Cross of Caravaca

CONCERNING THE HOLY CROSS OF CARAVACA,

believed to have been brought in the time of the holy King.

Ferdinand, King of Castile and Leon, at Seville in Bætica (St.)

BY THE AUTHOR D. P.

PREFACE OF THE COLLECTOR D. P.

[1] On the occasion of the Holy King, When first I applied my mind to collecting and illustrating the deeds of the Holy King, not only with Annotations, as the Acts of other Saints, but also with certain Historical By-pieces looking to the same purpose; first for this end there offered itself to me that miracle most celebrated throughout all Spain, by which the Cross of Caravaca is believed to have been brought; and I judged it altogether worth the trouble to inquire more studiously, Whether and how the revelation of that holy Cross pertains to the history of this time and King of which I was treating. For all wished it to pertain thereto; and there was in hand the History of the apparition and miracles of the holy Cross of Caravaca, printed at Madrid in the year MDCXV, divided into two books, and dedicated to D. Christopher de Roxas y Sandoval, Duke of Uceda, Gentleman of the Chamber to the Royal Majesty of Philip III and Commander of Caravaca, by the Licentiate John de Robles Corvalan, Clergyman Priest of Caravaca, when I had read the History of Caravaca by Robles, with the approbation of grave authors, of ciphers, of characters, of testimonies, of epistles, and of ancient traditions. Turning and re-turning this History, as to its substance indeed I judged that the miracles were sufficiently certainly established, by the Constant tradition of the citizens of Caravaca, already from the year MCCCLXXV, that is, from the next century after the age of the holy King, consigned by public instruments, and afterwards by continuous prodigies down to our age confirmed even today. and that concerning the year 1232 I should put no trust in Higuera But these teaching nothing about the year, that it was MCCXXXII, I could not believe the relations received from Jerome Higuera de Roman; because I had known him to be the inventor of infinite fables, by which I am compelled to grieve too often that the ecclesiastical history of Spain has now for a whole century been polluted. Therefore I turned myself elsewhere, and seeing an old inscription of Caravaca alleged, by which the year of the Arabs DXCIV was indicated from the interpretation of the Licentiate Michael de Luna, most learned (as was reported) of foreign tongues; [and that I thought from the ascribed hegira 594 the time could be more certainly defined;] I found that same year to take its beginning on the XII of November of our year MCXCVII, and to end on the last day of the following October, within which time it was established that Ferdinand was conceived and perhaps also born, who was so greatly to propagate the honor and faith of the holy Cross. This then I let descend into my mind the more easily, the more supports occurred for confirming that opinion, without any repugnance with the facts of more certain knowledge; while on the contrary that manifold repugnance was found in the figments of Higuera. Because moreover I feared, lest that disputation about the time should offer to some one of the readers, more pious than curious, an occasion of offense if it were proposed alone, as had then been done in By-piece I; I decreed at the end of the book to extend that argument more at length, the miracles being translated into the Latin tongue, by which that holy Cross, not to the Spaniards only, but to all Catholics in the whole

world God willed to be commended.

[2] So the book came forth, and on this very account it was received with no common applause by those devoted to the holy King, nor suspecting any deceit in that place, where the so happily found concurrence of the Arabic and Christian Era, I did not notice, how it was not Arabic writing, soothed with grateful novelty the mind piously affected. But although that determination of the year, in which the Cross was supposed to have appeared, had many supporters; yet to me their congratulation could never remove the scruple, born thence, that I saw the characters of the Caravaca inscriptions led in our manner from left to right, contrary to what the Arabs are accustomed, with whom writing goes backward from right to left; then that the figure of the same characters not only differed enormously from the everywhere-known letters of the Arabs, but also from the more artificially elaborated capitals, such as are beheld in that Key, which the Moors of Seville handed over to Ferdinand the conqueror. But the doubt once moved, other and other reasons came in for doubting more about the trustworthiness of that interpretation, and how unfaithful an interpreter Luna was, which had extended a few letters, partly known, partly foreign, into so many words, that, if they were written at length in any language, they ought to fill several lines. Finally I wished to learn, what sort of man Michael de Luna had been, who had no less confidently than wonderfully interpreted a mystery, the key of which had hitherto not been able to be found in any order of the known Alphabets. I could have learned this from Robles, page 47 blessing God, who had offered him an interpreter, already before approved in the explanation of the Granada books and plates: for the imposture of these, marked with the Vatican thunderbolt, would not have permitted me, had I attended, long to be ignorant, Higuera no better. how no trust at all was to be given to that explanation. But (which I frankly confess) the explanation, so commodious to my intent, so affected me, running with a quick eye only over the chief points of the Roblesian history, that I did not indulge myself the space of considering more attentively the preceding lines, where mention is made of the Granada figments. But before I re-read in Robles, what had formerly not been well enough read; there occurred to my mind the Library of Spanish writers of Nicholas Antonio, to be praised below, and in it I suspected that Michael would be. Nor was that thought vain, for thus I read there: Michael de Luna, of Granada, sprung from converted Arabs, Royal interpreter of this tongue, wished it to seem that he had translated from the Arabic of Abucacin into the vernacular tongue the History of King Roderick and the Perdition of Spain, both elsewhere and at Saragossa in 1603; and afterwards the second part of the Spanish Perdition, or the life of King James Almanzor, from the same Abucacin at Granada in 1610. I shuddered, I confess, when I read these things; but more when I knew, how great a part that Michael had had in the Granada fictions; and recognizing by no doubtful indications a fellow-conspirator of Higuera, even from the very titles of the books published under the name of Abucacin, I felt too late, that

I fell into Scylla, wishing to avoid Charybdis.

[3] But it is well, that it is permitted to draw back the vessel once unhappily dashed even thence, and to re-measure the course through this second edition of the same Treatise; to show also those very characters, how falsely reputed Arabic, This now being recognized, how certainly they are later than the age of the Moors, and taken from the idea of no known alphabet; but fabricated from the fantasy of a brain, either stupidly raving, or studiously deceiving, through Latin letters for the most part, but distorted to some appearance of barbarism and signifying nothing. Then when I considered, that the conflagration of the year MCCCXLVIII, by the testimony of Robles himself, was so great, the church and tower of the holy true Cross burning, that the wax flowing out through the door, liquefied and burning, equaled the height of half a leg, and the writing itself, painted after the year 1448 by its novelty, and the flames reached up to the very summit of the tower itself; I easily believed that I should persuade, that it was altogether necessary, that all the old sculpture, if any was there before, should be abolished, the stones especially leaping apart that surrounded the window vomiting flames; and also whatever there was on the walls of old paintings laid on with a plaster coating: for which were substituted from the memory of the inhabitants new sculptures or paintings, so that, however true they were as to the substance of the fact represented by them; yet they could not be true as to the figure of the characters. For these, if any had seen them in that rude age, they had not known how to read, much less to reform truly. It pleases therefore to retract the proposed argument in the contrary order than before; and first to propose the tradition of the people of Caravaca, polluted by no fables yet, with the sincere trust of the ancients; then the miracles following through the successions of the ages, always preserving the religion of the faithful vivid; and finally, I am compelled to give the treatise here retracted from these. the figments of Higuera and Luna being refuted, to investigate the memories of the old Chronicles concerning the King himself, who in the relation is named Zeyt Abuzeyt: for thus it will not be difficult to come to some knowledge of the time, in which so great a favor befell Spain divinely; and to ascribe it, not a little more securely than before, to the age of the holy King, although the year not so precisely as before determined.

CHAPTER I.

The miraculous Apparition of the holy Cross, described at Caravaca in the year 1375; and the relation of Doctor Oncala consonant with it: from which it will probably be said, that the matter happened about the year 1227.

[4] This History is found in Robles page 41, written in Spanish, and legitimately transcribed in the year MDLVI, before the fiction of the aforenoted fables; In the year 1550 the old History is transcribed, and that from an older copy of the year MCCCCLXXX, whose original I shall show below to have been older than the year MCCCC. But first receive the preliminary words of two Notaries, consequently doing this. In the town of Caravaca, on the second day of the month of January, in the year MDLVI. Today before the very Magnificent Lord, Francis Muso Muñoz, ordinary Praetor of this place, appeared present Francis de la Torre, Sacristan of the Holy True Cross: and he said, that the aforenamed Relic had done many miracles, described on the paper which he exhibits: of which, that the memory may be perpetually preserved, he asks that on this parchment paper an authentic transcript be made, in proving form, and that it be handed to him. Witnesses Genesius Botia, and Henry de Moya, and the Licentiate Muños. But the Lord Praetor commanded me, Peter Diaz scribe, to have the aforesaid miracles of the Holy True Cross transcribed on parchment, and to hand it over as is asked: and he said that he interposed, as he interposed, his authority and judicial decree, and confirmed it by the subscription of his name, Francis Musus Muños: but by the mandate of his Lordship, Peter Dias Scribe. The transcript is such. from a transcript of the year 1480, In the name of God. Amen. Be it known to all who shall see, hear, or read the present and public instrument of transcript, that in the town of Caravaca on the tenth day of the month of September, in the year from the nativity of our Savior Jesus Christ MCCCCLXXX, before the venerable and honored Lord Chacon, Chaplain of the King and Queen our Lords, Vicar of Caravaca and in its territory for the most Reverend Father in Christ, Lord Roderick de Borgia, by divine commiseration Bishop of Porto, commonly called Cardinal of Valencia, Vice-chancellor of the Apostolic See, and Administrator of the Bishopric of Cartagena, before me Notary and Scribe, and the witnesses underwritten, there appeared present the honored men, Peter Fernandi Botia Praetor-major, and John de Chinchilia and Alfonso de Robles, ordinary Praetors of the aforenamed town: and they offered and caused to be read by me a certain writing, drawn up on paper, of the following tenor. To all who shall see this quaternion of testimony, whom God honor and preserve from evil. according to the original made under the Commander Garcia de Cardenas, I Garcias Lupi de Cardenas, Commander of Caravaca, the Council, Knights, Squires, Rectors, Officials, and Goodmen of the aforesaid town, incline and commend ourselves to your Grace and Nobility, as to those for whom we wish that God may impart much honor and much felicity. Know ye, that for notifying and demonstrating to all the faithful Christians the state of the true Cross of Caravaca, and the miracles which through it have been and are done daily, as our elders visibly beheld, and we behold, as many as we are today inhabitants of this town; we send, to your Grace, our Procurator, Fr. Peter, Preacher of the Order of Preachers: whom also we beg that you would be willing to have commended to your guardianship and grace, and would help with your alms, to adorn and repair the holy church and towers of the holy and true Cross, which was found in this manner.

[5] it being narrated, that the Cross being lacking for the Mass, When King Zeyt Abuzeyt, in his time a powerful King of Caravaca, held a certain Clergyman Priest captive; it happened that the King inquired of him, why he celebrated Mass. He answered, Know, O King, that every Clergyman ordained to the Mass, after he is clothed with the sacred vestments, and has uttered those holy words, which Christ said on the fifth day at the supper, that host which he elevates becomes flesh, and the wine in the chalice pure blood: and thus the Clergyman confects the body of the pure and true God. The King said, that he would not believe this, unless he should make himself see it. The Clergyman answered, Lord, if thou hast brought to me all the apparatus necessary for making the Mass, I will make thee see what thou desirest. Then the King commanded, that whatever was necessary he should set down on a list for memory: and this the Clergyman did, except that he forgot the Cross. Then the King sent his messenger; and he having returned, the next day in the morning the Clergyman rose, and recited his Hours; and together with the King having entered the tower of the castle, where the true Cross is, he clothed himself, made confession devoutly, and approaching the altar to venerate the Cross, and it being brought by Angels, found none: wherefore consternated in mind and turned to the King, he said, There lacks one of the things most necessary for saying Mass. But to him asking, Which? he answered, The Cross, Lord. Then the King, looking toward the altar, the holy and true Cross being seen there, said: Is it this, which stands upon the altar? And the Clergyman took it with great devotion, and began to say Mass. And when he was elevating the Host, the King noticed between the hands of the Clergyman a white and beautiful boy: but he finished the Mass. In that same hour King Zeyt Abuzeyt knew, the barbarian King was converted, that the law of the Christians was a holy thing: and he freed the Clergyman, and was made a Christian himself, and as many of his subjects as wished: and he gave his land to the Christians: who in turn gave him a tower near Concha, which is called the tower of Abuzeyt, that he might lead his life there: and there his body lies buried… And this is the original history of the Holy True Cross (although so admirable, that it cannot be comprehended in words or writing) and also of many of its miracles, which it did and does daily &c. Thus far the popular Tradition, which seems sufficiently like the truth, provided we suppose the baptism either privately received by the King, but the change of religion openly permitted to the subjects; or still deferred for some years and celebrated in Aragon, which could easily have fallen out of the memory of the people of Caravaca. But as for what pertains to the tower, I would sooner believe it

was built by Abuzeyt sooner than that he himself is held to be buried in it; since he led almost all his last life at Saragossa in Aragon, as we shall see below: nor could such a burial in a profane place be fitting for a Christian.

[6] However it be, it appears from what has been said, that the name of the King converted by the miracle was in the mouth of the common people Abuzeyt, or Zeyt Abuzeyt: which if it was the true name, and the same be that one, by the name Zeyt Abuzeyt, in the old as well as the more recent Histories of the Spaniards most celebrated King of Valencia, who at first the greatest persecutor of the Christians (as S. Antoninus describes him part 3, title 24, §24, calling him Azotus), it would be understood by no difficult reasoning, that the thing was done within the year MCCXXV and XXIX. For, by the testimony of Robles page 45, it is established from the General history of Alfonso the Wise, that in the VI year of King Ferdinand his father, that is in the year of Christ MCCXXIIII, after the year 1225, Murcia being lost, still King of Valencia, Abuzeyt was King of Murcia and Valencia, and as such came to Concha, and subjected himself to his clientage, lest his dominions should be infested by him by waging war. It is established also through the History which the King of Aragon James composed, that he was such in the year MCCXXV (when the aforesaid James besieged Peñíscola) and offered him part of the revenues of his kingdoms, by which appeased he might return to Aragon. Would that Robles exhibited to us the very words of both Chronicles! Nevertheless that he was then King of Valencia and Murcia, I altogether believe Jerome Zurita; inasmuch as he published the former X books of his Aragonese Annals in the year MDLX, certainly long before Higuera thought of interpolating Spanish History with his supposititious antiquities; and who in the year MDXLVII in the assemblies of Aragon, (concerning whom Zurita is a faithful historian) created Chronographer for the writing of the History of the Nation at public expense (by the testimony in the Spanish Library of Nicholas Antonio) bestowed that care on it, to be formed from solemn and irrefragable documents sought out from every side, which his peregrination through Italy and Sicily, and through all the kingdoms of the Aragonese dominion, sufficiently and more than sufficiently betrays. I omit the very grave testimonies for the same Zurita of John Paez de Castro and Ambrose Morales, attributing to him the praise of incredible diligence, and of trustworthiness in no way to be suspected, to be read in the aforepraised Nicholas Antonio; let it suffice to say, that, adhering to the History of King James (than which nothing more certain in this place could be desired), he writes of Zeyt Abuzeyt, King of Valencia, that in the year MCCXXV he composed a truce of Teruel with King James, agreeing on a tribute, and consigning to him the fifth part of the revenues, to be received from the cities of Valencia and Murcia. The Moors being exasperated against him by that matter, the Murcians indeed received King Abenhud, that one who also subjected himself to the Holy King in the year MCCXL; but in the year 1229 also shut out of Valencia by his own people, but the Valencians in the year MCCXXIX received Zahen, governor of Denia, who was compelled to yield the ill-occupied kingdom to James, in the same year MCCXLVIII, in which the Saint received Seville by surrender. The Murcians seem to have first defected: for whom, to be reduced to his obedience, since the slothful King seems to have done nothing, being uniquely solicitous about retaining the Valencians in their duty; and since, after the defection of these also, he so proceeded to use the title of King of Valencia, that the title of Murcia is nowhere found to have been joined by him; it might verisimilarly be presumed, that he had compounded with Abenhud about his right to that kingdom, reserving to himself the territory of Caravaca, whence from the abovesaid tradition there he began simply to be called King of Caravaca. For recovering the Valencian Kingdom Zeyt Abuzeyt attempted many things, confederated with the Aragonese, pledges being given on both sides, under the condition of ceding a third part of those places which by his help he should there recover.

[7] But Zurita notes, that the Valencians defected chiefly for this reason, because the King was caught, through secret intermediaries, treating with the Roman Pontiff and the King of Aragon, on account of the suspicion of Christianity; about the Christian law to be received; I should say, to be publicly professed; if from what has been deduced above it be verisimilar enough, that, the miracle of Caravaca being seen, he was secretly baptized. But, since he, though baptized, lived little Christianly among the Christian Aragonese, indulging in roving lust; at length, at the persuasion of Sancho of Saragossa, about the year MCCXXXVI he joined to himself in matrimony a Saragossan maiden D. Dominica Lopez, and from her begot a daughter D. Alda Fernandez, who afterwards joined to D. Blasco Ximenez Toparch of Arenós, transmitted as hereditary to her posterity several estates left to her by her father the King. Thus to that year Zurita, called in baptism Ferdinand, from the surname of the daughter, according to the patronymic custom of the Spaniards, giving us occasion of suspecting, that the baptismal name of Zeyt was Ferdinand, perhaps from the memory of his first association with the Holy Castilian, although afterwards he turned himself to the Aragonese, as more opportune for recovering the Valencian kingdom, which the Castilians, sufficiently occupied otherwise in Bætica, had left to his portion. If however the Barbarian was not baptized before the year MCCXXIX, as is more verisimilar, then another Ferdinand, uncle of King James, could have taken him from the sacred font, and imposed his name on him. Diago book 7 of the Valencian Annals chapter 2 asserts, that in his own writings which he had seen he is called nephew of the Miramamolin, and so thinks he wished to be called with respect to Joseph, that more famous Emperor of the Moors in Africa, who in the year MCXV having entered Spain with an army of six hundred thousand, nephew of the Miramamolin, inflicted that memorable disaster on the Christians, who under Alfonso father of the Saint had dared to meet him. And this I should believe of him more certainly, than that Zeyt Abuzeyt was the same as the brother of that Miramamolin, who by his proper name called Mahomad, by surname the Green, eighteen years after suffered that great disaster at Las Navas de Tolosa, and whose brother left by him in Spain is by Roderick of Toledo called Zeyt Abocecrit: for the title of nephew can be saved in the son of the brother. If however the name is corrupted by the copyists, which is read in Roderick (as is verisimilar), he could have written himself, not only nephew, but also son and brother of the Miramolin; and it will rightly be said, that in the partition of the Moorish Empire through Spain, after the aforesaid disaster, he reserved to himself the conterminous kingdoms of Murcia and Valencia, and so began to reign in the year MCCXIII. Although moreover Diago does not explain, on what foundation a certain Modern (for thus he always names him) asserts in the History of the Valencian kingdom Decade 1, book 3 chapter 3 number 13, that Zeyt died in the year MCCXLVIII, and so immediately after Valencia was surrendered to King James; dead before Valencia was surrendered to King James yet he easily induces me to believe, that either then, or even earlier, and before the said surrender, he died: nor, to protract his life up to MCCLXIII and beyond, does the Brief produced by Diago of Urban IV move me, congratulating his and his sons' and grandsons' baptism, to Vincent once illustrious King of Valencia. Far be it from me to say, either that Zeyt Abuzeyt was baptized so late, or that he then first wrote of his conversion to the Roman Pontiff, or that the above-said daughter Alda obtained the surname Fernandez from any other source than from the baptismal name of her father.

