his house and paternal family: of which when his late father Lucas Rametta had died, and his sister Maria was sick, and another, for whom the physician was preparing the glowing iron. he himself together with his mother Angela and his other brothers was carried off outside the city, and shut up within certain caves where the borough now is; where to the witness himself two carbuncles broke out at the neck below the left ear. And when the physician had come, who had undertaken the care of the infected (he was the late Master Antony Barbara) and with a glowing iron wished to open the lethal bubo; his mother, moved by compassion for her son, was unwilling to permit this, and besought the physician, to defer the cure until the next day, she meanwhile to apply to the affected place oil from the lamp of S. Angelus: and Antoninus and Hieronymus de Orixi, brothers of the said his mother, coming to her, she asked them, that, having received the alms which she held out to them within a little vessel of vinegar, namely three grains, they should buy an ounce of oil, and carry it to the lamp of S. Angelus, and bring back the cotton dipped to her, For I wish, she said, to place it on the neck of my son Joseph, hoping that this being done the bubo will of its own accord burst. They went and did as Angela his sister had bidden; who applied the cotton to her son, as she had conceived, when in the evening she composed him to sleep; but when morning came the witness was found, all wet with pus, which had broken out of the opened carbuncle. Then truly the pious woman ascribed the benefit to the Saint's merits, giving him thanks often, and to the physician coming with the glowing iron exhibited her son whole and cured.

[47] There are also other things in which the Saint bound the whole city of Licata to himself: A whirlwind that would have been deadly to the whole city for instance that about twenty years ago, as Don Joseph Carletto deposed, a secular Priest aged sixty-four years, the XIV witness, on the XXII day of September, when about the third of the morning a vehement shower with a very great onset of winds had shaken the whole city; after a longer space of time the deadly tempest indeed ceased, but with the ruin of the poor church of S. Angelus, whose first and second roof the stormy whirlwind carried off, with such violence, that beams and boards were cast across the river: nor yet was the lamp extinguished which burned above the sacred relics. It happened moreover that one of the beams carried off from the church fell upon the house of the witness himself, is stopped at the church of Angelus and carries off the roof. which then was behind the tribune: wherefore it seemed it could be ascribed to a miracle, both specially that the ruin did not crush all the domestics, and universally that the deadly whirlwind spared almost all the rest of the city: as though the Saint took all the harm upon himself, and willed by the dissipation of his own roof to redeem the disaster of all. Which the city, grateful to its Protector recognizing it, decreed to expend a great sum of money for the restoration of the ruin, the peoples of the surrounding country contributing to it, and namely the Society of the Saint himself. And these things the witness himself says he knows, because for about twenty-seven years he was Chaplain of that church, when there was not yet there a convent of Carmelites. The same concerning the storm, the beams snatched across the river, and the roof repaired by collected expenses, a soldier safe under the ruins said Francis Grugno, aged XLV years, the LXXXIV witness; and added, that the same storm, in the soldiers' quarters, threw down one hut, under which a Spanish soldier being caught, and commending himself to S. Angelus, preserved his life; and the lamp unextinguished. led out safe from the rubble, to the very great amazement of all who had flocked together. But concerning the unextinguished lamp, besides him, also John Baptist Formica, about fifty-eight years of age, the XCVIII witness, and Marcus de Averna, sixty-four years of age, the XCIX witness, then a Jurat of the city itself, gave testimony.

[48] Very notable also is what the relation of the Reverend Turkish pirates are prevented from approaching, Secular Priest Don Angelus Royz contains, Delegate and general fiscal Procurator throughout the whole diocese of Agrigentum, aged about forty years, made on the XI day of the month of February 1626. He having said, that infinite miracles of S. Angelus his late Father Antony Royz was wont to relate, who if he were now living would surpass the hundred and tenth year of age; Among other things moreover he related, he says, that certain Turkish ships often entered these seas, to reduce into servitude whatsoever Christians they should find, but could not take land or inflict such harm as they were attempting. It happened also in the year 1553 that a Turkish fleet, at other times they abstain from violating the Saint's temple. allied to the fleet of the King of France in which the Prince of Salerno was serving, a rebel against the majesty of the Catholic King, took the port at Licata; whence the Turks going forth into the city violated or burned all the other temples indeed, but the church of S. Angelus they did not dare to touch, but left it undamaged; although the chest of his sacred Relics, by the provident care of the Magistrates, had been withdrawn from danger, carried off to certain dwellings, called della corda nera, seven miles from the city.

[49] But some citizens were then carried off into servitude, and with them the father of the witness himself, who afterward asserted into liberty and returned into their fatherland, related, that they had been bound to the piratical ships sailing to these shores for the sake of plunder, over which Rayz Adragutius presided, having under him eighteen galleys well armed, who wishing to put in here was again and again repelled by contrary winds: at other times they are terrified by the Saint himself appearing. and at length the channel being entered by the violence of the oars, by night sent forth some captains with skiffs, that they might take land there where they should find it unguarded. But these found on the shore upon a rock a Carmelite Brother fishing, and saying to them, Whither do you tend, sons? do you not see that the whole city is in arms? and pointing his finger, See, he said: and the Turks saw the whole city shining as it were with torches, with a great clamor of arms and horses: and therefore they betook themselves into their skiffs: and nevertheless approaching nearer to the city, they saw and heard the same things more distinctly. But also the Carmelite Brother, with whom they had spoken, they understood to be calling out to the guards of the walls; and therefore thinking themselves betrayed, they returned in alarm to their fleet, announcing each thing to their leader Rayz. But this happened not once but often, as his late father related, and the witness himself heard from various people of Licata who had escaped from Turkish captivity.

CHAPTER V.

Of the oil and water gushing from the place of burial and salutary even to many foreigners, and helping women in labor.

[50] The long-lived father of the witness named a little before, Don Angelus Ruyz, who had often been Rector of the Confraternity, of old enrolled in the church of S. Angelus, among other things was wont to commemorate, that at one time about the greater altar of the aforesaid church oil gushed, That oil often gushed in the church of S. Angelus with which sicknesses of every kind were cured: likewise that often the water of the fountain was wont to be moved, at which moving as many of the sick as flocked together and washed themselves, were wont to report sure health; as, says the witness himself, even now sometimes happens, with the very great solace of many sick. And concerning the oil indeed, Master Angelus Mortillitto, a hundred and one years of age, the LVII witness, a centenarian witness affirms. said that he knows, how about seventy years ago, he himself being present and the late Don Jacobus Acomando the church's Chaplain, it flowed forth, as also the witness himself had at other times seen it flow in the same church, and likewise had heard from the elders of Licata. Then to the report of the bubbling oil many sick flocked together, who anointed with it received health: among whom the witness himself recalls there was a five-year-old girl, daughter of Nicholas Schembri the gardener,

whose one side had dried up, wherefore placing herself in the very place whence the oil had flowed forth, and anointing her side with it, she at once received health.

[51] The fountain of S. Angelus miraculously moved after the year 1606, Of the miraculous moving of the fountain, let that one come forward as witness who, the first Prior P. Sebastian being dead, after the next October of the year 1606 held the Priorate for a quinquennium, Father Fr. Vitus Guglimotta, a Carmelite Priest, about sixty-one years of age, in the order of witnesses produced the IX. He asserted, that that moving happened in the time of his governance, as also before often, and that many received health. Likewise in the year 1616 on the VIII day of April, when Father Fr. Melchior Labiso the VIII witness was acting as Prior, the water was moved: and the year 1616 and to that moving came among others a certain Angelus Hernandez, stepson of Antoninus Infantini, withered in both feet; who being washed with the same water, recovered the power of walking freely, leaving his armpit-crutches in the church for the memory of the benefit. Which the XV witness, soon to be named below, affirms, who was present, took up the crutches, and hung them in the chapel with others, where they hang still. What the youth's sickness was the witness himself's mother will best explain, when through it a paralytic young man was healed. the LXXVIII witness, named Paulella, fifty years old, formerly the wife of the late Antoninus Infantini, and at present the wife of Master Angelus Jacopinelli. She had by her first husband Thomas Hernandez a son Angelus, then a youth of thirteen years, who returning from the estate of his late stepfather Infantini, the said Infantini still living, was paralytic from the girdle downward, saying, that he had found himself such, wishing in the morning to rise from sleep. But the various remedies which the consulted physicians applied profiting nothing, she ran to seeking the help of S. Angelus; first carrying her son thither, because he could not walk; then leading him, two staves being fitted to him by way of crutches, by the use of which he somewhat advanced his step. That calamity lasted a whole month and some days, the mother not ceasing to invoke the Saint and to wash her son with his water. At length understanding that miracles were wrought when the water was moved, she carried her son thither, and asked his health with as great affection as a most afflicted mother could, nor hesitating about returning thanks. The sick man however was not healed that day, but being carried back the next day suddenly received vigor in his whole body, and thanks being given and the staves left in the chapel, with his rejoicing mother most joyful he departed.

[52] To the aforesaid movement of the year 1616 Father Fr. Gaspar Gabulius the X witness also attests; under whom afterward as Prior in the year 1619 on the XVII day of April the IV feria, and the year 1619 again the same water was moved, as both the aforenamed Prior testifies and he who first observed the recurrence of the miracle, then the church's Sacristan, Father Fr. Michael Gentili, a Carmelite Priest, XXVIII years old, the XV witness. He relates, that on the said year and day, rising in the morning to open the church, as he was wont, he found the water of the said fountain vehemently moved, so that with very great abundance it flowed forth and moistened the whole church. the lamp lit by a miracle He found also the lamp, which is wont to be lit beside the fountain, and which he himself the day before in the evening had extinguished, and placed on the urn, taken thence and let down into its place burning: which brought him great wonder, since rather in that place by the sprinkling of the bubbling water it ought to have been extinguished. Therefore full of amazement and terror he ascended to the dormitory, and called the Prior, narrating to him and the rest of the Brothers what had happened. Who when they had likewise run to the church, and found all things as the Sacristan had narrated; the Prior ordered the bells to be rung, as in a similar movement of that water it is the custom to be done: at which sound there was made a concourse of the whole people and of the worshipful Jurats, who immediately ordered a solemn Mass to be sung, little mortars to be discharged, and other things to be done that are wont in more solemn festivities. On this occasion moreover the witness himself saw Paulilla wife of Marcus Grancina, when a possessed woman was freed, who, vexed for many years by an unclean spirit, after horrendous cries fell down as if lifeless in the chapel of the Relics: and a little after rising asserted that she was whole and free from the demons, through the intercession of the holy Martyr: and as a monument of the benefit brought a votive tablet, which the witness himself fixed in the chapel.

[53] The same concerning the water and the lamp, the aforesaid Prior asserted by his relation, and added a miracle wrought on this occasion in Laurea Palumba a paralytic woman, saying that he had heard of it. and a paralytic woman cured. From nearer knowledge the XCVIII witness, John Baptist Formica fifty-eight years old, deposed that he saw that same Laurea Palumba before the door of the church, who asserted that she had been paralytic, and having used the water of that fountain moved the day before to wash her body, had been wholly healed. He himself moreover asserts of the same water that many draw it, and out of devotion carry it even to distant regions. That water is carried away copiously sealed by the Jurats: And this he knows as having sometime been a Jurat of this city, to whom it often fell to seal the little vessels with the public seal of the city; and as bearing the vicarial Prefecture of the port for the city itself, who saw many ships, put in for the sake of taking on crops, fill vessels from the same water and carry them away with them: likewise as having often sent some of the same water to Palermo to Don Aloysius Maestro-Antoni, Knight of the habit of S. James, and a zealous worshipper of S. Angelus: who asked for it with the very greatest instance, and signified to the witness himself by letters, that there had been very many who had obtained very great and altogether singular benefits through the washing of that water, chiefly at the time of the last pestilence, which afflicted that city most grievously: and namely the Marchioness Gibellina, through it a blind woman is given light, the next blood-kinswoman of the said D. Aloysius, whose welfare on account of a grave infirmity of the eyes was held by the physicians as despaired of: and she was now wholly blind, when from the said water she received from D. Aloysius at once also light: in monument of which benefit a pair of silver eyes, which sent to him by D. Aloysius, the witness himself carried to the church of S. Angelus, was hung up before the chest of the relics.

[54] it is sent to the General of the Order Stratius, Likewise the XVII witness, John Jacobus la Scalia, aged LXXV years, among other things as one who was often a Jurat, deposes, that the same office of sealing in favor of strangers he fulfilled not rarely, and namely when the General of the whole Carmelite Order asked that grace from the city, which decreed to him through a certain ship four vessels to be carried, which also was done the witness himself taking care of it. Nor is that thing new or first begun to be done in this age: for the XIX witness Doctor of Arts and Medicine, Joseph de Raymundo, aged LXI complete years, said, that when he himself for the sake of studies forty years ago was staying in the city of Barcelona, and had given himself into the society of certain Catalans; one of them, called John Grial, the same at Barcelona profits many, said to the witness himself, You have in your city an excellent Saint and illustrious for miracles, namely S. Angelus the Carmelite Martyr. And he saw at the same time a ship put in there, which the crops of Licata being taken on, had received from the Prefect of the Port several vessels of water from the fountain of S. Angelus, sealed by the Jurats of Licata, which when it was sprinkled over the eyes of a certain blind man, he at once began to behold light: a certain one also maimed in the arm by the same remedy obtained health; and a concourse of the sick being made to share in the same, great benefits fell to very many.

[55] Also the XVIII witness, Doctor of Arts and Medicine Francis Safilla, aged about LX years, it is sought by men of Ragusa, a native of the city of Piacenza… He saw about XXX years ago, certain merchants of Ragusa, after they had loaded their ships here with grain, take with them vessels, as has been said, sealed, and carry them into their region. But the XLI witness Lawrence Burgius, aged XLIV years, a native of the island of Malta, known as a citizen of Licata, is to be heard first of all, who narrated, how about twelve years ago, from the aforesaid island to the city of Licata came Vincentius Vassallus, a Maltese, stepson of his late father Benedict Burgius, a very great friend to the witness himself: a Maltese merchant carrying the same away with whom the witness himself dealt concerning various matters and affairs, and these being dispatched, he thought it fitting to lead his friend to the church of S. Angelus; where, after the Saint's relics were adored, he showed him the fountain existing in the middle of the church, and said that it had come forth there, after the body of S. Angelus had been taken thence; and that many, both citizens and foreigners, by the use of that water had obtained from God very great graces, and been healed of every infirmity. If it is so, said Vincentius, I wish to carry some of it with me to Malta and try whether through it sight is to be restored to my wife, now for two years blind through a certain flux over her eyes, in curing which the industry of all the Maltese physicians has sweated in vain. He would do so indeed, Francis added, and with his own hand filled a little vessel for him; and so dismissed him about to sail back to Malta.

[56] After a year and a half from then Vincentius came again to Licata, and as soon as he applied himself to the house of the witness himself, Lord, he said, Lawrence, he professes his wife's sight restored: let us go to the church of S. Angelus: for I wish before his relics to have a Mass celebrated; because when I had washed my wife's eyes, formerly, as you know, blind, a third time with that water, which you furnishing I carried hence with me; she received light, and it is just that I be grateful on that account. A great and miraculous Saint indeed you have here. Said, done. The Mass is provided, Vincentius returns home. But this last past May, when from the island of Malta Master George Gattus had returned, and Lawrence had asked him about his friend Vincentius, and George had answered, that he was very well and that he had used his hospitality: Therefore, said Lawrence, tell me this also, how the eyes of his wife are. He has them, George related, as clear and beautiful as any woman of the whole island, and she herself told me they had been wholly blind, but enlightened by the water of S. Angelus, which her husband had brought from Licata. The aforenamed witness therefore knew it to be altogether true, what Vincentius had told him about his wife's healed eyes, and rendered new actions of thanks to God and his Saint. With like certainty the following witness related and one already named above, by the same one with a fever is healed, Doctor Joseph de Raymundo, that in the past years not more than four, he sent into the city of Terranova to his sister Margarita Bonasia, laboring with a malignant fever, a little vessel of similar water: which she using in drink, in a short time recovered perfect health, without the witness himself having applied to his said sister any other remedy.

[57] It is notable moreover that these two witnesses were Doctors of Medicine, who are not easily wont to ascribe to supernatural grace the cures of the sick: a Doctor of Medicine also

and at the same time a Priest was Don Horatius Contrera the XLII witness, who among other things asserted, that during the whole time of twenty-five years, a certain one mingling it with his medicines in which professing the physician he lived at Licata, in all the more difficult cases, when he had no remaining hope either in his art or in remedies, he was wont to mingle something with the remedies which he ordered to be applied, now of the oil of the lamp, now of the water of the fountain, and that very many sick were thus preserved in life, with his own and the others standing by's admiration, ascribing that grace rather to the help of the Saint than to the applied medicines. The witness himself also asserted, that in many malignant fevers, when now the lethal cold occupied not only the extremities, he cures the most desperate diseases. but the whole body, some drops of that water being put into the mouth of the dying, they returned to vital heat, to speech long since lost, and at length even to a health utterly despaired of. He asserted finally that many pregnant women, he testifies that women in labor are helped. to whom either a fetus lying crosswise in the womb or even one already dead promised death sooner than childbirth, after they had been either sprinkled or washed with that water, without any harm to themselves brought forth either a living child or one long since putrefying, beyond all the order of nature and the reasoning of medicine. And these things he says he knows, as one who by exercising his art handled with his own hands and beheld with his own eyes the very miracles which he related.

