ON ST. LEONTIUS OF ROME, MARTYR,
WHO IS VENERATED IN THE MONASTERY OF MURI IN SWITZERLAND.
COMMENTARY.
Leontius, Roman martyr, venerated in the monastery of Muri in Switzerland. (S.)
BY J. P.
§ I. An account of the authors whom we have used, and of the monastery to which the Saint's body was translated in the seventeenth century.
[ ] The time of the martyrdom unknown, Many Martyrs occur in the records and in the sacred Calendars whose name was Leontius, and many more, in all likelihood, once called by the same name are comprised in those numerous throngs of holy Martyrs which are so frequently announced with their names omitted: whether our Saint is one of these, or one of those, is equally unknown to us. That his name was Leontius, the documents to be alleged below bid us believe; that he is a Saint, the miracles and benefits cry aloud which are continually wrought at his invocation, and which likewise we shall narrate below; but in what year or on what day he was crowned with the laurel of martyrdom, nay, in what century he lived, we are taught by no testimony, at least none worthy of credit. But this
day we treat solely of his glory, because on that very day recurs the memory of the most solemn translation of the sacred bones, and of the beginning of the notable cult in the church of the monastery of Muri, where until now those same sacred bones are honorably preserved.
[2] For the composing of this Commentary on St. Leontius two writers above all have furnished us with material, an account of the authors who have furnished the material of whom, since they are almost the only ones, and will have to be cited rather often, we here set down a preliminary notice. The first is the Reverend Father Mauritius Pfleger, a priest of the monastery of Muri and author of a book written in the German tongue and published in print in the year 1706, who in his preface to the reader sets out the history of the translation of the relics, and then narrates at length the miracles and benefits wrought after the translation. The other is the Reverend Father Leodegarius Mayer, Apostolic notary and present dean of the same most famous monastery of Muri: and he directed to us in the year 1749 two accounts written out in his own hand, subscribed, and secured with his seal, through the good offices of the Reverend Father Mauritius Chardon of pious memory, then rector of the college of the Society of Jesus at Constance in Swabia, a man who deserved exceedingly well of our studies.
[3] for this Commentary, To the earlier little work of Mayer this title is prefixed: A true and succinct account of the translation of the sacred relics of the lord martyr Leontius, a true wonder-worker, from the cemetery of Callistus to the monastery of Muri of St. Martin, of the Order of the holy father Benedict, in Switzerland. And to the whole Lucubration, that you may recognize with what fidelity it was written and whence it was drawn, he appends the following clause: And these are the things which I the undersigned have faithfully extracted and reduced to a compendium concerning the relics of St. Leontius the martyr, and their translation from the cemetery of Callistus to the monastery of Muri, out of the records of our archive and other genuine documents, and also out of certain knowledge and my own very experience. Father Leodegarius Mayer, principal dean of the monastery of Muri, apostolic notary, by his own hand. Of the second account of that most distinguished man, which embraces the benefits and miracles of St. Leontius, we shall speak when we have given its chief portions collated with Pfleger's preface, and thence somewhat enlarged and confirmed.
[4] The situation and origin of the monastery of Muri, The said Mayer accordingly begins with a brief and apt description of the situation, origin and excellence of the monastery of Muri, in this manner: Mure, or, as they call it today, Muri, is a monastery and abbey of the Order of the holy father Benedict, situated in the Aargau of Switzerland, founded in the year of the Lord 1027 by Wernher, bishop of Strasbourg, who built the castle of Habsburg, and by his brother Radbot, first count of Habsburg, and also by Ita, duchess of Lorraine, the wife of the latter, the first ancestors of the present House of Habsburg-Austria. In consideration of these founders (for the bodies of Radbot and Ita were laid in separate walled tombs in the very church of the monastery before the doors of the choir, as in the year 1701 we ourselves beheld with our own eyes when the tombs were opened) — in consideration, I say, of these founders and first ancestors of his, Leopold the Great, most august emperor of the Romans, adopted and enrolled in the Register of the princes of the holy Roman empire the abbot Placidus, born of the family of the Zurlaubens, barons of Thurn and Gestelenburg, and his successors in perpetuity, etc., in that same aforesaid year 1701. Hence, about to pass to the narration itself of the translation, he notes that at the time when it took place the abbey was governed by the most reverend lord Dominicus Tschudi of Greblang, called the restorer of the rights of the monastery, a man possessing great authority both in Switzerland and in distant regions and in the courts of princes, kings and emperors, on account of the merits of his life, his learning, and his skill and prudence in the conduct of affairs: while the Prior of the convent was Father Benedictus Lang, conspicuous alike for learning and for virtues and piety, who held the priorate for thirty-five years. And at length he approaches the matter thus.
[5] In the year of the Lord 1647, with the consent or rather by the command of our most holy lord Pope Innocent X (that some bodies of Saints should be raised from the Roman cemeteries — these words I add from Pfleger — with which illustrious persons might be presented), by whom the Saint's body the most noble and strenuous lord Joannes Rudolphus Pfiffer, of the patrician family of Lucerne, lieutenant of the Pontifical guards (thinking the time opportune — these things too are added from Pfleger — that he might be made partaker of so great a treasure, after many and continual entreaties and prayers, not without singular grace and favor from his Holiness), obtained three bodies of holy martyrs, namely of Leontius, Basil and Lucina, dug out of the cemetery of Callistus, with the faculty of retaining them or of giving them away, and of exposing them to the public veneration of the faithful, as is customary, etc. Where Mayer here leaves off, Pfleger continues thus: And with the leave of the ordinary, of exposing them in any church or oratory whatsoever to the public veneration of the faithful, as appears from the authentic instrument subjoined, which for that same end the most exalted prince bishop of Constance subscribed with his own hand.
[6] Alexander Victricius, by the grace of God and of the Apostolic See bishop of Alatri, taken out of the cemetery of Callistus, vicegerent in the holy City of the most eminent and most reverend lord Cardinal, vicar of our most holy lord the Pope. We make known to all, and attest, how that we, for the greater glory of God and the veneration of his Saints, have given and consigned to the most illustrious lord Joannes Rudolphus Pfeiffer, citizen of Lucerne and lieutenant of the guards of our most holy lord Pope Innocent X, the bodies of SS. Basil, Leontius and Lucina, martyrs, formerly extracted by mandate of our most holy lord Pope Innocent X from the cemetery of Callistus, with the faculty of retaining them with himself, of giving them to others, of transmitting them outside the City, and of exposing them, with the leave of the ordinary, to the public veneration of the faithful in any church or oratory whatsoever. In witness whereof we have subscribed these presents with our hand, and have ordered them to be secured by the impression of our seal. At Rome, this fifteenth day of May 1647. Alexander, bishop of Alatri, vicegerent; Franciscus Joannes, bishop of Constance; Bern. Gasbarra, secretary of the said illustrious lord. Thus far in Pfleger. Now we resume the thread of Mayer's narrative.
[7] And those very bodies he (the aforesaid lord Pfeiffer) sent into Switzerland by the very reverend lord Udalricus Rieger, doctor of sacred theology and of the sacred canons, who was then transacting his affairs at Rome, in the year 1647 from Rome and he consigned and gave as a gift the body of St. Leontius to the monastery of Muri; the body of St. Basil to the monastery of Rheinau, of the same Order and of the Swiss congregation; and the body of St. Lucina to the illustrious college of noble canonesses at Säckingen in the Frickgau, having given letters dated the fourth of June to the abbot Dominicus, in which he presents to him the consecrated pledge in testimony of his good disposition toward the monastery. Then he admonishes him to receive it with fitting reverence and honor, as had been seriously enjoined and commanded upon himself; and finally he commits the remaining matters to be reported by word of mouth by the lord Rieger.
[8] it was translated. That same most distinguished doctor Rieger, otherwise parish priest of Jestetten in the Klettgau, having spent nineteen days upon the journey, brought the above-mentioned relics on the twenty-fourth day of the same month of June to Lucerne, the chief city among the Catholic Swiss, and distant only six hours from Muri. And on the next day, when news of his happy arrival had been received, one of the fathers of our convent was sent, that he might venerate from afar above all the sacred remains of the holy Leontius, and might honorably escort them to Muri. At length on the twenty-seventh day of June Rieger himself, in the name of the aforesaid lord Pfiffer, by a solemn act in the presence of witnesses, gave and irrevocably delivered the sacred body of the lord Leontius to the most reverend abbot Dominicus and his convent of Muri, together with the authentic letters of Alexander Victricius, bishop of Alatri, vicegerent of the most eminent lord vicar, concerning the donation and consignment of the aforesaid sacred bodies made to the lord lieutenant Pfiffer, and with a public instrument drawn up under notarial faith concerning the reception, donation and real delivery and acceptance of the body of St. Leontius, carried into execution by him both in his own name and as commissary. Pfleger agrees exactly with Mayer, but adds that the instrument just mentioned has the following opening: By the present public instrument let it be manifest to all everywhere, etc.