[8] I judge therefore that that Vincent is the firstborn of Abuzeyt, named Zeyt-Abomahomad in the paternal contract with Aragon, whose son, also baptized about the year 1253, and called Vincent, who, his father dying a little after he received from a Christian wife his only offspring, namely about the year MCCXLV, began to bear the title of King of Valencia and bore it, until that Metropolis being reduced under the power of Aragon, he yielded the title also to him, content with the possessions assigned to him by the victor. The matter will become clearer by the exhibition of that very Brief of Urban: for thus it sounds. Urban Bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his most dear son in Christ, Vincent, illustrious once King of Valencia, salutation and Apostolic benediction. The letters, which lately thy devotion sent to us, Urban 4 having congratulated his and his son's and grandsons' conversion, we have gladly inspected and read diligently: and about thy and thy son's and thy two grandsons' happy conversion, which we found there written, We and our Brethren have had full gladness, and thence we have conceived a very great joy; rendering forthwith devout jubilees of exultation and suppliant thanksgivings, to the only-begotten Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and to the Father of lights and the favoring director of the erring; over this that He has deigned to breathe with the breath of life into your heart, and to draw you back from the trackless way of the reprobate circle, and to direct your steps into the right way, and to prepare for you a lamp, by which in the night of the present life you may walk with unoffending steps, namely the orthodox faith, which is the solid foundation of the most holy religion, the true gate and door of heaven, through which there enters into the heart of man the Creator of all and the Lover of human salvation. Acknowledge therefore, most dear Son, thy vocation, that thy faith may always be certain, lest it be deceived by the spirit of error; let it be operative, lest through the softness of the flesh it vanish; let it be strong, lest it be overcome by any adversities; knowing that whoever with the inmost love of his heart perceives the faith of Christ, whatever assails from without, not only tolerates, but also conquers. Mayest thou imitate in faith the constancy of the Canaanite woman, that, what thou shalt worthily ask from the Lord thy God, thou mayest deserve to obtain by constant perseverance; he promised every favor. and looking unto the rewarder, mayest esteem to be greater riches than all the treasure of the Egyptians the reproach of Jesus Christ: who will recompense thee for an earthly kingdom a heavenly one, and for a transitory one an everlasting one. But thy aforesaid son and grandsons, still little ones in the faith (as we have understood), do thou instruct in Catholic disciplines; comforting them in the adoption of virtues, in the storming of temptations, in the sustaining of tribulations, and the conflict of any vices whatsoever; that thou mayest render them placid in morals, and informed by orthodox traditions; and thence may they truly be proved to be heirs of thy piety, who, things succeeding orderly, are to be the successors of thy temporal goods. Then his favor to them, for whatever they shall worthily request, the Pontiff promises; and having wished them many good things, he assigns also his patronage, at the Old City, the fourth of the Ides of April, in the third year of his Pontificate. But this distinction of D. Vincent the son, from his father D. Ferdinand, will not unfittingly befall the Belvises, referring their origin to the Moorish King of Valencia, and as to the father rightly rejected by Diago. If however they can render verisimilar, that some one of D. Vincent's grandsons migrated into Catalonia, and thence under the name of D. Bernard Belvis, in the year MCCLXXXVII, returned against the rebelling Moors into the Valencian kingdom with the Infante Don Peter, and for valor was given by Alfonso III King of Aragon certain castles around Játiva, of one of which the name is now Belgida, and which they themselves wish to have pertained to the possessions of the aforesaid ex-King. But until these things be proved, others hold it certain, that that Bernard is the head of the family.

[9] But, to return to Abuzeyt, and the miracle of the brought Cross seen by him; it remains hitherto verisimilar, that it was done after the treaty with the Castilian and the truce with

the Aragonese were entered into, before Zahen rebelled against him, Valencia being occupied, that is about the year MCCXXVII, when already several times the holy King had made incursions against other neighboring Moors. [These things being laid down, the Cross would have been brought about the year 1227.] For the greater confirmation moreover of the premises, and that it may be more clearly understood that nothing more distinct was known or believed about these matters, until Higuera and Luna forged their dreams, it pleases here also to relate the original words of Doctor Oncala, Canon of Ávila, related by Robles page 36; for he is said to have been the first, who gave to the press anything of the Caravaca history: he flourished, as our John Gamiz writes to me, from the year MDXXX up to LVIII, so that it is wonderful that his memory is not found in the Ecclesiastical Theater of Master Giles Gonzales Davila part 2, published about the year 1647, where, about to treat of the Church of Ávila, he prefixes a Catalogue of men illustrious in that city, who shone both with other titles and also especially with writings. But neither did Nicholas Antonio make mention of Antony Oncala (for this was his forename) in the oft-said Library: wherefore the silence of those about Oncala compels me to say, that he published (as I received from the already named P. Gamiz) I, From the Apophya of Doctor Oncala, Commentaries on Genesis. II, one volume of Opuscula, in the year 1555 at Salamanca at Andrew de Portonariis. III, the Pentaplon, in the year 1546 at Alcalá, at John Brocan, as it is extant in our College of Granada, and is dedicated to Philip II then only Prince of the Spains. But the XXIX Opusculum of this Volume, called Staurion, treats of the secrets of the Lord's Cross, and the one next following XXX, is called Apophya, and is an Appendix of Miracles. The author, as he has nothing that favors the figments rejected to the end, and there to be refuted; so he attests to the old monuments which we praise and embrace, printed in the year 1555, in these words, lightly purged of the faults, by which the copyist, not most skilled in old types, preparing for Robles a copy from the printed text, seems to have deformed them, as I shall note in the margin at these signs. *

[10] There is also at Caravaca a celebrated memory, concerning an ancient miracle of the Cross, which the townsmen call the True; for it appeared to a Christian Priest, when it alone was lacking to him about to sacrifice, and they relate the history. The Moors reigning throughout the Spains, and holding those places which are toward the Castulonenses and the Oretani, the history of the Cross is related not dissimilarly, and which today they call the kingdom of Murcia, on account of the exuberance of very many Myrtles, the Spanish Christians waged wars with them, [and] expelled them from their borders, spirited men in the tumult. About that time a certain religious Priest of ours travels to them, about to preach the Gospel of Christ, [and] to persuade the sacred things, ready either for death or for life; and trusting in the highest help of God, he gives his effort more boldly, that he might gain (if he could) many souls of the faithful to Christ: especially being asked he boldly praises the sacred office of the Mass before the King of that place, teaches, persuades. But the King hearing, as if by reproach, bids that he should do the divine thing after the manner of his country, about to see what it was, that the Christians so greatly magnified. But because the apparatus [for] celebrating the Sacred thing was lacking, the pious Priest sent straightway to the city of Concha, which the Christians held, servants, that through them they might send back to him the ornaments, whatever were necessary for the Sacrifice of the Mass, the great King about to see. All were sent back except the Cross. The Mystes begins to celebrate. And when he had noticed that the Cross was lacking, necessary for the sacrifice of the Mass, he stood disturbed [and] revolving many things. For it is by the highest consent of all Christians received and very fitting, not to celebrate at the altar except with the Cross present. The Moorish King beheld him stopping, and his face turn into pallor: he asks, whether anything had happened. But he; The Cross is lacking, he answers. Immediately the King; Is it that? he says: for he saw Angels bringing the Cross with ready hands to the top of the altar, whom he pointed out with his finger. But the Priest, full of God and sure hope, his eyes lifted up, thanks being given, received the heavenly Cross from the Angels, and joyfully finished the Sacred thing. But the King and very many who were present with him, the miracle being beheld, forthwith believed [in] Christ; and receiving the true light *, followed the religious Mystes, by his gift and effect, not grievously. Thus far Oncala, who in that he marks that time of the deed, in which, the Moors being at variance among themselves, the Christians more confidently insulted them, does not contradict the treaty and truce separately from the others established with Abuzeyt; as neither does the captivity of the Christian Priest: for he is not said to have been captured by the right of war, but apprehended for this reason, that he presumed to preach the faith to the Moors, a thing among all Mahometans always a capital daring.

* namely heavenly * the Spains * of the help * should ask for * about to be crucified * before * to the King * of the Mystes * He desisted * Whether * he died * receiving * still

CHAPTER II.

The older miracles of the Cross of Caravaca, and the information taken in the year 1598.

[11] We saw in the Chapter above that Robles thus concludes the history of the holy Cross received from an old instrument: From an authentic document of the year 1375, And this is the original history of the holy True Cross… and also of many of its miracles, which it did and does daily &c. But he had related no miracles yet. It seems therefore to be a consequence, that they indeed were written immediately after the History in the same authentic document, and the whole instrument was finally terminated by this conclusion: but by Robles torn away from its place, that he might begin from them the second book, which was to be about the Miracles; for he confesses these to be received, from a memorial authorized by Alfonso Ruiz public Notary, and many witnesses: which Alfonso says that he was in the time of Garcia Sanchez Mesia Commander of Caravaca, a kinsman of Don Gomez Mesia Master of S. James. But this being laid down, namely that between the relation of the history and the aforenoted little Conclusion the miracles soon to be described were located, there is had the year, in which they were thus authentically transcribed: for there is subjoined at number 13 this terminating clause. and by the trust of the most certain witnesses, Whatever is here written happened from the year MCCCLX up to MCCCLXXV, in that time in which the King of Castile was D. Henry, the second of his name. But it was from the year MCCCLXVII, when, according to Caro in the History of the 3 Orders book 1 chapter 28, Garcia Alvarez being deposed, there was assumed as Master of the Order of S. James, not Gomez, but Gonzalez de Mexia, and he ended his rule with his life in the year MCCCLXXIX. Accordingly the whole writing both of the history and of the miracles thus far set forth, can be believed to pertain to the already said year MCCCLXXV; when from that time at which we judge the Cross to have appeared, only two centuries and a half had elapsed. No long interval of time indeed in the matter of traditions, whose credibility is wont to extend itself even to much greater spaces of years, yet always so much the less, the farther it recedes from its origin. And let this indeed be said with respect to the history of the miraculous apparition, related in the chapter above: for the miracles (as it appears) receive trustworthiness from those present, and were written while for the greater part the witnesses were living, in this tenor.

[12] In the time of Garcia-Sancius Mesia Commander of Caravaca in the year MCCCXLVIII, a great conflagration blazed up in the church and tower of the Holy True Cross, [it is known concerning the Cross snatched from the flames without harm in the year 1348.] so that the wax flowing out through the door, liquefied and burning, equaled the height of half a leg; and the flames reached up to the very summit of the tower itself. Nevertheless a certain armiger of the Commander himself, with great devotion said, that he was ready to die in the service of the Holy True Cross; and so either to snatch it itself in its case from the fire, or to lay down his life in that attempt. He burst therefore through the midst of the flames, and drew out the case of the Holy True Cross from them, coming forth wholly unhurt. Here Robles rightly grieves, that the name of the man, worthy of eternal memory, was not consigned to writing: then, that he may pass more conveniently to the second Miracle, he notes that at that very time there existed that great and universal mortality, whose calamities Petrarch interwove in his verses; and he thinks that conflagration was its harbinger: then he thus pursues the interrupted context: Afterwards in the year of the second mortality, which was MCCCL, the Commandery of Caravaca being administered by Peter Alvarez, both the Commander himself and his armigers, and the mortality foretold in the year 1350. and many good men, by chance present there, saw borne into heaven a great splendor of burning tapers from the chapel of the Holy True Cross: which was held in the place of a great prodigy: and immediately there followed another huge mortality. But Robles adds again, that by the same pestilence King Alfonso XI was extinguished, in the siege of the citadel of Gibraltar. That John Nuñez de Villasan thus writes in the Chronicle of the aforesaid King chapter 341. At another time also, in the time of the same Commander, the Moors made an incursion as far as Moratalla, and a great booty being collected, led off to Vélez the wife of Diego Gil: who being there detained commended herself to the Holy True Cross. But soon a certain door was opened to her of its own accord, and she leaping over the litter, and concerning a woman and a youth captive among the Moors, and released. within which her lord slept, came as far as the door of the house: which opening, she went off to the house of another Moor, where a certain Christian was held captive, a kinsman of hers, whose name was Gonsalvo Ferrerio. Opening therefore also the door of that house, she entered and loosed her kinsman from the stock to which he was bound. Then likewise letting themselves down by a certain wall, on the fourth day after they arrived at Caravaca: and there they passed a wakeful night in the church of the Holy True Cross, and the iron chains which Gonzalvo had brought being left, they went away.

[13] The Commandery being held by Giles Rodriguez Nogerolio, on a certain day, when a great crowd was conducting the Holy True Cross in procession, John de Parega, now dwelling at Lorca, [It is narrated in the same place that the Holy Cross gave a huge sound within its case,] then a boy of about fourteen years, bearing it within his arms; and Peter Garcia, then scribe of the town of Caravaca, on this side, and John Pereton on the other, sustaining him; it happened near the church of S. Bartholomew, which had to be passed by those proceeding, that the True Cross gave as it were a thunder within its little box, no cause of such a sound appearing. The miracle so great stupefied all, and they judged that the Cross should be handed to the other bearer, who was Ferdinand son of John Pereton, a very small boy; and so they proceeded to conduct the begun pomp. But after they returned to the church, the case being opened they found that the silver, in which the Holy True Cross was enclosed, had cracked, uncertain from what cause; but in that very place, where the miraculous sound was heard, there was afterwards founded a Parochial church, which remains to this day. Again in the time of the same Giles Rodriguez, there lived at Caravaca a certain man, not only desperately addicted to the play of dice, but also accustomed while playing to abjure the Holy True Cross, so that on one occasion he was all but snatched away by the devil. Nor however on that account

did he dismiss his accustomed practices. When therefore the aforenamed Commander, accompanied by other good men, was proceeding toward the church of S. Mary, and heard the aforesaid dicer swearing in his wonted manner; that the blasphemer was punished in it, he indeed raised the cane which he bore in his hand as if to strike him, but rushing upon him the other violently wrested it from his hands, and began flight toward the tower of the Holy True Cross. Others therefore ran after him, and saw him striking against the leaves of the tower itself, closed by no iron bolt, but simply meeting; nor however was he able to open them, whatever effort was applied: wherefore leaping thence between two mural battlements, he fell down with them as they rushed down with him, and two captives freed: and perished by an evil death, such as by execrating so precious a Relic he had deserved. Afterwards two youths, captive at Huesca in the house of Ali Alcizarius, commended themselves to the Holy True Cross; and being freed they cast off their fetters; and having gone out of the place through the nocturnal darkness, neither knowing whither nor by what way they went, the next day they found themselves in this town. They were, moreover, and these things between 1360 and 1375, one of them an Aragonese, the other of Mesa. Further, whatever is here written happened from the year MCCCLX up to MCCCLXXV, in that time in which the King of Castile was D. Henry, the second of his name. And here I think the first writing, made before Garcia de Cardenas, was terminated: but afterwards there were successively added to the same paper the following miracles.

[14] likewise in the year 1376 a blind man enlightened, After these things, in the year of the Era MCCCCXIV, which is the year 1376, there came to Caravaca Alfonso Martin, a sifter, citizen of Seville from the Collation of S. Giles, blind, his son leading him by the hand, and he offered to the Holy True Cross a silken chasuble and a silver chalice: and he kept watch there the whole night. But about the morning hour, having dozed, blood burst from his eyes, which afterwards on waking he felt to be wholly healed for him, using them as good as any of us, and remained sound. This was done before the aforesaid Commander, and other good men of this place. In the year 1387 the Commander of Caravaca was, a dead boy raised, the thirteenth of the Order, D. Gometius de Soto-mayor, when the Master of S. James was D. Gometius Suarii de Figueroa. In the time of this Commander, about fourteen years now having passed, Paganus Rodriguez, inhabitant of the most noble city of Murcia, sent a silver lamp, wrapped in the funeral shroud of his son, who had died and been wrapped in it, but commended to this Holy True Cross revived. Before all, moreover, there was raised the lamp, which was here before, and from the oil which it contained he poured into the new one, and to both burning at once the oil abounded. About six years now have passed (we count, moreover, 1382 ) that a huge tempest of locusts overran the town and the territory of Lorca, devouring the whole hope of the future harvest, and leaving not even on the trees anything of greenness. There were sent here for that cause Peter Dias de Corduba, Peter John de Palentia, the locusts driven off in the year 1386, and John de Corvalan: who, a procession being instituted, dipped the Holy True Cross in water, and carried the water flowing thence to Lorca, and sprinkled the fields with it: which done, within the third day the calamity ceased, nor could the noxious little creatures do anything further.

[15] and these last things added in the year 1392. Thus far that little Appendix, as it is in Robles, with the figures of the years (in my judgment at least) faultily transcribed or printed: which if it be permitted to change according to the marginal corrections, the order will be altogether right, nor ought the last to be reckoned a fact done and written earlier, than the penultimate two were done and written fourteen years after. For just as after the year MCCCLXXV (in which the Relation ends, written by the care of D. Garcia de Cardenas) there will rightly follow the first miracle of this little Appendix concerning the year MCCCLXXVI; so to this will also rightly succeed the second and third concerning the year MCCCLXXVIII; and the last will have been done in the year MCCCLXXXVI; six years certainly before the last, and fourteen years before the penultimate were written; since all were written in the year MCCCXCII. But that the typesetters of Robles used great carelessness in figures of this kind, we see also at page 104, where the same driving off of the locusts is mentioned, and for 1382 here expressed, there is found 1384. So below at number 21 on Holy Friday, I shall be compelled to write XIV, for IV of April, the Paschal computation of the year MCCCCXXX so requiring, which brought back Easter, not the VI of April (as is wrongly there said) but the XVI, as I have replaced: for the Dominical letter was A, the cycle of the Moon 6, but the last Easter celebrated on the VI of April had been in the year MCCCXCIII, nor did it itself return on such a day except in the year MCCCCLV. But this fault being so evidently detected, I judged it advisable at number 24, to ascribe three years to the interval of one miracle from another, for two; and for the year MCCCCLXXIV to note LXXVI; and again at number 25 and number 28 for MCCCCLXXII, LXXVII; likewise at number 32 MDXCVII, for XCII, that all things may be had related in their order, and the fault of the confused numbers be believed to reside with the typesetters alone. From such correction this convenience also follows, that the writing which otherwise would have to be believed deferred up to the year MCCCCI or II, before the conflagration of the year 1393. immediately preceded the year of the devastation and conflagration brought upon the town and church of Caravaca by the Moors of Granada in the year MCCCXCIII: and it can be numbered as a singular benefit of God and the holy Cross, that this writing (formerly preserved in the chest of the holy Cross itself) escaped the flames, by which Robles proves all the other public monuments of the town to have been burned at page 81, an authentic Instrument being adduced, still existing with a certain citizen of Caravaca, through which to the sons of Martin de Pareja, asking from the archive of the place testimony concerning the good and ancient nobility of their Father, it is answered, that in the time of the rebellions under the Commandery of Peter Lopez Faxardi, the Moors burned all the writings which they sought, when they set flames to the whole town. Robles judges, that by this conflagration there perished whatever of old writings about the history and miracles of S. Cross of Caravaca was found in the time of John Giles de Zamora, writing to S. Ferdinand, and whatever afterwards had been consigned to writing. But besides that the learned judge him, a writer known from Higuera alone, to be fictitious; so I am confirmed in this opinion by the very memorial of the year MCCCLXXV already set forth; and I am compelled to believe, that nothing else could then be found than what we have related; for otherwise mention of such writings would have had to be made by those, who (as it appears) intended to make the faith of the aforementioned history and miracles to all the most certain.