[58] This chapter would grow immensely, if I wished to heap together here all the graces obtained through the use of that salutary water; rather, since it began from oil, let it also end in oil, and at the same time let some example be set forth of a woman in childbed helped through S. Angelus. This will be given us by Flavia, aged about thirty years, the oil of the lamp being employed wife of Matthew Reciputo, the LXIX witness. She in the month of May last past, on the very feast of the glorious Martyr, being set in the labor of childbirth, in which she had now persevered three days, when she believed herself now at last about to be delivered, sent forth a very great quantity of blood, so that she was believed shortly about to give up the ghost: and therefore the physicians ordered, that the last Sacraments be ministered to her. Therefore both the woman in labor herself and the Baroness of Monteclaro, a desperate childbirth is made easy then there present and the others standing around, the Saint, whose feast was then being kept and whose solemn procession was being led around, likewise began to pray, that on this his day he would succor the afflicted. Then Confession being made and the Viaticum taken, Flavia ordered oil to be sought from the lamp, which is wont to burn before the sacred Relics: which being brought and applied to her body, there came forth at once a dead son. But this one too, a vow being sent forth to the Saint, after three hours revived, and without delay being baptized was called Angelus, and lives even now whole and safe. The woman in childbed truly, and the dead fetus is raised up. although much weakened by the loss of blood, yet after the accustomed days rose from her bed, came to the church of S. Angelus to give thanks to God and the Saint, had a Mass sung there, and hung up a votive tablet witness of the obtained benefit, which there is now also seen.

[59] To these things noted in the year 1625 let us add also, on account of the identity of the argument, what the Relation of the married Clerk, Don John Francis Attardo, Master Notary of the Spiritual Court of Licata, contains, who on the XV day of the month of March 1627 narrated, how in the month of February of the last past year 1626, another is helped the day precisely he does not recall, his pregnant wife Armenia de Atardo and Averna, brought to the pains of childbirth, could not bring forth: wherefore all the domestics and first of all the relator himself began to invoke the most blessed Virgin Mary, that she would bestow on her the desired childbirth. Nevertheless the torments were aggravated, through a little fragment from the chest. so that nothing was expected but the last breath. There were present therefore all the midwives and physicians of the city, whose common judgment was, by the signs which betrayed themselves outwardly, that the fetus was dead. The woman in labor had now begun to swell, and was thought certainly about to be destroyed: wherefore Armenia herself and her husband and all the rest turned themselves to S. Angelus, of whose old chest they placed a preserved little fragment upon the dying woman: and, O miracle! at that very instant Armenia brought forth a dead son, and thenceforth with her whole family lives most devoted to that Saint. Now the miracles or benefits which remain to be narrated we begin to distribute into certain classes, lest similar matters wander without order, dispersed among examples of dissimilar argument: although dissimilar ones too in this nearly agree, that they were either done in a Procession or at least in some feast of the Saint himself, or by the application of water or oil, or by the simple invocation of the glorious Martyr.

CHAPTER VI.

Those drawn from the perils of the sea, of pirates and of rivers by the merits of S. Angelus.

[60] John Jacobus la Scaglia, aged LXXV years, the XVII witness, said, that if he wished to narrate the benefits and miracles, which assisting at the public processions he saw, about the year 1585 on the feast of S. Angelus time would by no means suffice him; that one chiefly worthy of relation seemed to him, which happened about forty years ago, when he was discharging the office of Jurat. When he himself on the feast day of S. Angelus had embarked on a swift boat, about to give the signal for beginning the course to other swift boats about to contend for a prize; there came up a ship, Messina, as it bore, arriving, whose passengers asked of the said swift boats and the Jurat himself, what so great a number of swift boats on the sea, so great a multitude of the watching people on the shore, meant. To whom he namely answered, Today is the feast of S. Angelus the glorious, Protector of this our city, to whose honor we contend by land and sea, a prize being set for the victors; and to these now I myself, as one of the Jurats, have come to give the signal. But they from the ship, Therefore it is true, they say, what Lord Nasca narrated to us. But the witness himself asking, what they were saying among themselves; Lord, they say, a great miracle has happened today. For coming from Messina with this ship, when we were only distant from your port by fifty thousand paces, about dawn we saw a piece of wood upon which were two persons: to whom being made nearer we recognized the keel of an overturned ship, and thence took up to us the poor wretches, and exempted them from the present peril of life.

[61] We then began to ask, what had happened to them: but they answered: those in peril upon the keel of an overturned ship Yesterday evening with this our ship we set sail from Malta toward Licata, and when we had entered the channel, and were turning the sail, the ship was overturned, and as many as were carried by it, each one leaning on a different piece of wood, tried to swim to the shore, we know not with what success: but we not knowing how to swim clung to the keel, and on it remained the whole night until just now; and now we were thinking to let it go, and to commit ourselves to God and fortune: but one of us, namely this Lord Nasca, Let us remain, he said, the Saint being invoked brother, and let us trust in S. Angelus the glorious, whose feast today with the solemn carrying-around of the relics is kept at Licata whither we were sailing: he works many miracles daily, as I know, having often and much stayed in that city: he will doubtless help us also. These things said, we saw something white upon the sea like a dove; which was coming toward us; namely your ship itself, which until it approached near us we continued our tears, vows, and groans, invoking S. Angelus: and so the hoped-for safety came to us through you. These things heard the witness himself ordered that the said Lord Nasca with his companion should pass into his swift boat, they are preserved unharmed. and the signal being given for which those about to run waited, returned to land, setting forth to all the people that admirable event, and vehemently exaggerating the common joy by such a narration. Then he ordered the wretched shipwrecked men to be clothed at public expense out of respect for the Saint, and to be led to the church, where they could not be satiated with kissing the pavement and giving thanks. The witness himself moreover says, that he could recount very many other things about various ships, drawn from the peril of shipwreck or of the Turks, did not the offerings of sleeves, chains and tablets fixed to the walls of the chapel, for the perpetual memory of the benefits received, impose silence on him.

[62] Angelus de Accolla, the XXV witness, recalls that about twenty-five years ago, a Turkish swift boat, five miles distant from this city, made a descent, at a certain station called ^b that of John Garganus, on a similar day two men of Licata captured by the Turks, on the night of the festivity of S. Angelus, and took captive two men of Licata, Francis de Labiso, otherwise lo Vecchio, and Francis Antonii, otherwise Patacca, at present both dead: whom when they had drawn into their swift boat, at the beginning of day they were found above this city not far from ^c Lorgitore, a place so called. But while the processional pomp was being led, the crash of arquebuses was heard from the royal castle of this city, as is wont: by which roused the Turks wished to know from the said Christians, what was being done in their city. They answered, that the feast of S. Angelus Protector of the people of Licata was being kept, illustrious for the glory of miracles. To whom the Turks, If your Saint had the power of working miracles, not in vain do they trust that they will be freed. he would surely not have permitted you to be captured by us. On the contrary the Christians, We believe, they say, in God and the Saint, that they will not suffer us to be carried off into Barbary, but that shortly we are to be freed from servitude. Under these things the city being passed by, the swift boat little by little approached the shores of Xichilis, to which galleys of the Maltese coming up, who had set out from Syracuse, took the pirates and asserted the aforesaid two Christians into liberty: who at once being set out with a skiff onto the shore, hastened to the temple of their deliverer, to render thanks duly; for the Relics still stood exposed upon the altar, inasmuch as within the Octave of the festivity, when scarcely four days had elapsed from their captivity. And these things the witness himself narrated, as one who often heard them from the mouth of the said captives. The same exactly narrated the LIII witness, Joseph de Labiso, son of the late Nicholas, as the next kinsman to that Francis, from whom he had often heard the matter, and who was present when he and his companion disembarked onto land, and accompanied them to the temple to give thanks.

[63] The Patron Joseph Bonfussuto, the LVI witness, said, that twenty-five years ago, on the IV day of December, on the feast of S. Barbara, going out from the port of this city into the sea three miles with seven other boatmen for the sake of drawing up an anchor, which the ship of the late Patron Francis de Antoniis of Licata, tossed by a storm, had left behind it ^d… And while doing this at sunrise they strove with all their strength, the boat was overturned: upon whose keel, seven sailors with their ship overturned about to be drowned, as best they could, the witness himself betook himself with his companions, among whom was the said de Antoniis himself, patron of the said ship. And when set in so present a strait of death they implored the help of S. Angelus, nor yet for fully five hours were helped by anyone;

at length one of those who go out into the fields for the sake of digging, when he had come outside the city to the church of S. Mary of the graces, looked out from afar at those thus in peril: and running back to the shore admonished the citizens about bringing help; who immediately dispatched two skiffs, yet not so quickly, but that before they reached them nearly five whole hours had elapsed. Meanwhile the witness himself with three others, trusting that they could reach land by swimming had let himself down into the sea, the others remaining upon the keel, the Saint being invoked they are helped. but almost killed by the cold. While therefore the skiffs cast off from the shore, those swim; but their breath little by little failing, the said witness, whom he could no longer by voice, at least in mind invoked the Saint. By whose furnishing of strength, he swam at length to one of the skiffs, as also the other three: but the other skiff, going forward a little further, took up the four remaining: but all together after they were restored to land and had dried and warmed their bodies, went to give thanks to the Saint in the temple, where the said de Antoniis offered alms for himself and his companions.

[64] Master Torchinus Titta, the LIV witness, said that about twenty years ago, being in a ship which carried wood from the Dirillus ^e wood, by the help of S. Angelus they escaped Turkish servitude. For when a certain piratical ship of the Turks had come up, a sailor about to be captured by a Turk is freed and they were compelled to direct the prow toward land, nor could hold it quickly enough, all cast themselves into the sea, about to escape by swimming. The Turks likewise followed swimming after them; by one of whom much swifter the witness himself seeing himself about to be seized, invoked the Saint: and the enemy being turned to another quarter, he escaped free; and likewise from many other perils, in which he sought and obtained the suffrage of the Saint.

[65] The Patron Francis Guglilmotta, the LV witness, says that about eighteen years ago, when he was serving in a certain ship belonging to the Patron Andreas Grossus of Licata now deceased, and on the 11th day of the month of May, as far as he recalls, they wished to set sail with the said ship hence, laden with seventy-five vessels of wine, to be carried to the island of Malta; there arose from the south a tempest. And since in that shore the ship could not abide longer, it was necessary to pass toward Verdura: whither when they had come the patron of the ship decreed not to abide there, The ship inclined and soon about to be submerged but for the sake of greater security to sail toward ^f Marsala. Thus pursuing their course they had passed Sciacca, but could not pass the cape of S. Marcus. While therefore they strive more violently… ^g the ship inclined onto its side was filled with waters, wherefore recognizing it soon about to seek the bottom, the witness himself with the said late Patron and the other boatmen, who were all of Licata, brought back to memory S. Angelus, and with very great cries began to invoke him. it is raised up and saved: Meanwhile the ship raised itself, and they eagerly setting about to bale out the water, in a short time congratulated themselves free from all peril. It was then evening: but morning come and the tempest stilled they came to Malta, and thence returned hither, and land being taken went to the temple of S. Angelus, offering there a wax torch with a votive tablet as a monument of the obtained grace, which even now is seen to hang in the chapel.

[66] He said also that in the next following summer of that year, returning in the same ship from Malta, when now in sight of the Mazarelli ^h they were furrowing the Xichilensian sea, the same is freed from the Turks. there came up to him by night two Turkish swift boats: which when they had twice made an assault on the ship, and the patron himself with his men understood that they could not repel a further onset, they often commended themselves to S. Angelus: and when they had discharged some arquebuses toward the Turks, they themselves turned elsewhere, and left the said ship undamaged. Wherefore as soon as they took land, betaking themselves for the sake of giving thanks to their deliverer to his church, they took care for a Mass to be sung, and left there a votive tablet as witness of the peril overcome, as today it is to be seen. And universally this witness professes, that being set in whatever peril of the sea, the Saint being invoked he always obtained the hoped-for help. To the same the above-named Joseph Bonfossuto attests, partner of both perils, and confirms the foregoing relation word for word: but as partaker of the second peril, the LIV witness, the same also inserted it into his relation.

[67] Moreover the already said Joseph Bonfossuto recalls, that about twelve years ago coming from Messina to Licata, as a passenger, in the already said ship of Andreas Grossus, when he had come to the bay of ⁱ Vindicaris, in that sea which the Sicilian sailors surname from Avola; about the twenty-second hour of the day, an enemy vessel ^k greater directed its course toward them, who were conducting another ship of Trapani for the sake of defense. likewise the passengers of another ship, space being given for escaping. But the wind blowing more vehemently, first indeed the enemies reduced the ship of Trapani into their power; then they did not cease to pursue the very one, in which the said witness with the already named Patron and the other boatmen of Licata was carried, until the hour of announcing the Angelic salutation: and now they had outstripped the same, when all began to demand the help of S. Angelus, and to pray that they might be drawn from so present a peril. And behold the wind subsided, so that the enemy vessel could no longer use its sails: and so opportunity was given to those in peril, that the ship being abandoned all cast themselves into a skiff, and by rowing escaped from the hands and sight of the gnashing enemies: and so to the church of S. Angelus they came for giving thanks according to custom, beyond all human hope safe.

[68] The Patron John Dominic Cavalcanti, a native of the city of Messina and a citizen of Licata, the LVIII witness, said that about five years ago, in the month of November, when he had loaded his ship with twenty-five wine-vessels, to be carried hence to the island of Malta; and thence the business being done was returning safe, using a favorable wind he came up to the station of S. Maria in the island del Gozo ^l. But because he noted the tempest growing worse and feared to depart thence, The ship its mast and rudder broken, he drew out a delay there for nearly three hours until the middle of the night. At length however he gave sails to the winds, and being carried forward fifteen thousand paces into the sea, could no longer go back to the aforesaid island, the winds more vehemently bearing down from the south and driving toward Sicily. The matter was most full of peril and labor on account of the vehemence of the raging storm, which had broken the greater mast of the ship and carried off certain tackle ^m. The mast however, although broken did not fall, the favor of S. Angelus, whom they invoked with assiduous prayers, sustaining it. Nay even when the rudder being broken a little after they seemed near to shipwreck, in peril from the tempest and the Turks, yet the ship was carried toward Sicily. Meanwhile the sailors and passengers, thinking it was over with their life, in sign of a penitent mind, confessed their sins to one another, as is frequent with men of this kind, and the tempest growing heavier they did not cease to invoke S. Angelus.

[69] While these things are done, there came up an enemy cargo ship ⁿ of a thousand salmas, which began to pursue the smaller Terranovan ^o one conducting their ship: and when it had driven it as far as the land of Sicily into the sea of the Masarelli, the hope of gaining it laid aside, it returned to the very ship of the said witness. Where the sailors caught amid the twin perils of winds and pirates, and more instantly demanding the aid of S. Angelus, saw the cargo ship, it escapes on both sides, not seen by the Turks. which could most easily have seized them, sail past without any harm attempted; nor did they doubt but that they ought to ascribe this to a miracle, by which the eyes of the enemies were blinded, lest they should see the prey set before them. Yet the sea raged as before: but it did not prevent the ship from taking land in Sicily below Xichili in the [p] Samperian sea. And then first the mast with the sails fell into the sea: but the witness going out with his companions, they gave thanks to the Saint; and there leaving their ship now wholly useless, pursuing their journey by land, they came to Licata, and on several occasions devoutly visited the holy relics of their deliverer.

[70] a tempest is stilled Master Horatius Raynel of Malta, appearing on the XXXI day of January 1626, said, that in the last past September he came in a French ship, to which he discharged the office of surgeon, from Alexandria to Malta. But while they were holding the Cretan sea, there arose a most foul tempest, with winds and showers, so that they were vehemently in peril of suffering shipwreck. There was there among others a certain Greek merchant, called John Baptist Ortonius, who said to the witness himself, Give me my wallet, because in it is contained a little fragment of the wood of the old chest of S. Angelus the Carmelite Martyr, which my mother received at Licata and gave me at Malta, and it is in much devotion. a fragment of the chest being sent into the sea. The fragment therefore being received from the cotton in which it was wrapped, by the command of the said Ortonius he sent it into the sea, after he had once recited the Lord's prayer and the Angelic salutation. And without delay, at that very instant the winds and rains ceased, and there was made a great tranquillity on the sea, by the intercession of the Martyr, to whom the witness himself with the sailors and the other passengers gladly rendered thanks, when they put in to Malta: whence afterward the witness himself with the Alexandrian merchandise came hither, and willed the grace done him to be publicly known.