[9] with how great preparation and pomp it was received there; Mayer then goes on to set out in what manner, and with what preparation and pomp, the sacred relics were carried into the church of the monastery of Muri: From that day therefore, he says, the most reverend abbot and our fathers had the sacred bones adorned with Phrygian work, and carefully made ready all things for their solemn translation to the church of the monastery and to the altar, and accordingly assigned the fifteenth day of the month of September for the festival: on the eve of which day solemn Vespers of the holy Martyr himself were chanted with the rite of the first class, and thereafter the whole Office with its octave was celebrated of him. On the aforesaid day itself, about the seventh hour, they went in procession to a tent erected in the middle of the field which adjoins the monastery, and there, a short sermon having first been made to the people, the sacred body was raised upon the shoulders of four levites from beneath the said tent, and was carried in procession by certain windings of the way to the basilica, amid the repeated festive sound of bells, of music, of muskets and of the greater cannon. And the procession itself (at which, besides our abbot named above, there were also present the most illustrious princes and abbots Pius of St. Gall and Placidus of Einsiedeln) was celebrated with all the pomp that was possible, and in most beautiful order. Two sermons [] followed it, delivered at the same time but, on account of the multitude of the people, in different places; and, these being ended, a solemn Mass was sung before the relics themselves placed upon the altar, and at length Vespers also were celebrated.*
[10] A prodigy which a little afterward All these particulars Pfleger also has in German in his preface, but embellished with a good many additional details, which Mayer passed over, doubtless for brevity's sake, and which for the same reason we too forbear. But after the translation has been thus narrated, Pfleger adds one thing which Mayer likewise passed over, for what reason we do not know. Yet it was most worthy of record, if only the truth of the fact was sufficiently established. For my part I see nothing which bids me doubt the good faith of the said Pfleger, who certainly was not so far removed from the times of the event that he could not be fully informed about it; and therefore I have judged that, upon that same faith of his, the matter may be here related as he says it happened. He asserts first that it is incredible with what fervor and piety the parish priests of the surrounding places, together with the flock committed to their care, flocked for a whole octave to the church of Muri, to salute and venerate their new guest Leontius; so much so that on a single day, namely the twenty-first of September, sacred to the holy apostle Matthew, some thousands of men were present there at one time, and on that occasion a memorable prodigy occurred.
[11] For when, out of the dense multitude of men pressing upon one another, a lamp had been overturned is related to have happened in the same place. which hung before the altar of St. Michael, the oil was poured out upon a priest's vestment made of cotton cloth of Damascene work of red color, so that it penetrated not only the cloth itself but also another sewn to it, and the priest, who was already clothed in it and about to celebrate, and all the rest standing by, judged it utterly ruined. The vestment was accordingly laid aside; but on the next day it was found so unharmed that neither any stain, nor the least
change of color could be perceived, as though it had never been touched by a drop of oil. Those especially marveled greatly to whom the nature of cloths of this kind was well known; nevertheless, for a fuller exploration of the truth, they moistened with oil a cloth of the same sort, which both lost its color and retained the stains. This was a manifest indication, says the author, that St. Leontius willed that not without a mighty prodigy the ornament employed on that day in his honor should be free of all damage.
Annotata\* Pfleger, three.
§ II. The Saint's name, martyrdom, and other matters bearing upon this; his notable cult.
[ ] Certain things are observed concerning the Saint's name, Mayer, after the description of the translation recited in the preceding §, proceeds to the discussion or proof of those things which we touched upon in a word in n. 1; and first he discourses thus concerning the Saint's name: Leontius is a name proper to our holy Martyr, not, as often is wont to happen, one attached to him. The truth of which is proved from the inscription which was read graven upon his sepulchral stone in these words, Leonti in Pace. But although in our Acts, which I have diligently gone through, no mention is made of this sepulchral stone, there is nevertheless an undoubted tradition, derived and propagated from our fathers who lived at the time of the aforesaid translation, and certain of whom survived in my own time, that such a stone was found either beside or above the body of this Martyr. Hence it is that the same stone with the name noted above is found expressed in pictures and figured representations both old and more recent.
[13] Assuredly so great an interval of time did not elapse between the year 1647, in which the translation took place, which is related to have been inscribed upon the sepulchral stone; and the year 1749, in which the documents for illustrating the glory of St. Leontius were communicated to us, that we ought to doubt the truth of the tradition consigned to writing by Mayer, and, on his own testimony, long since inscribed upon pictures and figured representations. But even setting these things aside, the very tenor of the inscription in some measure persuades us that it was not gratuitously invented. For let us suppose for a moment that someone were found so shameless that, in order to win authority for a body dug out of the cemeteries of the City as being that of some martyr, he should fabricate an inscription and put it forth as having been found upon a sepulchral stone; I am for my part wholly persuaded that an inscription would have to be produced by a man of this kind different from that which tradition reports of St. Leontius, one namely which should contain particles indicating martyrdom more clearly, such as our inscription Leonti in pace does not contain. For these words in pace, unless others be added, are common to martyrs, confessors, and the rest of the faithful of Christ buried in the same place.
[14] likewise concerning other matters I know that there have been found men to whom the monogram seemed an indication of martyrdom, according to whose opinion what is lacking to the inscription might be supplied; for — a thing which Mayer did not observe, or, having observed, did not add — that a monogram of this kind was carved upon the sepulchral stone of St. Leontius may likewise be gathered from the figured representations mentioned by Mayer, in one at least of which, sent to us here, a monogram is represented as inscribed upon the stone. But that opinion has today as its opponents the learned well-nigh everywhere, so much so that Ludovico Muratori, in vol. 5 of the Antiquitates Italicæ, col. 54, writes in this manner: Nor indeed is there need to refute the opinion of the common people, who think that the Christian monogram … gives proof of martyrdom. Nay, there have not been wanting those who would have that sign to be the mark not of a martyr but of a confessor; the maintainers of both opinions you may see in the illustrious Work on the beatification of the Servants of God and the canonization of the Blessed, book 4, part 2, chapter 27, where the author, the most holy lord Pope Benedict XIV, now happily governing the universal Church, discoursing at length and in his learned manner upon this matter, after both opinions have been reported, concludes thus: But it seems more true that that symbol, if it stand alone, signifies neither a martyr nor a confessor, but merely a man who professed the Christian religion.
[15] pertaining to the martyrdom, Therefore the inscription itself, as I was just saying — inasmuch as from it, even joined with the monogram, neither martyrdom nor sanctity can be drawn out — removes in some measure the suspicion of fabrication, and thus the tradition concerning the stone that was found is rendered more credible, and the argument deduced thence by Mayer for the true name of the holy Martyr is made firmer. For the true name, I say; for concerning the title of Martyr we can and ought to be secure, since the most illustrious bishop of Alatri, vicegerent of the most eminent Cardinal vicar, in the testimonial letters recited in n. 6 expressly asserts that they are the bodies of SS. Basil, Leontius and Lucina, martyrs; for although it very frequently happens that names are imposed by the Cardinal vicar, or by the bishop who is prefect of the Apostolic sacristy, upon the bodies of unknown Martyrs, as they call them, dug out of some cemetery, yet they never attribute to them the title of martyr, much less insert it in public letters, unless the martyrdom be established from the signs of martyrdom found beside those same bodies.
[16] and to the tokens thereof, In the figured representation or image cited in n. 14, a genius is represented holding out in his hand a small vessel, by which I judge it is indicated that there was found beside the remains of our Saint a like vessel stained with the blood of that same Saint — the chief and most certain proof of martyrdom; nay, on the testimony of the most holy lord Benedict XIV, in the book and chapter praised above, today the whole foundation of it. Those who now, he says, have charge of the digging out of bodies from the catacombs, being questioned by us … said that they do not hold the palm alone for a sufficient sign of martyrdom, but that the whole foundation is established by them in a vessel stained with blood. That the same practice was observed in the preceding century is clearly signified by Raphael Fabretti, who about the year 1675 was secretary to the Cardinal vicar, in his book on ancient Inscriptions, chapter 8, p. 555, where, describing the signs upon a sepulchral stone from the cemetery of Bl. Castulus, he has this: That knife or lateral sickle, with the little branch of palm carved upon it, I am not unwilling to believe was an instrument of martyrdom, signified also by the little vessel painted upon it, in which the blood used to be preserved; so that even today like glass phials covered with a bloody and purple crust are very frequently found in the sacred cemeteries beside the niches of the martyrs, at the place where their heads lie — a most certain proof of the blood that was shed, which I used as the chief, nay as the only one, while I had charge of the extraction and custody of the sacred relics. More upon this matter see in the praised Work of Pope Benedict XIV, chapters 27 and 28 of book 4, part 2. In the same image a lamp is seen set upon the stone which another genius supports with his hands; but what they wished to be indicated by it is unknown to me: perhaps a lamp was dug up together with the other objects found at the Saint's tomb, such as even in the most ancient times were lighted before the tombs of the Saints; but perhaps also by the lamp there is here expressed the prodigy related in n. XI. I return to Mayer.