[16] More worthily is to be made of this, that Doctor Oncala, praised in the former Chapter, after relating somehow the history of the miraculous apparition, relates, To the aforesaid Oncala adds, partly from the tradition of the people of Caravaca, not yet polluted by novel figments; partly as an eyewitness, in these words. That Cross is to this present day, not only to the inhabitants, but to all Spaniards, always held in the greatest honors and veneration: which with the highest study and the highest vigilance, placed in a lofty and most strong citadel, they preserve enclosed in a little box, that it may both be illuminated with perpetual light, and not be venerated except closed with three keys religiously, the neighboring provincials. They relate also that, stolen by a shepherd, and the thief disrupted as by excessive weight, that the holy Cross disrupted its own thief, it returned divinely [to] the citadel: so far do the divine powers [not] suffer faults and robberies, nor leave more depraved crimes without punishment: of such moment is it to render to each his own right. They narrate also other and very many and most certain miracles, not to be despised, but which on account of brevity it is not leisure at present to recount: for shut out by unjust spaces, we direct our pen elsewhere more hastily: but that I will not meanwhile cease to mention. The people of Caravaca celebrate the solemn feast of the True Cross on the * V Nones of May, and there hold a most celebrated assembly of merchandise, at which it is wonderful with how great a presence of strangers, how great a multitude of neighboring peoples, and a throng of the adjacent provinces, there flows together most eagerly.

[17] Another also holier and more frequent miracle and more solemn does not seem to be passed over. For many religious Priests of the city and province, with the whole people, the torches lighted, with great pomp and great veneration, not without dances and dancers, among the greatest crowds of pilgrims thronging, the open Cross drawn forth from the chest, and placed on a gilded litter, every year carry out as far as the next pool (they call it the Acequia) and there thrice the urban Archpriest, having plunged it in the waters (namely dipping its extreme part) [lifts it up: [and on May 3 carried in procession to sanctify the waters, it elicits rains from a serene sky.] and thrice the same] in the presence of a numerous people it is carried about to be beheld and adored. Then as if the lower waters being sanctified and the upper ones called, (wonderful to see) forthwith rains, descending from heaven through the opened clouds, often rush in the feast being toward evening, and through three or four days of the celebration more often through the Octaves flow forth: by which the dried fields drink in more fecund crops, and fodder growing more luxuriantly floods to innumerable flocks and animals: which as true, admonished, with these eyes, present we have inspected, about to make faith for the writings: and the elders of the town affirm, that they never remember that feast celebrated without opportune and wished-for rains, by which one thing they gather more abundant fruits. Hence that city more than its neighbors abounds in wealth. But also by the fault of nature and place God most good and great, having pitied, indulged this gift: for that part of Spain is both exposed to the bitterness of the sun toward the south, and on this account thirsty; unless by yearly waters through rivulets the aridity of the earth alleviating, the fields are aided: as being a region, which scarcely from heaven recognizes rains in season, unless these by the benefit of the True Cross unlocked, the thirst be relieved. But because in the same True Cross a present remedy of tempests, [and] an admirable help we have experienced, we discern; therefore from God the fountain of all goods we recognize by easy faith the highest virtue attributed to it, to whom through infinite ages praise, honor and glory. Amen.

[18] Two other feasts of the holy Cross are celebrated, By what rite and with what ceremonies the aforesaid sanctification of the waters is done, Robles describes at length in book 2 chapter 11; and he thinks that it had its beginning from the benefit bestowed on the people of Lorca against the locusts, in the year (as it seemed to us) MCCCLXXXVI, when they had asked water from Caravaca, sanctified by the touch of the True Cross. In the same place also he says, that besides the chief and to all most known feast of the holy Cross on May III, there is celebrated on July XVI, but with a little less solemnity, the Triumph of the holy Cross, a feast already long ago instituted from the year MCCX, and ordered to be celebrated in all Spain, in memory of that most famous victory, won by Alfonso the grandfather of the holy King at Las Navas de Tolosa on such a day in the aforesaid year. This worship, by the lapse of four centuries, had much grown cold; but that it might at Caravaca be resumed anew, the author was our P. Agnaya: who in the year MDCVI making words to the people, persuaded and prevailed that demonstration

that, of due gratitude, was to be renewed. Likewise also in the month of September is celebrated the feast of the Cross Exalted, on the day XIV, about which day by divination we conjecture S. Ferdinand to have been born. The same Robles further narrates in chapter 16, that Michael Reyna, formerly a citizen and Consul of Caravaca, and a college of the Society of Jesus is instituted, touched with great repentance of his past sins, and deliberating thereon by what kind of satisfaction he might better wash out the faults contracted; brought it into his mind, that he could do nothing more acceptable to the divine majesty, than if he should take care to promote the honor of the holy Cross by the most efficacious means; but he could devise no more efficacious one, than the foundation of a College of the Society of Jesus. For up to that day Caravaca had no body of Mendicant Religious; but afterwards, our Society being introduced, there were added five other monasteries, namely one Hieronymite for men; two Franciscan, and two of the Teresian institute, of men and of virgins. The foundation therefore was made, and the Founder, thenceforth plainly converted into another man, in whose oratory the Founder's body was afterwards found incorrupt for 20 years. and made to all an exemplar of Christian humility and other virtues, met his last day in the year MDLXXI, on the XVII of January, and was buried in the temporary oratory, which we had fitted up and taken care to have dedicated. But afterwards when in the year MDXCII the body of the well-deserving Founder had to be transferred to a new and better-equipped church of ours in the same place, it was found wholly entire and sweet-smelling; although it had been fortified against putrefaction neither with balsam nor with any other thing. But this it was fitting to indicate as through a lattice, that it may be understood whence proceeded the devotion of our Fathers toward the holy Cross of Caravaca, and the zeal of propagating it everywhere, by the distribution of little Crosses consecrated by its touch; and at the same time also that it may appear, how not without merit I have undertaken (although it may seem somewhat beyond the argument of the work undertaken) to vindicate its history from the more recent little fables.

[19] In the year 1589 it is written, There remains in this place to be produced another public Instrument, found in the often-cited Robles page 85. In the town of Caravaca in the year MDXCVIII, before me John Abril, public Notary within the diocese of Cartagena, and the witnesses underwritten, there personally appeared Ferdinand Lopez, Clergyman Priest, born and dwelling at Caravaca; and he said that he came at the instance of John de Robles Corvalan Clergyman, asked, that, being now ninety years old, he would declare for the memory of posterity certain things, concerning the Holy True Cross and its origin. He said therefore, that when in the year MDXLVIII it had been reported to the Inquisitors of the city of Murcia concerning the holy Cross, which is preserved in the castle and citadel of the town of Caravaca, how in the year 1548 an inquisition being made about the miracles, to the end that, information being taken about the miracles, which by its means the faithful have obtained and daily obtain, they might add to the same the certitude of their approbation. And when the Inquisitors had sent here for that end the aforenamed Ferdinand Lopez Clergyman, then a minister of that holy Office; he, making the information, and the verification of the apparition and miracle, examined Genesius de Robles the elder, Diego de Mesa, Peter Muñoz, and Ferdinand also the elder, and others. These said, that they knew through the tradition of their elders, and that it was public and notorious, that the most holy Cross which is in the castle, was brought by Angels into the tower, in that place where it now is, just as by the relation of that miracle it is carried about.

[20] The aforenamed Ferdinand Lopez also said, that he examined Alfonso Sanchez, together with other witnesses, sworn upon the cedar altar which is in the shrine, which altar stands at the left hand of the major altar in the old church of this town, it was found that the holy Cross was wont to foretell the coming of the Moors, and is commonly called the altar of the Solitude of Our Lady. He moreover deposed, that it had been the custom, because the town was bordering on the Moors of Granada, to set watchmen at the altar in which the holy True Cross is preserved, to which there was no other lock or guard. But when it happened that the Moors made an incursion toward the town or the surrounding field, the holy Cross itself made a certain noise: which heard, the aforesaid watchmen rang the bell, which is to this day in the tower: to which more often the watchmen in the towers responded, for which reason nocturnal watchmen were set to it. the New and the Old and the Gallows, which severally are distant from this about a league; but they responded by raising smoke. As therefore the turns of such watches were committed only to men of known probity, and in whom great trust was had, whence so great a profit accrued to all in common; so the lot had sometime fallen on that very Alfonso Sanchez.

[21] At the same time there was discharging the office of Sacristan there for some years a certain Priest, One of these testifies that it was taken away by the Sacristan, sent here fraudulently by the Chapter of Toledo, desiring to transfer the holy Cross to its church: who, since he seemed to have abundantly proved his integrity and probity to the whole city, was suspected by no one. To him therefore for the guardianship of the holy Cross there being given as companion one of the nights Alfonso, when, a certain necessity urging, he was compelled to go out, unknowingly afforded the Sacristan the opportunity of stealing it from the little box, in which also were preserved the testimonies of the miraculous apparition. The plunderer of the sacred deposit was going toward Toledo, and on the same day an honest man coming hither from Moratalla, above the place which is called of S. Francis, now named from the Crosses, known to all everywhere and distant a quarter of a league from Caravaca, beheld certain lights, and among them the most holy Cross. He announced therefore at Caravaca what he had seen. miraculously received back, Soon came the Parish priest and a certain pilgrim Clergyman, then by chance present, with all the citizens constituting a devout procession, and brought back the holy Cross into its tower to its proper altar: but in that very place, where the Cross had been found, there appeared a new fountain, which there flows today also. Further, when D. Peter Faxardus, first Marquis of Vélez, held the Commandery of the place, there were made, the painted panel of the altar, the shrine, and the reliquary, which are now had, that all things might be better and more faithfully preserved.

[22] The aforenamed Clergyman Ferdinand Lopez moreover said, but without the old writings: that by the mandate of the Inquisitors from the aforesaid year MDXLVIII up to L, he remained two years in the Court of Valladolid, soliciting the restitution of the instruments and testimonial papers, taken away by the Clergyman of Toledo; and brought the matter so far, that, had not the President of the Council D. Ferdinand Niño died, he would have recovered them by sentence and brought them back &c. Thus far that Instrument, which Robles brings forth to confirm the fact, related by him at the beginning of Chapter 3, where he notes that the design of seizing the holy Cross was taken at Toledo under the Archbishopric of Fr. Francis Ximenes de Cisneros Cardinal, who held the Chair from the year MCCCCXCV to MDXVII; and using his right of Primate, and persuaded that it would be for the greater honor of the holy Cross, if it were honored in the Primatial church, he preferred to permit that it be secretly carried off, than to order it to be openly transferred with the danger of sedition. Robles also says, that to the Clergyman chosen for this there was committed first indeed the sacristy of the Parish church, then, being much approved, the guardianship of the holy Cross, which he held for six years: but he obtained the occasion of executing his purpose in the time of Cardinal Tavera, and so after the year MDXXXIV. Finally he accuses the same Clergyman that he concealed the required instruments, which we are of opinion were exhibited at Toledo and secretly restored. lest he be publicly confounded, and pertinaciously denied that they were with him. But I fear lest that judgment be altogether rash; and I should rather, for the excuse of the Clergyman himself and of the whole Chapter of Toledo, presume, that the Clergyman arriving at Toledo; and finding not the Cross, which he believed himself to bring, but only the papers (namely those which we gave above, written in the time of Garcia de Cardenas); these indeed he showed to the Canons by whom he had been sent, in testimony of the mandate fulfilled as far as in him lay; but these, either by their persuasion or of his own accord, secretly or openly, he took care to be brought back thither, where afterwards they were found, and in the year MDLVI offered to be authenticated, by those ignorant that these were the same, which were so greatly required, only the memory of the taking away surviving, not likewise of the restitution.

* rather 1378 * rather 1392 * of the little box * religious men * force * also * on the IV * to * I see * the chest * celebration * luxuriant * they cleanse * which as of things * Then in the city * in spirits * food as

CHAPTER III.

Other old and well-attested miracles, from the Caravaca History of Robles.

[23] From the proof of the Caravaca history I pass to the Miracles, not comprehended in the documents hitherto adduced, and wrought in the next-following XV century, such as from the Caravaca monuments Robles produces in Spanish. In the year 1430 a boy mortally wounded by a Moor, In the year MCCCCXXX a certain Caravaca citizen, whose name is spared for the sake of the family, had agreed with the Moors of Granada, that for a settled price he should hand over the town to them. But in the very moment of executing the crime the Holy Cross was heard, within its little box giving greater strokes than usual; and immediately after the watchmen in the towers were seen to give the signal of the Moors coming. These had drawn near to the town on that very night of the great Friday, the XIV of April; and when they had learned that their coming had become known, they turned aside to Cieza and came to a certain village called Campoloy. Here a certain shepherd of Diego de Fuensalida, my great-grandfather, climbing up into a high oak, that he might escape and elude those passing by; had hidden the little son committed to him of the same Diego, my great-great-uncle, under a certain bramble-thicket: and a Moorish horseman passing by it, is miraculously healed, and looking round for the cause which had made his suddenly startled horse grow fierce, noticed the boy, and hurled his lance at him seven times: wherefore the shepherd, returning afterwards to the place, found the boy all but dead: he took him up nevertheless, and carried him into his father's house. Here those who were present commended him to the Holy True Cross, promising, that, preserved alive, they would consecrate him to the ministry of the Church. The boy was healed through the grace of God; and his studies completed, having become a Clergyman, he was even received at Uclés among the Brothers of the Order of S. James, where he had a paternal uncle of the same habit, and lives beyond the year 1540, Alfonso de Fuensalida. But Genesius de Fuensalida himself, made Parish priest in the town of Moratalla, came to so great an old age, that he passed the year CXV of his age: since in the year MDXL he was still living, and when he was wounded he was reckoned to be thirteen years old; and many still survive, both here and at Moratalla, who remember him as seen and known to them.

[24] In the same year, on the very day of Easter the XVI of April, the same Moors came to Cieza, and the town being taken and pillaged led off many Christians captive: and then fire being applied they were returning to their own places laden with spoils. When the people of Caravaca had understood this, they admonished the people of Lorca; and going out unanimously to meet them, they found the enemies in a certain small field, which from this event they called the Field of the Horsemen. There a most fierce contest pressed on both sides, because the Moors were greatest in number, ours in spirit; and while one part of the Moors fought, another advanced, a signal victory is won over the plunderers: and proceeded to draw the booty off into safety. Wishing therefore to forestall this, ours, having mutually exhorted one another

and gathered together, the name of the holy Cross being invoked, which is said to have appeared to them in that place, hurled themselves with such force upon the barbarians; that, many of them being slain, they put the rest to flight, and recovered all the booty from them. They doubted not at all to refer a success of this kind as received from that divine standard. In the year MCCCCXXXII there came to Caravaca a certain Religious of the Order of S. Francis, a deaf and dumb man is healed: after a grave infirmity which he had suffered, deprived of the use of his tongue and ears. His pious mother had brought him to the Chapel of the True Cross, and through it praying the Lord she recovered for her son speech and hearing, without any delay. In the year MCCCCLXXII, John de Haro administering the Caravaca Commandery, a lamp is kindled of its own accord. he himself declared, before the ordinary Praetor of the place Peter Fernandez Botia, that, standing in prayer before the altar of the holy Cross, he noticed that the lamp, which was there, being extinguished, gave no more any light; and therefore he ordered his attending pages, that they should rekindle it. But before any one reached there, he beholds it illuminated of its own accord burning again, and that they held for a great and certain miracle, both he, and the others who were present.

[25] In the year MCCCCLXXIII, on the X day of October and that a Sunday, very early in the morning there came hither a certain man, saying that he was called Alfonso de Morote, An Ethiopian slave, from the fame of the holy Cross desirous of Christianity, an inhabitant of the very place of Morote. He led with him as companion an Ethiopian, by name Benalique, bound with no chains, while he himself dragged fetters of about sixty pounds' weight. But by means of an oath he declared, before Fr. Antony de Poza, Lieutenant of the Vicar of this Commandery, the honorable man D. Diego Chacon, that being captive at Baza among the Moors, under the power of Salinus Abendega, he was heard one day by the present Benalique to sigh; and being asked the cause of his groan, he answered, because he saw himself placed in captivity, and wished to return to his fatherland. To whom the Ethiopian: See that thou keep the secret for me, Alfonso, and in truth I will affirm to thee, by the law of the true God, that I, after I heard of the Cross of Caravaca and the great miracles which it works, have burned with a vehement desire of embracing Christianity. Since therefore our lord has entrusted to me, as thou seest, the care of guarding the Christians; if it please, and thou knowest the way by which one goes to Caravaca, let us commend ourselves to God and the Holy True Cross, and let us go to Caravaca, and I will become a Christian. We will mount the mule toward evening, and if any one ask us going away, Whither? we will answer, Into the vineyard, to gather vine-shoots. And it was done as they had proposed on a certain Friday about evening, with a Christian captive he sets out in flight, and they began to journey on into the night; when wandering from the way they heard the drum of Baza beaten, on account of their flight being noticed; nor was it long before several went out after them, to intercept them going away. What should they do, caught in the middle of the field outside the public way? They bent their knees toward the rising of the sun, and prayed God and S. Mary of Guadalupe and also the Holy True Cross, that they would afford them help and safety, and he wonderfully reaches Caravaca. and would not suffer them to slip back into the hands of the enemies of the holy Faith. But behold there appeared to them in the air a wooden sculpture, as of a castle, plainly similar to the town and citadel of Caravaca, as far as a crossbow can shoot. When they directed their steps toward it, the whole vision indeed disappeared, but they found themselves on the royal way, which pursuing until the morning of Saturday, the whole day indeed they lay hidden in the field; but toward night resuming the journey, the next day in the morning, that is on Sunday, they entered hither. When the aforesaid D. Commander saw these, he ordered Alfonso's chains to be removed, one pair of which was hung up in the church of S. Cross, the other sent to Guadalupe, as he affirmed that he had vowed; but the Ethiopian, made a Christian, took the name of John of the True Cross. Witnesses to the aforesaid deposition and adjuration were the Bachelor Alvarus de Pratada, Alvarus de Mula, and Garcias de Aguilar, servants and armigers of the aforesaid D. John de Haro.