[71] In the same year 1626 on the VI day of the month of March, Marianus Lombardus, of the city [q] of Piazza, just now found here at Licata, aged about eighty years, said that he knows, how on Wednesday last past the IV day of the present month, he himself with his son Peter came to the crossing [r] of the river of this city. But because night was coming on and the stream had swelled with rainwaters, about to be drowned in the crossing of the river so that it could not be navigated; he betook himself to the lodgings of Sabbucus, distant about four miles from the city. There when they had passed the night, they decreed likewise to cross by a ford in a certain place called Trosus. Committing this to execution first the son crossed with difficulty, but the horse of the witness himself, about to follow the son, when it had come into the middle bed of the river, deviating from the path long since paved, fell, and with it its rider; who began soon to be snatched away by the swelling waters. Therefore fearing himself about to be suffocated there, he recalled that from the city Piazza itself, he is wonderfully drawn out. whence he was coming, among other merchandise he carried with him certain candles of white wax, for the use of the church of S. Angelus the Martyr: whom forthwith he invoked with these words, S. Angelus, help me, because I carry your candles. At these things heard the son ran up, to the place where the river was exceedingly deep; and seizing his father drew him out of the peril, with such violence, that he altogether recognizes it could not have come about that his son should have and exert such great strength, unless the Saint himself had supplied them; and therefore recognized himself freed and preserved in life through his merits, especially since he and his son are unskilled in swimming.

[72] likewise a boy fallen into the Saint's fountain. The Reverend Don Angelus Rayz (from whom more will be read in the following chapter) said, that some many years ago, on the vigil of the festivity of the glorious Saint himself, a certain boy named Michael, son of Charles de Labiso, fell into the fountain which is in the middle of the church of S. Angelus: and floated upon the waters so long, until others ran up, who drew him out safe and unharmed, saying, that a certain Carmelite monk stood by him, and putting his hand under the breast of the falling one prevented him from being submerged. There are moreover a thousand miracles and benefits of this kind, which the witness himself says are passed over as known by him: who specially saw by himself very many miraculous cures conferred on those devoted to S. Angelus, chiefly on the Processional day, concerning the deaf, blind, lame, mute, ruptured and possessed, since this care was then committed to him, and afterward noted them in writing. But writings of this kind we have not seen, and only those things, which in the year 1625 and thereafter were lawfully attested, we proceed consequently to arrange and distinguish by some chapters.

ANNOTATA.

p. The Samperian sea is here so called, from the village of S. Peter, vulgarly Sampiero, near the mouth of the aforenamed Xichilis.

q. Piazza, vulgarly Piazza, distant by nearly an equal interval of 50 or 60 miles from Licata and Mount Etna, midway between both.

r. In the vulgar la Giarretta del fiume: which by conjecture had to be explained by us from the nature of the river Salsa, at the fourth mile above Licata dividing itself into two horns, and representing as it were a bent knee-joint. In French certainly the knee-joint is called jarrette, and land intercepted by such a bend even in our Belgian tongue is called by a word of kindred signification ham, that is, a leg of pork, by metaphor namely: why not likewise Giarretta also?

CHAPTER VII.

Those freed from demons and raging beasts by the help of S. Angelus.

[73] About the year 1565 are freed a girl, Master Angelus Martolitto, the LVII witness, aged a hundred and one years, says that about sixty years ago, he and others of the family of Master Pasqualis Galia carried into the church of S. Angelus the daughter of that Pasqualis, Palma, vexed by demons, whom many Priests by exorcizing had vainly attempted to free. In this church therefore Don Francis Blondus, a Priest, began to adjure the unclean spirits: who had not long to labor: because the demons, somewhat reluctant, quickly confessed that they could not persist longer in that place, where was the body of that Saint, a woman whom they so greatly dreaded. Therefore in sign of their going forth they were bidden to extinguish three lamps: which done the said Palma then and thereafter appeared free: and the matter as miraculous was openly published. In the same year came also another woman Jacobella by name, wife of Angelus Locurri; and she too in the hour in which she was led into the church, after some adjurations, was cleansed and quiet, as if she had never carried about an impure guest. But about the same times to Licata came a certain Maltese, called Peter, and a possessed man. himself also possessed: who washing himself with the water of the fountain of S. Angelus, himself by himself drove out the demon; and while, it being gone forth, he lies down for a while in the middle of the church under the greater vault and rubs himself, Jacobus Acommandus, Chaplain of that church, lifted him from the place, and from the very place where Peter had lain saw oil gush, concerning which see the beginning of chapter 5.

[74] about 1585 a Spanish soldier, John Andreas Barberi, the LIX witness, about fifty-five years of age, a citizen of Licata, recalls that about forty years ago there came to Licata a certain Spanish soldier (the name has slipped from memory) who, vexed by demons and demanding the help of S. Angelus, entered through the greater gate of the city: but as he sought the straight way toward the church, the demon so fixed him in his step, that the hands of no one however robust could move him from the spot, he knowing himself to be led to the Relics of the Saint. While therefore he thus struggles, a very great multitude of people ran together: and then as if driven by a scourge he began to run straight to the church, he who had never been at Licata nor had learned the way by asking. There followed him a not small multitude, in which the witness himself also was, and having overtaken him, they found him striving to enter before the greater gate of the church. Meanwhile there came Don Tullius Cirami the Presbyter, wont to pronounce the sacred exorcisms over such persons: whom when the possessed man saw, he of his own accord went into the church, and placed himself in the Chapel before the Relics of the Saint as if dead. And when the said Priest had compelled him to speak through exorcisms, and had ordered the names of the demons to be declared, and them themselves to go forth from the obsessed body, and going forth to extinguish the lamps and lights of the church, the things were done which the Priest had commanded, and the soldier appeared wholly free, all standing around extolling the mercy of God with one accord of cry.

[75] after 1600 a citizen of Licata Horatius Contrera, the XLII witness, Priest-physician, of whom elsewhere, testifies that during the whole time of twenty-five years in which he professed his art, he saw every year on the feast day of the Saint himself, on which very many and various sick flock together, and through the whole Octave, many of them healed. But namely he remembers a certain obsessed citizen of Licata, still living; on whom in his own home the pious Priest Don Leonard Re bestowed the sacred exorcisms, doubting nothing but that he was truly held by the evil one, for the reason that he had revealed various secrets to him, and speaking in the Latin tongue alleged various texts of the Gospel, and gave other evident signs of his calamity. And when at length the demon being compelled to speak and to betray his own and his companions' names, he also urged him to dismiss the unhappy man, the demon answered, carry me to S. Angelus: for at his command, not at yours, I will go forth. The wretch therefore was brought thither on the feast of SS. Philip and James, under whose names that church was consecrated: and there without any harm either to the patient or to anyone else the demons went forth, in sign of their departure extinguishing seven lamps, before a numerous multitude, in which the witness himself and his father was.

[76] The Reverend Father Master Fr. Angelus Gatto, Doctor of Sacred Theology, in the year 1623 a woman of Palermo, a Carmelite Priest, the hundredth witness, asserts, that when two years ago at Palermo during Lent he was holding sermons in the church of the Convent of S. Maria of Mount Carmel, by Master John Conti Baullaro, to whom as one of the brothers of the Confraternity of Palermo of S. Angelus a particle of the wood of the old chest had fallen, which the Confraternity of Licata had sent to that of Palermo, it was told him, that the same Master John had shared a segment of the same particle with a certain blood-kinsman of his, who devoutly carried it to his house. But scarcely had he reached the threshold of the house, when his wife began to be driven into the furies accustomed to her, and to say and do many incongruous things, the husband not at all moved at these, who had long tolerated such things, imputing them to womanish pride and want of self-control. But at length a far different cause of those vociferations became evident, when the woman seeming more and more to rise up, What, she said, is that wood which you bring into the house? cast it out, for I will not suffer it to remain here. Then indeed the man was astonished, certain that it could not humanly have become known to his wife, that he had with him any such thing: wherefore now beginning to suspect that that known perversity of the woman, was not so much hers, as of the devil possessing her, he committed her to be exorcized by Priests: on whose acting, the demon openly professed himself, and through the invocation of S. Angelus being compelled to go forth, the woman thereafter modestly bearing herself as one whole. The same things confirmed three months after on the II day of March, heard, John Antoninus de Caci, who asserted that he had heard it from the mouth of the same John Conti. and a young man brought from Palermo to Licata,

[77] The Relation of the Reverend Priest D. Angelus Royz, made on the XI of February 1626, as said above at no. 48, in the first place before has other things, that when he himself, who for the discharge of his office stays in the Episcopal court of Agrigentum, during the festive days of the Lord's Nativity had run over to this his fatherland, there came to him Master Vincentius della Villa of Palermo, and said that he had a nephew, named Master Vincentius Palizzi, whom now for eight years vexed by demons the Priests and Exorcists of Palermo had not been able to heal, several of whom he had wearied: led around also through various Holy places of this kingdom of Sicily to the Relics of the more illustrious Saints, equally in vain; at length again at Palermo in the church of S. Michael he had been subjected to exorcisms together with several other possessed persons. Of these

some at length being compelled to speak, said of Vincentius, that he was nowhere at all to be freed except at Licata at the invocation of S. Angelus the Martyr: wherefore the said della Villa asked this witness, that he himself should take charge of his nephew, inasmuch as, as he had heard, he was not inexperienced in adjuring demons, and had often used charity of this kind with wretched possessed persons. Nor did the witness himself refuse to do what was asked, only he stipulated that he wished the possessed man to be brought to the church of S. Angelus, and that there two Religious be designated, by whom he might be helped by reading psalms and litanies.

[78] into whom a jealous harlot had sent the demons, Therefore on the first day of the present February, the same Sunday, the said witness with the possessed man betook himself to the church, and prayer being made before the Relics of the Saint, to avoid the popular crowd he ordered him to be carried to the oratory of the Confraternity, where stands a most ancient image of the holy Martyr; and there he began to adjure the demon and to constrain him to confess, how he had entered there, for what cause, in what number, and at length without injury to the patient to depart. Hard and froward were the spirits, nor so easily about to yield the place; the Priest however continuing the exorcisms, and bidding him speak in the name of Jesus of Nazareth and of S. Angelus the Martyr, when it had come to those words, You have forsaken the God who begot you; the principal spirit roaring and vociferating, said that he was called Beelzebub, and had under him four spirits, bound there by the menstrual blood of a certain harlot of Palermo, who envied another harlot the love of that Palizzi. And when the Priest held the obsessed man bound with the sacred stole, the demon asked that a truce be given him until the feast of the Saint. who at length conquered by exorcisms But the Priest unwilling to grant any urged that he go forth at once, and exhibit himself to be beheld in the very form which he had then assumed. And the possessed man was seen forthwith converted into the form of a most hideous beast, and stretched himself on the ground creeping forward like a serpent, and with querulous cries inculcating, that he must go forth in the name of S. Angelus: and that with a roaring and bellowing so great that they struck horror into all standing around.

[79] All invoked the Saint's name, while the Priest raises his possessed man onto his feet, turning him toward the sacred image: but the demon not enduring to behold this, twisted aside the face and eyes of the patient, and with it wholly black and swollen vociferated, You expel me, you expel me. professed themselves to be expelled by S. Angelus. There were present at this action the Reverend Doctor of Laws D. Julius Bonnici Vicar-forane, and the Clerk D. Francis Attardus, with three Brothers of the Society of S. Angelus: who not ceasing to redouble prayers and litanies, at length the Exorcist, rebuking the longer delays, Go forth, he said, from him in the name of the holy Martyr. To whom the demon with a more horrible wailing answered, I go forth: and much foaming, and blood flowing copiously through the nostrils, and greatly wearied, he dismissed his possessed man, from whose body still for a whole eight days afterward blood flowed, not without pain of all the members feeling as it were the relics of a burning. At last the witness returning to Palizzi himself, found him whole and free, crying and saying, Mercy! S. Angelus! My soul! mercy! Yet again he caused him to be carried before the Relics of the Saint: where the exorcisms being repeated, when no indication of the old guest appeared to anyone, he was believed to have absolutely gone forth; and the people giving thanks, and praising together the mercy of God and the merits of S. Angelus, the bells were rung, and all running up in very great number, the grace obtained through the Saint was published. The said witness moreover advised the man now freed to assume the habit of the Saint himself; and to him having duly confessed his sins he imparted the next day holy Communion, under that Mass, which the Prior of the Convent sang in thanksgiving.

[80] Thus far concerning the evil spirits, tormenting men by themselves: let us add to these examples of those, whom into evident peril of losing life they brought, goading the ferocity of beasts, given to men for help. Lazarus de Rinaldus, about thirty-six years of age, a native of the Island of Malta, known as a citizen of Licata, the LXXXII witness, A man is preserved who was several times tossed by the horns of a raging bull: said that he knows how about three years ago, in the month of May in the Octave of S. Angelus, when he had set out to the estate of Joseph Cavaleri, which is in the district della Petrulla, belonging to the territory of this city, there was delivered to him by the servants by command of Joseph la Licata an enormous bull to be led to the slaughterhouse, for the reason that it had done great damages by killing various animals. It being bound therefore when Lazarus drove it toward the city, and now it had come to the new gate; the bull turned itself toward the witness, and seizing him with its horns lifted him into the air several times, always receiving him on its horns. Set in this peril, when he continually called out the name of Jesus and Angelus, and the multitude running up everywhere to his aid did the same; the bull at last dismissed the man, then indeed half-dead, but within a few days so whole and robust, that he did not doubt to ascribe his life preserved to a special grace, and to hang up a votive tablet as monument of the matter.

[81] [another snatched along by a cow and in the very snatching about to be suffocated,] Francis Provinzanus, about twenty-four years of age, the LXXXIX witness, said, that at the end of September of the past year, being himself in the district of the Sabbuci within the territory of this city, hired by Antony de Xiculuna to perform services there on the estate, he wished together with the said Xiculuna to tame a certain cow. And when he held it by the horns, and the said Xiculuna wound a rope about the same horns; it twisting itself violently in every direction, and entangling the witness himself with it, who was unable to resist longer, began unhappily to snatch him along the ground. Therefore seeing himself in peril, since he was entangled in the rope, drawn round about his neck and the cow's horns; and it was driven into a headlong course; whom he could not by voice, on account of the closed throat, in mind invoked S. Angelus, the said Xiculuna doing the same more loudly. And at once the cow stood unmoved like a stone, affording its bound one opportunity to extricate himself, and to remove the rope from his nearly crushed throat: which attributing to the miraculous help of the Virgin Mother of God and the holy Martyr, he rendered thanks on that account to both and renders them often.

[82] a third by the horns of a fierce bullock Joseph la Pulcella, about forty years of age, heard on the XXIV day of December 1625, said, that about seven years ago, in the month of January, while he served on the estate of the late Alexander Patellari and tilled the earth, it happened that one of the bullocks yoked to the plow, not yet sufficiently tamed, running forward violently and snatching along with it the other bullock, turned upon the witness himself, with such ferocity, that driving its horn into his left side it held him hanging by his girdle. In which peril when he called out S. Angelus with very great cries, and asked that he would help him, the iron bonds of his girdle were broken asunder, and he fell to the earth unhurt. But since it was not the leather of the girdle that was broken, old and rotten and often patched again, but the iron clasp of that girdle; he did not doubt to ascribe the grace to a miracle, and to hang up a votive tablet of it as witness in the chapel of S. Angelus. The same asserts that being set in a certain vineyard of the suburban territory about Sciacca, and a cow driven by a similar frenzy. and wishing to yoke a certain cow to the plow, he was assailed by it violently withdrawing itself, so that he could in no way escape. Seeing it therefore coming straight at him, he invoked the holy Martyr; then being caught between the cow's horns, an unwonted vigor being taken, he seized the very horns, clinging to both his sides; and the cow being caught by them he so violently dashed it down to the earth, that from its mouth, struck against the ground, two teeth fell out. Then truly the cow letting him go fled away; and he, believing it not done by his own strength, gave due thanks to the Saint.

CHAPTER VIII.

Those dangerously fallen, lethally wounded, and others dying helped through S. Angelus.

[83] The Doctor of Both Laws Orlandus de Orlandis, about LIV years of age, a native of the city ^a of Naro, and a citizen of this city of Licata, the XXXIII witness, said, Having of the wood of the old chest that when in the year 1633 the translation of the Relics was publicly made from the old into the new silver chest, in a concourse of nearly ten thousand men, both citizens and foreigners; there was present there his son John Baptist, a youth of about XII years, and for his devotion obtained something of the wooden chest, within which the relics had been enclosed, which afterward he hung from his neck. But when on the following Tuesday the same John Baptist, by command of his parent, was staying in the suburb of this city; he fell into a deep pit, paved below with many stones. Who in the very fall invoking S. Angelus, saw a little Carmelite monk stretch a cloak under him, and felt himself caught by it set down without harm. Wherefore he raised himself onto his feet, and there remained, he slips harmlessly into a deep pit. until the neighbors running up to his cries he was drawn out, narrating to all how he had fallen and been preserved: but his father, having understood the benefit which he had received in the person of his son, took care for the eucharistic sacrifice to be done in the church of S. Angelus, before himself and his son who had been saved.