[17] There exists, he says, in the Roman Martyrology, at the eighth of the Kalends of May, the memory of the holy martyrs Eusebius, [Although the name of this Leontius is not believed to have been inserted in the Roman Martyrology;] Neon, Leontius, Longinus and others, who in the persecution of Diocletian, after dreadful torments, were struck with the sword. But these suffered and were buried at Nicomedia, not at Rome; so that it is not merely not permissible to say, but not even to suspect, that the name and memory of our holy martyr Leontius is expressly contained in the published Roman Martyrology. Concerning the said Martyrs of Nicomedia our Henschen disputed in vol. III of April, p. 263, against the authors of the pseudo-chronicles of Flavius Dexter and Julianus Petrus and their defender Tamayo, who, not finding the arena of the martyrdom noted in the Roman Martyrology, placed it in Spain, as it is today most fully known to the learned world was frequently done by them elsewhere. On the same occasion the said Henschen also corrected the Proper of the Saints of the church of Osnabrück, where for that same twenty-fourth day of April an Office is prescribed of St. Leontius the martyr, whose body was carried thither from Rome in the year 1641, and in the fourth Lesson the martyrdom is narrated as though that Leontius were the same who is announced on that day in the Roman Martyrology, and had undergone martyrdom with his companions Eusebius, Neon and Longinus in the city of Rome itself. To these things at length Henschen subjoined the following admonition: To these, and to others who possess like relics from the Roman crypts, we would give the advice that, laying aside the fruitless anxiety to know something more than the name about them, they take for the day of the cult that on which they were translated; lest, if they choose the day on which a Martyr of like name is entered in the Martyrology, they lead themselves and their posterity into errors and abuses not easily to be corrected.
[18] Mayer follows the admonition, and, desisting from further inquiry, adds: [nevertheless he has obtained a notable cult, promoted by the favors of the Supreme Pontiffs] Nevertheless from the first day of the aforesaid translation up to the present age we have celebrated the whole Office every year most solemnly, that is, under the rite of a double of the first class with an Octave; and votive Masses of him are read on days not impeded by a double feast: nay, on double feasts also solemn votive Masses on account of public and grave necessities. There survives too the Bull of our most holy lord Pope Innocent X concerning the institution of a confraternity under the names and invocation of St. Leontius the martyr and St. Benedict the abbot, which nevertheless, other reasons and causes intervening, was not carried into execution by our people. Moreover the Supreme Pontiffs, of whom the latest is Benedict XIV, who today happily holds the holy See, have made famous by plenary indulgences the feast day itself, which is the second of the month of September. Nor have the most illustrious lords the Apostolic Nuncios been less zealous to increase the cult of the holy Martyr, since they have granted indulgences of two hundred days to those who recite the Hymn: Gloriose Martyr Christi, etc., or in the vernacular tongue: Edler Martyr Christi, etc., once on any given day.
[19] and of other prelates, But surpassing these is the piety of the most reverend and most excellent lord Philippus Acciaioli, archbishop of Petra, and Nuncio of the holy See to the Swiss, etc., who not only was present at the jubilee or jubilee solemnity of the translation of the holy relics of that same Martyr, which we celebrated in the past year, and graced the procession, in pontifical vesture, with an example truly splendid and with the very great edification of a well-nigh innumerable people; and indeed from the seventh hour of the morning until nearly the third hour of the afternoon, in an all but unbroken succession, performed the divine offices, celebrating also the solemn Mass, and after the Mass Vespers themselves. Not only, I say, did that most illustrious prelate adorn by his presence the aforesaid act of the solemnity; but he granted to the pilgrims indulgences to be valid for five years: of seven years indeed and as many quarantines for the second day within the octave, on which we festively celebrate the feast of all the holy relics, and for the octave day; but for the remaining days within the Octave, and for all the other days through the year, of three hundred and sixty-five days.
[20] advanced by favors. From these things we cannot doubt that so great a solemnity of cult was not begun, or at least not continued, without a special concession obtained at Rome, inasmuch as without such it is provided that neither Mass be celebrated nor Office recited of a Saint whose body, although it has been dug out of the cemeteries and, with the observance of
the things that must be observed, is set forth for public veneration, if his name is not written in the Roman Martyrology, or if the identity is not established between the body and that Saint whose name is read in the Martyrology. You have also upon this matter very many things learnedly set in order in the most holy Father Benedict XIV, book 4, part 2, chapter 28, n. 17 and following. Further, at what time and for what cause the festival of St. Leontius began to be kept yearly on the second day of September, as is clear from the words recited in n. 18, Mayer had nowhere observed. Consulted by me by letter, he answered most courteously on the twenty-sixth day of April 1753, and confessed candidly that this was quite unknown to him, adding nevertheless that he suspected it had perhaps been done for the fostering of the zeal of the common people, which has always been, and is to this day, greater than can be told; since at the beginning of September the longer day, the more serene air and weather, and the lighter labor in the fields and vineyards make the approach more convenient for pilgrims.
§ III. A chapel and altar built for the Saint; the reliquaries splendidly adorned; the concourse of people through the year; a jubilee solemnly instituted in the year 1747, the hundredth from the translation.
[ ] The chapel, altar and reliquaries Having discussed the matters we reported in the preceding §, Mayer returns to the first times of the translation, and touches in this manner upon the ornaments which from those times down to our own age have accrued to the sacred relics and to the church of Muri itself: For the placing of the oft-mentioned relics of St. Leontius and for exposing them to the public cult of the faithful, the abbot Dominicus, likewise often named, added to the nave of the church of the monastery, on the north side, a chapel, and in it erected an altar of statuary work, most richly adorned with gold. The statue of the holy Martyr, holding in one hand a palm and in the other a sword with its point turned toward the ground, occupied the center. At his feet was a chest of the same work, in which, as in a coffer or urn, the sacred bones, fittingly disposed about the head, were distinctly seen through transparent glass, with little golden chains hanging from the upper shelf of the chest, together with golden rings, pearls set in gold, precious medals, and various jewels which the piety of the faithful in the course of time offered for the adornment of the holy body. Besides this, over and above some silver girdles such as the matrons in our parts have been accustomed to wear, there was present a great number of votive offerings of silver, which the pious faithful offered by vow at those same relics in testimony of the benefits and healings received from the holy Martyr; four silver candlesticks also of great weight and excellent workmanship, together with a very large silver lamp, a certain most noble lord liberally gave to the aforesaid altar.
[22] splendidly adorned The most reverend abbot Hieronymus the second (whose praise is comprised in our Acts chiefly in these words: "a notable propagator of the cult of God and of the Saints") provided a silver half-statue, weighing about forty-eight marks, with which the altars are adorned on festivals. There exists besides a silver tablet with a small bone enclosed in it, which is held out to the pious faithful to be kissed, and with which garments, rosaries, bread, herbs, nay and the afflicted parts of sick bodies are touched and blessed, very often with an immediate effect of health. Likewise a silver rod with another fragment of the sacred bone, with which water and other liquids are wont to be blessed, with an operation of power altogether wonderful.
[23] and renewed also in this century; The most reverend abbot Placidus about the year 1694, the old nave of the church having been pulled down, rebuilt together with the new one the chapel of St. Leontius also from the foundation, and furnished it, conformably to the rest of the body of the church, with ornaments of plaster and with paintings, and with a new altar, yet changed nothing in the relics. At length in the past year 1747 the most illustrious prince and abbot Geroldus, for the jubilee solemnity of the translation which he had conceived in his mind, not only adorned the chapel itself magnificently with a splendid altar and with ornaments about the walls, but had a chest for the laying up of the remains of the holy Martyr made with silver plates and ornaments, most skillfully and at the same time most richly. Mayer had a drawing made of this chest or more recent shrine, and we here present it engraved in copper to be looked upon.
This representation of the shrine agrees exceedingly well with the description which the same Mayer gave in n. 21 of the older shrine, made about the year 1647 and in the lapse of time decorated with precious ornaments; whence we conjecture that in the newest one the form of the older was preserved, and that the ornaments of the latter were applied to the present one in the same order and manner.
[24] It is also customary, the words are again Mayer's, Of the people, who flock to the sacred relics that every year on the feast and Octave of the holy Martyr crowns of fresh herbs and flowers be hung about his sepulcher or chest around the circuit of the chapel, and after the Vespers of the octave day be solemnly blessed, both by a special prayer and by actual contact with the sacred skull, and be given through the year to pilgrims. There are blessed besides in his name thin bands, or silken girdles, of the greatest profit to women with child and in labor. And truly it is wonderful that the same devotions which flourished from the beginning, and indeed the cult, the confidence and the frequency of pilgrims, in the course of these hundred years have not only not failed, but grow more and more; so that few days pass through the summer which are free of pilgrims, and those from more remote places also.
[25] But the number of those who run together on Sundays and other festivals well-nigh exceeds belief, often and in crowds, especially from that time in which the missionary fathers Carolus Malliardo and Michaël Zeech of the Society of Jesus with their companions held missions in these parts and in our neighborhood: who, because we willingly went to their aid in the hearing of Confessions, persuaded the people to take counsel of the fathers of Muri. With signal piety also those about to be joined in matrimony come to the relics of St. Leontius, that their nuptials may be blessed in their presence, relying on the sure hope that they will be blessed and happy in their offspring. Finally there is scarcely through all Catholic Switzerland a city, community, hamlet or village in which there is not one or several distinguished by the name of Leontius; nay, outside Switzerland also, as in the Breisgau, the Frickgau, the Black Forest, and Alsace, this name is spread abroad among men.