[26] Three years after this another miracle happened, whose testimony is had of the following tenor. When the Commander of this place of Caravaca was the fortunate Knight D. John de Haro, A treason is indicated by the stroke of the holy Cross, on the feast of the holy Cross May III, on the III day of the week also, in the year of our Savior Jesus Christ MCCCCLXXVI, before the honorable Peter Fernandez Botia, ordinary Praetor of the said town of Caravaca, and Francis de Salas, scribe of our Lord the King, and the witnesses underwritten, a certain man personally appeared, saying, that his name was Laurence de Barrio-novo, but his domicile Baeza; and he asserted that on the XV of March of the present year, when at night he was keeping watch in the castle of the holy Cross, he heard from it certain strokes: and therefore he had returned on other nights also, and always experienced the same; until other witnesses also, both with and without him, heard the same. But those strokes were repeated on each night, until there came hither a messenger, sent by D. Lupus Vasquez de Acuña, Prefect of Cazorla, with letters, by which it was signified to D. John de Haro, that certain traitors in this town had already covenanted with the Moors about delivering it. But on the very night, on which such an epistle was brought, the aforesaid strokes ceased. Concerning whose truth, when the said Bartholomew gave an oath in the form of law, the witnesses present were Sancho de Parega, John de Ubiedo, and Martin Montego, servants and armigers of the aforenamed D. John de Haro. Again, under the same Commander, another miracle was consigned to a public instrument in this manner.

[27] In the town of Caravaca, on the XVIII day of the month of May, in the year from the nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ MCCCCLXXVII, in the presence of me Francis de Salas the Royal Scribe, A certain Commander with other captives, before the honorable Diego Chacon, Vicar in this town of Caravaca and its Commandery and the town of Moratalla, there appeared present the honorable Knight Peter Alarcon, Commander of the town called Membrilla del Tocon, of the Order of S. James, and said: that when in a certain town of the kingdom of Granada, called Vélez Blanco, he was held captive by the Moors, enemies of our holy faith, within a narrow prison; and indeed weighed down with certain iron plates, weighing at least fifty pounds; he remained there more than three months. There were also there other Christian captives, among whom it was agreed to undermine the prison, although so high and strong, that it was wonderful that they could even think such a thing. That therefore for the execution of that purpose they might conciliate to themselves divine favor, a vow being pronounced to the holy Cross, they both instituted other devotions, and especially commended themselves to the Lord our God, and to his holy Mother Mary, and to this Holy True Cross; promising that from the town of Xiquena, through nine leagues of desolate region and exposed to the ambushes of the Moors, they would come with feet and legs bare, and would keep a novena before the Holy True Cross, a certain alms being added. But they began to work a mine within the prison, using the single dagger which they had, without any other iron tools, so that it was wonderful that in so little time so much work could be accomplished; since the Moors stood night and day intent on the guarding of the prison. And yet with that dagger alone within eight days the mine was made, he digs through the prison with the dagger alone, with an opening as wide as a window is wont to be; whose entrance when they could not otherwise cover than by the rubble being carried out, yet the Moors visiting them again and again, the work remained unobserved, by the virtue of the Cross, which they formed above with the little mallets, which they used for hollowing the stones, though even one half-blind could have noticed a thing so manifest: but the eyes and minds of the Moors seemed to be held, that they should not perceive things placed before them, or suspect that anything was being done.

[28] and penetrates into a neighboring smithy: After eight days of that labor the Commander began, and the other Christian captives also began, each to cut his bonds, by means of certain instruments suitable thereto: which while they were doing, and the Commander now had his fetters cut half through, twice in one day he was called out of the prison to a colloquy, on the occasion of the ransom which was being treated of; and yet not even then did the barbarians suspect anything. But he having returned into the prison, in that very hour so hastened the work, equally as the others, that, the bonds being loosed, they all from the first hour of the night up to the dawn went out thence little by little, the Commander going before, and bearing in front the Cross which he had there, all unshod, and reciting the hymn Te Deum laudamus, in an order as it were processional. But through their mine they came out into a smithy, overlooking the public street and shut from without: whose lock when they had broken from within, and had removed two boards from the very door, they burst out into the aforesaid street; the Commander, as was said, preceding with the Cross, the rest following in order and with bare foot. and it being broken open coming out into the street, But in the very street they met certain Moorish women, returning from the bath with a light to their houses: who, the train of those going seen, raising a cry, roused their husbands and the neighbors dwelling there. But they nevertheless walked the begun way toward the gate of Vélez: arriving whither, they were noticed by the watchmen keeping watch above that same gate: who, a cry being raised, throwing stones, accomplished nothing, the Christians notwithstanding daring to pass through that gate. They came then to the outer-wall enclosure, which itself also was closed with a door: and one of the Christians, although he still bore his fetters disrupted, leaps over the enclosure of the gate with the same companions, leaped over the enclosure, four or five cubits high; and after him the Commander, and the others; and they began to descend through cultivated ground, from the lofty place of the town, into the way which leads to Xiquena, although none of them knew which way they should walk, nor whither the journey led. Four of them however, much laden with iron, were led back into captivity by the Moors gone out behind their backs: the rest with the Commander reached Xiquena, the barbarians pursuing in vain, and often passing them, yet not seeing them and as it were struck with blindness, and he reaches Caravaca safe. through the virtue of God, of his most holy Mother, and the intervention of the Holy True Cross. Having departed from Xiquena they arrived safe at Caravaca, and affirmed all the aforementioned things before witnesses called for that, Genesius de Robles, Roderick Nogueros, and John Begar, citizens of Caravaca. And I the abovesaid Scribe here subscribe myself.

Francis de Salas.

[29] Under the same D. John de Haro Commander, in the town of Caravaca, on the XV of October, in the year from the nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ MCCCCLXXVII, Another, fleeing while the Moors look on. there was in the church of the Holy True Cross a certain man, saying that he was called Martin de Baeza, and that he was a citizen of Aragon: who, the novena devotion being finished, affirmed, that in the month of May lately past, captive at Baza in the kingdom of Granada, with a Moor citizen of that city, by name Cad Alvarroz, he was held bound with fetters, having at least fifty pounds of iron. In this state, to him thinking by what means he could escape free,

it occurred that he should commend himself to God our Lord, and to S. Mary of Guadalupe, and to the Holy True Cross of Caravaca, so that, aided thence, he might be able to reach some place of the Christians; for he was ignorant of the journeys of the region. Then he began to wear down the irons with a file, with such success, that within two days he loosed himself from them unobserved; and from Baza toward night he went out in the sight of very many Moors, because he could not otherwise. he is snatched from their hands. They therefore began to run after him, who alone and barefoot was walking: but he, perceiving them coming near him, having turned, bent himself, that with his right hand he might seize a stone to be thrown at them, since he had nothing else with which to defend himself. But while he turns himself, about to cast the stone at those following behind, he saw absolutely no one, neither then nor afterwards; but with the very stone in his hand he came to Xiquena: and it is now in the Chapel of the Holy True Cross: for although he tried to throw it away along the way, he never could. Witnesses Lazarus and John de Viamonte, and Alfonso de Ubeda.

[30] At the same time Fr. Antony de Poza, Vicar of Caravaca affirmed, swearing by the Orders which he had received, that there had come a boy, A boy about to be choked by quinsy is cured: son of Bartholomew Sanchez and Catharine de Truxilio, suffering most gravely from quinsy and near to suffocation; and his mother came with him to the Chapel of the Holy True Cross, to pray for him, and to offer a little dish of oil for the lamp. This therefore the aforesaid Vicar beholding, who stood with Fr. Gonzalvo, Chaplain of D. Commander John de Haro, holding forth the Holy True Cross against a cloudy storm, which was feared to be about to come over the city; he ordered the aforesaid Fr. Gonzalvo, to anoint the throat of the boy, with the oil of the lamp burning before the altar. He obeyed, and soon the boy being anointed cast forth through his mouth a great and two-headed worm, and began to speak. The mother therefore brought back her son, carrying with her oil for further anointings; but scarcely had she used them a third time, when the boy's throat subsided, purged, five worms being cast out. Then in the year MCCCCLXXVIII, when the Commander of this town was Peter Faxardus, Prefect of the Kingdom of Murcia and Lord of the city of Cartagena, a workman dangerously falls without harm. a certain one of the carpenters, Capared by name, on the IX day of December, fitting certain wood in the chapel of the Holy True Cross, fell from the height of eleven elevations onto certain rocks; but falling he commended himself to the Holy True Cross, and was found, his breastplate, undershirt, shirt, breeches, and shoes being disrupted, himself unhurt in every part. In the year MCCCCLXXXIII Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Sovereigns besieged Baza, and exhausted much labor to obtain the city: but they vowed to go to Caravaca to visit the Holy True Cross, and in the aforesaid year and on the day of S. Barbara IV of December they entered the city. And when they had ordered all things there, they passed in their return through Caravaca, and visiting the holy Cross offered a silver lamp, to be beheld there today also.

CHAPTER IV.

Miracles wrought toward the end of the preceding century and through the course of the present, also by means of the little Crosses applied to the true holy Cross, from the same Robles.

[31] In those parts, which for the most part are nothing else than a bare plain, sometimes, when one least expects it, there are stirred up such great storms of winds and rains, The district of Caravaca, subject to tempests, that, carrying stones, even of ninety pounds, they leave the fields and gardens so desolate, as if they had been washed through by a deluge of waters. Accordingly the whole town of Caravaca with its territory would long ago have utterly perished, had not God provided for it by the miraculous wood of the holy Cross, making it daily triumph over the aerial powers, busying themselves to harm at least through the elements the familiar things of men, when they cannot harm their souls. By several examples Robles confirms this, beginning from one of this kind. I Genesius Salmeron, Scribe of the King and our Lord and citizen of Caravaca, certify, and give and make faith, in true testimony of those who present shall see, that in the aforenamed town, on the VIII day of the month of November past in the year MDXCI, before the Licentiate Peter de las Cuevas, Governor and Justice Major of this town, there appeared, Alfonso de Robles, both in his own proper name and in the public name of the town and republic of this place; and Guiterius Robles, public Scribe of the same town and of the most holy Cross, in the name of the Confraternity and the rest, as Sacristan of it; and they said that it was notorious, that in the castle of that town there is had a certain most holy Relic, it is believed to be preserved by the holy Cross: under the appellation and invocation of the Holy True Cross of Caravaca; which, when this city was formerly of the Moors, descended from heaven associated with two Angels, for the conversion of the infidels here ruling, and the driving away of the tempests so frequently rising, which at its presence ceased and cease; and very many other miracles are done, whose authentic faith remains in the archive of this place.

[32] which in the year 1591, on November 7, in a like case, These things being thus, it happened, that on the night before the VII day of the aforesaid November, there arose a tempest of thunders and lightnings, with so great a storm of whirlwinds and rains, that the citizens dreaded the final extermination; since besides the densest darkness, which the abundance of waters flowing from heaven caused, the crash of buildings falling in several places struck the ears and minds, so that it was possible for no one to walk through the streets: wherefore neither John Martinez, Chaplain of the Holy True Cross, nor any other presumed to ascend toward the castle, as they had otherwise been accustomed, to bring out and expose the aforesaid Holy True Cross. Many citizens nevertheless saw above the summit and roof of the tower, within which it is preserved, it was seen above the tower in much light, that tempest raging as much as possible, many lights kindled, and among them another greater and more splendid light. They thought therefore, and so it was said, that the aforenamed Chaplain and other persons were there with the most holy Relic: but it was found afterwards, that neither he, nor any other had been in the tower, or had brought out the holy Cross. Wherefore it was judged, that the most holy Relic itself, of itself, no one moving it, had ascended to the top of the tower, in aid of the inhabitants and dwellers, as it had otherwise often aided them against tempests of this kind assailing. whither however no one had been able to ascend. But that there might exist a perpetual memory of this miracle, it was asked that authentic information be taken, the aforesaid Governor interposing his authority: as the same ordered to be done &c. But there were offered as witnesses, Ferdinand Melgares Scribe, Damiana Robles his wife, and their son Ferdinand Melgares, who were dwelling in the citadel. These said all things contained above in the relation; and that they had then approached the door of the aforesaid tower, but found it closed. At the same time also five other witnesses were examined; and the Chaplain himself in his deposition swore, that on that night he could not on account of the excessive tempest approach the chapel. But all declare, that those splendors above the tower lasted for an hour and a half. The Instrument is written at Moratalla, on the XXVIII of July MDXCII.

[33] A woman with a maimed hand is healed, In the year MDXCIV, when the procession of the Holy True Cross, toward the evening of the feast, on the II day of May, had descended from the chapel to the Parish church of the town, for the Office to be performed there that and the following day according to custom; and when the Relic had been carried to the altar, erected for that end in the middle of the nave; a certain woman with a maimed hand raised her voice, most instantly supplicating, that her hand and arm might be touched by the holy Cross itself (which on such an occasion and place could most easily be done); and being touched, she began to use those members as freely, as if she had suffered no infirmity in them. While therefore she withdrew exulting, with loud voices glorifying God and proclaiming his wonderful works; a blind man, whose sight had failed him for six months, demanded that the same benefit be bestowed on his eyes: but since on account of the surrounding clamoring and pressing crowd he could not be heard, and being touched by it the blind man is enlightened. he asked with like instance the already healed woman, that she would draw him nearer to the aforesaid altar. While she tries to give effect to this, the blind man asked her, which of the arms the holy Cross had touched: and she answering, that the right; again he, approaching more, insisted, that with it she should rub his eyes for him: and the expected grace followed the faith of him asking, sight being restored immediately and entirely. That blind man was from a place of the diocese of Cuenca, called Vers de Tovar de Beteta.

[34] In the year MDXCVII no sowing had been made in this region, rain is obtained, because from October up to the following March the rains had failed, accordingly through want of fodder the flocks were perishing. Therefore the Clergy and Council of the town decreed on the vigil of the Lord's Incarnation, when the most serene sky as much as ever in Egypt gave no hope of water, to lead a procession of the whole people to the chapel of the Holy True Cross: which done, when they were returning from it, so copious a rain fell, that each one entered his own house, and serene weather. no less wet from the shower, than glad for the obtained benefit. In the same year, so dense mists and so great obscurity of the air lay upon the fields all the spring, that all hope of making the harvest languished: but another procession being instituted, to obtain serene weather, that was obtained forthwith; and the harvest was not altogether to be despised. In the year MDXCVIII from the borders of the towns of Lorca and Vélez there came so great an abundance of locusts, that the people of Caravaca hoped no remedy against them: for the calamity had already begun to devour their fields and vineyards and gardens, and to penetrate within the houses themselves. Again therefore a supplication was proclaimed: and without delay every locust ceased to be seen, even through the whole region around, as if there had never been any there.

[35] In the year MDCI, a certain Judge came hither from a certain commission, little Crosses secretly taken away are lost, and buying from the silversmith some silver and brazen Crosses; without his knowledge stole some others, the price of which he had not paid: but all together, inserted on a thread several times twisted and knotted, he brought to be applied to the Holy True Cross. And when he had received them so joined, and had wound the thread round his finger; he composed himself to pray before the altar, gathering the Crosses themselves within his hand. But the prayer finished, turning his mind back to them, he found nothing but the thread wound round the finger of his left hand. Confounded by this event he narrated it to certain Religious, asking that, he having departed, and not being named, they should publish the case: as they did. rain is again obtained, In the year MDCV, from August up to March of the following year, it did not rain: and the scanty sowing which had been made, was feared to be about to give no harvest; when the Holy True Cross was brought out in procession: which done it rained continuously and without ceasing for four days. But then the City promised, having seen so evidently the miraculous help, divinely given to it, to observe the feast of the Triumph of the holy Cross on July XVI, as on September XIV is observed the feast of the exalted Cross: which before was not wont to be observed.

[36] In the year MDCVII, for the celebrating of the feast on the III

of May, an immobile arm is healed, there came hither Peter Garcias and Antonia Serrana, with a little son nine years old, whose arm broken from a fall had been so badly treated, that he could not move it at all. When therefore they had immersed the holy Cross on such a day in the water, the parents plunged the boy's arm into the bucket of the aspersion received thence, and immediately he began to move it. But in the evening, it being carried to the chapel, the same parents anointed it with the oil of the lamp, and the boy felt himself more strengthened. But when they had again immersed the aforesaid arm in the water, they drew it forth from it so sound, as if it had never been broken, just as we ourselves writing these things saw. On the same day from the town of Cehegín a mother brought her dumb girl: speech is restored to the dumb girl, and both passed the nocturnal vigil in the church, where then the holy Cross stood forth. But when the Clergy took it to be carried out to the place, the mother instantly and devoutly asked, that the mouth of her daughter might be touched by it. This done, the girl began stammering to say, Cru, Cru; and being again touched to speak perfectly, praising God in his works. For many years now the custom has obtained, that on each Friday Mass is sung with solemn rite, with Deacon and Subdeacon, in the chapel of the Holy True Cross at its altar, incensing it according to the prescribed rites. incense is found in the empty little vessel. On a certain Friday therefore of this kind, the Sacristan having forgotten to put incense in the censer, and knowing that none remained, went off home to seek it. Meanwhile the Officiant arriving there, where the thurification was needed, ordered that the censer be inspected anew; and it was found wholly full, so that it even overflowed: at which thing the ministers present, astonished, proclaimed the case as miraculous.

[37] Although the Cross itself could never be perfectly imitated, From the time it began to be the practice, that other Crosses, consecrated by the touch of the Cross of Caravaca, of every metal and material, were distributed throughout the Christian world; the virtue of the same toward many wonderful effects being found, a huge number of such began yearly to be asked for, and accordingly also to be fabricated; so that craftsmen of various kinds, silversmiths, braziers, cabinet-makers &c. set themselves to form likenesses of every kind of the Cross of Caravaca: and making thence no small gain, they tried also to imitate its form and manner through every dimension as closely as possible. But it is like a miracle, says Robles, yet others applied to it are very efficacious. that, the measure of it having been taken often, hitherto no one has been able to represent it so perfectly, but that something was wanting in the breadth, length, or thickness. This however detracts nothing from the virtue of the same, which I indicated above: wherefore it pleases to confirm it by some clearer examples, received from the same Robles.

[38] P. Alfonso Sanchez of the Society of Jesus having such a one, P. Alfonso Sanchez, of the Society of Jesus, became known to all Spain, on account of his virtue and his singular talents; and also on account of the prayer-chaplets, which are called Philippine, blessed through his Holiness with the application of Indulgences, and the faculty granted to him of applying the same also to others, in the name and stead of his Holiness. He had before resided in the College of this town of Caravaca (which is one of the older ones of his Order) for a good many years: which being passed, for the singular zeal with which he burned for souls to be gained for God, he asked and obtained the Indian mission, and from Mexico crossed into the Philippines; but afterwards by the mandate of Pope Gregory XIII he returned into these kingdoms, and went to Rome. Whence retracing his journey hither, heaped with excellent favors and graces for the utility of others by Pope Sixtus V, he narrated to me, that, setting out from New Spain and the port of Acapulco, through the Pacific sea toward the Philippines, in the company of two other ships, it preserves the ship from shipwreck. after much difficulty and labor in sailing, there came on a tempest of whirling winds so furious, that all who were in his ship believed themselves lost with it: for already the other two had perished. In such peril, remembering the Cross of Caravaca, which he bore with him, he asked for a longer cord: to which tying it he handed it to a certain marine, to be thrown into the sea, when he should see more dreadful waves rushing on. But so great was its virtue, that, as often as it was set against any wave, that never reached the Cross, but was broken back turned upon itself, all who were in the ship looking on and wondering. Thus it, though much shaken, yet came safe to the port of Manila: but there survives to this day in the College of Madrid Fr. Bartholomew Alfonso, of the same Society, companion of the aforesaid P. Alfonso in the tempest, who as a witness of the deeds confirms all the same things.