[84] A Carmelite falling from very high stairs onto certain sharp pieces of wood Father Fr. Vincentius de Alatto, a Carmelite Priest, aged LXVII years, the XXXVI witness, says, that when first the Carmelite Order had obtained the church of S. Angelus in the year 1606, and he himself was numbered among the first Religious of the new Convent under the Prior Fr. Sebastian Syracusa of pious memory, it happened on the Vigil of the Apostles Peter and Paul about noon, on which day and hour the witness himself affirmed himself to have been born, that wishing to attend to a certain nightingale hung in a cage, he climbed a certain seat; but in the very effort of climbing the cell being overturned, through the very high stairs of the convent, it went headlong, together with the witness himself. Who immediately recalling S. Angelus, and invoking him, fell at last upon certain sharp ^b pieces of wood, whose points must necessarily have pierced the body of him slipping upon them, and snatched away his life. There ran up at once Fr. Desiderius Barberi, who was nearer, and helped the fallen one to rise: but he rose without any injury or mark: nor unaware to whom he owed his life, forthwith he came to venerate the Relics; then took care for his fall expressed in a tablet to be publicly exposed in the chapel of S. Angelus, where it is even now beheld.

[85] The Patron Joseph Bonfussuto, already named elsewhere, the LVI witness, a shipwright buried under his own work with a fellow sailor. said that about twenty-five years ago, on a certain day about the eighteenth hour, on the shore about the old gate, attending to the repair of his skiff, whose keel Master Antoninus la Rocca was repairing; when both stood under the same, the skiff was suddenly moved, and buried them, thinking

themselves wholly about to be crushed. Yet each one cried, S. Angelus help me; and the cry being heard there ran up several, who were about the gate already named: and with great effort lifting the skiff, they wondered to see both unhurt, when by the mere weight, under which they lay a whole quarter of an hour, they ought to have been utterly bruised. Therefore he and the said Master Antoninus recognizing a manifest miracle in their preservation, without delay sought his temple to give thanks to the Saint.

[86] Joseph la Carubba, the XCII witness, almost seven years ago, wishing on the mountain of this city to split three great stones cohering to one another to make gypsum, a stonemason falling headlong with the very stones he was splitting, for by this art he sustains himself, so unhappily performed the matter, standing upon the middle stone, that those suddenly leaping apart, together with the witness himself began to be carried headlong with very great force. Who doubting nothing but that under them he was infallibly to be crushed, yet recalling that S. Angelus was to be invoked, as he says; began to invoke his name, and his companion in the work Antoninus Bellia did the same. Who running up with a wail, and removing the fragments of the stones as he could, under which he believed he would find Joseph dead and wholly broken; found him whole and safe, save that one of his hips was lightly grazed; but the cap which he had had on his head was bruised and minutely shattered. Both therefore likewise falling to their knees, in the very place gave thanks to the Saint, then came to his church, about to do the same more at length and more clearly.

[87] Hentiona, wife of Angelus Smecca, the LXXII witness, healed by the Saint by the miracle which will be related below at no. 120, a woman about to be crushed with a smith under a millstone. commemorates that a few days after she had risen from her bed she incurred a new strait of life. For when there had come to her house Master Marcus Cassato, to sharpen a certain hand-mill ^c; and he had propped the upper stone suspended higher with a pole, the witness herself, fearing about the outcome, invoked the name of S. Angelus. And behold, while she was still speaking, the pole breaks, and upon her and the said Master Marcus a heavy stone began to fall, with the certain death of both: but the Saint being again invoked the stone stuck, hanging on a fragment of the very pole: which fragment could by no means have borne a weight of this kind, unless the glorious Martyr had put a more robust, but invisible prop from heaven. Which thing the said Hentiona, greatly kindled by the former benefit, inflamed still more to the worship and love of so beneficent a Guardian.

[88] Likewise fallen with a laden horse, in peril of a precipice. Joseph la Pulcella, of whom at no. 82, said on the XXIV of December of the year still 1625, that about four months before he was setting out for Palermo on horseback, having with him two chests full of silver goods, belonging to the Marchioness ^d of Campofranco; and when he was near the said town, in a certain pass where there was a great precipice, the laden horse fell so and under it the witness himself. Who understanding the peril, as always at other times in a doubtful matter, so also then implored the help of S. Angelus, toward whom he is affected with special devotion: for if the horse had moved itself ever so little, it was altogether necessary for both to be rolled into the precipice. But by the virtue of the Saint it came about that both the horse and Joseph found themselves turned to the right side, the witness himself not knowing how it was done or could be done; and giving thanks as for a deliverance evidently miraculous.

[89] The Doctor of Medicine Don Horatius Contrera, a boy's shin broken by a fall the XLII witness, said, that for twenty-five years exercising his profession in this city of Licata, for the singular affection of devotion which he had from infancy toward S. Angelus, he always and diligently observed the favors, graces and miracles which the city itself received through him, that asked of them he might give testimony: but first of all he related this, which he recalled, his late father Marianus Contrera, himself also a Doctor of medicine, was wont to narrate to him solicitously and to fix in perpetual memory. Namely, that when the witness himself was only four or five years old, by a certain unhappy fall he broke both bones of his right shin; so that his father, however not moderately experienced, distrusted that he could be healed without a deformity remaining. And so before he should begin his son's cure, as most devoted toward S. Angelus, he ordered him to be carried into his chapel: then he himself following thither and with great lamentation begging his son's health, heard him break into a cry: before the Saint's altar it is consolidated. and therefore running up clasped him in his arms. While he holds him thus embraced, the son falls asleep, and the father, the bolder for this unhoped-for outcome, explores his son's right shin: and finding it most whole, and doubting lest perchance the sense of pain had confused his memory, he applied his hand to the left also, and found it equally whole. And so doubting nothing of the miracle, he exclaimed, Mercy, and ordered the bells of the church to be rung, as they are wont when the people is convoked to arms: which here is the sign of publishing a miracle. Then, with the common congratulation and amazement of the whole city, he brought his son home whole; on whom afterward he never ceased again and again to inculcate this signal benefit, that he might make him more devoted to the Saint.

[90] a girl having suffered the same, John Andreas Barberi, the LIX witness, said, that about nineteen years ago a certain ten-year-old daughter of his, named Beatrix, descending the stairs fell from a height, so that the bones of her right shin were broken. Whom when the witness himself had exhibited to the surgeon the late Francis la Scalia, he to his amazement finding both fistulae broken, in more than one place; bound the shin itself most tightly between boards, about to return to cure it the next day; he indicated however that the girl, if perchance she were cured, would be maimed all the rest of her life. Which when the parents understood, much devoted to S. Angelus, together with their whole family they went to his church, and took care for the daughter also to be carried thither, in the arms of Lawrence Pisani, their friend. But as they entered the church and took holy water, in the entrance of the church she is cured. the girl also asked to be set down on her feet, that she might enter the church by herself. The father at first forbade, afterward led by conscience, and now beginning to hope something greater than his expectation, permitted her to be set down on the ground. Who soon began to enter on her own feet, as though she had never suffered any evil: which thereafter she also could do, since the whole day she walked without any impediment at all. Meanwhile to the house of the witness himself the surgeon returned, and finding no one, asserted, that those had done very badly, who had moved from its place a body so affected. But he was more astonished, when the same witness brought the daughter to his house, that it might be proved whether anything further remained to be cured. For then signing himself often with the cross, he testified that that was a most evident miracle. Wherefore the witness himself, wishing to be grateful, had a votive Mass sung.

[91] It seems fitting to subjoin to these miracles others, those wounded by men. Francischella, wife of the late Lawrence de Orlando and now wife of the Sergeant Salvator Secchi, and about LIII years of age, the XXXV witness said, how thirty years ago, wounded with two lethal wounds, her late former husband still living, in the month of May within the octave of S. Angelus, she, then and now most devoted to him, together with her sister Antoninella, wife of Jacobus Caruso, about the twenty-fourth hour, cloaks being taken, went out from the house to visit the Relics of the Saint, standing upon the greater altar in the church through the Octave. But when they had come to the area, which is before the greater church, she says there approached a man unknown to her, who unexpectedly drawing a dagger, inflicted two mortal wounds on her shoulders, in nothing offended or injured by her. But she at once exclaimed invoking S. Angelus; the striker fled, a multitude of people ran up, and the wounded woman as best they could, her sister and others carried into the neighboring house of Bartholomew Ramundus, a Medical Surgeon. Who together with his son Joseph Raimundi, a Doctor of medicine, examining the wounds and beginning to cure them, said the poor wretch would die, as soon as the wound-tent should be removed, which within twenty-four hours had to be done; for the reason that one wound passed through the other. Thus cured they carried her into her own house, and laid her on a bed, often crying, the Saint being invoked she recovers: S. Angelus, help me, since innocent I have come into this strait: which also the whole city affirmed, saying, it was done by error, for the reason that her stature was like that of the wife of him who had done the crime, and of like color, namely green, the tunic she had put on under her cloak, whence she had been taken for her. After a space of twenty-four hours the physicians returned, and the wounds being inspected said she was almost whole, whom they had pronounced about to die at once: and this they manifestly ascribed to a miracle. Wherefore within a few days the witness herself rising from her bed, did not defer to give thanks to the Saint in his church, having a Mass celebrated there, and as a monument of the received grace leaving fixed to the iron grates the upper part of her tunic, namely that in which she had received the wounds. To this miracle the already said Doctor of Medicine the XIX witness attests: likewise the XXIII witness, the Doctor of Both Laws Francis Bissi XLVI years old, from the relation of his late father Jacobus Bissi, who now if he were living would be about XC years old.

[92] Master Peter la Villa, a native of the happy city of Palermo and a citizen of this most beloved city of Licata, pierced through with a sword about thirty years of age, on the IV day of the month of March, in the year 1627 said, how on the XIV day of the same month in the last past year, on Saturday about the twentieth hour, when by chance in his blacksmith's workshop, which he has in the borough outside the walls of the city, attending to his work, he wished to correct a certain servant of his Paul Gueli, his wife's brother, and had gone forth outside the workshop to chastise him; there ran up someone with a drawn sword, wishing to prevent him from striking the young man; and before the witness beheld him, he plunged the sword into his belly to a palm and a half below the navel from the left side, and not being able to draw it out left it in the wound. Thus set, Peter, with as great force as he could, tried to extract the sword, invoking the help of S. Angelus: there ran up also his father-in-law Vincentius Gueli, and his left hand being placed upon the belly of the injured man, with his right he drew out the sword with very great effort, and with copious effusion of blood. Further the first care of the wounded man was, and given up by the physicians, to provide for himself as a Christian through the Sacrament of Confession, which he made to D. Antoninus Collura the Priest. There came then the physicians, one surgeon John Baptist d'Ogni-bene and ^e two physicians Horatius Contrera and Joseph Ramundi. These likewise judged there was no hope of life, and that the very night at the second hour Peter would die (who, that he might provide for his affairs, asked that this be expressly signified to him

he had wished) but before he should expire, he was to be deprived of sight and of the recognition of those present. He therefore wishing most piously to spend that short space of life which remained, asked that there be brought to him the image of S. Angelus which he had at his house; and also the little fragment of that wood, which had fallen to him from the old chest of the Relics: and clasping that to his breast, the Saint's water being drunk he is quickly healed. applying the latter also to the wound, he prayed the Saint, that he would not suffer him to be extinguished by such a death. Afterward when the hour defined by the physicians arrived, feeling his sight failing and himself worse, he stirred up as he could the fervor of devotion: then his strength being somewhat resumed, he asked that some of the water of the fountain be given him. Soon being given, he devoutly drank it: and thence being better, and quickly advancing toward health, within a few days he appeared wholly whole in public, weak indeed on account of the blood so copiously poured out, but sufficient for the due actions of thanksgiving, and he wished the received benefit to be consigned in lawful records.

[93] I add to these others dying of natural infirmity. Balthasar Celestri and Prades, the LXVIII witness said, likewise a dying boy, that in the translation of the relics, having gotten a part of the wood of the old chest, he sent the little portion taken from it to the city of Piazza, to his kinswoman D. Elisabeth Triona, Baroness of Azolina, relict of the late Trojanus de Triona: for the reason that she had signified to him, that her firstborn John Francis, a boy of twelve years, lay in the extreme peril of life and was believed soon about to die. But when she had received the pious gift from Licata, she immersed it in water: and exhibiting it to her dying son to drink, together with it she held out health, as she wrote to the witness himself in the first days from the received gift. And thereafter she made it a custom every year on the feast of the Saint himself, and chiefly on the new feast last past, to send to the Relics of the Saint to be honored one torch of white wax.

[94] and a Priest the altar-pall being placed upon him. Don Joseph Perconti, a secular Priest, the IV witness, said that eight years ago being in the city of Naro, and there lying abed of a most grave fever, so that he altogether believed the last day of his life to be at hand; turning to invoking the Saint, he sent to Licata someone to bring him the pall from his altar. Which when he devoutly placed upon his body, the fever being driven off he was whole in a moment. Also the LIV witness Turchinus Titta, of whom soon more in the following chapter, said that twice brought to the last point of life, and now anointed with the sacred oil, by the intercession of the Saint himself he was freed, another twice brought to the point of death. relying on the services which he had always with the greatest promptitude of mind exhibited by ministering to his church. But in one of those infirmities about fourteen years ago, when his death would have been most damaging to the whole family, taking pity on his children whom he was leaving little ones, with great devotion he turned to the Saint saying, S. Angelus, you know how I have served your church and Fraternity. But at that very instant it seemed to him that he saw someone clothed in the Carmelite habit, and that within a wood or desert place: but he seemed to walk, and again and again to look upon him sick: at which look the sick man felt the disease relieved and himself healed: as indeed it was, both then and thereafter until now, free from all infirmity. Also in the year 1627, on the IV day of the month of March, Joseph Manara a citizen of Licata said, and a boy consumed by leprosy, that in the year 1608 to his son Angelus then two years old there came leprosy, which over the space of sixteen months eating him away, had brought him to the last bound of life. Now the witness himself and Angelutia his wife had prepared a sepulchral shroud for the dying one, when the aforesaid Angelutia, by no means forgetful of S. Angelus, ordered some of the water of the fountain to be brought to her; and with it sprinkled her son; with so happy a success, that he soon opened his eyes, and in a moment showed himself whole and clean. On account of the magnitude and evidence of which miracle, a solemn Mass was sung, they providing for it, and a tablet of the benefit as witness fixed in the chapel.

[95] But here first of all is to be heard, who after the hundred relations of the witnesses were received finally also himself subjoined his own, the Notary Jacobus Murci, aged XLI years, whose words after the oath taken are these: I say that I know, how the devotion, which from boyhood I had toward my and this most beloved city's holy Protector, The notary himself professes that he owes his life twice to the Saint urges me, to set forth equally as others some least part of those marvels, which the Lord deigned in my times to do through the intercession of the Saint himself, and which I, though unworthy, took care curiously to observe. And before other things it pleases to narrate, that when there had come to me as a boy a certain most grave infirmity, my parents, Bartholomew Murci and Joannella Gallo, seeing that I was hastening to the end of life, devoted me to S. Angelus: and so preserved in life in memory of so great a benefit they clothed me with the Carmelite habit, which I very well recall to have worn for some days. Nor will I pass over, that as often as in my infirmities or tribulations I invoked the holy name of his Martyr, I always obtained help and consolation: as when Epiphania Murci and Caci my sister, wife of the late Michael Caci, lay sick unto death, and likewise his dying sister. whose death would have been most damaging to me; I made a vow for her to the Saint, and having become possessed of it, both for her life and for the loss which I had escaped, I hung up in the chapel a tablet, even today there to be beheld. Likewise when eighteen years ago I was at Palermo, to be inscribed to the Order of public Notaries, again I saw myself brought to the gates of death from a grave disease by which I was held: but binding myself with a vow, that returning to Licata I would do nothing before visiting the Relics of the Saint himself, I soon obtained health; and as I had promised, having returned I did.

ANNOTATA.

CHAPTER IX.

Of the Ruptured restored to their integrity through S. Angelus.

[96] Master Torchinus Titta, about sixty years of age, the LIV witness, said, From boyhood wont to minister to the church of S. Angelus, that he knows how from the eighth year of his age he stayed with the late Master Gregory Bissi a tailor ^a, for the sake of learning the art; which Master Gregory, if he were living, would today be at least a hundred and eight years old: but he was one of the officials of the Confraternity now ^b the Society of S. Angelus, and that more frequently for his devotion toward the Saint; and even then when he was freed from office, he spent himself in the service of that church, the more because there was no convent there, and therefore it was closed after the Masses were finished, and remained closed the rest of the day, except on the chief feasts of the year and the festivity of the Saint himself. Since therefore the Relics of S. Angelus were never exposed, whether in the already said solemnity or on other occasions through the year, but that the said Gregory had the care of adorning the church; and, while the chest stood exposed, attended to its custody together with the other Confreres day and night; and therefore conscious of many miracles, and since in these he always used the ministry of the witness himself, who himself also was enrolled among the Confreres; it came about also, that from the already said age until now he was conscious of very many miracles which were wrought through the Saint, and of the graces which men of every condition, age and sex professed to have received: of which not even he himself was without share.