[26] The same author of ours, about to confirm what he had already in general foretasted concerning the continuation and increase and splendor of the cult down to these times, confidence, strengthened by many benefits. and concerning the exceeding confidence of the faithful in the patronage of the holy Martyr, and also concerning the most present fruit thence perceived by many in their calamities, narrates various benefits and prodigies divinely wrought at the Saint's invocation in this present century; but these we for the moment pass over here, as being more fitly to be subjoined to many others of the same kind wrought in the preceding century, and therefore to be appended to the later paragraphs of this Commentary. After the prodigies and benefits have been narrated, Mayer goes on with these words: And this uninterrupted continuation of miracles, this faith and piety, devotion and esteem of the Christian people, was the cause that the most illustrious prince and abbot Geroldus ordered the jubilee of the translation to be celebrated with solemn pomp. For the festival there was appointed the year 1747, the hundredth from the first translation, and the fourth day of the month of September, as we learn from a German booklet printed in the abbey of Muri itself, in which is described the order, pomp and preparation with which the relics of the holy Martyr were on that day, after a solemn supplication, placed upon the new altar. Mayer in the letter mentioned in n. 20 sets out the reason why that solemnity is said to have been performed on the fourth of September rather than on the second: The solemnity, he says, of the jubilee translation was carried on for a whole triduum in the year 1747, beginning from the feast day of St. Leontius, which in that year fell on a Saturday, on which and on the following Sunday we received the confessions of well-nigh more than six thousand persons, namely to prepare unto the Lord a perfect people. On the third day at last we concluded the act of the translation with a solemn procession; and thus the fourth day of September was the last of the solemn triduum, and, as regards outward pomp at any rate, by far the most famous of them all.
[27] In the year of the Jubilee 1747, But with what splendor that day was passed the same Mayer teaches by the following account: Further, the procession and the other ceremonies of this jubilee solemnity, published in print and afterward rendered into Latin, the most excellent lord Nuncio himself transmitted to Rome, that the chief men of the Roman Church might learn, as he himself said, in how great honor the relics of the Saints are held in these parts. And that act of the solemn translation lasted from the seventh hour of the morning until nearly the third hour of the afternoon in unbroken succession. There were present, besides our own, more than a hundred priests, who from the third hour of the morning occupied fourteen altars almost without interruption, so that as one withdrew another was at once at hand to perform the Sacred rite, all the sacred vestments being made ready in duplicate.
[28] an innumerable multitude of men flocking together, For the rest — and let all wonder at it — on that day the sky was free of every cloud; the native people were most ready to obey; there was no confusion through the whole solemnity; the multitude of the common folk running together, from every people, nation and religion, was well-nigh innumerable (most judged that twenty thousand spectators and pilgrims were present; but those commanders skilled in the art of war who were there extended the number to forty thousand). Notwithstanding so great a throng of men, no one was hurt, no one was injured, no one withdrew from Muri other than content and edified.
[29] instituted with the highest order Our most illustrious prince and abbot Geroldus himself, long before and up to that very day tormented by continual pains of the stomach, was present at the solemnity without any difficulty whatever; although his great age of sixty-nine years, and the trouble of the burning sun, would of themselves have sufficed to bring on or beget an illness. The religious father himself, a man of sixty, upon whom by the will of the aforesaid most illustrious abbot it lay to order the whole act, through the whole and very long space of time in which he labored at the business, exempted from no burden or exercise of religion and of his most weighty office, suffered not a whit against his health. And because nothing ought to be omitted of those things which conduce to the greater glory of God and the honor of holy Leontius, the youths, boys and little girls, all the children of countryfolk, from the fifth year of their age to the twentieth, whether carried on triumphal cars or walking on foot, held their stations and actions and ranks so constantly and firmly through the whole four hours during which the procession lasted, that they did not depart from them so much as a finger's breadth.
[30] and with splendor, And with so great piety, reverence and modesty did our men and women, nay and those of the neighboring parishes also, pursue their way and their ranks in the procession, that the crowds marveled and were pricked to compunction. All which things, after God, no Christian fails to see must be ascribed to nothing but the merits of the most blessed martyr Leontius. At length, after an end had been made of the performance of the sacred rites, a little before the third hour there came to dinner more than a hundred and fifty guests in the greater hall; thirty noble women in the separate house for women guests; forty religious of the convent in the cloister refectory; nearly a hundred and thirty boys and youths who had taken part; the bailiffs, judges, leaders of the companies, attendants, and of the ranks and of the procession
and the subaltern conductors, etc., about seventy; the retainers of the guests, the servants, etc., in great number, dined in different places, ranks and tables, richly and becomingly according to the dignity of the persons. But to the soldiers, and to those who carried the banners, crosses and litters in the procession, about four hundred in number, there was handed out to each at another time a sextary of wine with a pound of bread. And the number of those dining that day in the abbey, with the utmost peace and concord, was reckoned at six hundred persons of different age, condition and state. Thus far Mayer, an eye-witness.
[31] Further, what he affirms concerning the vast multitude of men a description. which flocked together from every side to this festival is likewise confirmed in the booklet praised above concerning the order, pomp and preparation of the solemn supplication, in the conclusion of which it is indeed said that, after the sacred remains had been carried back into the church and placed upon the new altar, a twofold sermon was at the same time delivered before the assembly in honor of the holy Martyr, one indeed in the church, whose spaciousness you may conjecture from the number of fourteen altars, and the other outside on account of the alleged multitude of the common people. Each sermon was afterward published in print in the German tongue, and a copy of each was sent hither. Upon this above all was the industry and eloquence of the orators employed (they were delivered by the Reverend Father Gregorius of Arth, a priest of the renowned Order of Capuchins, who took to himself these words: Whosoever shall glorify me, him will I glorify, 1 Kings 2 ℣ 30; and by Father Antonius Pfyffer, a presbyter of the Society of Jesus, who chose for himself these: Salvation shall occupy thy walls, Isaiah 60 ℣ 18) — upon this, I say, was their industry and eloquence employed, that they might strengthen and further kindle the veneration long since conceived by the faithful people toward the Saint, and their confidence in his patronage; by showing, namely, how great is the glory of the holy Martyr in heaven, how great his power, at whose intercession for a whole century God has conferred, and confers even now, so many and so wonderful benefits — which they touch upon there only in general terms, save that you may except one or two, but which we, according to our own plan, shall shortly narrate more fully. Receive now the hymn mentioned in n. 18 together with the prayers to be recited for the gaining of the indulgences.
[32] Gloriose martyr Christi,
Pro quo sanguinem fudisti, The Hymn and prayers of the Saint.
Deus te glorificavit,
Et miraclis illustravit:
Hinc mortales te laudamus,
Opem tuam imploramus,
O! Patrone miserorum,
Magne Victor tyrannorum,
Per tormenta, quæ tulisti,
Per cruorem, quem fudisti,
Te precamur corde flentes,
Et afflictas leva mentes,
Ut per te nos consolati,
Cunctis malis liberati,
In te Deum veneremur,
Tecum jugiter lætemur. Amen.
[Glorious martyr of Christ, for whom thou didst pour out thy blood, God hath glorified thee and made thee illustrious with miracles: hence we mortals praise thee, and implore thy aid, O Patron of the wretched, great Conqueror of tyrants. By the torments which thou didst bear, by the gore which thou didst shed, we beseech thee with weeping heart, and do thou lift up our afflicted minds, that, consoled by thee and freed from all evils, we may venerate God in thee, and rejoice with thee for ever. Amen.]
℣ Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor, O Lord.
℞ And hast set him over the works of thy hands.
℣ Pray for us, St. Leontius.
℞ That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Prayer. O God, for whose honor the glorious martyr Leontius fell by the hands of the impious: grant, we beseech thee, that all who implore his help may obtain the saving effect of their petition. Through our Lord.
Prayer. Grant, we beseech thee, almighty God: that by the intercession of blessed Leontius thy martyr we may both be freed from all adversities in body, and be cleansed from wicked thoughts in mind. Through our Lord.
To those devoutly reciting this Prayer before an image of St. Leontius M., the most illustrious Lord Joannes Baptista de Barnis, Nuncio to the Swiss, granted Indulgences of 200 days, to be gained once in a day.
§ IV. Miracles and benefits; fevers healed.
[ ] By whom the miracles were The miracles and benefits ascribed to the patronage of St. Leontius, and drawn (as he himself testifies) from authentic letters or from the votive tablets hung up in the church, were first collected, and published in print in the German tongue in the year 1706, by the Reverend Father Mauritius Pfleger, monk of the abbey of Muri, praised several times already. The book of this man the Reverend Father Leodegarius Mayer, likewise often praised, took care to have brought to us with the other matters pertaining to the Saint's glory, and he added a little book written out in his own hand, in which he comprised Pfleger's Lucubration in Latin in a more compressed style: and this is the second little book, of which we made mention in n. 3. And to this he subjoined the following clause, and subscribed it, secured with his seal: These miracles and benefits, which God deigned to work in his servant Leontius, whom we by right and merit call a Wonder-worker, the Reverend Father Mauritius Pfleger, our pious and learned confrère, chose and selected out of innumerable others, partly similar, partly not sufficiently proved; and having collected them into one volume he committed them to the press in the vernacular and more diffuse tongue, with the permission and will of his superiors; and these I, omitting the things which make nothing to the substance of the miracle, have reduced to an epitome and rendered into Latin. Father Leodegarius Mayer, unworthy principal dean of the monastery of Muri, Apostolic Notary.