[39] When P. Diego de Soto, of the same Society, in the year MDLXXXI Minister of this College, A matron of Granada with a similar one set against it stills a tempest, had gone to Granada for certain affairs of his, carrying with him one of the Crosses of Caravaca; and had there for the sake of a visit approached D. Isabella de Mansilia, a relative of Father Fuensalida of the same Society; finding her exceedingly fearful of lightnings and thunders, and persuaded that he could give her against them no more present aid than the very Cross which he bore, he gave this to her. A few days from then having passed, a horrible tempest of lightnings and thunders came on: wherefore remembering her Cross, having received it she extended it toward that part of the sky which was clouded with chief darkness: and immediately and in the twinkling of an eye the tempest ceased. Believing therefore that so venerable a pledge would be better honored publicly in some church than privately in her own house, she handed it to certain religious and devout persons: who, a Confraternity being instituted under its name, carry it out solemnly every year on the III day of May, and attend it with no less honor, than the people of Caravaca themselves their own.

[40] A Discalced shipwrecked man is preserved from drowning, From the Convent of Discalced Carmelites of this town, in the year MDXCII, together with other Brothers, whom his Royal Majesty was destining for New Spain, there went out two, to embark on a ship at Seville. One of these Fr. Julian de S. Hilarione, having stayed some years in those parts, returned to these Kingdoms; and narrated to me and many others, that when they were being carried in one of the ships, constituting the fleet that year crossing to New Spain; the boy of the dispenser of the nautical bread, descending into the lowest part with a lighted candle, to seek provisions for the marines; handled that same candle so carelessly, that a particle of the flaming wick falling upon a little vessel of gunpowder, made it soon burst and at the same time the ship; no one, as far as he could know, escaping death, except himself, from the sunken ship. He had already for many days a Cross hung on his neck, applied to that of Caravaca, to which in so great a peril he commended himself. But not knowing how, it seemed to him that he had placed under his feet a support of something harder, and by it was hindered from being immersed by the angry waves. So he was carried with his head eminent above the waves, clothed as he was in his habit: nay also he saw his Cross, floating on the waters and fluctuating from the cord, whence it was borne hung. But so long he thus remained, until one of the accompanying ships nearer, the Brother being seen above the sea, had leisure to cast a skiff into the sea, and to take him to itself: all recognizing the evidence of the miracle, without which it was necessary that the said Brother be drowned, with the ship in which he was carried. Whence afterwards he published, that he referred his life as received from God, through the Holy Cross of Caravaca, and that one which had touched it hanging from his neck, which also he showed me, not long ago having died in the town of Bezeril de Campos.

[41] P. Diego de Soto of the Society of Jesus is guarded from a thunderbolt: The aforenamed P. Diego de Soto had crossed into the Indies, to the Population of the Angels, which is the head of the province of Tlaxcala in New Spain, and thence wrote to his Caravaca Fathers that there resided in the college which the Society there has the Father Master Morales, a man of great erudition and sanctity: to whom, having one of the Crosses of Caravaca, in that year (which was MDXCV) it happened, that, seeing a most terrible thunderbolt ray burst from heaven, he judged it to be carried straight into his bedchamber: wherefore leaping out, he placed the aforesaid Cross in the window. Nor was the fear without foundation: for soon he felt the flame near, and believed that to be his last hour. But the thunderbolt, immediately as it touched the window, as if recoiled, bent most swiftly into the lateral wall of the window; and descending through it, left a foul trace of its passage; by this very thing demonstrating, how much graver a damage would have followed, had not the virtue of the holy Cross repressed that onset. But this grace seems not to have been divinely granted to him without the preceding merit of that Father; but to have been the reward of the benefit, in the preceding year granted by him to the very church of the holy Cross, by applying to it the Indulgences, which Pope Sixtus V had granted him for the conversion of the Philippines, whither he was going, with great power of distributing similar ones wherever he should judge suitable, no less within than without these kingdoms. And so he conferred them on the Chapel of the holy Cross, or wherever it might be, on the XXIV day of June, MDXCIV; as is established from his patent letters, preserved in the archive of the holy Cross, with the example of the Pontifical Brief inserted in them: and another copy of the same letters, left in the secretariat of the Community. Which Indulgences also, on the IV day of September of the same year, Cardinal Don Francis Davila confirmed, as Commissary general of the Crusade.

[42] In the year MDXCV Peter Portillus, Royal Scribe, a citizen of this town, a man most worthy of faith, A citizen of Caravaca, by commission of the King sailed hence into New Spain for the sake of urgent affairs, using a ship to which the name was the Rosario. This, when it had passed the island Garnosa in the Province of Honduras, on the V day of September, was wrapped in a whirlwind so vehement, that the sailors lacked space to gather the sails, but were forced to commit them and themselves to the divine mercy: for they had nothing before their eyes but present death, and they busied themselves to defer it for a while by unloading the ship, especially by throwing out the boat, which however twice let down, was twice thrown back within the ship by the waves. They threw out also the brazen cannons, which were on the highest deck, with many merchandise, lest they should overturn the ship by their weight, rolled together into one part at once. But these things availed nothing, since the sea swelled more and more, and at every moment threatened to swallow the ship with the passengers. Peter therefore, remembering the little Crosses of Caravaca which he had, and of the miracles wrought through such in similar cases; gave a very small one of brass to Jerome de Gamarra of Riogos, one cast into the sea stills the tempest once, who tying it to a thicker thread cast it into the sea from the stern side. Meanwhile night came on them; and the tempest, though somewhat milder, lasted until morning; when it wholly subsided, and the little Cross (as Peter asserted) was found with its thread to lie upon one of the lower ropes, by which the sails are stretched, shining like a star. All wondered at the case; and praising God, they came safe into the port and city of Tonsilla of the Province of Honduras,

on the VII day of the aforesaid month on the vigil of the Nativity of Our Lady.

[43] and again, But when the aforesaid Peter, on the day of S. Martin, had set sail from the port of Campeche of the province of Yucatan toward New Spain, in that ship which they call of Commerce, together with three smaller vessels; and a tempestuous North wind had brought all at once into present peril; he, remembering the above-mentioned event, gave another little Cross of brass to the shipmaster, who likewise tied to a cord let it down into the sea: and after twenty-two days of a most difficult navigation, for which otherwise four or five could have sufficed, they held the port of S. John de Ulva, two of the companion vessels being lost; but the third entered the same port after three days, the jettison of all the things which it carried being made. The shipmaster therefore asked Peter, that he would give him that little Cross, a great sum of money nevertheless being offered: but he, having no other remaining, and curbs a demon in one possessed would not be deprived of so efficacious a protection, for those journeys through the sea which still remained to him. Returning at length the same Peter into Spain, as he himself testifies, in the month of October of the year MDCVIII he visited the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe: entering there at the same time, in which they had drawn thither a possessed woman, stirring up such horrible motions, that to all she was a terror. To curb her by the sacred exorcisms a Priest was called, whom they named Rubius, a man of proven virtue, who asked of the bystanders, whether they had any Relics with them. Peter brought forth the Cross, formerly applied to that of Caravaca, the very one by means of which the former miracle had been done, which he had affixed to his Rosary, and gave it to the Priest: but the demoniac, although with her head pressed to the ground she could not see what was being done, yet cried, Caravaca, Caravaca: however much thou esteem it, yet cast it away, because it torments me. That thing brought astonishment to all: for many other Relics had been exhibited without effect: and Peter thence held his own dearer, because the demon so greatly abhorred it.

[44] Into Germany also penetrated the esteem of such little Crosses, in testimony of which it pleases here to adduce, that P. Peter de Buyza of the Society of Jesus, at present staying at Madrid in the College of his Order, affirms by a memorial subscribed in his name, in which he says, that in the year MDC migrating into Germany out of the obedience of his Prelates, In Bohemia a vehement conflagration is quenched, once, he carried with him some little Crosses, sanctified by contact with that of Caravaca, that he might distribute them there among devout persons. One of these therefore he gave to D. Maria Manrique, formerly chief Chamberlain of the most August Empress D. Maria, grandmother of our King and Lord and wife of the Emperor Maximilian: which Lady Manrique, on account of her excellent virtue and great prudence, held in the greatest esteem with that Majesty, had been joined in matrimony to the Baron of Pernstein, one of the chief and richer Nobles of Bohemia, from whom dying she retained by way of dowry, according to the customs of that kingdom, the city of Leitomischl, where she herself at that time was staying. She narrated to the Father returning that way, that in the aforesaid city a little before a very great conflagration had been stirred up, by which in a short space more than eighty houses were burned, although an Agnus Dei and other Relics had been thrown in to curb the flames. She therefore, as she said, remembering the little Cross which she had received from the Father, and how efficacious a remedy was wont to be hoped thence in cases of this kind; and again. seized the prayer-chaplet to which she had tied it, and entwined on a staff extended it through the window of her palace, toward that part where the fire was spreading: which immediately subsided, in that very moment of time, in which all judged that it was over with the whole city. So great wonder did that thing bring to all the citizens, that, since the cause of the conflagration so suddenly quenched lay hidden, some were persuaded that it had been done by the work of an Angel sent down from heaven. But God willed, that the cause of so admirable a protection should be more distinctly known, by permitting that fifteen days after another conflagration arose in another part of the city, no whit milder than the former. For the Lady, having now once experienced the promptness of the divine mercy, to be elicited by means of the holy Cross, far also more confidently than before, brought out her little Cross: and again the fire so settled in itself, as if there had been none. Whence all evidently knew that it had been the effect of the holy Cross, after their Lady had caused to be narrated to them what she had done: and there was stirred up in all a huge devotion toward that sacred pledge, which the Baroness herself afterwards held even dearer, and in so great esteem, that she preferred it to all her treasures.

CHAPTER V.

The figments of Higuera, by which the apparition of the holy Cross is deferred to the year 1232, and the truth of the history is obscured.

[45] However verisimilar that reasoning may be, according to which, no light of more certain authority shining, That author, suspect to his Colleague Mariana for 20 years, I define at number 9 of this Appendix, that the apparition of the holy Cross of Caravaca pertains to about the year MCCXXVII, before the Moorish King of Caravaca Zeyt Abuzeyt; within that time, namely, in which he in the whole Murcian kingdom possessed Caravaca alone, but still held the Valencian without a rival: yet if from somewhere there were offered some monument of sufficiently certain antiquity, whence it could be made out, that that matter happened some years after the elevation of Zahen, and the ejection of Zeyt from the aforenamed Valencian kingdom; I would not difficultly yield to it, and would find a way of dissolving the former reasoning of whatever kind. But such are not the things which, for the year MCCXXXII, Jerome Roman de Higuera offered to Robles; commended indeed not perfunctorily by almost all the curious in antiquarian matters with whom he lived, as Nicholas Antonio writes in the Library; but not by his colleague at Toledo for more than thirty years, John Mariana; who in his whole Spanish History, is found so to have abstained his hand from all those things which he was not ignorant Higuera not illiberally communicated, as if he had absolutely nowhere known him: which even alone might be enough, for those who have known the erudition and genius of Mariana, to avoid those things, of which he, however much they might seem to make most for his purpose and were everywhere most eagerly received, would not have even a trace appear in his books.

[46] The aforepraised Nicholas Antonio, a man of a clean nose and solid erudition, and to Nicholas Antonio and other more learned Spaniards and foreigners, whom Italy and Spain approved as Procurator general of the Royal affairs in the Roman Court for twenty years; The industry, he says, and diligence of Jerome our men commonly extol with the highest praises up to heaven, who, since they know not how to deceive, do not easily believe that they can be deceived by others; because he is said to have enriched us with certain old Chronicles, and other monuments of Spanish antiquities nowhere before seen; to which it is very wonderful, how obnoxious and reverential the men of this age, and among them not a few of our countrymen, and also of foreigners, learned and sagacious, have risen up: which yet others (namely each most erudite of the foreigners, and these of ours who are led by reason rather than by prejudiced opinions) clearly themselves believe to have been feigned, and supposititious to those whose names they bear, convinced by more luculent arguments daily; nor do they hope they can less easily persuade others, who have brought to the matter a mind desirous of being taught. Convictions of figments of this kind the reader will find in our whole work so many, that he can easily recognize that we had no need of another's indication to beware the impostures of that man, which we daily handle with our own hands. Yet before I began to uncover, what Higuera either feigned himself about the Cross of Caravaca, or, feigned by others, lent to Robles; it pleased to oppose to the credulity of this too easy Spaniard, the judgment of a man likewise Spanish. Now I come to exhibit from Robles page 26, a figment, which he brings forth with such confidence, as if no more certain and explicit document of the deed, could not only not be had but not even be hoped for, written in Latin in these original words.

[47] In the year MCCXXXI (as is established from the Cuenca and Caravaca relation) there set out from the city of Cuenca, with a safe-conduct of King Mulei Azebuteus, of Caravaca and Valencia, Lord Genesius Petri Chirinus, Person of the Church of Cuenca, nephew of Chirinus the Populator of Cuenca, to Caravaca to preach the Gospel of Christ, to the Christian captives and the Moors. he feigns that in the year 1231 Genesius Chirinus, cast into chains, And when this holy man, Master Genesius Petri Chirinus, once more than at other times inveighed against the sect of Mahomet, on the very day of the Holy Cross, he was ordered by King Azebuteus to be cast among the captives into chains. Afterwards in the following year in the month of January at the end, when the King had ordered the captives to be led to him, that holy man also was seen: who complained, that he had been cast into chains, under the public faith and safe-conduct. The King said, Had they not had regard to this matter, they would plainly have killed thee, and he was ordered to be shut up again. Until toward the end of March, when the King inquired of each about their offices, Master Chirinus said, that he was a Priest of Christ. And when he ordered, that he should sacrifice; he said that could not be done without the sacred vestments. There was sent one to bring them thither from Cuenca: which being brought, and the frontal and shrine, and in the year 1232 ordered to make Mass before the King, the chalice and other things necessary for the divine celebration; clothed with the vestments when he had stopped sad, the King said, why he stopped? Chirinus answered, That the Cross was lacking. But the King raising his eyes saw two Angels, bringing the Patriarchal Cross, which they had taken from the neck of holy Robert, then Patriarch of Jerusalem, and that, the Angels announcing it, was known, and to the people of Caravaca by a messenger sent was found out.

[48] This Cross was of the sacred wood of the Cross where Christ hung. Chirinus performed the Sacred thing; and there are who say, that the King saw in the Host a most beautiful boy. Who, by the magnitude of so great miracles (so that, what was commonly bruited at Jerusalem, this Cross had disappeared after the year MCLXXXIV, but Patriarch Dositheus found it) stupefied, proposes to become a Christian. And that King was called Lord Vincent, and that under King James of Aragon the Warrior. This miracle happened on the very day of the Finding of the holy Cross in the month of May, he received the Cross taken from the neck of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, which always in the Church has dawned a most auspicious day, and to the whole world most celebrated. The Cross also from that to this day began to grow famous with many signs and miracles, and to be held illustrious through Spain. The author of this relation is said by Robles to have been, Fr. John Giles of Zamora, in the Additions or Adversaria, which against some points of the Chronicle, compiled by Julian Archpriest of Toledo, he wrote by the mandate of the holy King Ferdinand, just as they are found in the quaternion of P. Master Jerome Roman de Higuera, moved, as he said, by the fame of the miracles which were done at Caravaca, to visit the holy Cross. But he had said before at page 11, that this whole his history, was somehow to be reckoned the offspring of Higuera himself, to whose ordinary

vigils and learned studies it ought to be referred as received, if it has anything good, collected from the varied reading of ancient and modern Authors: as though from the relation of a contemporary author since he communicated those things to him, professing, that he wished much for the sake of the holy Cross of Caravaca, because through a little Cross applied to him by his mother, consecrated by its touch, he had recovered health, lost by immoderate study, a boy of seventeen years. But that fuller faith might be given to the aforesaid, at page 66 again certain Latin words are brought forth, as though by that pretended John of Zamora thus written: I while I was writing these things, several times addressed, namely Azebuteus, or Lord Vincent Belvis. He was a man courteous, humane, prudent, just, of tall body, of royal right, with most beautiful eyes, of comely face, full of majesty, with hair let down in a silken covering of the head, in a purple garment, always accompanied by many servants; his sons follow him.

[49] Roman de Higuera also gave to Robles, another certain document, transcribed as he said from an old parchment Spanish MS. codex, which he asserted was preserved in the archive of the Church of Cuenca; but he, believing himself most certain of its faith, received also from Cuenca, from a certain citizen of that city a similar copy to this effect, from the Spanish (which is had at page 44) thus to be rendered into Latin: Moses Genesius Petri Chirinus, son of Alfonso Petri Chirini, one of the first Populators of Cuenca, who draw their origin from Toledo, and to confirm it he alleges a MS. of Cuenca, passed to the town of Caravaca, to preach the faith to the Moors, with a safe-conduct of King Ferdinand surnamed the Saint, who was the father of King Alfonso, to be compared to Emperors. But when Azebuteus, King of Caravaca, Murcia, and Valencia, asked him there, what craft he practiced; he answered that he was a Missal Clergyman. And he asked of all the rest of the captives the same, and ordered that each should practice his work: but the Clergyman said, that he could not sing Mass without ecclesiastical paraments. The King moreover, knowing those were to be found at Cuenca, sent one to seek them: and being brought the Clergyman put them on, and made an altar. The King ordered him to do his work. And when nevertheless the Clergyman hesitated, Why, said he, dost thou not work? He answered, Because the chief part is lacking, namely the Cross. The King moreover raising his eyes, saw that two Angels were letting down a Cross with great brightness; whence the Clergyman, animated, gave thanks to God, and said Mass: but afterwards it was understood, that the Angels had taken it from the breast of the Patriarch of Jerusalem. The King was baptized by the hands of Chirinus: but his godfathers were D. Peter de Monteforti and Belvis, and D. John de Cuenca: from whom and from D. Moses Genesius all these things were learned; when King Zeyt Azebuteus had dismissed them free. The aforesaid Moses Genesius ended his holy life, and lies buried at Cuenca in the church of S. Mary. Era MCCLIV.