[97] For being ruptured in the fourth year of his age, while by chance as boys are wont he wished to leap, he endured that hernia until the tenth year of his age, always demanding the help of the Saint. he is healed of a rupture which he had suffered 5 years. But it happened on Passion Sunday in the morning, that he was sent by the said late Gregory into the church to veil the Crucifix, which then was seen above the greater arch of that church, and now is above the side altar. And so walking upon that lofty beam and dreading a fall, the more because he remembered himself ruptured, he commended himself to the Crucifix and S. Angelus, and at that very instant felt much pain in the place of the injury: but in descending he found himself whole, without any tumor of the down-flowing intestines: and most perfectly whole the physicians judged him to be, as many as visited him for the sake of examining the miracle, after he revealed the grace done in him to the Chaplain of that church, who then was the late D. Francis de Celestre: who described the matter, as it had been related to him, and as he was wont to do in such cases, in the book of miracles of S. Angelus. And likewise the same witness, among his other sons, likewise two of his sons. had two laboring of the same infirmity of hernia: for whom he obtained health by commending them to the Saint, so that they lived long afterward, and afterward, as it seemed good to God, died of another kind of disease.

[98] Of the same past time, when there was not yet a convent of Carmelites there, likewise about the year 1565 a boy the XLVI witness Antony Streva the Notary narrates, and aged LXXIV years, that a certain woman Lucia Aletta, a Carmelite tertiary nun, not many fewer years than sixty ago, dwelt at the very front of the church of S. Angelus, in certain little houses, now destroyed to level the area before the temple; having with her a seven-year-old grandson, named Angelus, son of the late Lixus Barberi, who suffered a most grave hernia. He before the door of the church, according to the use of that time closed after the Masses celebrated, playing, and through the chinks childishly looking in, saw within the church a Carmelite Brother with a book in his hands. He ran therefore to his grandmother, about to narrate the sight. But she suspecting it to be S. Angelus, at that time wont sometimes to be beheld there, S. Angelus appearing to him in the church. Go, she said, and tell S. Angelus, to make you whole. The boy went, and asked the Saint as he had been taught: who soon coming to the joint of the doorway, extended his arm, and the hernia itself

he gripped with his hand so strongly, that the boy cried out with a great voice, Ah me: then ran back to his grandmother: who embracing her grandson and perceiving him whole, began to exclaim, Mercy. There ran up to those cries several from the neighborhood, and because the witness himself with his late father then dwelt in certain dwellings of his own behind the church, he too ran up: and found the woman narrating to all the miracle which had happened in her grandson, and saw whole the boy whom he had often before seen sick.

[99] as in the year 1550 another had been cured there. A little more ancient even than this miracle is what Master Angelus Mortilletto relates, a hundred and one years old, the LVII witness, namely that seventy years had passed, in which he, now grown older and having sons, heard the bells of the church of S. Angelus rung, as was the custom whenever some miracle was published, wrought there by S. Angelus: wherefore hastening thither with many others, he saw there a seven-year-old boy named Palmerius, of whom the boy's father, Master Angelus Jacopinellus Spatula and his wife asserted, that they had often commended the same laboring of a hernia to S. Angelus; but then when the said boy by chance was playing within the temple itself together with other coevals, there came a certain one in the habit of a Carmelite Brother, who seizing the little one by the arm placed him upon the greater altar, and so touched the ill-affected members, that the boy was compelled to publish his pain with a huge cry. At these cries the companions ran up, and certain others; there ran up also the father and mother themselves, and from their now whole son understood what had happened: who therefore there gave thanks publicly, suspecting that that Brother had been S. Angelus, wont in this manner often to appear there and to perpetrate miracles of this kind.

[100] More recently two boys are healed Father Fr. Gaspar Galutius, a Carmelite Priest, XLIII years old, the X witness, deposed that being not yet three years old, he was ruptured: but when the Notary Charles and Angela his parents had made a vow for him to the Saint, he received health. The XXI witness D. Antony Collura, a secular Priest, among other things remembers, that he saw a boy about three years old, son of Joseph Parlaturus, whom most gravely ruptured his father had carried in his arms to the Relics of S. Angelus, while on his feast day the accustomed procession was made: whom the physicians judged cured by a miracle, considering the same before and after the received grace, with the joyful jubilation of the whole people, crying out for mercy according to custom. and one Doctor of Law The Doctor of Both Laws Francis Bissi, the XXIII witness, when twenty years ago he was at Catania, visited the relics of S. Agatha the Virgin and Martyr. But while he persists there in prayer, he came into hope that by the merits of that Saint and of S. Angelus he could be healed of a most grave hernia which he suffered. But when he then tended toward Messina, that there he might deliver himself to the surgeons to be cured; at his very going out of the ship he felt himself whole, nor did he doubt but that this was the benefit of both the Virgin and Martyr, Agatha, I say, and Angelus.

[101] Likewise the XXXIV witness the Doctor of Both Laws Joseph Boynello, again two boys, one in the Procession in the year 1595 about XXXVIII years of age, in like manner ruptured for thirty years, so that without linen and iron bonds he could not walk; says that commending himself to S. Angelus (as his father urged him, often inculcating, Have confidence in him, and be certain of obtaining health) and in the May feast joined to the procession; after it had come to the level ground of the royal castle, wondering himself to be whole, he perseveres in the same health even now: wherefore his late father both had a Mass sung in thanksgiving, and the bond by which the witness himself was constrained hung up at the iron grate. Also Joseph Serrovira, who was the XXXII witness, notwithstanding a certain disease of his, of which below, was present sitting upon the platform, on which the sacred Relics in the year 1623 led out from the chest were exhibited to the people: and said that being there, another in the translation in the year 1623. he was asked by a certain woman, who had a Spanish husband in the company of the Captain Don Gracia Sarmiento and Acugna, then set for the garrison of the city, that her son, whom she held out to him, and whom she said labored of a fleshy hernia in one of his testicles, he would bring near the said Relics to be kissed. Which when he had done, and the boy had kissed the Relics raised in the hands of the Archpriest, he set the little one back within the arms of his mother, whose and likewise the husband's name has slipped from memory: and she at once protested, that she had received her son safe.

[102] The Doctor of Both Laws Don Francis de Caro, the XLIV witness, says that in the person of himself and his he received many benefits through S. Angelus, and specially in his son Joseph, who in the year 1619, and the third year of his age nearly complete, was so gravely ruptured on both sides, that often and ordinarily it was needful to hold the little one suspended by the feet, until the intestines, which had descended into the scrotum, should fall back into their place. Whom when he had shown to D. Horatius Contrera the Doctor of medicine, The boy carried around twice in the procession in vain he ordered that a bond be made for the boy: which the better it constrained the tender flesh, the more deeply it cut it, a lamentable spectacle indeed to the parents. At length when not even this profited, the physician denied that any other than a divine remedy could be had. The fifth of May therefore approaching, the feast day of the Saint himself, the witness himself and his wife D. Angela Orlandi, took the Sacraments of confession and communion in the church of the Saint, likewise praying that he would take pity on his and his little son: then that very morning they had their sick son carried in the procession beside the chest of the Relics, as in such cases is the custom. But not only was the boy not healed, but the hernia was more enlarged. In the next following year the witness and his wife made a vow, that they would clothe their son with the Carmelite habit, and again the Sacraments being received on the very feast, in a like manner again they had the son carried around in the procession: but neither then were the prayers heard, the hernia always growing heavier until the feast of the year 1621. Then truly the parents did the same things as before, but lest the heat of that day should turn out ill for the little one, at length in the year 1621 he is made whole. they wished him to be left at home, in the square which has the name of S. Maria de Itria, because the pomp was about to pass thereby; for they knew that the Saint was powerful, if it so were expedient, to impart the benefit of health in whatever place. When therefore the order of the suppliants passed, and the pious parents set at the windows besought the Saint for their son, the boy's face became livid from a sudden sob, who likewise emitted a great voice; roused by which they run up, and find him whole, and show him healed to the aforenamed physician. Thus far the boy's father the XLIV witness, with whom the relation also of the said physician himself, which is the XLII in order, in all things accords.

[103] Angelucia, wife of Alfius Grasso, the LI witness, says that two years ago, seeing her two-month-old daughter, and in the year 1623 a girl named Rosa, present an unusual tumor in the left groin, she offered her to the physicians, who answered that she was ruptured: but in the progress of no long time the same little infant appeared weak and soft in all her members, as if she lacked bones: and the physicians said she was paralytic. The mother therefore seeking and hoping help from S. Angelus, again and again returned to visiting his Relics: but the month of May last past recurring, and the Octave day of his feast (when on account of the copious rain, the procession which could not be led through the city, was led through the church) the witness herself, who on account of her own disease had with much grief remained at home on the feast day, carried her little daughter to the same church. after the procession of the Octave day. Where when now the sacred reliquary was being set back into its place, and she for maternal affection asked the help of the Saint, from desire of obtaining the grace handling the sick members of her daughter, she perceived the tumor had vanished. Which joyfully manifesting to others, John Baptist d'Ogni-bene the Medical Surgeon was summoned by the Officials of the city, to examine whether the girl were truly healed; and he tarrying, there came Doctor Joseph Raymundi the Physician and surgeon: who asserted it had been a perfect and miraculous cure: wherefore this being published, the mercy of God was praised together by all the people with high voices: and the name and surname of the little infant referred into the records by Jacobus Murci the Notary.

[104] Hieronymus Liscanus of the island of Sardinia, the LII witness, said that about ten years ago, he had a son named Peter then three years old; and in the year 1615 a boy whose right testicle he and his wife Angelutia when they had seen swell enormously, and had consulted John Baptist d'Ogni-bene and Joseph Raymundi the physicians, they judging it to be a hernia, and advising a bond to be fitted to the boy; the witness himself had it made, and put it about the boy violently though he resisted: but because he was a little grown, it was less fitting. Which when the father had narrated to D. Angelus Oriolo, Chaplain of the Society of S. Angelus, Go, he said, into the chapel of the Saint, and of the very many bonds of the healed which are hung up there, take with my permission another smaller and more fitting than mine. He went therefore with his son into the church, and the Venerable Sacrament being first saluted and adored, then the Relics of the Saint, the little son admonished by his father to genuflect, on account of the tumor of the testicle could not: but neither was the time apt, darkness now being made, for changing the bond. Wherefore about to return on the morrow, he had the little one kiss a most ancient tablet, on which the Saint was painted, the Saint's image being kissed, then indeed placed in the church beside the door of the convent beside the fountain of the Saint, but now placed in the oratory of the Society of S. Angelus. The boy obeyed, devoutly enough for his age: whom then composing in the bed to inspect, he saw the swelling removed, and so the next day showed his son to the physicians, who pronounced him whole. Thanks therefore being given according to merit, the boy felt nothing similar afterward, but within two years departed of a certain other infirmity.

[105] John Andreas Barberi LV years old, the LIX witness said, about the year 1581 another boy that in the tenth year of his age from a certain violence he was burst on both sides; and when D. Marcus Barberi, a secular Priest and the witness himself's uncle, had shown him to the physicians; they said it was a notable and great rupture. Then various cure was applied to him: at length the Doctor of Medicine the late Ferrantes Zammito had a bond made for him very tight, for such the magnitude of the evil required. But the aforesaid his late uncle seeing, that the boy advanced nothing toward health; he too began seriously to commend his nephew to S. Angelus, and to admonish the little one to do the same for himself, often also for this cause saying Mass before the Relics. in the procession. Thus the boy remained

until the following May, when the feast of the Saint recurring, when the very procession, wont on such a day to be led around with the relics, had come to the convent of the nuns called de ^c Succursu; the witness himself felt, who walked under the bier in supplication, the bond burst asunder: and applying his hand to the place before ill-swollen, and finding no tumor any more, he showed himself to the aforenamed physician, then assisting in the procession, that he might give judgment concerning the miracles which were said to be done: who approving and publishing his cure, the people exclaimed, Mercy: nor did the witness himself suffer any such thing more.

ANNOTATA.

CHAPTER X.

Other similar cures of the ruptured, ascribed to the merits of S. Angelus.

[106] A girl is cured ruptured in the navel: Margarita la Chiara, relict of the late John Baptist Puloso, a native of the city of Polizzi and known as a citizen of Licata, the LX witness, says, that on a certain day, two or three years ago, her six-month-old daughter named Flavia, whom she carried on her arm, suddenly began to wail beyond measure. But when by no means she let herself be appeased, the mother doubting some misfortune, and surveying the little one's body, found a great tumor in the navel: which John Baptist d'Ogni-bene the surgeon being consulted indicated to be from a rupture. Remedies were applied, but profited nothing. She therefore who knew and had seen many freed by S. Angelus from such an infirmity, believed she too should have recourse to the same: and the day of the annual procession recurring, she by no means neglected to carry her daughter thither, about to accompany beside the bier. And then indeed she did not obtain the hoped-for grace: but in that procession which was held on the eighth day likewise present, she perceived that that perilous tumor had vanished, and showed her to the aforenamed surgeon, then accompanying the procession for the examination of those to be healed: before the Vicar of Agrigentum. who when he pronounced the little one to be whole, it was joyfully cried out by the people, in the presence of the Vicar of Agrigentum, who wished to see the healed little one: then her name and surname was referred into the book of miracles. So the mother, to whom attests, who was present, then the Prefect of the City Joseph Serrovira, the XXXII witness, expressing more distinctly the name of the Vicar, whom he says was Doctor D. Alfonsus Servantius, Vicar General of Cardinal Octavius Rodulfius, Bishop of Agrigentum.

[107] The Captain of Justice ruptured, Balthasar Celestri and Prades the LXVIII witness, when about fifteen years ago he was Captain of justice in this city, and was exercising his horse; from the force which he employed was so ruptured, that he says he had to dismount from his horse and lie abed. But the next day he had one Mass said, and a little of the oil of the lamp burning before the Relics brought: with which when he had anointed himself, before evening he was whole, and rendered the received grace to the Saint. Also the LXXXVI witness, Michael Gattuto son of the late Leonard, and a boy so born. asserted that he had a grandson, who now is in the third year of his age, Felix by name, and this one was ruptured from birth in the right groin: whom when the boy's mother his daughter Francischella, wife of the late Joseph Zeraphi, had commended to S. Angelus, vowing a Saturday fast for one whole year for obtaining health for her son, she rejoiced to be possessed of her vow in the month of June, at the very end of the year of the aforesaid devotion, and with all her family gave thanks to the Saint.

[108] Angelus de Caci, about XXVI years of age, the LXXII witness said, likewise another laboring of a fleshy hernia, that as he recalls from the relation of his late father Master Thomas de Caci, when he was an infant of a few months in swaddling clothes, he was seized by that infirmity of the testicles, which the physicians call a fleshy hernia, which granted him no rest, for the magnitude of the torment from the enormous swelling of the testicles themselves: to which evil when the physicians after various things applied found no sufficient remedy, it seemed good to the parents of the witness himself, of whom Francischella the mother is still among the living, to seek help from the Saint Protector of this city, by visiting his church frequently and devoutly. And when not even thus did it please God to make an end of the calamity, to whom the physician was advising the operation: and the witness himself had now reached the seventh year of his age, there came to Licata a certain most experienced physician from the town ^a of Burgio, called Antoninus Cupo: to whom the parents were persuaded by certain blood-kinsmen of theirs to present their son: but they received the counsel that they should have the boy castrated, doubtless thus to be freed. A hard thing it seemed to the parents to exercise such cruelty against their son, and so they returned to placing their hope in the Saint alone.

[109] which he meditating, Not the same was the witness himself's mind: but when he had understood from somewhere what the physician had counseled, he resolved to commit it to execution as secretly as he could, his father not knowing. When therefore he frequented the schools in the new convent of the Carmelite Brothers, over which Fr. Sebastian Syracusa was set, to learn letters under Fr. Ludovicus Milazo, he dealt with this his master concerning this business. The matter he conferred with Father Sebastian: but he denied that the boy's wish in this part should be complied with without consulting the father, with whom he promised he would deal: but so he dealt that instead of the perilous operation, which he was dissuading, he counseled to anoint the son with the oil of the lamp burning before the Relics, promising him sure health, and moreover giving them a part of the red cloth from the old stuffing of the silver chest. Then he persevering daily to anoint the affected parts, he is advised to anoint himself with the oil of the lamp. and applying to them the said particle, it happened within a few days that a certain brother of his John Antoninus coming to lie down, found the witness doing that very thing. But he applying his hand wishing to know in what state the matter was, felt no tumor as before, and exclaimed with a great voice, Mercy. There ran up at the cry the father and mother with the rest of the family; and the miraculous cure of the son being known, they spent that whole night in giving thanks, with great impatience awaiting the light: which when it had risen, the father took his son by the hand and led him to the church, and exhibited him to P. Sebastian meeting him at the door: who addressing him first, I believe, he said, you come to give thanks to S. Angelus, because he has restored health to your son. That very thing, the father replies, I had come about to do and to indicate to your Reverence: subjoining that he wished a solemn Mass to be provided, and as a sign of public congratulation some little mortars ^b to be discharged at his own expense: which also was done. Thereafter the same father did not cease as long as he lived to remind his son of the received benefit, and to inculcate devotion toward the Saint in him, by narrating the order of the obtained grace. So he, all which things John Antoninus de Caci confirmed, the witness himself's brother named above, in the year 1626 on the II day of March, attesting each thing on oath.