[34] collected, For my part I cannot but praise the untiring labor and zeal of Father Mayer, to whom I set down as received whatever concerning the glory of St. Leontius has hitherto come to our knowledge: besides this I confess that Pfleger's lucubration is drawn out too far, and is stuffed with oratorical circumlocutions and ascetical reasonings, which contribute little or nothing to the knowledge and luster of the benefits, and which therefore could rightly seem to need excision, so that the rest might be inserted in more orderly fashion into a historical Work such as ours is. But in truth, on going through Pfleger, I noticed that many things had from time to time been passed over by Mayer out of zeal for brevity — namely the names of persons and places, the length of the sicknesses or calamities, and like circumstances by which narrated matters are wont to be illustrated and confirmed; nay, that the very documents, whether of the witnesses or of the persons who had received the benefit, had been neglected, and the matter merely related bare in the historical style.
[35] and in what manner they are here to be given. Wherefore, since the chief reason for treating of St. Leontius has been the desire of showing, through the abundance of the benefits, how great is the favor he enjoys with God, and so of stirring up men's minds to his veneration and cult and to confidence in his patronage, I have thought that nothing should be omitted which could conduce to the luster of that same cult and to the authority of the things narrated. I shall therefore give Mayer's compendium, but where it shall seem useful for the end proposed I shall enlarge and illustrate it from Pfleger's lucubration: and the German documents of the witnesses, leaving Mayer's compendious narration aside for the moment, I shall render into Latin from that same Pfleger. Yet I would not here bind myself to so strict an interpretation as to express every single thing word for word, to transpose nothing, to interpose nothing here and there for clarity's sake, or to take away nothing that is redundant — which can scarcely be done save ineptly. For, as everywhere each tongue has its proper phrases and its various ways of setting forth what is meant, so also has the German, and especially here, where well-nigh every one of the testimonies was written or dictated by different persons. Nevertheless I shall take pains that the reader may have the sense of the words, and the very words themselves whenever it can be done easily and without detriment to clarity. Finally I shall give those benefits upon the faith of Pfleger and Mayer, of which they are no less worthy than the authors of earlier centuries, even anonymous and unknown ones, whose genuine writings are everywhere so highly esteemed by the learned, especially where they are judged to have been near to the things narrated and not addicted to fables. For our praised authors write of things which they themselves were able partly to see, partly to hear from eye-witnesses, or at any rate drew from authentic documents. Yet I would not have you infer from this either that I put forward each and every thing as beyond doubt; on the contrary — and let this, observed once, suffice — there occur here and there accounts of benefits which, if they be sifted with the utmost rigor, could hardly be proved to have been unable absolutely to happen without a miracle or prodigy.
[36] In the year of the translation of the relics 1647, on the fourteenth day of the month of September, A woman is freed from a violent fever; the day before the solemnity that was instituted, the parishioners of Niederwil went in procession with a litany to the monastery of Muri. Among the women was Magdalena Frey, who was so violently afflicted with a fever that no one doubted she would die upon the road. But by the grace of God, who wills to be glorified in his Saints, she completed the journey with the rest, and performed the sacred pilgrimage; and when this was finished the fever began to leave her, so that within a few days she was more vigorous than any in her house. Pfleger adds that she had used no remedies at all of human medicine, and that the miracle was plain and certain to all the inhabitants of the place.
[37] The singular patronage of the holy Martyr was experienced in the city of Rome itself by the most illustrious lord Joannes Rudolphus Pfiffer, likewise a boy who had given his sacred relics to the monastery of Muri. So Mayer, going on then to record the history of the benefit received; but Pfleger produces the very letter in which the lord Pfiffer himself wrote an account of the same benefit to the most reverend lord Dominicus Tschudi, abbot of Muri; and it, translated from the German into Latin, runs thus: The great benefit which has been reported to Your Grace, namely in what manner my eight-year-old son Thadæus Ludovicus in a grave case evidently perceived the help of St. Leontius the martyr, I shall by no means, as is just, suppress in silence, but publish it to the greater glory of God and of his holy Martyr. Let Your Grace know, therefore, that my said son was unexpectedly seized with a burning Hungarian fever, and for some days without intermission was so tormented that he was brought to the last extremity. All this the Reverend Capuchin Fathers, who were at that time holding the general chapter of their Order here, will be able to attest in person and in particular and to confirm with sure faith; who, as we lost heart, consoled us and said that after a few hours we should have an angel in heaven, for that no other hope remained.
[38] Nevertheless by a special disposition of God almighty the powers of nature held out a little longer than had been thought, and warned us that in the meantime we should implore the intercession of the holy martyr Leontius. now struggling with death I therefore and my beloved wife promised the sacred sacrifice of the Mass to be celebrated in his honor. And when I had earlier brought help to the Reverend Father Mathias, who then presided over the whole province (the Swiss) of the Capuchins, in a certain business of his, returning home together we found the sick boy struggling with death, despaired of and abandoned. On that account the said Father Provincial declined the dinner with us which had been agreed upon beforehand, but, having pronounced a last blessing over the sick boy, withdrew. As he was withdrawing I informed him that I had vowed the sacrifice of the Mass, and asked his companion Father Antonius to fulfill it himself.
[39] struggling; At that same moment of time it was found that the sick boy was better, so much so that when I returned into the chamber he was sitting up in his little bed, and with a cheerful face was earnestly wishing that his brothers and sisters were present, that he might go away from there with them; for he signified that nothing ailed him, and desired to rise from the bed and be clothed in his garments. This, however, although he often begged for it, was not granted him for that whole day: he was merely moved from his own little bed into another; but, since from the previous violence of the disease he was — saving your reverence — all bathed in sweat, and was lying in an unaccustomed bed, he was distressed,
and had continually to be shifted in position because of his urgent entreaties, being able neither to endure nor to rest in any one of them. Then, when he had been put back in his own little bed, he refrained from all complaint, and showed only a desire to get up; and having obtained this on the following day, although he stood upon his feet with difficulty, he nevertheless persevered steadily and with all sadness laid aside, and after a few days recovered his full strength, nor did he thereafter show any pain. Given at Rome the twenty-ninth day of November in the year 1650.
[40] and three men In the year 1656 (these things again from Mayer's compendium, which the reader is to understand as often as that type returns, save where I shall advise otherwise) Joannes Anger, a blacksmith in the town of Uznach, was for seventy-seven whole weeks tormented with a feverish heat: and when the obstinate force of the disease yielded to no art of the physicians, he raised his mind to God and to the holy Leontius; he vowed and made a pilgrimage to his relics (and a votive tablet to be hung up there, adds Pfleger), and thence returned to his home entirely safe and sound.
[41] afflicted with the same disease In the year 1659, the Reverend Lord Ludovicus an der Allmend, coadjutor of the parish church of Lucerne, lay in extremity with a malignant fever, and the venom of the deadly disease was creeping to his breast, so that no hope of healing remained, death being now, as it were, before his eyes. But he, raising his mind to heaven, called upon the holy Leontius in his vows, and vowed that, if his strength were restored by his intercession, he would go in person to venerate his relics and offer holy Mass. The vow being made, the venom withdrew, and the feverish heat withdrew also; and his strength being gradually recovered by this remedy alone, he received entire health. This happened on the twentieth of March of the year mentioned above.
[42] are healed: Mayer here passed over a nearly similar benefit, conferred in the following year on another fever-stricken man, the summary of which, taken from Pfleger, is as follows: Judocus Sultz, of the parish of Buochs in the canton of Unterwalden, which is called by the Germans die Ort von Underwalden, and is one of the thirteen cantons of Switzerland and wholly Catholic, was in the year 1660 on the second day of September seized with a most burning fever, which did not cease to torment and consume his weak body until the eleventh day of the month of November next following, on which, after he had employed every aid of the medical art in vain, he turned all his hope to St. Leontius, and imploring his help with great piety and confidence, promised that, if by the intervention of his aid he recovered his health, he would go on pilgrimage to the monastery of Muri to venerate the sacred relics: he obtained his wish, and by this one remedy received his health.
[43] In the year 1662 a burning fever with headache most intensely tormented Jacobus Sidler, a citizen of Zug a fourth is suddenly healed. (in German Zug, a town of Switzerland, the capital of the canton of the same name); and having sought remedies in vain, he found it superfluous to hope for deliverance from it. Therefore, natural medicine failing, he turned his mind to imploring higher aids, and made a vow to the holy Leontius to visit his sacred bones, when opportunity offered, with the greatest devotion he could. And scarcely had he uttered the vow when at once the headache with the fever withdrew from him, so that in one moment, as it were, both the promise was made and health restored. This Jacobus Sidler himself, on Pfleger's testimony, confessed and confirmed with his own signature.
[44] The benefit which I now subjoin I have taken from Pfleger and rendered into Latin, Fever-stricken persons because it is itself an authentic document. By this present and public testimony let it be known and manifest to all, that we, Christianus Baumbacher and Christina Schön, together with three children, were at one and the same time infected with a fever (it is added that in German it is called das frieren; by which word I judge an ague is denoted), and lying sick of it employed and used various remedies prescribed by the lord physicians; but that by them we experienced no remission of the fever, much less its extinction; on the contrary, that without any fruit, help or solace that misery had long to be endured. Being so wretchedly situated, we thought nothing remained but to suffer continually and to prepare ourselves for a hard death that must be undergone without remedy. At length we turned our minds to God, to his most lovable Mother the Virgin Mary, and to the Saints; we vowed a pilgrimage to the holy martyr Leontius, the wonderful patron of the monastery of Muri, who shines there with innumerable miracles, trusting thus that by his most powerful patronage with God we should receive our health. After the pronouncing of which vow it began from day to day to be better with us, and at last the fever wholly left us all, myself alone excepted, the father of the family, with whom it was a little worse than with them. Nevertheless I fully trust that I too, through the most powerful intercession of the holy and glorious Martyr, shall obtain entire health. To almighty God, whose mercy is infinite, be everlasting praise and glory in his blessed Mother Mary and in the holy martyr Leontius, who brought us so healthful an aid. Amen. In the year of Christ 1663. Much more compressed had Mayer given these things, to whom I return.