[50] Who would not believe that he here holds in his hand two testimonies most worthy of all faith, the one written in the age of S. Ferdinand, [of the same flour as also the pseudo-chronicle of Julian, and other similar things.] the other under his son Alfonso? Yet both will be suspected by anyone with me to be of feeble faith, who knows that Roman de Higuera, on whose faith Robles published all these things, is the author of all those fables, for which so blind a faith held by very many of the more recent the more clear-sighted in Spain rightly lament, since they are nothing else than the dreams of a brain raving after much learning, especially the aforenamed Chronicle of Julian, and several others of this kind, published under the names of Dexter, Maximus, Luitprand, and similar ancients: against which both several other erudite Spaniards have confidently contended, and most laboriously and solidly of all Don Gaspar Ibañez de Segovia y Peralta in his Ecclesiastical Dissertations, whose former part he published in the year 1671 then only with the chief title of Marquis of Agropoli; but now, while he has the second under the press, by a double title a Grandee of Spain, inasmuch as by the hereditary right of his wife he has passed into the family of Mendoza, and been made also Marquis of Mondejar and of Valhermoso, likewise Count of Tendilla; to be silent of his other prerogatives, from the habit of the Equestrian Order of Calatrava, the Praetorship of the Alhambra, and the Captaincy of the city of Granada. In the same workshop therefore, and the same pleasure of deceiving, the aforesaid two monuments, already related from Robles, can be reckoned forged. For that Roman, contriving such a machine, did nothing more cunningly, than to scatter everywhere the fragments of his figments, which he might afterwards use in confirmation of the fable adorned by himself, as testimonies propped on all certainty. But I will not use this prejudice, although among the more Erudite Spaniards now most received; I come to the immediate conviction of the impostures, with which both that pretended Adversaria of Fr. Giles of Zamora, and the Cuenca writings, teem.

[51] As to the first and chief, written in the Latin tongue, In these (to be silent of the novelty of style, it would be difficult to recognize in it any appearance of antiquity, most easy to suspect novelty, from words of plainly more recent use, such as are Safe-conduct, Person, Master, Populator, Frontal, Sacred thing, Shrine, in that XIII century not so wont to be named. But I will not use this argument. Nor will I even ask, how, besides the use of the same century, in the same Latin testimony the years are noted according to the vulgar Christian Era. Yet I cannot beware but note, that the year of Christ MCCXXXI, in which the aforementioned Genesius is said first to have set out to Caravaca, ill agrees with the Era MCCLIV, in which in the Cuenca MS. he seems to be said buried: for this would be the year of Christ MCCXVI. Finally I do not require, what are those Relations of Cuenca and Caravaca, to which John of Zamora is feigned to appeal; whether handed down by word, or in writing? the incongruity of both Eras &c.) although that Relation which is had written at Caravaca in the year MCCCLXXV, supposes no other earlier one handed down in writing, and narrates far otherwise those things which it relates as received from the memory of the Elders. Yet before I go on further to examine, again and again I protest, that of the truth of the holy Cross brought to Caravaca, and of the miracle by which it was brought, I in no way doubt; and only that I desire its History purged from the novel additaments of fabulous circumstances, without which unless the matter were found more anciently and sincerely attested, even the very substance of the miracle one would rightly hold suspect of fiction. For no more pernicious blemish can be brought to sacred histories, than when they are so implicated with false circumstances of things, the evident repugnance with the more certain history is weighed times, and persons, that, these being detected, the reader or hearer cannot establish, what at length of truth lies beneath them, except by conjecture. Under that protestation therefore I say, that the aforecited Relations can in no way be received as true writings of the XIII century, because they fight with the indubitable Chronology, both of the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, and of the Spanish Kings, so that errors of this kind to commit and so to wander an Author writing at that time could not have done.

[52] of the Spanish Kings, The city of Cuenca, whence that Priest (whose name I prefer to be ignorant of, than to learn it from a fabulist) the city, I say, whence the Christian Priest is said to have gone to Caravaca, in the year MCLXXVII vindicated to the Christian Religion by Alfonso, not of Aragon (as perhaps Higuera believed, feigning these things) but King of Castile, in the year MCCXXXI was under the Holy King Ferdinand. How then could it have come about, that the Author, by his command about to correct the defects of Julian the Archdeacon, as is pretended; and about to name the King, under whom the matter was done; that one, to whom, and in whose favor he was writing, being passed over, should write the matter done under the King of Aragon James, who had no right either at Cuenca or at Caravaca? But this is done in that manner, while there is added, the Warrior; as if it were treated of a King long ago dead, and that glorious surname earned by frequent battles and victories. Yet that James was first born in the year MCCIX, and so was younger than Ferdinand the Saint by XI years, and survived him whole XXIV years, dying about the year MCCLXXV. No more lightly does the supposititious John of Zamora dash against the Chronology of the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, deduced from contemporary and eyewitness witnesses before Volume 3 of May: where it will be found, that Robert, from whose neck, then Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Angels are said to have received the Cross of Caravaca, was first promoted in the year MCCXL; before whom two others were elected, namely James de Vitry, and Gerond or Gerald Bishop of Valence in Gaul, who died in the year MCCXXXVI. It is moreover absurd, that the Cross, which is said to have been lost in the year MCLXXXIV, and so under Heraclius, the last of the Latins residing at Jerusalem, and found by Dositheus (the city now being taken by the Turks) his schismatic successor, and of the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, should not also be said to have been snatched from the neck of him or of the equally unworthy successor, but from the neck of an orthodox Latin Patriarch, residing not at Jerusalem but at Acre; and yet the truth of the fact, not at Acre, but at Jerusalem the Legates of Caravaca are feigned to have learned. Accordingly it is most easy to judge, that the fabulist so wandering in designating places and persons, was as ignorant of things, as he who, under the name of Enoch Patriarch of Jerusalem feigning the life of S. Angelus the Martyr, sent him, to be ordained Priest in the year MCCXIII, not to Acre, where he was to find the orthodox Patriarch, the same one from whom his Order had recently received the Rule; but into Jerusalem occupied by the Turks, and where no Christian remained except a schismatic. Doubtless both writers judged, that with the orthodox the holy City still was at that time for which they were writing; but by thus opining they betrayed their inexperience, and to their rashness to be confuted furnished an argument.

[53] But why is the Cross called Patriarchal, and said to have been taken from the neck, that one, whose figure is here expressed, [and the very form of the Cross, which is falsely said to have been a Patriarchal Encolpion,] of the very length and form which the Caravaca Cross is? Is it because the Venetian Patriarch, and certain other Patriarchs in our West, now use a double Cross? But this our institution is quite recent; but in the East all, both Bishops and Patriarchs, both Clergy and Laity, both men and women, use a single or double Cross indifferently, as is to be seen in the images of Saints and holy ones of every kind, which our Greek-Muscovite Ephemerides exhibit before the 1st Volume of May. If moreover we attend to those Crosses, which are wont to be brought from Caravaca, they all have above either a perforated handle or a ring, that they may be hung at the neck or otherwise: but such, if the chief Cross also had it, nothing would hinder, but that it had been a Greek Encolpion, Episcopal or Patriarchal. But if a handle of this kind be lacking, nor another hole in the upper part, through which a cord or little chain could be passed (as Robles exhibits his own in the image, and we from him) certainly, just as he denies it itself to be of that kind which were borne before Patriarchs on a staff, because below it has neither a hole, in which it might receive the point of the staff;

nor a point, which might be inserted into the staff itself perforated above; so also the same Cross will have to be denied to have been able to afford the use of an Encolpion, on account of the defect of a little handle, or a ring, or at least a hole in the upper part. But in such a case I should say (for it is very consonant with the present history) that the Cross is Liturgical, such as the Greeks everywhere (as I myself saw) use for the Sacrifice, having it placed before them on the altar, without any support into which, as is done among us, it might be fixed. But whence the Caravaca Cross was brought, let no one presume to define: nor let any one with foundation have asserted, that it was formed from the wood of that Cross, on which the Lord hung; since, before the figments already refuted, it came into no one's mind to assert that; unless perhaps one be drawn by this, that, whereas it has rather the appearance of a Liturgical Cross. in the ancient miracles and the use of today, it is again and again called the Holy true Cross, whence at most an argument of vulgar presumption can be had. But such a presumption; how difficultly it would be convicted of error, so easily it will be believed to be uncertain and doubtful, by those who know, to how many little fragments everywhere of some sacred wood or miraculous Cross popular tradition attributes that prerogative, that they are received from the very Cross of Christ. As to the Caravaca one, for venerating it more specially it abundantly suffices, that it is believed to have been brought by the hands of Angels, and is a most present instrument of divine benefits toward men.

CHAPTER VI.

How with no whit better faith another, explaining the fictitious Characters found at Caravaca, as Arabic, noted the year of the Arabs 594, which would be of Christ 1198.

[54] There is at Caravaca, over against the altar in which the holy Cross is preserved, a circular window, through which light is brought to the altar itself and the whole little chapel; The Characters found around the window, on whose border there were read, when Robles wrote, I know not whether even now, certain characters, of a writing and language commonly unknown to the erudite, in this form, which he exhibits at page 47. These characters, says Robles, when faithfully and accurately through each of their apices, as they are here represented, I had taken care to be copied, some years lately past (namely before the year 1615, in which he published his book) I sent to Valencia and into Aragon, into Portugal also and Salamanca, and other places of Spain, where I knew several erudite men were had, among whom I hoped an interpreter of those Characters would be found; nay even into Barbary itself my diligence extended itself. But all in vain: for no one anywhere was found, who would dare to promise an explanation: until, God and our Lord revealing his divine treasures, which hidden in the holy mountain near Granada, how he had explained the Granada plates, had lain hidden even in past ages; there came thither, for the explanation of the found plates and books, most skilled of such things the Licentiate Michael de Luna, Physician, interpreter of tongues: who declared the sense of those Characters through two epistles, which I have in the original, and intend to bring into the archive of the holy Cross to be preserved; one written on the XXIX of September of the year MDCIII, the other on the VIII of March following: and he taught me, that they were Arabic figures. of a Character, as is pretended, Solomonic:

[55] Reading these things run back, I beseech, to the Commentary, prefixed to the Acts of the holy King, and at number 15 see of what sort are those Granada books and plates, and how a not small part of them, according to the most grave judgment of the Apostolic See about them, from the Alcoran and other most impure books of the Mahometans, was transcribed to the destruction of the Catholic faith. There are very many, either described on subtle parchment in today's Arabic both language and letter, with some affectation however of antiquity; or in leaden plates engraved point by point, with Latin words, but with letters not Roman, but affectedly barbarous: whose specimen be to thee the title of one of them, thus to be read in ordinary Latin letters: THE BOOK OF THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH, WRITTEN IN THE CHARACTERS OF SOLOMON, such namely as he sees here.

[56] But what could the Arabic characters, readily enough legible to anyone knowing the language, and having absolutely no affinity with the Caravaca ones? what others, if it please the Gods, Solomonic, and having imagined to himself that these were Arabic, easily referable to the form of the Teutonic letters and types a little before this century used in Spain, however studiously deformed? what, I say, could both confer on Michael de Luna, for explaining the sense of the aforesaid inscription; in which several letters, namely A. E. I. O. V. or Y. M. N. R. S. T. are most clearly distinguished what they are; the rest for the most part are indeed found in Gothic or Runic writings, or are easily reduced to them, yet are able to integrate no appearance of an articulate word? But he who, undertaking the very inscription to be interpreted, is openly convicted to have lied, in that whose contrary he could best know; since, sufficiently well versed in Arabic writings, he feigned letters most diverse from their use to be Arabic; how will he find faith, not only saying, that single or most of them stand for whole words, which is gratuitously asserted; but also that he has attained their genuine signification? since from one and the same initial letters, so taken and extended at each one's pleasure, sentences most disparate and almost infinite can be fitted, as is plain in these S. P. Q. R. and I. N. R. I. Yet come let us see, what sentence our Arab wished to be believed to lie beneath the Caravaca (as he calls them) figures, augmented with the title and stipend of Royal Interpreter, he gratuitously devised the year 594 of the Hegira, for the work bestowed on the Granada books, and alone found a suitable Oedipus to unravel that Sphinx. He himself says it makes this sense. In the five hundred ninety-fourth year of the Arabs, in the time of Mahomad, Abuzeyt the most powerful King, and thirty men, in this dwelling were converted to the true law of salvation (and this, by the grace of God, by means of a doubled Cross, which the Angels of God brought) and many others accompanying and aiding them to the celebration: to whose memory these letters were engraved.

[57] Here before I accuse and excuse my excessive credulity, born of affection toward the Holy King, and of abomination of the Higuerian fiction, it is necessary that I explain the reckoning of the Arabic years, most diverse from ours. Know therefore, which falls in the year of Christ 1198, that all those peoples who follow the Mahometan impiety, and especially the Arabs, whence the Moorish Saracens draw their race, draw the epoch of their years, which they call the Hegira, from the flight of Mahomet, which (by the consent of all now versed in such matters) fell on the XV of July, of the year according to the common Christian Era DCXXII. And since their years are lunar, and so ordinarily number only twelve lunations, constituting the sum of CCCLIII days; it necessarily happens, that year I of the Hegira, drawn from the XV of July, ends on the III day of the following July; and year II of the same Hegira begins from the IV day of the aforenamed month; and so consequently by going backward through XII days, the beginning of each Arabic year is always anticipated; and at length it comes to this, that such an Arabic year begun on the Kalends of our January, ends in the December of the same our year; as happened in the year DCXL, when the year XIX of the Hegira, begun on January I, was succeeded, in the same our year and on December XX, by the year XX of the same Hegira. So it comes about, that the same circle recurring every thirty-two years, above the number of our years the number of the Arabic years grows by one year; and that their year DXCIV under that unequal progression takes its beginning on the XII of November of our year MCXCVII (otherwise, if it had progressed equally, to be begun in the July of our year MCCXV) and ends on the I day of November of our year MCXCVIII, according to the most accurate table of the same years, in the Glossary of Du Cange (which thou wouldst more rightly name a storehouse of all kinds of erudition) most accurately explained, at the word Year.

[58] Thus taught, and finding that Mahomad, in whose time the matter was said to have been done, reigned precisely in that year: inasmuch as he, and that agreement with the natal year of the Saint deceived me, a little after the disaster brought on the Christians in the year MCXCV at Alarcos, succeeded his father, and lived up to after the greater one received from them at Las Navas de Tolosa in the year MCCXIII: finding, I say, the aforenoted year of the Arabic Era rightly to agree with the time of the reigning Mahomad; and to agree precisely with that year, in which it was established that the holy King was either conceived or born; as though with my eyes closed to all other considerations, first I congratulated the Saint himself, that by so illustrious a miracle it had been foreshown, that he would be the defender of the saving Cross; then I compassionated Robles, who, blinded by the Higuerian figments, tried to twist the circle of the Arabic years, contrary to what he recognized to be everywhere taught, to the year of Christ MCCXXXII, from I know not whose imaginary calculation of Pineda; nor at least noticed, how much that year exceeded the time of the reigning Mahomad, which yet was altogether to be retained, if there were any faith in the interpreting Luna. Then indeed I began to think, how aptly one could conceive, that Abuzeyt, although then, when the matter was done, only King or Petty-king of Caravaca, yet before had also been of Cuenca: who, Cuenca itself and the whole region around being left, in the year MCLXXVII, having bargained his life and liberty from the Castilian victor, was permitted to live by his own judgment and his own law at Caravaca; that the same about the year MCXCIV, the spirits of the Moors being raised by the presence of the new Almohad Emperor, on account of the innumerable forces which he had brought over from Africa, joined himself to him, full of great hope of recovering his kingdom, and a more apt connection with the rest of the history, that, a participant in the battle and victory at Alarcos, and thence the fiercer toward the Christians, he led off several captives to Caravaca, and among them one Priest; that finally, this Priest being ordered to celebrate Mass, a miracle was done, by which moved Abuzeyt came over to the Christian faith; and for the sake of more freely exercising it ceded Caravaca to Alfonso, having received in turn a certain possession near Cuenca, of which today a surviving tower retains the name from such an inhabitant. Finally, the true year of the brought Cross being thus found, as I thought, I judged that all things whatever fell of their own accord, which some Castilian and Aragonese writers, than the figments of Higuera had; stuffed by the same Higuera, or moreover propped on their own conjectures, added to the fable once begun; such as that Abuzeyt, for the sake of asking peace carried to Cuenca, and having used the hospitality of Genesius the Priest, made him the faculty of going out to Caravaca; that after the miracle, expelled from his kingdom by his rebel subjects he fled to S. Ferdinand with his wife and sons, Alfonso and Ferdinand said above at the font; and endowed with many possessions, after the matter faithfully waged against the Moors in the sieges of Cordova and Seville, grew old near Cuenca, and lived up to the year MCCLXX more than eighty years old; that finally to the aforesaid sons leaving whatever he possessed, by the gift of King James, in the Valencian kingdom now Christian; he gave up his other possessions in the Murcian Kingdom to the Hospital of S. James of Cuenca.

[59] Another error of mine was, gushing from the same fount of excessive affection, so that I did not note that all things were more recent than the 14th century. that I did not note that fenestral inscription of whatever kind, together with the paintings through the walls of the Caravaca Chapel

drawn out, that I received them as undoubted monuments of that very time, in which the matter was done; nor did I attend to that horrible conflagration related at number 11 of the year MCCCXLVIII, by which it was necessary either, that anything such, if it before existed there, should be abolished; or that, by a miracle no less memorable than was the preservation of the Cross itself, it remained unhurt by the flames, which yet is nowhere said. For if I had noticed this, it would have been enough to concede, that all these things, were after some years, either first thus set up, or from some memory of those which had before existed restored by an artificer. But this too ought to have seemed too much, if I had noted, that in that authentic relation of the year MCCCLXXV no mention is made of the paintings, representing the history of the Holy Cross. But these things at length being recalled to mind, Those things are now indeed abolished, when I had it plainly now persuaded, that nothing was beheld on the aforesaid walls which was older than the XV century; I wished to ask a painter my friend, suitable for forming a judgment about them, then staying at Cádiz, that he would go out to Caravaca for the sake of devotion. But I understood, that this would be in vain: for all those paintings and inscriptions of whatever kind, a few years after the history published by Robles, for the sake of renewing and whitewashing the chapel, had been overlaid with fresh lime, those who took care of this being in no way solicitous, that at least copies of them should be made, to be preserved in the archive with a better right, than there Robles wished the deceptive epistles of Luna to be preserved. Yet it would be worth the trouble to know the subjects of the same, at least in the words of Robles. Therefore, but what he saw he described, as he says, first on the wall, collateral to the altar which is in the chapel of the holy Cross, on the side of the Gospel, was beheld a painting of the King, sitting on a horse, and clothed in a sky-blue robe: beside which much people seemed to stand, leading a captive Clergyman; but on the outermost border of the robe, as though embroidered with the needle, were beheld these marks: On the arch also of the equestrian saddle, on which the King seemed to sit, similarly noted these characters were read: On the other side of the wall at the horn of the Epistle, was expressed the disputation of the King and his Priests with the Clergyman, but the King sat on a seat; the Clergyman stood, and began Mass; meanwhile the Angels let down the Cross, of that magnitude and form which we expressed above. Finally on the wall which is over against the altar, where is the round window, of which above, were beheld two Moorish Priests, with other persons of great gravity, assisting at the baptism of the King; who was baptized by a certain Priest of ours, the same, as far as appeared from the lineaments of the face, who had been captured and had said Mass. But the King appeared at the foot of the sacred Font kneeling, with hands joined, with a cheerful countenance, with great devotion: and beside him assisted a Queen robed, of great majesty, and around the border of the robe were seen these marks:

[60] Thus Robles: which read and seen, it was not difficult for Luna to devise something, not altogether discordant from the subject itself of the paintings: and Luna gratuitously invented an explanation, and so to the first characters he adapted this interpretation. In memory of my conversion, and to the glory of God, I offered this Royal garment, to be put on it on the day of the holy Cross, on account of the solemnity of the feast. Others he feigned to signify: With this horse I exalted the Law of God, and conquered his enemies in battle many times. To the third letters finally he subjoined such a sense: I Queen Heyla, now Helena, wife of Abuzeith, and my two sons, were converted by the grace of God to the holy faith: in memory of which thing I am here effigied. So he from conjecture, which though not altogether alien from the paintings, so diverse from the letters offered to him, devised. Although that which seems to be a painting about the Queen's conversion, Whereas those characters are not Arabic but Latin and Gotho-Runic, does not everywhere agree, with the prayer, which the blind recite at the holy Cross, by the testimony of Robles. For in this, no mention of conversion being made, it is only said that the Queen, the miracle being understood, remained at Moratalla, where she was, as though she never returned to her husband. About the Characters it is plain (as I said) that many are Latin, with which that some also are Gothic, several Runic mixed, no one will deny, whoever shall have seen the Alphabets of those nations, in Francis Junius and Olaus Wormius. Yet lest the reader desire a specimen also of these, not having those Authors at hand, lo for thee, from the treasury of the most Christian King of France, some of the Gothic coins there preserved, taken in fish-glue and transmitted to me by the most erudite Du Cange, the further examination of the same being left to those skilled in Northern antiquities. A certain erudite Dane also noticed that among those Caravaca letters some are mingled which one would only find in the six secret and magic alphabets in Thurneisser, at the end of part 2 of his Onomasticon, which we have not yet seen: and he says that they are such whose first in the Norman Alphabet answers to our R, or rather feigned at pleasure. the second in the Magic of Honorius the Theban is E, the third in the Vastvaldian is G, the fourth in the Trithemian is D. From all which meanwhile together that erudite man denies, and all others deny, that any sense can be elicited, and accordingly they vehemently suspect that the whole matter is fictitious. Certainly if any one in the time of S. Ferdinand had wished to write or sculpt anything at Caravaca for the illustration of the history, to be painted on the walls of the chapel; he would have used the letters of that time, either Arabic or Gotho-Roman; one who knew how to read which would never have been lacking, so many monuments of private and public writings of the XIII century in either language extant even today.