[110] Jacobus Bono son of the late John, about XXXV years of age, the LXXIV witness, said, that he had among others one son now four years old, named Sebastian, who in the first year of his age was burst in the right groin, with a huge tumor, the intestines protruding: for whom after the father had in vain applied various remedies, he began more frequently to commend his son to the Saint: who although an infant not yet perfectly forming words, yet in the best way he could always said, let us go to the church of S. Angelus. Thus one year passed in such infirmity: but afterward in the procession, held two years ago on the fifth of May, with the translation of the Relics from the old into the new silver chest, after their public exhibition; In the Translation are healed one when it had come to the level ground of the castle, the sick were examined by the physicians there, who with hope of receiving health proceeded nearer the chest, and they found the boy to be whole. The witness himself therefore exclaimed, Mercy; and the congratulating people doing the same, he set his son before the Notary Jacobus Murci, that he might receive the name and surname of the healed one into the records.

[111] Lawrence Spata, the LXXVI witness, of his son Julius now seven years old said, and another boy. that in the second year of his age becoming ruptured on the left side, after certain remedies tried in vain, he was by him and by his wife Margarita commended to the intercession of S. Angelus, washed with the water of the fountain, anointed with the oil of his lamp, and sometimes carried in the processions. At length two years ago when the Relics were solemnly translated, on the very level ground of the royal castle the boy was visited by the physicians, between the arms of the witness himself carrying him: and as if never injured at all, found whole; and therefore after the joyful crying-out of Mercy, his name and surname also was received by the aforesaid Notary. Maria Falcone, the XCVI witness, on oath affirmed, likewise one at the fountain. that about XXVIII years ago she had a son named Andreas, then two years old and ruptured: whom when a certain daughter of hers named Francischella had led to the church of S. Angelus, she brought him back whole and entire to his wondering mother: and to her asking the manner of the thing done answered, We both descended within the fountain of S. Angelus, where was a certain little Carmelite Brother: who touched the hernia and healed it. In compensation of which benefit her late husband Master Peter Falcone offered to the altar of the Saint himself a pall of red camlet ^c with golden borders.

[112] and another commended to the Saint. The Relation of D. Andreas Lombardo, described on the very XXV of November after the deposition of the Notary himself the last witness, among other things has, that when his brother Francis Lombardi, ten years ago elapsed eight years old, suffered a grave hernia, he was by the mother of both Laurea commended to the Saint, the effect of the desired cure following. And the same afterward on the II day of March in the year 1626 John Antoninus de Caci confirmed, kinsman of the said Andreas and Francis Lombardo, through the wife whom he has, their sister. Finally the Captain Vascus de Sayavedra a Spaniard, of the kingdom of Old Castile, of the land of S. Martin de Valdez, aged LXI years, likewise the son of the Royal Castellan Royal Castellan of the royal castle of this city, one of the four royal castles of this kingdom of Sicily, on the XXV day of the aforenoted March, said that he knows, that eight years ago his son Don Peter, then a youth of twelve years, riding toward the church of S. Maria de Sambucis at the fourth mile from this city, when he could not sufficiently rule the raging horse, and exerted force more on himself than on it,

was ruptured in the right groin so vehemently, that the consulted physicians answered the evil was incurable, and namely John Baptist d'Ogni-bene: who was author to the father, that the human remedies being despaired of he should apply the divine, and commend his son to S. Angelus. Acquiescing in which counsel the witness himself and his wife Catharina, and for the whole four years, in which this son of his suffered great torments from that infirmity, continuing their devotion, at length rejoiced that they were heard, and showed their son healed to the aforesaid surgeon. He assenting that it seemed a miraculous cure; they had through him who then was Prior set over the convent, P. Master Fr. Angelus Gatto, a most solemn Mass done, with the festive sound of bells and the boom of cannon: and afterward in the name of alms by a public Act they ceded to the Society of the Saint himself, for the use of promoting the fabric, ten scudi owed to them by Master Lucas Bissi and his associates. And these things also are read confirmed in the relation of the already said Prior, the last among the hundred witnesses, brought forward in the first process.

[113] and another's two sons with a paralytic daughter. Finally in the year 1627 on the XI day of March, Antony lo Judici publicly testified, that four years ago to his son Francis who is now eight years old, there broke out a huge hernia in the right groin with continual and most grave torment: likewise that his daughter Angela, a three-year-old girl, from her very birth was so soft and weak in all her members, that she could not without the greatest difficulty walk: who then one month before these things were written, fallen from the stairs, was made powerless in her whole body, and compelled perpetually to sit: nay even, that another of his sons, Joseph by name, at present nine years old, came forth from his mother's womb ruptured on the left side. So manifold an affliction in so many children, as he says, excited a vehement desire in him and his wife, in children so defective to experience the virtue of S. Angelus: wherefore continually they besought him, that he would succor their calamity. But at length eight days before, receiving water from the fountain, and preparing from it a bath for their children, the next day in the morning they found them all whole. Whom when they had exhibited to the surgeon John Baptist d'Ogni-bene to be inspected, and he had asserted them to be perfectly healed; they ran at once with them to the church: and revealing the grace done them, they had a solemn Mass, with the festive ringing of bells and other signs of joy, sung.

ANNOTATA.

CHAPTER XI.

Pains of the stone and bladder likewise and dropsy cured through S. Angelus.

[114] Joseph Serrovira, the XXXII witness about LX years of age, said of his late father Nicholas, Laboring of strangury who if he were now living would be a hundred and fifteen years old, that in the forty-eighth year of his age occupied by strangury, an evil familiar to him, he summoned from the town of Castrogiovanni a most experienced physician, whose name was John-Maria, the surname has slipped from memory: who attempting to relieve the evil through syringes several times, when he had profited nothing, the sick man had been reduced to the extreme straits and was believed about to die. He lying abed, on a certain night asked of one of the women assisting him, what hour it was. She answered, that it was about the fourth of the night. Which said the sick man recalled that that was the very hour at which a few years before, namely 1553 on the XI day of July, he was summoned by the Chaplain of the venerable church of S. Angelus, who once had saved the chest of S. Angelus from the Turks, that he should help him in saving the silver chest of the glorious body from the hands of the Turks and infidels, who at the beginning of the day having entered the city had begun to pillage it: and then the said Nicholas had carried off the sacred chest into the territory of Daynumera, a place belonging to the precinct of this city, and there hidden it in a certain lodging called della Chorda nigra. And so turning to the Saint, more with heart than with voice, the same being invoked he casts out a purulent abscess. he besought him for health to be obtained. He said moreover afterward, that scarcely had he begun the prayer, when he felt himself seized by a vehement paroxysm: then through the member he cast out as it were a certain intestine of the length of one palm, full of pus and gravel so fetid, that scarcely anyone could remain in that chamber. But the physician arriving, and ordering the sick man to make water, he filled the urinal with the same matter. Which he considering, pronounced it could not naturally have come about, that this should be so cast out: since that sausage-shaped thing was nothing other than the skin of an abscess concreted within the bladder, as the matter contained within demonstrated. But this being cast out, the sick man suddenly received health, and lived unharmed until the eightieth year of his age.

[115] Francis Turco, the XL witness, said, that about nine years ago, to his son Peter, then five years old, a boy with the stone there came a most grave infirmity, hindering the faculty of rendering urine, by which day and night almost continuously the boy wept and wailed: but the consulted physicians answered, that it was an effect of the stone, whence the boy could not be freed except by an operation. The father felt as he ought his son's strait, and finding no remedy among human things, proposed to explore the divine, by having recourse to the prayer of S. Angelus. When therefore he had often carried the boy to his church, and chiefly whenever the Relics were led forth (which on his feast the V of May and the octave day of the festivity was then wont to be done) nor yet experienced any help, the evil now lasting a year and a half; he began to insist with the Saint so much the more importunately, by how much the longer the grace was deferred. anointed with the oil of the lamp he casts out the stone. At length he resolved to anoint his son with the oil of the lamp burning before the chest; which indeed he did with the most ardent devotion, nevertheless that night the boy wailed even more than usual. But the witness himself rising in the morning, in the same bed, in which the little one lay, found a stone like an olive-kernel: and persuading himself that this was what had tormented his son, he showed it to the physicians: who recognized it to be such as those with the stone are wont to carry. And the firm and constant health of the boy thereafter showed clearly enough, that he had been miraculously cured: and therefore the father ceases not, after thanks given to the Saint, to inculcate to his son daily devotion to him and love of him.

[116] likewise another boy. Andreas Ferro, XXI years old, the XC witness, said, that when he was nine years old, a grave infirmity hindering, he either could not at all make water, or not without the greatest torments, which the tears and wailings will testify. Moved by which his parents Angelus and Francischella, when they had seen the boy for three whole days in that torment, devoted him to the Saint Protector of this city: and visiting his church, and anointing their son with the oil of the lamp, awaited his help, having moreover provided a sacrifice of Mass in his honor. And the boy continued indeed to weep, carried back from the church no less in pain, than when he had been carried thither: but the surgeon Antoninus Belguardus, called by the parents, knew the evil to be from a stone, which was next to going forth: as indeed going forth at that very hour, no other remedy being applied, it left the boy wholly whole; and therefore they did not doubt to ascribe the grace to the benefits of S. Angelus, whom they had so devoutly invoked, since from that time the boy suffered nothing such any more.

[117] and a Minorite Preacher, The Reverend Father Fr. Paul of Alcamo, Preacher and Priest of the Minors of the Observance of S. Francis, the XCIII witness, said on the XVII of September, that in the past week being in his Convent of this city of S. Maria de Jesu, he felt an infirmity familiar to him, namely the difficulty of rendering urine. And when in this his labor the pain grew heavier even unto spasms, nor had he any hope in human remedies, for the reason that the pain exceeded its accustomed bounds, at length he recalled S. Angelus: to whom as soon as he commended himself saying, S. Angelus, free me from this torment; he began at will to render urine, casting out a stone with a sense of the sharpest pain: which ascribing to the benefits of the Saint, he gratefully declared as such, hoping thenceforth to be free of that evil through the intercession of the said Saint.

[118] The Prior of the Carmelite Convent, his urine impeded, is relieved. The hundredth witness the Reverend Father Fr. Angelus Gatto, a Carmelite Priest, affirmed, that in that four years, in which he was Prior of this Convent and during Lent preached to the people in his church, on a certain night he was invaded by an intolerable pain first of the belly then of the bladder: which so growing strong that he seemed to himself to be giving up the ghost, nor found any help in the applied medicines, because he had now passed a whole night, nor yet been able to cast out anything of urine; he turned to S. Angelus, praying through the communion of the same religion and name, that he would deign to succor him: which prayer being uttered, suddenly the urine was loosed for him, and he wondered himself free from all pain at all.

[119] From the Syndic of Palermo fevers are removed The Doctor of Both Laws Caesar Lazara about sixty years of age, Royal Syndic of the city of Palermo, dwelling in this city, said on the ninth day of the month of December, that when in the last past November he was in the city of Naro, he felt himself invaded by a most vehement disease, with a burning fever and the utmost labor of the whole body, especially on account of the urine, which was all red and inflamed and mixed with blood. Thus sick he came into this city for the sake of his office, intending before all things to visit the Relics of S. Angelus: and arriving at the city on the XXX day of the month, beside the fountain he dismounted from his horse, and so with other nobles wished to enter the city on foot. But when he approached the gate, there was going forth the same processional pomp, which those nobles said was instituted by the people of Licata, for the deliverance of the city of Agrigentum from a pestilence. The way therefore had to be changed, and so by chance it came about that the very church of S. Angelus had to be passed: of which the witness asking what it was, and understanding the name, felt himself exceedingly consoled, and asked the aforesaid nobles leading him, that with their good grace it might be permitted him to visit the relics of the said Saint. They assenting, the water being drunk from the fountain of the Saint. after the venerable Sacrament was adored and the chest honored, being led to the fountain, which was said to have come forth in the very place, where formerly had been the burial of the holy Martyr; he with a singular affection of unwonted devotion drank from the same, and coming to his lodging felt neither the disease nor the fever nor the relics of either any more, and his urine thereafter appeared clear and healthy: wherefore he recognizes himself most obligated to the Saint himself,

before Hieronymus la Magnia and Peter Faraone his Actuaries, and Basilius Stilla his apparitor, rendering the due praise to the Saint.

[120] But because mention has been made of fevers, let us subjoin here some freed from them. likewise to a woman suffering with them a grave symptom: Hentiona, wife of Angelus Smecca, about LX years of age, the LXXXIII witness, said on the VII day of the month of November, that about one month ago she began to suffer a fever with a most troublesome symptom, by which continued through eight days, she felt herself reduced to the worst state. But since she was, as even now she is, most devoted to S. Angelus; she often commended herself to him: and on a certain evening she ordered some to be drawn for her from the fountain, and something to be taken of the oil of the lamp of S. Angelus. Which water and oil being brought to her she applied to her body, and so much the more earnestly besought the Saint, by how much the more solicitously her physician Doctor Francis Perconti inculcated the same devotion to her. But at the fourth hour of the night she slept a little, and it seemed to her that she saw through sleep a grave person, in youthful age, with a white cloak, a hat, and a staff, like a pilgrim; who finding her in bed asked, what was the matter with her? But she seemed to answer, that she was much wearied by this her infirmity, after the apparition of the Saint himself, and that if she should once more suffer a symptom of this kind, such as she said she awaited the next morning, it would doubtless suffice for death. To whom the pilgrim, Fear not, but take this herb and apply it to your neck, nor will that which you dread recur any more. The witness herself knew the herb, but the name has wholly slipped from memory: but wishing as it seemed to her to take the said herb, she awoke from sleep, full of great confidence, that he who had been seen was S. Angelus, whose likeness she had known from his images, and that she would thenceforth be free from every distress: as indeed the physician returning to visit her found her free, and permitted her to rise from her bed, after he had heard from her the order of the dream or vision. To this relation attested, the week after the matter had happened, on the XI of October, the aforenamed physician himself, the XX witness.

[121] the daughter of the Marchioness of Santa Croce is healed. Balthasar Caelestri and Prades the LXVII witness, said it was signified to him by the Marchioness of Santa Croce, dwelling in this kingdom, D. Francisca Caelestri, that by applying a little fragment of the wood of the chest to her daughter Lucretia the secondborn, who labored of a hectic fever, she restored the same to health: for which benefit, she sent two torches, which burned in the greater church, during a certain prayer of forty hours, there before the relics of S. Angelus instituted, for the deliverance of the city of Palermo from a contagious plague, which the previous year in the month of August there was announced to be detected. John Antoninus de Caci on the II day of the month of March in the year 1626 professed that his kinsman, and another from a perilous fever, his wife's brother, Francis Lombardus, the preceding month of January having fallen into a grave fever, began to be in peril of his life, by the judgment of the physicians, judging him nearer to fear than to hope: wherefore both the witness himself and his mother-in-law Laurea and the rest of the family commended the sick man to the Saint, and with great devotion gave him several times to consume a little fragment of the wood of the old chest, and water from the fountain to drink. By which it came about, that the malignant humor which caused the fever dissipating itself, there broke out for the sick man two parotid swellings at the neck: and these within a short time being opened, Francis convalesced; and so now lives whole, as if he had suffered nothing of distress. Furthermore something must be said also about dropsy: for the Saint is found to have cured this also.

[122] Melchiora, wife of Paul Bella, aged XLIII years, the XXII witness, said on the XII day of the month of October, likewise a dropsical woman that about two months ago she began to swell over her whole body, the physician Francis Safilla judging the evil to proceed from an asthma inveterate for five years, and that it was a wholly incurable dropsy, to which he judged only some relief could be given by opening the belly, which also he had determined to do. But the disease growing, the hope of preserving life decreased: nor are there more than eight days, that on account of the very great straits which she suffered, she herself esteemed herself near death. And so Confession and holy Communion being premised, she also received extreme Unction from the hand of D. Antoninus Collura, Chaplain of the parish of S. Paul and her spiritual Father, summoned by Paul her husband: who left her in such a state, that he believed nothing remained to be bestowed on her except the last office of burial. Therefore the sick woman seeing herself brought to that point, commended herself to S. Rosalia, now near to death but first of all to the Virgin and Martyr S. Angelus, and ordered alms to be carried to the Convent for a Mass to be said. The next night, after she had often placed upon her belly the particles from the chest of S. Angelus, and the sepulchral stone of S. Rosalia, falling asleep a little she felt her belly constricted by, as it seemed, the Saints Angelus and Rosalia, and all her intestines moved. But when she awoke, through SS. Angelus and Rosalia. and knew herself to be without tumor and freed from all the disease, calling her daughter Philippa to her, she narrated the miracle done in her, as whole and slender as ever before; and free from the relics of the asthma itself. She gave thanks moreover to her deliverers the Saints, and to the Physician and Chaplain aforesaid coming to her the next day the so miraculous and so sudden change caused amazement: who also confirmed the matter by their own oath here the XXI, there the XVIII witness.