[45] The same benefit was received in the following year, 1664, by Casparus Laubi of Klingnau in the Swiss county of Baden, various men, who, when for twelve weeks he was tormented well-nigh to death by a tertian fever, with the most violent shaking and gripings of the bowels, and when the medicines applied not only did no good but rather sharpened the disease and the pains, and he despaired with the physicians of recovery, took refuge in the intercession of the blessed martyr Leontius, and pronounced a vow to venerate his remains in person on a sacred pilgrimage; which done, the fever withdrew from him, and he himself escaped unharmed from danger and disease.
[46] the Saint being invoked In the year 1665 a two-year-old infant, Melchior Remigius Löw of Obwalden (it is a canton of Switzerland, otherwise Unterwalden, on which see n. 42), was held by great and long-continued fevers, and his parents besought St. Leontius for him with a promise of making an offering in token of gratitude. Leontius heard those who prayed, and not long after the vow was uttered bestowed entire health upon the little boy. And the parents, as Pfleger adds, for a perpetual memorial of the thing, and for the greater glory of God and the luster of the cult of St. Leontius, sent to Muri the tablet which they had vowed.
[47] obtain Even to Paris the blessed Martyr stretched out his hands in recompensing. For when Waltherus Tschudi of the canton of Glarus (the canton of Glarus, in German die Orth von Glaris, is one of the lesser cantons of Switzerland), a standard-bearer in the army of the Most Christian King, lay mortally sick at Paris of the Hungarian fever, and in the judgment of the physicians was to be (as was believed) the prey of death — but when he had bound himself by vow to the holy Leontius, after a short interval he was freed of the fever and restored to entire health, in the year 1666. The vow was fulfilled in his name by Fridolinus Tschudi on the thirteenth day of September of the same year; on which day, namely, as Pfleger writes, Waltherus, by the care of his cousin Fridolinus, willed a painted tablet to be hung up in the chapel of the holy Martyr as a token of a grateful mind.
[48] by the Saint's patronage, To this benefit there is subjoined next in Pfleger another, passed over by Mayer, which, the more diffuse and unnecessary circumstances of the German style being cut away, runs about thus. Joannes Huser in the year 1669, on the thirteenth day of the month of February, had begun to struggle with a fever, of which, when he had already borne two most violent onsets drawn out to two hours each, and also the most burning and bitter pain of the head which soon followed, so that he was unequal to bearing more of the like, he took refuge with St. Leontius, promised a pilgrimage to the church of Muri and a votive tablet, and had the help of the holy Martyr so present that thereafter, as he himself attested, he felt neither the fever, nor the heat and headache which followed it, nor any evil at all. So nearly it stands in the praised Pfleger; whence also I transfer hither the following testimony, rendered into Latin.
[49] some also I, Joannes Udalricus am Stein, parish priest at St. Stephen's in Beromünster (commonly Münster) in the Aargau (a district of Switzerland), testify to the greater glory of God and of the glorious martyr Leontius, that in the year 1673 I was brought by a violent hot fever well-nigh to death and the grave: the violence of which evil had at any rate so drained me of strength that the physician himself, master Abrahamus Sepp, declared me to be a victim of death. But when I had bound myself by a vow of a pilgrimage and of a Mass to be celebrated to the said Martyr, most famous for miracles (wondrous thing!), in that same hour I felt relief and remission of the evil, and that in such wise that both the physician named above, visiting me again toward evening, and all my household greatly marveled at this sudden change; to whom I openly professed that I had been snatched from the jaws of death by St. Leontius, since, as I have already said, I had bound myself by a vow. At length they together with me joyfully praised God in his Saint, and I gladly fulfilled the vow.
[50] suddenly, No less sudden was the healing which Pfleger at once subjoins, and which Mayer sets out thus: Margarita Hoffmann, wife of Ludovicus Rütimann of Sursee (a town of the canton of Lucerne), was so wretchedly harried by a burning fever for twenty whole weeks that, with great pains of the head and the convulsions which followed thereupon, she very often lay bereft of all sense and use of reason; and when the physicians, their labor being superfluous, had abandoned her as one destined for death, she, coming to herself, called with great confidence upon the holy Leontius in her vows, and, with almost no delay interposed, to the astonishment of all, was restored to health. Pfleger, noting the year 1677, adds that the woman went on pilgrimage to the relics of St. Leontius, and publicly hung up in his chapel a tablet as a memorial of the benefit received.
[51] The most noble lord Joannes Carolus Schindler, their health chief secretary of the county or lordship of Baden, was in the year 1682 so cruelly tormented by the Hungarian fever together with pleurisy that, being about to die very shortly, he was provided with the sacred Sacraments of the dying. And because the drugs employed produced not even a slight effect, his anxious wife, the lady Maria Francisca de Roll, committed and commended her beloved husband to the patronage of the blessed martyr Leontius, and having sent a maidservant to perform the pilgrimage at Muri, asked for water blessed with the relics of the holy Martyr. And when the maidservant, the duties of the pilgrimage being discharged, had brought it back, and the dying man had drunk it, in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, the deadly pleurisy vanished, the disease grew faint, and the fever departed from him. And he himself thereafter, for the sake of the gratitude he owed, honored the wonder-working Martyr with a notable gift.
[52] In the year 1682 a malignant epidemic fever so gained strength in the most famous city of Lucerne recover. that within the space of twenty-four hours it delivered over to death whomever it seized. And among very many others it seized also the Reverend Lord Carolus Ludovicus Pfleger, chaplain of the collegiate church of St. Leodegar, who, since medicines profited nothing, bound himself by a vow of a pilgrimage and a Mass to St. Leontius: which done, his health at once began to be in a much better state, and he, free of the danger of death, afterward recovered entirely.
[53] In the same year, and with well-nigh the same disease, pleurisy supervening, was tormented Anna Maria Lucretia Holderbanck of Baden in Switzerland, A woman so that, after the greatest pains had been endured, she was abandoned by the physicians — whose labor indeed had not been wanting, but neither had it profited — as one about to yield to fate, and was provided with the accustomed Sacred rites for the last struggle. Destitute therefore of all means, and therefore full of anguish,
she fell into a sleep, in which she seemed to hear a voice saying to her repeatedly: Dost thou wish to be healed? Make a vow to God to perform a sacred pilgrimage to St. Leontius at Muri. She, roused from sleep, held the dream for an admonisher, made the vow, and at once the force of the disease abated; and within a few days she recovered entirely.
[54] Carolus Josephus Weber also, son of master Petrus Weber, and a youth brought to the last extremity recover. at Sihlbrugg in the Canton of Zug, was so burned up and worn away by a burning fever that for fifteen hours, as one lifeless and wholly bereft of the vital spirits, he was accounted a son of death. Fomentations and medicines were applied, whatever seemed likely to profit, but with fruitless labor. At length his father, judging that help must be sought from heaven, sent up a vow to St. Leontius. When lo! Carolus awoke as from a deep sleep, endowed with the use of reason; the disease decreased; the vigor of his limbs and body increased day by day, so that he, restored to health, on the third day of October of the year mentioned above fulfilled the vow by a sacred pilgrimage to the blessed Martyr.
§ V. Various diseases removed.
[ ] A girl Leaving aside for the moment the Latin Lucubration of Mayer, we begin this paragraph with an account which is in Pfleger in German, framed (as he testifies) in the very words in which it was first written down by the Reverend Lord Augustinus Dinglickoffer, parish priest in the town of Surlach, commonly Sursee, after a diligent examination of eye-witnesses. It embraces a benefit conferred by St. Leontius upon an eight-year-old girl of that same town, whose name was Anna Catharina Leist, and it runs thus: Catharina Nützi, the mother of the child, affirmed before me in good faith that eight years ago, when she was carrying that child in her womb, Ludovicus Leist her husband began to labor under a grave disease and moreover under frenzy, so far that, driven by violent madness and rage, he uttered disordered cries and gestures, nay tried to throw himself headlong from the windows into the street, etc. On account of this calamity the mother herself was wretchedly distressed, and was shaken with the gravest fear and horror; and, as is credible, that same horror and trembling seized the unborn child.
[56] from her birth to the eighth year of her age For when, eleven weeks after the death of the father, the girl was brought forth into the light, and after she had been washed in the sacred font of Baptism was being carried back to her mother, she immediately observed that the infant was not sound, but was infected with some evil: for she trembled in her limbs, had her face suffused with a livid color, and was so wretchedly straitened in her breathing as though she were being continually squeezed. Hence she, like the other women too, supposed she would die shortly; which nevertheless turned out otherwise, etc. That infirmity harried her from that hour to her eighth year, and that on each day not merely three, four, or five times, but seven and even oftener, especially when a change of weather was at hand; at the full moon the evil showed itself somewhat more and more violently. And when she was seized by the evil, she would throw herself upon a bench, a seat, a stone, a chest or the ground, or would clasp in her embrace and hold fast people of any age whatever whom she met in the streets, at home, in the stove-rooms or the bedchambers, until the evil withdrew, which lasted about a quarter of an hour.