[61] And let these things be said about the impostures, now obscuring the very first history of the True Cross, and therefore necessarily uncovered. But as to what concerns the secondary little Crosses, which in Chapter 4 we saw, to acquire so much virtue by the touch of that chief one, that at their presence no less miracles than at it itself are wrought; the Reader is also to be admonished, lest he believe that with them is likewise distributed the faculty of gaining Indulgences, such as the Faithful obtain who hold medals and other things of that kind, blessed for that end by the Roman Pontiffs or out of their special commission. Here was at one time an error, sowed abroad among the common people by men, by no means bad, but too credulous, whose Relations are carried about, printed in various idioms and various places and years, with a list added at the end of the greatest Indulgences, which Pius V had granted to those piously bearing little Crosses of this kind, but Gregory XV and Urban VIII had confirmed. they impart no indulgences, But now after the Decree of the sacred Roman Inquisition came forth in the year MDCLVII, on the XVIII of May, where among several others supposititious, in the penultimate place are recounted the Indulgences granted to the Crosses of Caravaca, it is fitting, that no one be found any more, who (unless ignorant of such a Decree) presume to sell or give the little Crosses of Caravaca, as endowed with Indulgences of this kind. Let our P. George Gobat be seen in the Quinarius, Tract on Indulgences number 678, exhibiting the Decree itself: which to have read is enough, that one beware for himself and others of impostures of this kind. More difficultly perhaps will those be guarded against, who, having imitated the form of the Caravaca ones, and for true ones sometimes false ones are obtruded. sell similar ones to them, as though brought from the place, where they never were; and partaking the virtue of the sacred Wood, which they never touched. And woe indeed to those who make gain for themselves from the pious credulity of the faithful: but so great is the benignity of the most clement Savior, that the good faith of those thus deceived he will never reject, but that they bring back from it either the wished and hoped fruit, or another better. Meanwhile, that I may return whence I digressed, let that holy wood remain, to the lovers and worshippers of the Holy King among the Spaniards even by that title henceforth more venerable, that it was brought while he reigned: but through the virtue of that most holy Cross itself, which the Caravaca one represents, if it be not also some part of it, may our God free us from all our enemies. Amen.

EPISTLES

given by the Dean and Chapter, on the occasion of the first edition of these Acts, to the Catholic King, to the Emperor of the Romans, and the most Serene King of Poland.

Ferdinand, King of Castile and Leon, at Seville in Bætica (St.)

I refuse, that what before had come forth in a singular edition, and is brought back into this its proper place; I shall seem injurious to posterity, and most ungrateful toward the most Reverend Dean and Chapter of Seville, curators of that edition; if I shall withdraw from the eyes of readers that Epistle, with which it was dedicated and offered to our most glorious Monarch; likewise those others, with which copies were sent to the Emperor and the King of Poland; that they who in the extermination of the Turkish barbarism conferred most auspicious arms and counsels with so great a success; having before their eyes Ferdinand eminent in this praise, might both be animated by his examples, and deserve to be aided by his suffrages.

TO CHARLES II, CATHOLIC KING OF THE SPAINS AND THE INDIES.

Under the sacred aspect of Thy Majesty there comes again Thy and Our Ferdinand, King of Castile and Leon, in the order of name the Third, by the prerogative of sanctity the First. Ours, by the benefit of the Metropolitan Church of Seville founded and endowed for us after the Moors were ejected: Thine, by the bond of a lineage continued through so many most glorious Kings. To both however more venerable by that title, by which before this decade the Apostolic See having deigned, enrolled him in the Catalogue of the holy Patrons of Spain. Then the apparatus and order of the festivals, on such an occasion instructed in Thy city of Seville, not only to be read through letters, but also to be beheld in images we exhibited to Thy Sacred Majesty; just emerging indeed from the years only of earliest age, but even then magnificently demonstrating, how much of Catholic piety Thou hadst drawn from so Holy a Forefather. But after that, with the same step by which Thou wast walking to manly age, Thou wast made also more incited both to augment the veneration of such a Progenitor and to follow his footsteps; Thou didst obtain a Pontifical Brief, by which Thy subjects in both worlds, as many as are bound to discharge duly the task of the Canonical Hours, should be ordered to celebrate the feast of the same Holy King with chief solemnity under the Rite of a Double. Hence the studies of so many peoples being kindled more and more, as many as Thou embracest in Thy most vast Empire, desiring to know more distinctly the merits and praises of the new Patron, commended to them with so great a prerogative of honor; we seemed able to do nothing more opportune, than if we should take care that the Acts of his life, no less Christian than Heroic, scattered among the voluminous codices of the old Annals, be collected into one body, and with the whole history of his Posthumous Glory be made public by a Latin impression, whereby they could be read through all Thy Kingdoms, among so many other nations of most diverse tongues. To us thus thinking, from Thy Belgium, and Thy city Antwerp, there offered himself to us Daniel Papebroch, of the Society of Jesus a writer by no means obscure, and after the Fathers of the same Society John Bolland and Godfrey Henschen, continuing the labor, immortal in illustrating the Acts of all the Saints who through the whole world are known and worshipped, a Continuator of a labor most honorable to the Church Triumphant, but to the Militant not moderately useful. For we had seen

the beginnings of May, in three large Volumes published three years ago; and we hoped it was near, that in the last of the remaining Volumes we should find the deeds of our Divine one, treated with like accuracy, faith, and erudition, with which we already had the Acts of so many other illustrious Saints set forth. But the expectation of so laborious an undertaking seemed long, perhaps still to be protracted into one or another year. We therefore desired those things (if indeed they were already had prepared for the press) to be sent forth into light in a singular Treatise; and we who with great promptness had borne the huge expenditures of moneys, necessary for procuring the Canonization at the Roman See and the first festivity to be celebrated here among us; with no less alacrity offered that little which seemed to be desired, that such a book might come forth not unworthy to be set before Thy summit, nor below the majesty of so holy an argument. But he, by that reverence with which all the Belgians are toward the Spanish name, answered that the more gladly he held our desires for commands, the more ardently he desired as quickly as possible to absolve from all doubt the primogeniture of Queen Berengaria (she who was mother to the Holy King), before Blanca, her sister, mother of S. Louis King of the Franks. For this, although doubted by none of the contemporaries, but by Roderick Archbishop of Toledo and Lucas Bishop of Tuy, how great men! then living and beholding all things in person, unhesitatingly asserted; yet in the preceding century, even by two Spanish writers (that we may not wonder at the Gauls) Garibay and Mariana, inconsiderately and unadvisedly was denied; with manifest injury of our nation, and with a prejudice of Thy Majesty also not to be dissembled, while that opinion seems to hand over to the Franks the natural right of succession in the kingdom of Castile. On the contrary Papebroch promised, in the Commentary prefixed to the Acts (as he does in this book) that he would manifestly evince by a chronological demonstration, that Berengaria was so far from being younger than Blanca, that she could by age be her mother; she who, before the latter was born, betrothed to the Imperial youth, refused afterwards to follow him into Germany; and being freed from that bond, and after six years from then married to Alfonso of Leon, had borne him a son Ferdinand, when her sister was scarcely nine years old, three years after (which was of Christ MCC) the little maid herself about to marry Louis Prince of France, then a youth of thirteen, as in the same year in his Carolina sang a noble and ancient Poet among the Gauls (lest one hold the faith of the Spaniards suspect) Giles of Paris. Worthy indeed, that men, so erudite in our affairs, nay in our affairs themselves, Belgica brings forth and nourishes, on which so much of Spanish blood, no less than of gold, the Castilian generosity may well believe to have been spent: and on which it may desire to spend itself wholly and overspend, that, the most faithful of provinces, and for that cause alone now most miserable, may by Thy nod, most Powerful King, be relieved; and may experience its great-great-grandfather Charles, among Emperors the Fifth, among the Kings of Castile the First, revived in its Second King. Meanwhile we also beseeching the same Royal Clemency, by the right of Patronage specially Thine; with the prayers of the Belgians join also our own; that Thou who, with Thy most Serene Wife Maria-Louisa, busiest Thyself to represent the most holy and most fortunate Spouses, Ferdinand and Beatrice, in justice, clemency, religion; mayest be made equal to the same also in the other titles of graces to be added divinely, namely in the number of glorious Offspring, in the success of the Faith to be dilated among the barbarians, in the celerity of restoring the ancestral Empire. But what to those Holy Kings were common only for sixteen years (for after them Beatrice, extinguished by an untimely fate, made room for Joanna, who was to succeed into the consortship of the same felicity for almost as many years) to Thee and Thy Spouse let them be undivided twice and three times longer: nor let the most Serene Mariana the mother be separated except late from the usufruct of so great goods. For as Berengaria preserved her Ferdinand, for the kingdoms of Castile and Leon; so she preserved her son for the Empire of the Spanish dominions, which widely through both worlds extend, and the Empire itself for her son, amid similar perils, without the solace of a husband. Let her live therefore, equally as that one, long-lived days: let her exult beholding your successes, victories, increases. Let Thy Majesty live with Wife and Mother into a fruitful old age, with a mind concordant with them ruling more Provinces, than the Holy Kings whom we praise lorded over Cities. Give perpetual peace to the Christian world, that the subject peoples may enjoy firm tranquility, holy Religion grow and flourish, the Roman Church be exalted more sublimely, eternally bound to Charles II, Catholic King of the Spains and the Indies. Thus we vow, at Seville MDCLXXXIV, on the VI of the Ides of February.

For the Dean and Chapter of the Kindly Patriarchal Church of Seville signs Paul Francis Eustace Secretary.

The Ordinary Censor of Books of Antwerp, the most Erudite D. Antony Hoefslach S. T. L. and Graduate Canon of the Cathedral Church among us, subjoined his Approbation to the same Book in this tenor.

That then at length the Commonwealths would be happy, when either Philosophers should reign, or Kings should philosophize, was the saying of one of the Ancients; most true, if Christianly understood; namely so that by the name of Philosophy be received the love and study of Virtue, consummated according to the discipline of Christ our God, which is the one and only true Wisdom. How always Ferdinand III, in fact and name the Holy King, followed this, even in that summit of supreme power, his Acts luculently demonstrate, in this book collected from the writings of his contemporaries almost. In which and in the adjoined Historical Annotations and Commentaries of R. P. Daniel Papebroch S. I. Theologian, not only did I find nothing either contrary to sound faith or to good morals; but much also of holy edification and curious erudition. Accordingly I judge it expedient, that the present little work, taken from the later Acts of the Saints of May, which after three already published, divided into four others, sweat under the press, be sent before; as a specimen brought from the most verdant garden of every kind of variety, which we hope soon to behold the whole unlocked to the sight and use of all. Fixed therefore for a while in the contemplation of this most beautiful flower, let us praise God, and congratulate the renowned Kingdoms of the Spains, which brought forth Ferdinand for themselves a King, for the Church Militant a Defender, for the Triumphant a Saint, for Princes an Exemplar, for all a Patron. Given at Antwerp MDCLXXXIV, on the VII of the Ides of March.

Thus far all the things published in the Book itself, but here subjoined not so much for its commendation, much less for the praise of the Collector (for whom more than enough of reward has been and will be to be admonished of the errors committed here and elsewhere) as that those who wished to honor the Saint with their eulogies on such an occasion, may bring back some fruit of their piety to posterity. But that this fruit might extend itself to more, it pleased the aforepraised Dean and Chapter to order the book now brought into light, to the number of five hundred copies, soon with a liberal mind to be distributed through Italy, Germany, Belgium and Gaul, but especially through Spain; that as far as in itself lay everywhere there might be afforded to be read the history of his Acts, of which all the knowledge hitherto was almost contained in the Lessons of the proper Office, not yet permitted to be recited beyond the bounds of the Spanish Monarchy. But that this might be permitted to all the Clergy everywhere in the world, and others bound to the task of the Canonical Hours, or even be ordered by the Apostolic See; a copy of the aforesaid book was sent into the City and through one of the Canons carried to the Feet of our most Holy Lord, with much congratulation of the happy successes from the league of the Christian Princes against the Turks conciliated through him. There was added an Epistle inscribed to his Holiness, but it did not come to my hands: yet there came on the same occasion others given, the two which I mentioned above, and which with the Responses I here append.

TO THE MOST HIGH AND MOST POWERFUL EMPEROR OF THE ROMANS, LEOPOLD IGNATIUS.

Sacred Imperial Majesty.

The sacred History of S. Ferdinand, King of Castile and Leon, most munificent Erector of our kindly Church, formerly by Spanish Writers, but now by a foreign pen also drawn up, and struck with Belgian types, we procuring it, we reverently set before Thy Imperial Majesty; and we promise ourselves that our service will be grateful from the very argument of the work. For it will be to Thy Imperial Majesty not unpleasant to unroll the illustrious deeds of a most Holy progenitor, of whom Thou art numbered the thirteenth Descendant, and the series of things done by him; since in it, if Thou wilt regard magnanimity; there occur everywhere egregious exploits and the renowned endowments of a truly Royal mind; if piety; thou mayest contemplate the domestic examples of justice, of religion, in short of all virtues. This also, among very many things, God indulged to the Princes of the most August House, that they are whetted by ancestral examples both to act bravely and gloriously, and to act piously and holily, nor need foreign incitements. There shone forth among the other virtues of the Holy King a most ardent zeal of propagating the Faith; and thence also that constant and uninterrupted study in the Austrian Princes of defending the Catholic Religion, for several centuries hereditary, and as it were innate, even the envious will be permitted to recognize. Of this thing Thy Imperial Majesty has given repeated documents; but that one illustrious among few, while for asserting it Thou hast preferred to sustain the defections of subjects, and with the rebel Hungarians a war now of ten years. Inflamed with this ardor of faith the most holy King wholly set himself to subduing the Mahometans, sworn enemies of the Christian name; and though always greater than the gravest perils, war rising from victory, he snatched from them the nobler part of our Spain. We omit, what wars Thy Imperial Majesty, and Thy renowned Ancestors, have waged with the same enemies; nor is there leisure to recount the triumphs, while there snatches us, what snatched the eyes of all Europe, this present and most perilous war with the Tyrant of the East: in which Thy Imperial Majesty has exhibited itself, in prudence, magnanimity, and fortitude incomparable; and (that we may embrace each greatest thing in a word) most worthy and most glorious Descendant of the most Holy and Triumphant Ferdinand. The Christian World indeed shuddered at the irruption of the Barbaric multitude, and at the peril of besieged Vienna almost trembled: yet stood, and unbroken stood the invincible constancy of Thy Imperial Majesty. This the conspired forces of the Rebels and of the whole Ottoman Empire, not only could not overthrow, but not even move; nay with a mind erected above the peril, it sustained the iniquity of fortune then flattering the Barbarians; and forces being augmented, subsidies contracted, and all things most wisely constituted, by those two victories at Pressburg and near the Morava river, it preluded to that greatest one and to the ages especially memorable, by which, innumerable forces of the Turks and Tartars being slain and put to flight in a just battle, it procured for Vienna liberty, for Religion a defense, for the Christian provinces security, but for Itself the applause of rejoicing peoples, and among late posterity immortal glory. The Christian World exults with joy, and confesses itself bound to Thy Imperial Majesty by an eternal benefit; while it refers as received from Thy perils, its own stability; from Thy cares and vigils, its own quiet and tranquility: but the very age, ennobled by such a victory, somehow exults and is proud. Let the past age boast Vienna, by Solyman with a twenty-day siege in vain attempted, and the fleet of Selim routed at Lepanto in a most fortunate battle, and Malta preserved;

for the present age sets back the same City, defended most fiercely for the space of two months, the laurels of the Vienna battle and of the Párkány slaughter, and Esztergom most gloriously taken, and expects to be adorned with other triumphs daily. But upon this both ages conspire, and though envy gnash, it testifies, that that immense power of the Ottoman Empire, under the auspices of the Austrian Princes, both by land and by sea, has been bravely and happily weakened and repressed. But still by new disasters to be broken by Thy Imperial Majesty we hope, most August Emperor. The most Holy King will be at hand with aid, who went before by example; nor will he be lacking to his own, who favors aliens imploring him; and who so often fought for Religion, will be present to one fighting for Religion; and will strengthen the Christian legions from heaven with such virtue, that Thy Imperial Majesty, the forces of the Turks being utterly cut down, may be able to penetrate the inmost parts of the enemies, and there to establish the trophy of the Cross, and to vindicate the once most noble provinces into their pristine liberty, and the Orthodox Religion. Thus we vow: and to Thy Imperial Majesty, as the safety of the Christian Commonwealth requires, we pray long incolumity and felicity. At Seville, from our Capitular hall, on the II day of the month of March, in the Year of the Lord MDCLXXXIV.

It was subscribed and signed below, as above.