[123] Father Fr. Francis Galutius, a Carmelite Priest, and a pilgrim likewise dropsical. the X witness, said that when P. Master Angelus Gatto was Prior, he saw a certain pilgrim, whose name has slipped from his memory, although he openly indicated the name, laboring of dropsy: who a few days before going out of the hospital of S. James came into the church of S. Angelus. And when he wished to enter his fountain, the witness himself strove to prevent it, lest some tumults should arise. He however persisting, and saying, that he ought altogether to fill himself with such health-bringing water; the witness himself revering his great fervor, permitted him to enter. After therefore entering he drank largely, Now, he said, Father, I am whole, through the grace of God and of S. Angelus: and indeed that he was whole the sudden slenderness of his body, reduced to its natural state, showed: there was present and saw, the already named Prior of the Convent.

[124] Antoninus Streva the Notary, LXXIV years old, the XLVI witness, said, In the year 1565 a blind girl is enlightened, that about sixty years ago, a little before and after, he often saw Agathuccia a sixteen-year-old girl, daughter of Jacobus de Drepano, who as an honored and opulent citizen dwelt in the square of the Bridge beside the Royal castle. But the said daughter through a flux of humors over her eyes had become wholly blind, the medicines profiting nothing, which at the great expense of the father the late Angelus de Glava, then a most experienced physician of this city, had applied: who at length said to that Jacobus, when no hope humanly remained of recovering his daughter's sight, that he should go and invoke the help of S. Angelus. The afflicted father obeyed, coming to the temple of S. Angelus, and devoting his daughter to the Saint, took care for her to be clothed in a tunic of the Carmelite habit, and one of those days led her to the church with the offering of one wax candle. But scarcely had they reached the door, when the eyes of Agathuccia were opened, which for so long a time she had had closed; and seeing herself whole, together with her father she began to cry, Mercy. The citizens running together at those cries, the witness himself also ran together, and saw the opened eyes of Agathuccia, which he had before often seen closed, and so was partaker of the joy, equally as afterward in many other occasions of published miracles: of which since the monuments stand openly in the chapel of the Saint, he believed it superfluous to weave a longer relation of them.

[125] Angelutia, wife of Philip lo Nobili, the XLVIII witness, and in the year 1623 a boy, said, that to a certain grandson of hers by her sister Antonella, two years old, named Marianus, son of the late Philip Monisteri, a grave catarrh over the eyes, in a short time took away the whole faculty of seeing with the right eye, nearly the whole with the left. Which calamity when he had suffered for two years; at length in the month of May, two and a half years ago, the Priests of the Saint publicly showing the relics in the greater cemetery, the witness herself held out her rosary to be applied to the sacred relics, and being applied received it with so much the greater devotion, by how much the more she had desired sometime to see the relics themselves. Then truly going out of the city to the district of the Sabbuci, where her husband Philip together with the said grandson Marianus was staying, she applied the aforesaid rosary or beads to the boy's eyes several times, saying, May the glorious S. Angelus give us light: and the same day returned into the city, leaving her husband and grandson in the suburbs: touched with the rosary applied to the relics. who also after eight days came to her; and indeed Marianus seeing as clearly, as if he had never had any distress at all in his eyes, to the very great amazement of the witness herself and all the neighbors; of whom none doubted, but that this was an evident miracle of S. Angelus; to whom therefore both by her and by her husband and grandson frequent thanks were given for so estimable a benefit.

CHAPTER XII.

The blind enlightened, paralytics cured, through the invocation of S. Angelus.

[126] John Angelus la Cutrera, about fifty years of age, a native of the city of Heraclea, and a citizen of Licata, the XXXIX witness heard on the XXI day of October, said that about twenty years ago, a certain flux, falling into his right eye, extinguished all its light: in which blindness he himself remained for fourteen whole years, until a similar descent into the other eye brought full blindness, the remedies notwithstanding however many. Now for three years he had been thus blind, when two and a half years ago in the month of May, likewise a man in the Translation of the relics invoking the Saint in the translation of the body of S. Angelus, understanding the Relics to be publicly shown in the cemetery of the greater church, he grieved very much that he was deprived of so religious a spectacle, shut up in his house on account of the defect of his eyes. Meanwhile he not negligently invoked the Saint: and while the pomp with the new chest passed his house, he came to the door of his house supplicating after it. Then truly it seemed to him that he confusedly discerned the passing order, and the chest itself as it were shadows: which when he had said to his wife Martia, she answered; Why do you not, husband, wash your eyes with the water of that fountain, which is in the middle of the church of S. Angelus; for I have seen people everywhere doing this, and citizens and foreigners professing that much help was obtained thence. Perhaps God will succor you also by that means, because I have a great hope placed in the merits of the Saint. Go therefore, said the witness, and bring of that water as quickly as possible. The woman went to the church, and gaining his eyes, washing them with it. filled a little vessel with water,

brought it to her husband, and he for three days washed himself with it: but on the third day perfectly enlightened, he began to see most distinctly whatsoever things and persons: wherefore falling to his knees, he gave frequent thanks to God and the Saint: then betook himself to the church, and made the grace done him publicly known, with the great jubilation of the whole city and the increase of his devotion toward the Saint. So he and concerning him also the II witness Don Julius Bennici the Vicar of Licata.

[127] Francischella wife of Francis Mangiameli, the LXX witness, in the year 1624 a blind woman healed by the same water said that about four years ago, to a certain daughter of hers, named Gratia, then scarcely past the first year of her age, a humor so malignant flowed into her eyes, that it extinguished all their light, and from them blood continually dripped. There grew then over them a flesh, covering the pupils, and begetting so great torments, that almost always covering both eyes with applied little palms with open mouth she wailed. The mother indeed applied many remedies: but nothing seemed to profit toward the cure: wherefore turning herself to deserving the intercession of the Virgin Mother of God and S. Angelus with God, and again and again visiting his church, she commended to him her daughter, by washing her eyes with the water of the fountain gushing in the middle of the church. Now two years and a half the unhappy little one had spent in this distress, and was thought about to remain blind forever: but to the blindness was added also so great a weakness of the members, that although her age had made her ripe for forming her step, yet she could do nothing less. At length in the year 1624, and a paralytic girl, on a certain Saturday of the month of August at the hour of Compline, while the said witness was in the church invoking the Saint, and dipping in his water, not only the eyes and legs of the little daughter, but her whole body, and making a vow that she would put upon her the habit of the Carmelite Order; the little one began from that hour to walk and to open her eyes: nor did many days pass but that she was most entirely whole. Wherefore the witness herself desiring to demonstrate her grateful will, beyond the daily action of thanks, took care for various sacrifices of Mass to be offered; nor did she defer to clothe the little one with the votive habit. So the mother: whose all and each word read to her the girl's father Francis, the LXXI witness, said he confirmed.

[128] in the year 1625 a blind man is healed in the procession, on the V of May Martinus Cumbo, the LXXXVIII witness, said, that one year ago at the beginning of December, he began to suffer a flux over the eyes, by which at length he became wholly blind, whatever remedies being applied in vain. He had recourse therefore to invoking S. Lucy and S. Angelus the Virgins and Martyrs, and had himself frequently led to this church before the Relics, and before the image of S. Lucy, which is venerated in the same church: he took care also there for a Mass to be celebrated, and vowed to those Saints a twin torch of wax, if they would restore to him the use of light. But persevering in this state until the fifth day of May last past, when the Procession was led around, he too had himself carried about the holy Relics, with great affection imploring the Saint's help. Nor in vain: during the procession he began little by little to see light with so great a successive increase, that the next day he could without a guide go out to till his field, which from the beginning of the said infirmity he had never been able to do, who had not even set foot out of the city: but now he enjoys most entire sight, chiefly by the benefit of S. Angelus, whom he more specially invoked together with S. Lucy, to whom he likewise recognizes himself obligated.

[129] Elisabettucia, wife of Francis Gulino, the XLIX witness heard on the XXVI day of the same month of October, and in the month of August a blind girl through the water: said that six months ago a certain daughter of hers Francischella, a seven-year-old girl, began to be sick in her eyes: to which the witness herself did not omit by the counsel of the physicians to apply whatever remedies were suggested: but in vain. She prayed therefore to God and S. Angelus that they would rather grant death to the little one, than suffer her to live blind: she lived however wholly blind for four months, until she received some of the water of the salutary fountain: with which often washing the girl's face, she conceived much confidence of obtaining the grace: as also she obtained it. For the next day Francischella began to be better, and little by little to recover sight: and so she advanced toward health that on the third day she could entirely and most distinctly recognize whatsoever objects, and perseveres in that clearness of sight even today, with the great consolation of the mother, recognizing herself therefore most devoted to the holy Martyr. So much concerning the blind: I pass to the paralytics.

[130] Josepha, wife of Francis Bagarella, a paralytic and miserably contracted woman is helped, about seventeen years of age, the XXVIII witness, said, that two years ago she was so taken sick that she could move no member of her body, nor found any solace in the physicians often consulted, and applying various remedies; nay the evil growing heavier from day to day, which was said to be paralysis, her health utterly went to ruin, and she was held continually fixed to her bed. Then her legs also and the other limbs were contracted, with so great a disfigurement of the whole body, that it struck horror into all beholders. At length she and her mother Hieronymella had recourse to the Mother of God and S. Angelus. And when the said mother had sought water from the fountain of the Saint, and washed her daughter's members with it, she began somewhat to move her feet and the other limbs. by the use of water from the fountain. But feeling that this was the beginning of the hoped-for grace and the fruit of her devotion, she bound herself by a vow, she and her mother, that they would have a solemn Mass sung. Scarcely had two days passed, but that fully healed in her mother's company she went to the church, and acquitted herself of her vow, with the discharge of little mortars and other public signs of joy and gratitude added. To this relation similar things had also said Don Joseph Carletto, a secular Priest, the XIV witness, as one who very well knew Josepha, dwelling in a house joined to his own house, but there the husband's surname is written to have been Zagarella.

[131] Antony Graecus son of the late Martin, the VI witness, said, that about X years ago, likewise a boy dissolved in all his members, his son Joseph then a year old, and the same most beautiful and most strong for his age, on a certain morning while he was being loosed from his swaddling clothes was found by his wife Antonella the boy's mother soft and rotten in all his members like a lung: and so he remained sick for four years, so that he indeed could speak, but could not walk, but only stand fixed in a place; which that he might be able to do, and have some consistency like a trunk, his mother wrapped him in swaddling clothes. Furthermore one of the days, the swaddling clothes being loosed at one time, he began to walk so readily, as if he had long since and often done it. At which spectacle the mother astonished; And how, she said, son, do I see you whole? at the apparition of the Saint. But he: This night, he said, there appeared to me a certain one and said: Rise, walk: I am S. Angelus. To him therefore, to whom he and his wife had often supplicated for the son's health, they referred the received benefit: for they had been wont both to apply the water from his fountain by washing the boy, and to accompany always the procession of the Relics with him taken up in their arms. But because the matter had happened in the days immediately preceding the feast itself, again following the procession, when it had come to the level ground of the Cunicella, before all the people they proclaimed the miracle, the whole son being publicly exhibited. The same testifies, who was present at the said publication, Don Angelus Oriolus, a secular Priest, the III witness, expressly adding, that it is the custom, for the order of suppliants to halt at certain places, to learn of the graces which are done during the procession, or are announced to have been done before, the people praising together with high voices the mercy of God at the publication of each.

[132] Calogerus Bravo, the XLV witness, said, that two years ago, about the month of November, his stepson Francis Zirafi, a fourteen-year-old youth, was carried home from the vineyard, situated at Caput-aquae, and belonging to Doctor Joseph Raimundi, whom he served; as also another mute and deprived of all motion: but he was carried home mute and seized in all his members. To cure him not only physicians, but also Priests were applied, on account of the suspicion of a demon lurking in him. But when both profited nothing, the boy's mother wept, the witness himself's wife Francischella; who in the third month of this infirmity being passed, after many prayers to God and the Mother of God, at length turned also to demanding the suffrage of S. Angelus, took water from his fountain, and prepared a bath thence for her son, with as great devotion and confidence of obtaining help as she could. But that very night following the washing made, the boy awaking, began to cry, Help, help me: because here is a certain Father: and rising from the bed began to run toward the stairs. By which immediately ascending the witness himself and his wife, who had been roused by the cry and the running, and seeing and hearing Francis speaking and walking rightly, asked what was the matter with him: but he answered, that being placed in the bed he saw beside the little vessel, in which he had been washed, a certain Carmelite Father, like the Prior of the Convent of S. Angelus, by whose look as he gazed on him being terrified and attempting to rise, he found himself whole, as indeed he was and now is, free from all infirmity at all: which the witness himself and his wife ascribing to a by no means doubtful miracle of the Saint, professed that thanks were owed to him.

[133] Angelucia, relict of the late Notary Peter Cavaleri, the XLVII witness, a contracted and lame man is healed after 4 years. says that, as far as she recalls, it is sixteen years, that her late husband being dead, one of the sons left to her by him, named Marius, only eleven months old, began to be contracted in his members, the evil taking increase from day to day: and at length he appeared useless in his whole body, when he came to that age at which boys are wont now to form their step: for his arms and legs were distorted and soft, wherefore he could only sit or lie. Sad at which thing the witness herself, did not fail herself, but that to cure so miserable a disease she applied physicians and medicines: but profiting nothing by that means, and recognizing it to be a work of a higher power, she turned herself to God and the Virgin Mother of God and S. Angelus the Protector of the city. Meanwhile the boy had reached the sixth year of his age, often commended to the Saint by his mother going to the church, often washed with water taken from his fountain: then truly he began somewhat to move himself, and to attempt some kind of gait, supporting himself as best he could: and so leaning on two staves he came by himself to the church of the Saint: and entire health being soon received there, he let go the staves, and walked straight home to his mother, who having seen the miracle was poured out into actions of thanks. The same, as he had heard from Marius himself, the XIV witness, D. Joseph Carletto named above, touched on more briefly.

[134] and likewise a girl so born and hunchbacked: Antoninus Xiculuna, the LXXV witness, of his daughter

Francischella said, that from her very birth she was soft and rotten in all her members like a lung, having besides a great hump under her side, nor was it doubted but that she would remain all her life deprived of gait, wherefore it was needful always to carry her in the arms. But when she was now two years old, the witness himself's wife Mattheola, despairing of human remedies, applied her mind to seeking the divine, and began to invoke S. Angelus, sometimes anointing her daughter with the oil of his lamp and washing her with the water of the fountain. Afterward about one year and a half she carried the girl to the church, and there the Saint being adored began to make trial whether the little one could not yet walk. But she began to walk, as though she had long since known it: and walking rightly, she was brought home by her mother, much congratulating herself on so propitious a Patron.

[135] Michael Gattuto son of the late Leonard, aged LVIII years, the LXXXVI witness, two years ago was seized, as he said, by a grave infirmity finally a father of a family. and fixed to his bed, his members contracted and wholly weak: wherefore wholly mournful and weeping much, for the reason that no remedies profited him, he continually invoked the help of God and S. Angelus. At the same time his wife Agathucella and his sons were seized by fevers: his own, his wife's and children's disease, a grief. whence much more afflicted, and the more earnestly praying the Saint, he began to use water drawn from the fountain of the Saint, and to sprinkle or wash himself with it again and again. Doing this at one time at the lighted candle of his house, about the sixth hour of a certain night, that of the preceding Wednesday, and turning over in thought his distresses, and the miracles of S. Angelus, he says he saw with waking eyes a certain little Carmelite Brother, of seven years as it appeared, and pleasant of countenance; who passing above the bed of him lying down looked upon him, and suddenly disappeared. After then in a like manner he saw another Brother of the same order, who showing about twenty-seven years of age, had a lean face, a flaxen little beard, a middling stature: who he too passing the bed looked upon the sick man. But he recognizing himself to be awake and by no means dreaming, is raised into a great hope of obtaining through S. Angelus, the Saint appearing. whom he thought had appeared to him, his health. Nor was it vain: for the following day being better, he began daily to advance toward perfect and full health: nor did many days flow by but that he went to the church, to render thanks for health restored.

CHAPTER XIII.

The remaining cures and graces attributed to the intercession of S. Angelus.

[136] Joseph Serrovira, about sixty years of age, the XXXII witness, after the other things which he testified, A frequent erysipelas is cured, altogether believed it worthy of relation, what in the year 1623 happened to him in the Translation of the Relics from the old into the new silver chest. For when then an erysipelas familiar to him of one of his shins returned, as it was wont several times every year; and yet he believed it by no means to be allowed him, to withdraw his presence from an action so solemn and so desired by all; in a chair, because he could not otherwise come to the public, he had himself carried to the platform, from which the Relics were to be shown to the people. And while this was done, he commended himself with most fervent vows to the Saint; and experiencing his help in a short time, not only saw that troublesome evil quickly driven off then; but also suffered it no more, free of it until now.