[57] gravely and often prostrated by an unknown disease, Nor yet, when the evil withdrew, was she free of all pain: for she complained that her head grievously ached, and that a certain horrible torment ascended from her back up to her head, whence her back grew livid and the hairs fell from her head. Often too she would say to other children, called to her to cheer her mind: It is well indeed with you; how much I suffer you do not know. Pious people and neighbors, out of a feeling of compassion, admonished the mother to commend and devote her daughter to St. Leontius the martyr of Muri, in case help might be brought to her also by his sacred relics and intercession; and they set before her an example too: namely that not long before there had passed through this town of Sursee a man who confessed that on account of his ill-affected and darkened eyes he had for five years been unable to see a priest performing the rites at the altar, but that now, when on that day he had been present at the Sacred rite in the church of Muri, his eyes had been opened, so that he was able to behold the celebrant. She suffered herself to be moved by such friendly admonitions, and about eight weeks ago, on the day sacred to St. John the Baptist, commended and devoted her little daughter to St. Leontius with a vow of a pilgrimage to Muri, animated with great confidence and firm faith that the child would through the intercession of this Saint be freed from her infirmity and pain, as also, praise be to God, came to pass. For, this vow having been pronounced, the infirmity never afterward showed itself, nor could it be observed by any indication, inward or outward, grave or slight, hidden or open. So much so that they trust and believe that the girl in that infirmity was succored by the Wonder-worker of Muri.
[58] Meanwhile what had been promised was faithfully discharged; a vow having been made, for the mother herself hastened with her little daughter to Muri, visited the church, prayed, called with her inmost heart upon the clemency and mercy of God through the intercession of St. Leontius for the lasting soundness of the child, venerated the relics, and kissed them often. These things happened on the fourteenth day of August, the vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the year 1648. Further, what kind of disease that was is manifest to no one. The girl indeed, when she felt its approach coming on, was wont to say: The torment is at hand (so I have rendered the word leyren, whose true signification I have not found). The commoner conjecture, nevertheless, is that it was the falling sickness: master Huober, doctor of medicine, is also reported to have said that it was not a natural evil, and therefore not to be removed by natural remedies.
[59] For the rest, as the girl's mother attested all that we have now related, thereafter she feels so the same things can be confirmed and strengthened by the testimonies of well-nigh the whole neighborhood of Lower Surlach. For my part I have questioned in particular, and, adjuring them upon their faith, have diligently and carefully examined the witnesses written below; who with unanimous consent affirmed that the girl was infected with the evil now set forth, and that after the vow was uttered no infirmity was observed in her, as has been said. The names of the witnesses are these: Joannes Schantzlin, a carpenter, who with his wife dwelt with her in the same house for two years, and testifies that he often saw the girl so afflicted with that disease that she either lay upon the benches and seats with her hands and feet folded and drawn together, or clasped people in a tight embrace; and that after the promised and fulfilled pilgrimage to the monastery of Muri he thereafter noticed nothing of the sort.
[60] The names of the widows: Anna Maria Leist, Anna Durich, nothing of such an evil. Elisabeth Stocker, etc. Magdalena Binder, an upright widow, affirms that the child was often seen by her lying prostrate on the ground at the crossways, with her eyesight disturbed, twisting her arms and feet, with foaming mouth, etc. When the same Magdalena had accosted the mother, now returned from Muri together with her daughter, saying: Whither have you gone, and whence do you return? the child answered in these words: Now I am well, now I am well. Blessed therefore be God in his holy martyr Leontius. To these things, in confirmation and testimony of the foregoing, I subscribe and append my seal according to custom. Done at Sursee the twenty-second day of August in the year 1648. Augustinus Dinglickoffer, parish priest in Sursee, I attest as above. The same benefit, but after his manner more compressed, Mayer also recounts, and to it he presently subjoins the following.
[61] In the following year 1649, at Solothurn (in German Solothurn, a city of Switzerland, the chief town of the canton of the same name), Girls, one seized suddenly by a disease, a seven-year-old schoolgirl, while she was applying herself to her lesson among her companions, was unexpectedly and suddenly seized by I know not what horrible evil and driven into such madness that she scarcely allowed place and space for the applying of spiritual remedies. But the schoolmaster, being called, and inwardly moved by the pitiable sight, by a hasty yet prudent counsel had cold water brought, and mixing it with blessed water and putting into it a rosary which had been consecrated by contact with the relics of St. Leontius, and calling to his aid the most blessed Virgin and the holy martyr Leontius, touched the tongue of the afflicted girl three times. And when she had at once opened her mouth and drunk eagerly of that water, she immediately returned to her senses, recognized those standing by, and recovered her former strength and health.
[62] and another afflicted for two years with an unknown evil, In the course of the same year Joannes Wolfgangus Frickhart, a citizen of Zug, found the holy Leontius a kindly helper to himself and to his child. His child, then, had for two years labored under a disease unknown to the physicians. And when, after the solemn translation of the holy Leontius, the fame of his miracles spread far and wide, the father, besides the other remedies he employed, went with pious intent and confidence to the resting-place of the holy Martyr at Muri, and had water, shirts, cloths and swaddling-bands hallowed and blessed by his relics. And when on his return he had applied all these to his sick child, he perceived that the disease at once gave way and changed for the better. But this very power which went out from those blessed things emboldened the father to seek Muri again a second time with his sick child; where at length he found what he was waiting for; for the child was better day by day, until it came out entirely sound. This prodigy, says Pfleger, was most widely known and most famous throughout the whole neighborhood.
[63] likewise of an infant In the year 1650 Petrus Salber and his lawful wife Anna Stöcklin had an infant which from some unknown accident was so ill that at the mere sight of the sun's light, or even of fire, it several times a day fell into a deadly swoon, as though drawing its last breath. The mother, being the more loving toward her wretched child, becomes a suppliant to the holy Leontius with a vow, and after the vow the infant suffered nothing further at all of that destructive languor.
[64] and of a boy Jodocus Benedictus Pfiffer, son of the most illustrious lord captain Jodocus Pfiffer and of Francisca Grafft of Lucerne, was even from his mother's womb filled with so many miseries, and such as escaped the science of the physicians, that up to his twelfth year, natural and spiritual remedies having been applied in vain, he led a most wretched life and daily declined to worse. His most pious mother, stirred and roused by the fame of the miracles of the holy Leontius, conceives a vow of a devout pilgrimage to his tomb in the monastery of Muri; and from that moment, as it were, the disease declined toward better things: and after the pilgrimage had been performed, when the boy had drunk of water hallowed by the relics of the holy Martyr, he was endowed with and enjoyed entire health. Pfleger notes the year of the benefit obtained as one thousand six hundred and fifty.
[65] and of others Hieronymus Stierlin of Aristau, which is a village of the parish and lordship of Muri, half an hour distant from the monastery, was held fast to his bed for eighteen weeks by a certain disease with the greatest pains; and because the seat or origin of the evil could not be discovered by the physicians, no other remedy than suffering and patience was at hand for the poor man. At length, in accordance with a vow which he had made, he sends men to honor with singular devotion in his name St. Leontius and his sacred relics: and the vow thus
fulfilled, he came away free of pains, and sound without any medicine of the physicians, in the year 1653.
[66] infirmities Magdalena Spillmann of Losdorf (in Matthäus Merian, in the Appendix to the Topography of Switzerland, it is written Lustorff and Lussdorff, if that is the place here designated — any other is unknown to me — and it lies in the district of Thurgau in Switzerland) had a daughter Anna, a daughter of prayers, who had been preserved in life by the intercession of the most blessed Virgin Mary (and, on Pfleger's authority, washed in the saving waters), but who, the hindrance of a certain accident supervening, could not take nourishment for the sustaining and growth of her body. The most pious mother, undismayed and full of faith and confidence, offers her languishing little daughter to God, to the most blessed Virgin and to the holy Leontius for grace, with this happy issue, that scarcely had the mother conceived this thought in her mind, of going on pilgrimage to the chapel of the holy Leontius for the sake of the vow, when the newborn and firstborn child, to the wonder of all, not only took nourishment, but, her strength and bodily vigor increasing, remained sound and safe. This happened, according to Pfleger, on the twentieth day of June in the year 1655.
[67] Margarita Ming, daughter of Petrus Ming and Elisabeth ander Gassen, fourteen years old, which mocked the art of the physicians of Lungern in the canton of Obwalden, fell through a languor, not recognized by the physicians, into such misery that she could neither walk nor stand upon her feet; and besides this, inward pains most violently afflicted her as she lay continually in bed. Love and piety urged and goaded her parents to seek counsel and help earnestly from the physicians, and, when these failed with their art, to pronounce vows at various places of sacred pilgrimage. But because divine providence had reserved this cure for St. Leontius, the sick girl always remained in the same state. At length, as she slept, it came to her in a dream that she should bind herself by vow to the newly arrived holy Leontius, if she wished to be restored to bodily health. And when she awoke, judging that dream to be a divine admonition, with the consent of her parents she pronounces the vow. Wondrous thing! Where so many medicines had not availed, what so many sacred vows had not obtained, confidence alone and a vow to St. Leontius accomplished wholly in one moment. For, the vow having been pronounced as has been said, all the pains ceased, the sick girl rose up healed, and walked without inconvenience upon sound feet. Wherefore they also satisfied the vow at Muri. In the year 1658.