The corrupted air of Vienna and the prevailing diseases, and the necessity of repairing the ruins, had still hindered the Emperor from soon after the siege was raised returning to Vienna, and had compelled the whole Court to subsist at Linz; and there it still stuck, when the Book was brought thither and delivered at the beginning of summer. Hence while daily the return is prepared to the at length cleansed Royal seat; and the Imperial Chancery, with great effort brought back, is ordered into its pristine state; the dispatch of the Response was deferred up to September, which was inscribed, To the Honorable, Devout, to Us Beloved, N. Dean and Chapter of the Patriarchal Church of Seville, in this tenor.

LEOPOLD by the grace of God Emperor of the Romans ever August, King of Servia, Hungary, Bohemia, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Count of Tyrol &c.

We have received some months ago the life of S. Ferdinand III King of Castile and Leon, eruditely written, and then given to the type, but destined and dedicated to Us by you. As we received it with a reverential mind on account of the man's Sanctity; so your propense observance toward Us, and with how obsequious an affection of mind you attend each our House, we have abundantly perceived from your letters. The gift of this book was indeed most grateful to Us, and worthy, that with Imperial benignity, as opportunities shall offer themselves, we should compensate it; none of which we will pass over, by which to the honorable Chapter of Seville universally, and to you singly, we may be able benignly to make testified the promptness of our Imperial grace. Given at Vienna on the V of September MDCLXXXIV.

To the most High and most Powerful Prince

JOHN KING OF POLAND.

Most Powerful and most Invincible King.

The eximious virtues and illustrious exploits of S. Ferdinand, King of Castile and Leon, by Spanish writers in the vernacular tongue commended to the monuments of letters, come forth now into the theater of Europe, we procuring it, written in the Latin speech: nor have we feared to set before a most Pious and most Invincible King a work, by the argument of its matter no less Sacred than Royal. We are indeed impelled, to reverence Thy Majesty, whom the Christian World looks up to and celebrates with the highest praises, by some signification of our most bound observance, and at the same time to declare our study of propagating piety, toward the Erector of our kindly Church most illustrious by sanctity and munificence. For if Thy Majesty will favor his sacred history (and Thou wilt favor it most humanely) and in it shalt contemplate justice in clemency, humility in royal splendor, in mildness warlike fortitude against the enemies of the faith, majesty in humanity, and purple joined with a hair-shirt; there is no doubt, but that toward the most Holy King Thou wilt be affected with a certain singular and special religion. There has been added to these, that the exemplar of a most pious Prince, and one renowned by so many expeditions undertaken against the Mahometans for the glory of the Cross, is owed to Thy Majesty by a certain peculiar right; whom in this iron age, in which an impotent ambition of domination has stirred up and fosters deplorable dissensions among Christian Princes, that Father of mercies, who suffers the Christian commonwealth sometime to be in peril, never to perish, for defending it and crushing the forces of the infidels has by a special benefit of his providence destined, erected, strengthened. This testifies (that we may omit other things about Thy Majesty, however most noble) this recent and terrible tempest of the Turkish war stirred up against the Emperor; which, by the whirlwind of the first onset the ramparts of Hungary being broken, and Austria laid waste with slaughters and burnings, lay upon Vienna; and thence threatened hails, lightnings, and bloody showers to the rest of the Christian Provinces. In this most savage storm, and the horrid image of impending peril, all things sad, turbid, all things dark: but when Thy Majesty subscribed to the sacred league, a certain first light of serenity began to whiten, which somewhat recreated all the consternated peoples, who have the care of Religion at heart. But after it was announced, that Thy Majesty, forces being collected, was preparing the march, was in readiness, and was now expected in the Imperial camp at the Danube; then indeed, as though the day opening itself, the minds being led over from fear into confidence and erected, no longer solicitous about the event, but about the opportune arrival, prayed for Thy Majesty an easy and expedite journey with conceived vows. The wished serenity at length Thy Majesty restored, nor did any purer and more cheerful day of the Christian Commonwealth shine forth, than that, on which Thy Majesty, the entire forces of the Ottoman Empire and the Tartar troops routed in a most fierce battle, snatched and preserved Vienna about to perish from destruction, the bravest defenders from death, the neighboring Regions from tyranny, whole Nations of peoples from servitude, the honor of the Christian name from disgrace, and the temples consecrated to God from nefarious rites. Nor did the virtue of the invincible mind stop here, although it had most amply sufficed for the expectation of the undertaken province and of all Europe. Pursuing the Barbarians snatched away by the benefit of night, by a new battle at Párkány, it destroyed to extermination whatever of strength from the hostile forces had withdrawn itself by flight from the victorious right hand of Thy Majesty. And indeed by this most noble and especially illustrious victory the Christian World preserved renders immortal thanks to Thy Majesty, and religiously conspires into its veneration and love; celerity, and a mind most present in perils, and invincible fortitude, it celebrates and extols from the due titles of praises: but Thy Majesty, fighting not for hearths, but for altars; not for itself, but for God, but for the Church; and the Royal Person and that of the most Serene Prince James thrown into the danger of battles among the readiest, it wonders and is amazed at, and late posterity will be amazed and will wonder. Nor is there now, that we should much complain of the iniquity of the age: for this example of most religious magnanimity even those golden times of the rising Church could have envied. And would that the other Princes only envied, and excited by Thy Majesty's not only deeds, but also letters, would be willing to attempt something worthy of their name against the common enemy; or at least were ashamed, with sought colors to confuse all things, and to corrupt the offered opportunity of subduing the proud tyrant, with a never-to-be-effaced mark of their honor. But these things perhaps, God so permitting, fall out, that while they catch at a fleeting, and not even to be wished glory; they leave to Thy Majesty the most copious harvest of true and solid glory more amply to be reaped. But Thy Majesty proceeds, as it has begun, to press the enemies broken by repeated disasters; and, God being the auspice, to victories won will superadd new triumphs, widely extending the glory of the Christian name with victorious arms. For all things cannot but be prosperous to Thy Majesty, who hast so piously and generously devoted Thyself and the most Serene Prince, educated in the hope of a most noble Empire, for Religion. Which while we vow from the heart; to Thy Majesty we pray all auspicious things, and after a most long and most fortunate course of life eternal felicity. At Seville from our Capitular hall. On the XX day of the Month of March. In the Year of the Lord MDCLXXXIV.

It was subscribed and signed as above: but the King all but wintering in the Camps, and removed from Cracow by long intervals of lands, the Book with the Epistle was very late brought, and still later offered to his Majesty; the Royal Confessor, to whom the matter had been commended, having died amid the camp labors in Hungary; and no one further existing who thought it to be of his office to take care that the response of the Royal Humanity be dispatched. Thus one and another year passed, the King nowhere almost stably acting; until R. P. Charles Maurice Vota of the Society of Jesus, most dear to the King for his science of Historical and Mathematical matters, sought and found both the Book and the Epistle in the Royal Coffers; and the King assenting to him, what he had long ago wished done, without delay the response was written, whose tenor was inscribed To the Venerable and most Renowned Prelates, the Dean, Canons, and the whole Chapter of the kindly Patriarchal Church of Seville, sincerely Beloved by Us.

JOHN THE THIRD

By the grace of God King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania, Russia, Prussia, Mazovia, Samogitia, Kiev, Podlachia, Livonia, Smolensk, Severia, and Chernihiv.

Venerable, most Renowned, sincerely beloved by us. Just as it is a document of your eximious Piety, that the Divine Ferdinand, Founder of your Kindly Patriarchal Church, like another Phoenix raised from sacred ashes, as glorious now from the press, as formerly victorious from the battle, comes again into the Christian world: so it is an argument of your signal Urbanity, that to us, set apart by such great spaces of lands, you wished to direct this archetype of Royal fortitude and piety. To us indeed, who hitherto have looked up wondering at the heroic deeds of the Catholic Kings, and of the renowned Spanish Nation most celebrated in the whole world, against the enemies of the Christian name, it was always in mind to cultivate the memory of the most invincible athlete for the glory of the Cross Ferdinand, and as far as we can to imitate the loftiness of his deeds. But now, when it is permitted us, by your gift, to re-read the series of that most holy life adumbrated with true colors; we will more earnestly endeavor, for the Christian cause and the orthodox faith, to form our actions to this idea, by the help and patronage of so holy a King and dear to God. But this, among the examples of a Prince well deserving of you, will with us be not the least, that your Venerable Chapter, which glories that it was founded by so holy a Monarch, may experience, as often as occasion shall offer itself, the specimens of our Royal benevolence and esteem. Meanwhile we wish from heaven for your Venerable Chapter the increases of every good and felicity, and we, our Royal House, and our Kingdom, earnestly commend to the prayers of your Holy Church of Seville. Given at Lviv, on the XII day of March, in the year of the Lord one thousand six hundred eighty-seven, but of our reign the fourteenth.

JOHN THE KING.

CONCERNING B. CONSTANTIA XIRA AND B. MARIA FERNANDEZ,

OF THE POOR LIFE, AT ÉVORA IN LUSITANIA.

15TH CENTURY

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

On their worship, manner of life, the Augustinian Rule, undertaken at least after the death of Constantia.

Constantia Xira, of the Poor Life, at Évora in Lusitania. Maria Fernandez, of the Poor Life, at Évora in Lusitania.

Those whom the Castilians commonly called Beatas, the Lusitanians in the preceding centuries Poor women, or of the Poor Life; were women, so given to the works of charity and devotion, Their manner of life, that, their possessions being sold for the love of God, they chose to live by the labor of their own hands and the alms of the pious, binding themselves to the Rule of no religious institute, and content with the sole direction of a Confessor. Such were,

those whom I have set forth in the title, Constantia and Maria; Widows, or Virgins, I am not able to say; and by the example of such a life provoking many to their imitation, they instituted a certain College of Recluses, in houses bought for this. There at length the Rule of S. Augustine being assumed, and a cenobitic form of living introduced, afterwards changed, the Augustinian Rule being brought in. under the title of S. Monica and the rule of the Friars Hermits; under whom the Nuns being multiplied, in the year MDXXVII they sent out a Colony to Vila Viçosa; and another, when they had been led over from the jurisdiction of the Order to the care of the Bishop, in the year MDLXXXVI to Lisbon, for founding there the convents of the Holy Cross and of S. Monica. Hence it came about that the Augustinian Hermits also enroll them among the Blessed of their Order, in weaving whose Alphabet Herrera, in part 1 page 136, suggests to us some notices about them worthy of memory, which in the Lusitanian Hagiology George Cardoso partly augmented, and partly polished.

[2] And first as to what concerns worship; their Relics are venerably preserved under the altar of the major chapel, where anciently they shone with several miracles: The bodies under the altar. and their birthday was solemn in this monastery, on the first day after Pentecost, up to the beginnings of the reign of Philip I (the Spaniards call him the Second) that is up to the year MDLXXX, in which the last King of Lusitania Henry died. The cause of the intermitted worship one can scarcely devise other, than piety languishing in that age as much as possible. Of it is alleged as witness Antony of the Purification, of the Triumphal Theater Choir 3, who published this his book, comprising the praises of the Lusitanian province of the Hermits, in the year 1632, then rendered into the vernacular tongue he published it, under the title of the most ancient Chronicle of the Portuguese Province; and finally he caused similar things to be printed in the work, which Cardoso alleges, under the title of Monastic Chronology. But what moved Cardoso, that he should affix the feast, movable within the year, to this XXX of May, is difficult to divine; unless perhaps he found something (which however if he had found he does not seem to have been about to be silent) concerning them or one of them done in such a year, in which a day of this kind agreed with the II Feria of Pentecost; which in the whole XV century, of which alone the question can be, happened only twice, namely in the year MCCCCXXXI and MCCCCLXII, nor in the whole eighty years after, or forty before, had it happened that Easter was celebrated on the X day of April, whence that concurrence ought to arise.

[3] Further, both the aforesaid Antony, and those whom he followed, They were not Sisters, except in spirit; only a little more ancient, Louis de Angelis, in the Lusitanian Viridarium, and others; make them Sisters. But that they were sisters in spirit, not in flesh, Cardoso convinces, from the testamentary legacy of John Gomez and Violante Rodriguez, written under the Era MCCCCXLVI, that is in the year of Christ MCCCCVIII, in which certain houses are bequeathed to Constantia Xira and Maria Fernandez * her companion, because they are good women, poor and handmaids of God; where even the sole diversity of surnames suffices to exclude consanguinity. nor at least did Constantia profess the Augustinian Rule. The same Augustinian authors speak of them as if both at length professed the Augustinian Rule: but that this too, at least of Constantia, cannot be said, the burial in the Cathedral church proves; for which a double Anniversary in the same Cathedral was established, under these terms rendered into Latin, is found. On the XXIII day of March we make the anniversary of Constantia the Poor, on account of the houses which she bequeathed to the Chapter, which are in Murofracto, and there are given for those houses nine old pounds. But we make for her two Anniversaries; one this day, on which she ended her life; and the other on the VI of May, and for these are assigned five old pounds. She lies near the baptismal font by two steps, and the stones laid over her are marked with crosses. Similar things in the same book of Anniversaries are read in the same Lusitanian terms on the VI day of May. From which words first we know, that Constantia died on the XXIII day of March; then we gather from the same, that the Poor Sisters, she having died first on March 23, whom she living had collected, then had no church of their own, in which they might bury their dead. But we remain uncertain, whether by a testament of this kind she living abdicated the property of those houses; or rather so, that after the death of the testatrix herself they first came into the possession of the Chapter: yet it pleases more, that all property of stable estate she living herself laid down.

[4] Of Maria it is more difficult to define, whether, her Companion being dead, Maria could have done it, she with the others Recluse with her subjected herself to the Augustinian Order. Yet credible this makes the burial which she seems to have received in her own church; if this first (as is verisimilar) was built after the reception of the Rule. But in this when perhaps soon she began to grow famous with miracles, and was worshipped as a Saint; it was judged by the Superiors, that the body should be more worthily placed; not only of herself, but also of Constantia, who died with an opinion of sanctity no less, although elsewhere already buried. But a translation of this kind from the former burials to the altar, certainly made not except by counsel and approbation of the Archbishop, was a certain species of Canonization, used in the preceding centuries, and answering at least to that which we now call Beatification; wherefore we have called them Blessed without scruple. About the year MCCCXC, as Louis says, there already stood in the city of Évora that reclusory of women very devout: and in the year MCCCCXXI, if she lived beyond the year 1421. as Cardoso writes, the Augustinian Rule was brought in thither; Fr. John Fanono Provincial of Lusitania receiving their obedience, under whose and his successors' rule the place remained up to the year MDXXVI, as Louis; or, as Cardoso, up to MDXLI, when John the third transferred their rule to the Ordinary, the Nuns long striving against it in vain. On such or another occasion little by little fallen from the fervor of the old discipline, they also grew cold in the worship of their first Mothers, perhaps under that pretext that they were not solemnly canonized; just as we know the veneration anciently received of very many others, in possession of long worship as Blessed, abolished after the Council of Trent, the interpreters of the Council's decrees being rigid in mind. But we, omitting a complaint of this kind, let us exhibit the eulogy which Cardoso wove for them, rendered into Latin.

ACTS

From the Lusitanian Hagiology of George Cardoso.

Constantia Xira, of the Poor Life, at Évora in Lusitania. Maria Fernandez, of the Poor Life, at Évora in Lusitania.

On the XXX day of May. At Évora the solemn commemoration of two prudent virgins and spouses of Christ, Renouncing the world, Constantia and Maria of the poor life, born in that place, and foundresses (as is believed) of the Convent of S. Monica, which the Hermit Order there has. For when they were daughters of rich and noble parents, treading down with a generous mind all mundane pomp, and consecrating their virginal purity to God, they put their woman's adornment, by no means small indeed, into the hands of the poor; set as a model of perfection for the matrons and virgins of Évora (as formerly for the Roman ones Paula and Eustochium) to imitate. When therefore the sweet odor of so holy a conversation diffused itself far and wide through that region, it allured to them several companions; whence soon there existed a signal and well-ordered college of the Blessed, who in the succeeding years embraced the Rule of S. Augustine, under the obedience of the Hermit Order. they institute a college of Blessed women, Over them Constantia the elder held the place of Prioress, the younger Maria of Vicaress, as long as they lived; both with wonderful sweetness ruling the new flock; nor was there lacking, where there was need, the rigor of discipline; which yet in no way alienated and exasperated the minds of the subjects, but conciliated for them among them esteem and veneration. But both were so given to the works of charity, that they seemed to have this only proposed in mind, whereby they might deserve well of each one, as though they were their own germane sisters: but their hands, endowed with a certain divine virtue, bore a present remedy to the sick, to whomsoever they were applied.

[2] Further, from the place of their reclusion, daily both proceeded, the companions following in a double order, for using the Sacraments, to the church of S. Mamede nearer to them; they frequent the church of S. Mamede, and it is said of them, that when Mother Constantia, either by the fault of age, or for the abundance of devout tears, had been made blind; in winter time going forth outdoors, she was led by the hand by her Guardian Angel, in the form and habit of a youth, lest she fall or be stained with mud, as she herself often testified. The rigor of the penances which they exercised was great; and in memory of the sacred column, at which our Lord was scourged in the Praetorium, they had in a more secret part of the house a column, they cause themselves to be scourged at a column, to which they also caused both themselves to be tied and cruelly scourged, and that especially on Fridays; applying a pious exercise of this kind to the souls of Purgatory, whose inmost parts were touched with compassion: and on such an occasion they often saw before them ascending fiery sparks, as though indications of the help bestowed on the souls, which in that manner showed themselves relieved from torments. But because the virtue of those women was most known to all, they live on hidden alms. they never suffered want of temporal subsidy; but the Lord inspired certain faithful, that they should bring by night to the door of the house, what was enough for passing the day; yet so that it could never be found out, by whose benignity it was done.

[3] Many years being passed in this manner, they at length came to the end of their desires, heaped with the merits of good works. And first indeed died she who, elder in age, was blind in the eyes, Mother Constantia: whose body carried into the Cathedral church (for not yet was the church there where they dwelt built) was deposited with great concourse of people near the baptismal font. But when Maria died, Constantia buried in the Cathedral, the fabric of the proper church had risen to a just height; within which to her burial was given, with singular veneration, beneath the high altar. It is credible, that not long after thither also was translated the body of the faithful companion: for it was not fitting after death that those should be separated from one another, who in their life had been so joined; since each had left an equal opinion of her sanctity in the minds of all. afterwards Maria is joined under the Altar, By this induced the faithful, long had in use devoutly to take of the earth of the first burial of them for the use of the fevered: which when it succeeded most happily for very many, conciliated for the same a great veneration in the whole province, and this especially appeared, on the first day after Pentecost, which the people of Évora had been wont to hold singularly festive for them. But time, which changes all things, both are worshipped on the day of Pentecost. has abolished both the festivity and the ancient veneration, not without the fault of the citizens of Évora, as today we discern. Thus he, whose third bimester first came forth in the year MDCLXVI. That the other part of that sacred year be not finished, the untimely death of the author effects; whom would that another succeed with equal diligence, but one who would dare to despise the Dextrine figments; which if Cardoso

had been able to do, he would doubtless have better consulted for his own and his nation's esteem among the erudite men, with whom those things are held in contempt.

* Parciera

May VII: 31 May

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