[137] Philip Cinciglione, the fiftieth witness, his arm in peril after a vein cut. said, that on the XV day of past September, his son Andreas, a youth of twenty years, on account of an infirmity of the eyes returned into the city from his vineyard, situated below the district of Durra in the territory of this city: and when the following morning he had had blood diminished for himself, that very evening there flowed into the arm, whose vein had been opened, a malignant humor, swelling it enormously with the whole hand, so that he could not move even a finger: there was added in the same parts so great a pain with convulsions and spasm, that all night he wailed demanding help. Wherefore the witness himself's wife Paulella, fearing lest perchance so vehement an evil should turn into paralysis, since Doctor Joseph Ramundi, who had visited the sick man, suspected some such thing; took some cotton which she had by her, then applied to the sacred Relics, when they were translated from one into the other chest, two years and a half ago: likewise a particle of the wood of the old chest: and bound both to the affected arm. She ordered also water from the fountain of the same Saint to be brought to her, and with it washed her son's arm and hand with great devotion and confidence of obtaining the grace. And behold suddenly the spasm ceased, and the arm and hand, the tumor subsiding, within one hour not full returned to their natural state: and the said Andreas now uses them, as if he had never suffered any distress: which thing increased not a little the devotion of the whole family toward the Saint.

[138] a most difficult sciatica, Hieronymus Liscano, of the island of Sardinia a citizen of Licata, the LII witness, said that about four years ago coming from Palermo to Licata, while he was between Racalmuto ^a and Naro, he suddenly felt so great a torment in his right hip, that by it he seemed to himself about to die: he came however but with great difficulty into this city, but could not by himself dismount from his horse, but had to be carried off by others: by whom being placed in a bed Doctor Francis Safilla visited him. He thinking it to be sciatica, ordered a vein to be opened in the foot: but the evil growing heavier, the sick man now foreseeing nothing but death, sought a Confessor: then recalling S. Angelus, who had done to his ruptured son the grace related at no. 104; he asked the same that he would succor him also, vowing that for one whole month every single day he would visit his holy relics in his church. Scarcely had he uttered the vow, when suddenly all the torment yielded, and the witness himself felt himself so free, as if he had suffered nothing. Wherefore to the surgeon coming to cut the vein he would not permit it, alleging there was now no need, since through S. Angelus he had received entire soundness: and leaping from his bed he hastened to the church to give thanks: which from that time until now he has not ceased to do, at least on alternate days.

[139] Francis Mangiameli, the LXXI witness, about XXVI years old, a vein burst in the breast, said, that four years ago in the month of December, near the feast of the Lord's Nativity, a vein was burst for him in the breast with the effusion of most copious blood: so that the physicians asserted he would without doubt die of that infirmity, and indeed quickly. But since the witness himself was most devoted toward S. Angelus, he several times asked of him that in this strait he would take charge of curing him. Meanwhile he did not cease to spit blood the whole month, and on a certain day of January vomited it so abundantly, that empty of all human counsel he rose from his bed, and dragged himself as he could into the church of the Saint: where after he had drunk of the water of the fountain, he composed himself to make prayer: and the Priest having gone out to the altar he set himself to hear the Mass to be said by him, spitting blood meanwhile as before. But he ceased to do this when the Priest came to the consecration of the Lord's Body and Blood. When therefore he had been present at the rest of the Mass without distress, now doubting nothing of the health conferred on him, he began to give thanks; and afterward provided a tablet, which in testimony of the perceived benefit is seen fixed to the wall of the chapel.

[140] an incurable herpes, Francis Grugno, the LXXXIV witness, asserted that he had a nine-year-old daughter named Cassandra, who labored of a most grave and incurable evil, which the common people call the children's disease, the physicians herpes ^b: who after she with singular devotion and confidence placed upon herself that board, which the witness himself had obtained in the division of the old chest, as before said, in a short time recovered entire health, in which even today she perseveres. Joseph Riccobeni, the XCV witness, said on the XVIII of November, that about eight days ago, his three-year-old daughter, Angela by name, was vexed by a flux so malignant, that with her tongue drawn back, her neck twisted, her nose constricted, and her eyes inverted and showing only the white, they were a miserable spectacle to beholders: a distortion of the tongue, neck, eyes, but what few words she could speak were nearly inarticulate ^c. Therefore the witness himself and his wife Catharinella devoted their daughter to S. Angelus: but the next day, the other members being cured, only the neck appeared awry. In which recognizing the beneficent virtue of the Saint, the witness himself immediately went to the church: and thanks being given for his daughter, took water from the fountain and oil from the lamp, and with them washing and anointing the daughter's whole head, the following day again saw the girl wholly healed: whom therefore he and his wife carried to the church, to profess the miracle done in her.

[141] Maria, relict of the late Master Peter Falcone, the XCVI witness, said that about six years ago, most copious scrofula. her daughter Antonia, then twelve years old, was vexed by scrofula, emerging in very great abundance about the neck, and often enormously swelling it, with great trouble to her. But although suitable medicines were applied, yet the evil grew heavier, and at length threatened suffocation. The mother and daughter therefore had recourse to imploring the help of S. Angelus, frequenting his church, and washing the ill-affected neck with the fountain, and anointing it with oil, taken from the lamp burning before the chest. At length about six months ago there appeared in dreams to Antonia sleeping a Carmelite Brother, in age a youth, white of face, having a little beard, and placed himself on a seat near. But she seemed to herself before him as before S. Angelus to bend her knees, and with joined hands to supplicate that he would free her from the said infirmity. Then truly he seemed to place his hand on her neck, and to prepare to depart: whom again, as she asserted, Antonia calling, asked for health: but he making over her the sign of the Cross disappeared. At these things the girl being awakened and wonderfully refreshed, narrated to her mother the dream; which when both hoped would be by no means vain, the event approved the hope of both: because from that hour the scrofula began little by little to vanish, and the girl being freed from it within a few days, remained thereafter free and remains.

[142] Elisabetha de Raymundo, the XCIV witness, has a son named Joseph, a distorted leg. who now numbers the seventh year of his age: this one from his birth had his right leg distorted from the very knee, and as much as he advanced in age, so much he fell short of the comeliness of an upright gait. The witness herself however, despairing of the cure of the inborn evil, applied no remedy to him: she only sometimes washed her son with water, taken from the fountain of S. Angelus. And while she perseveres in this devotion, and commends her need to the Saint, on a certain day about two years ago, she saw with wonder her son's leg composed to straightness: nor did she have any other to whom she might refer such a benefit

than S. Angelus, to whom she had been devoted.

[143] The Reverend Father Fr. Antony Serravilla, a shin useless from a fracture. a Carmelite Priest, about XLV years of age, Prior of the venerable Convent of Carmel of this city of Licata, the VII witness, after he had testified in general concerning the most prompt will of S. Angelus to help his people of Licata, proved by so many arguments, that for narrating the miracles one by one he could not suffice, said of his sister Francischella, that after one of her shins was rendered wholly useless to her, from a fall from a lofty upper-story, whence the said shin was broken in two places, and she for three months had lain abed, unable to move herself; at length she affectionately devoted herself to S. Angelus: and obtained from him full health and a ready faculty of walking, and as a monument of the benefit left to the church the staff or crutch, which she had fitted to herself, to help her gait such as it was.

[144] P. Fr. Vitius Guglilmotta, a Carmelite Priest, aged LXI years, the IX witness, the first Prior of the Convent Fr. Sebastian being dead, another woman desperately ulcerated, there Vicar and then by the ordination of the Chapter declared Prior, said he held the office for a space of five years, and saw the water of the fountain moved, to which many sick then ran together and obtained health, and among others the wife of the late Nicholas de Labiso, who had her whole shin desperately ulcerated, and washing it with the said water professed afterward to have it whole. Likewise he says he saw a certain woman, whose name has slipped from memory, a paralysis of both legs, who then was staying in the district of that church, and for seven whole years had been paralytic below, and impeded in both legs. She, other women supporting her, at one time came to the church at the time of the Masses, and there remained the whole day, with tears and prayers asking for health. And when, the evening signal being given for the Angelic Salutation, the sacristan wished to close the church, and admonished those women to go out, the sick woman would not acquiesce, but with high voices began to cry, S. Angelus, I will not depart hence unless I obtain the desired grace. But scarcely had she uttered the words, when she rose to her feet, as whole as if she had never been sick, and returned home joyful and rejoicing.

[145] P. Fr. Gaspar Galutius, a Carmelite Priest aged XLIII years, Prior of the Convent in the year 1619, the X witness, affirmed that in the time of his Priorate, he saw Master Francis Bartelotta ^d a mattress-maker of the city of Piazza, an internal pain of the leg, seriously commending himself to S. Angelus; for the reason that, as he said, he suffered a certain internal pain in the leg about the very bone, which not only prevented him from the exercise of his craft, but permitted him no rest, whence also he limped notably when walking. But as soon as he entered to the fountain of S. Angelus and washed his leg with it, he immediately professed himself whole, advancing to his accustomed labor, upright and cheerful. Jacobus de Labiso, about LXXXVIII years of age, the XXXIV witness, saw a certain Antony Morinellus, otherwise called Peduzo ^e, from the defect of his foot which he had inverted whence also he limped, an inverted foot a citizen otherwise opulent enough and enjoying very convenient fortune: who when he often had recourse to S. Angelus, the witness himself saw him walking with upright foot, it is now about fifty years; wont before to see his foot placed in the contrary order, so that the part appeared upward which ought to have been the sole below.

[146] Let all these things be concluded with the commemoration of a grace so obtained for a certain accused man, that by it, besides the patronage of the Saint, also the virtue of him who was given as the first Prior to the Convent of Licata, Fr. Sebastian Syracusa of Caltabellotta, may be commended, which he who was then Sub-prior and afterward Prior of the same Convent, P. Fr. Vitus Guglilmotta, eighth in the order of witnesses, already several times named above, An accused man condemned to death set forth narrating, that on a certain day he found P. Sebastian much troubled: who to him asking what new thing had happened, exhibited a letter of the Lady Baroness of Trapani, his spiritual daughter, commending to his prayers with S. Angelus her husband, captive in the Vicaria of Palermo and condemned to death; and added: Go, Father Sub-prior, and do not omit to commend to God and S. Angelus that afflicted Lady, and commended to the Saint that by their help she may obtain for her husband the pardon she desires. Nor did he himself do less than he had commended to the other Fr. Sebastian: but spent the whole following night sleepless praying before the Relics, and the next day sacrificed before the same Relics, nor afterward ceased to pray, until on the eighth day he received letters of the same Lady, giving thanks for the help brought her; nor doubting but that the life, granted to her husband beyond hope, was the benefit of S. Angelus, having deserved it with God; and of Fr. Sebastian himself, obtains the grace of life. who inclined S. Angelus by his prayers, to ask and obtain such a favor from God.

[147] Let it now be allowed me again to profess with how alacrious and willing a mind I undertook this labor of arranging and describing so many miracles, This treatise hastily done with a most friendly mind, that in them I might breathe for a while from the grief, hitherto inconsolable, which certain zealots of Carmelite antiquity had heaped upon me, by dragging me most unwilling and beseeching in many ways to the wholly ungrateful and unpleasant discussion, which I had resolved with all zeal to decline, of those authorities, by which they strove to prop their pretensions for it. And so having gotten this so longed-for occasion of relieving the tedium, I suffered no delay to be cast upon me from April, which otherwise demanded me wholly to itself, until May should be taken in hand (as he can be a witness to me, who lent the Italian MS., the Reverend Father Daniel a Virgine Maria) but all other cares set aside, I spent nearly the very nights on the work, and within fourteen days exhibited it to the said Father. For since at the same time he was giving to the press the Lives of the Saints of the Order arranged through the circle of the year, and the printing had now proceeded to April; I hastened that I might offer this my labor to be inserted into his very May next ready for the same press, that the Order might the sooner enjoy it; and by so clear a proof might have my most tender affection toward it known beforehand, and offered to it long since to forestall complaints, than that, our April being published, which could not be avoided, on account of that discussion which some had extorted, it should open its ears and minds to less favorable delations and judgments concerning me.

[148] P. Daniel gratefully accepted the gift offered him, which the very speed made the dearer; declaring that the space of a whole year would not be enough for him to make a similar collection. Since however his own work had grown into a greater bulk than he had destined in mind, and he desired to finish the printing, begun in the year 70 of this century, at least in the year 74; he preferred the grace of that benefit to be reserved entire to our May: of which meanwhile, that he might exhibit some specimen to the reader, he signified that he wished to subjoin the titles of this treatise gathered into one to the elaborated and just now to be printed Life of S. Angelus: which indeed I could not but have accepted. But the slower progress of that work disappointed my hope, whereby it came about, the Carmelite Fathers held it grateful, that not only did our April come into the light first, then only begun to be printed, but the printing of the very May proceeded thus far, nor can I know, whether affections, changed not on our part, but on his, have not also changed that place, which would make my then equally as now constant love testified, more steadfast against any injury and contumely brought and to be brought by the aforesaid zealots, if it should come forth such, as it was first printed. Wherefore lest the Order be ignorant of that, which the said P. Daniel then wished it to know, and now I would not wish to be removed from its knowledge; I wished to take care by inserting mention of that matter here.

[149] It pleases also to add that witnesses of the same affection were both to me then, as a singular benefit and can be now P. Seraphinus a Jesu Maria, then managing the affairs of the Province at Rome; and P. Ludovicus Perez, there most esteemed for erudition not only Theological but also historical: of whom the first having taken care of the copying of the book, the other having lent his labor to re-reading the copies against the original, and to both having given thanks by letters; each wrote back on the XXIV of February of the year 1674. The latter namely to this sense: I read with great consolation of mind the two letters of your Paternity, inscribed to P. Seraphinus and to me, and weigh them with no less blushing. For a simple, though accurate, collation of the MS. Copy sent thither with the Licatan original you give me thanks, and on purpose write a letter, as humane as pious: with what services therefore does it become me to pursue your Paternity, while with most prompt and incomparably greater labor it has made the very MS. codex Latin from Sicilian, and fitted it for the public light? Hither indeed it occurs to me to invoke the patronage of S. Angelus, praising the labor placed about the Saints of his Order; whose praises and marvels, since your Paternity undertakes with so great solicitude to publish, worthily deserves his grace, and will bring back the reward of so signal a work by his prayers from God. The same Father then proceeds to promise certain other things, which I have not yet received; although also promised by P. Seraphinus through a letter which was such. It was not for your Paternity to give me thanks, for the book of miracles of S. Angelus copied and transmitted; but for mine: who will always profess myself both mindful and grateful to it, that with so ardent zeal it sweats to publish the marvels of the Saints of our Order. I have in our cell an authentic transcript of the first informative process for the canonization of S. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi, which I will take care to have copied: and the desired delineation of the ancient image of S. Angelus preserved in the oratory of the Confraternity of Licata, to be made by the faithful hand of a painter, together with a testimony of the age of that picture, that I may according to my powers respond to the zeal of your Paternity; to whom as also to the Reverend Father Henschenius, I give immense thanks for so many labors borne to the honor of the Saints of our Order, and I will not omit to beg from them both rewards for both.

[150] So they, with words no more humane, than (as it pleases to believe) with sincere mind, making me faith in the thing itself, even after the Armamentarium published against us, that they wished to have no part in the bitter complaints, with which the author of the Carmelite Armamentarium, rashly used against our March, attempted to fill the ears of his and to turn aside their minds, even from the year 1669. I too, that I might declare myself nothing moved by them, immediately from the very publication of the aforesaid book, doubled my endeavor of deserving well of the whole Order, and namely of the authors of that detraction. Nor now, although in the second part of the same Armamentarium treated much more inhumanely, do I cease to do the same; so profuse in this kind, that to the value of about three thousand florins, contributed by friends for the stipend of having Masses said, I have laid out through the Convents of both Orders in Flanders-Belgian

of Cologne, and Gaul-Belgian provinces, so that the Carmelite Fathers might be able to have both our and other books opportune to them; favoring those alone in this kind more, than all the other Orders of Mendicants together, most instantly supplicating for the same benefit. The use besides of our whole library and of all the most recondite monuments in our Museum, whom in turn we have continued and shall continue to benefit. I always and liberally granted as my own to the aforesaid Reverend Father Daniel; offering the same even to one about to write against us, and if perhaps he could hammer out from them something whereby he might refute our opinions concerning the history of the Order, and zealous only for truth might more certainly teach the same, which we have learned from the writings of the ancients. And if these things are small, we will endeavor to add also greater; only let not those Fathers, who can have men friendly favorable to their honor, hope to find us slavishly subject to their opinions: and since for themselves they have written whatsoever and in whatever manner they wished, let them also suffer us to give an account for ourselves; nor here indeed by words and writings let them provoke to a response, which in its place and time they will find ready in truth and charity, but elsewhere by hidden machinations let them strive to subvert the freedom of bringing forth the same.

ANNOTATA.

May II: 6. May

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