[68] At Bremgarten, a free town nearly two hours distant from the monastery of Muri, and deluded those afflicted with them, Sebastianus Riser had a son (by Catharina Ritzart his wife, says Pfleger), Beatus Jacobus, who about the fifth year of his age began to fail in ill health. For although he took food and drink, he yet drew no nourishment into his flesh. Thence he was so bereft of strength that he appeared like a wasted corpse, with only the skin clinging to his bones; and therefore, because the drugs aptly prescribed availed nothing, he was given over to death by two very learned physicians of that same town. But churchmen bade the parents hope for better things, and admonished them to commit their son to the patronage of the holy Leontius. These, acquiescing in the pious admonitions, had the boy, all but dead, carried with a vow to the Saint's remains; and the vow being discharged, they found that from that day their vows and prayers had not been in vain, since the boy's strength began by degrees to be restored, the nourishment of his food to profit, and his flesh to grow, until he obtained full health. In the year 1659.
[69] At Solothurn the lady Maria Elisabeth Lippin, the healing of them beloved wife of master Wolfgangus Brunner, labored under a certain inward disease which mocked the science, counsels and art of three physicians. (Pfleger inserts many things here, in which he sets out how untiringly the physicians labored, first to investigate the origin and nature of the disease, which was at first unknown, and then, when at length they had judged it to be dropsy, how energetically they employed all their powers and industry to drive it out.) For half a year already she lay afflicted and, as it were, destitute of human aid; until, by God's inspiration, she took refuge under the protection of the holy Leontius, vowing a vow of a sacred pilgrimage with two Masses to be said: whereupon the sick woman, freed of her pains, recovered after a very short time. In the year 1676.
[70] is ascribed to the Saint's By another disease, but one equally unknown to the physicians, Anna Maria Toll was held, the twelve-year-old daughter of Petrus Toll and Elisabeth Wieter of Mariastein, where stands the monastery of the congregation famous for the patronage and miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The nights especially were troublesome to her, since for the greatness of her pains she could in no wise rest in bed, but had to be laid out under the open sky (and here indeed, as Pfleger adds, the pains abated and rest came upon her, whereas nevertheless, so long as she was kept in bed, she wretchedly moaned and wailed). Drugs of various kinds availed nothing. There remained to lift her eyes and mind to heaven. Taking counsel, therefore, the parents commend their poor little daughter with a vow to the holy Leontius, with this fruit, that from that time, free of the most grievous evil, she slept quiet nights. In the year 1681.
[71] patronage. In the following year 1682 Anna Maria Reidhar, wife of Jacobus Utiger of Zug, had borne a daughter Elisabeth, but one so wretched from her birth that, had she not drawn breath, she would have been thought a misshapen and bloodless corpse; and because she took in neither nourishment from her mother's milk nor strength from the medicines administered, she lay a sad spectacle to those who looked on and were moved with compassion. And when no natural remedy remained, and the parents had on that account bound themselves by a vow to the holy Leontius on the first day of May of the above-written year, suddenly the livid color of her face was changed into a lively and ruddy one, a sure forerunner of the recovery of health. For so much from day to day, through the inward reception of natural nourishment, did she begin and go on to grow strong and to increase, that on the twenty-fourth day of the same month she was offered by her parents, sound and robust, to the holy Martyr at his relics in Muri, in testimony and thanksgiving for the help afforded.
§ VI. Pleurisy and other sicknesses cured.
[ ] A virgin afflicted with pleurisy, A consecrated virgin, sister Elisabetha Womer, while she was staying at the baths for the sake of restoring her health, was so violently seized with pleurisy that she underwent the utmost peril of life (nor, so Pfleger nearly, did any hope shine upon anyone that she would be snatched from the jaws of death); but she, having made a vow, after God and the most blessed Mother of God, to St. Leontius, drank of water blessed by his holy relics, and with this very water washed away and turned aside the fatal stroke of death which she had received from the baths, being restored to the desired and entire health. In the year 1648.
[73] and another afflicted with a long-lasting disease, are healed. Maria Rütimann of Lachen in the March of Schwyz was sick four whole years, and, although she omitted nothing by which the physicians judged her languor might be healed, yet the remedies were prepared with vain issue: so that the more she desired to recover her strength, the more she languished. Yet that very desire of a healthier life drew her to Muri and to the holy Leontius, to whom, when she had devoted herself and had completed the sacred pilgrimage, on the third day of March in the year 1649 Leontius fulfilled her desire, and within a few days rendered her whole.
[74] Hence Mayer proceeds to a benefit granted by the intercession of St. Leontius to the Reverend Father Thomas Metzler, A priest, a monk of the Order of St. Benedict in the monastery of Zwiefalten, otherwise called ad Duplices aquas, and situated in the diocese of Constance; but since Pfleger presents Metzler's own testimony, I have judged that it, like the others above, rendered into Latin, should be substituted for Mayer's account. When in the year 1649, on the second day of September, I, Father Friar Thomas Metzler, of the Order of St. Benedict in the monastery of Zwiefalten, had felt some infirmity of body, and had on that account taken a fixed number of pills, the whole evil betook itself to my kidneys; whence both the taste for food was taken from me, and the power of resting; nor did anything remain but pain and lamentation. On the fifth day of the same month, about the second hour of the morning, being afflicted more violently than usual, after the divine mercy I called to my aid St. Leontius, even before this my special patron, and presently the pain vanished, and there succeeded so great a hunger that the food left over from the preceding evening, the very sight of which had stirred up nausea in me, warmed at the fire by the help of a certain student of philosophy, I devoured greedily; then I fell asleep, and on the next day was in good health. On the sixth day of September I celebrated Mass, and after dinner presided publicly, before the most reverend abbot and the venerable convent, at the philosophical examination of my hearers.
[75] But since I had wearied myself too much by disputing, of the stone, the evil I had had before assailed me again with a greater onset, nor did any medicines avail to soothe it. Especially since neither master Vorsinger, praetor and physician of Baden in the Aargau, nor I myself had any clear view of the nature or the name of the evil: although we suspected that a stone lay hid. Destitute therefore of human aid, I turned my mind again to the heavenly physician St. Leontius, and with firm confidence besought his help. And forthwith (saving all decency) there broke from me without any pain a stone equal to half a bean of proper size: there following afterward, over an interval of some days, without any sensation, sharp particles of the remaining stone, which both the said lord physician and several others handled before their eyes: all which for my part, after God, I cannot ascribe to anyone without the mark of an ungrateful mind, save to St. Leontius my patron. Eternally be God praised in his holy Martyr. Amen. Thus I the above-written attest with my own hand and with the seal of the venerable monastery of Zwiefalten. Thus far from Pfleger, whom Mayer goes on to render thus.
[76] Barbara Abbt of Boswil (a place not far from Muri, a woman with headache, and having for its parish priest a religious of the same monastery) was for seven years so monstrously tormented with headache that the violence of the pain spread itself into her other limbs also. And the pain increased with the variety of the seasons: and the height of the pain in its ordinary course lasted five weeks, so that she could not refrain from great crying out. At length she cried with her whole heart to the holy helper Leontius, with a vow of making a pilgrimage and offering a gift, and was heard. For from that time she recovered entirely. In the year 1653.
[77] Margarita Hildbrand of Bünzen (that place too has for its parish priest a religious of the said monastery), lawful wife of Joachimus Keller, and another with grievous pains; suffered for a whole year and a half great pains, burnings and prickings in her mouth: and although with many prayers, and with pilgrimages undertaken also through sacred places, she had asked to be freed from those pains, she was not heard; without doubt out of the reverence which the heavenly ones willed to be reserved for the holy Leontius. That pious woman therefore so far did not desist from her constancy and confidence that, relying on a new hope, she vowed a vow to the holy Leontius, and fulfilled it by a sacred pilgrimage to his sacred body. And with how happy an effect! For the woman, healed on the instant, loosed her mouth in the praises of God and of the holy Martyr. In the year 1654.
[78] a man likewise with a deadly disease Mayer neglected in this place a healing which Martinus Läw, a citizen of Rheinfelden, acknowledged to have been divinely granted to him, and ascribed to the intercession of the most blessed Virgin Mary and of the glorious martyr Leontius
This is the summary of the matter as narrated in Pfleger: In the year 1656, on the thirteenth day of the month of May, the said Martinus Läw, wholly sound and vigorous, was suddenly struck with a deadly disease, and brought to such a pass that no hope shone from human remedies: turning therefore to divine ones, he cried aloud upon the mercy of God, and upon the help of his most blessed Mother and of Leontius the martyr, adding a vow of going on pilgrimage to the monastery of Muri, of offering a small gift there, and of hanging up a tablet in honor of the holy Martyr, if only he might receive health; he received it, and discharged what he had promised.
[79] and another are freed from pain of the head. Joannes Fischer, of the parish of Muri, endured for the space of five years intense pains of the head, medicines and other remedies having been taken to no purpose. (So intense were those pains, on Pfleger's testimony, that the poor man thought he would be reduced to madness.) At last he begged help of the holy Leontius devoutly and urgently with a vow, and obtained it. For from that long and well-nigh incurable infirmity he was within a short time thoroughly freed, in the year 1658.
[80] A dangerous disease for a nun, There follows now a benefit which the lady abbess of Amtenhausen, a convent of the Order of St. Benedict in the diocese of Constance, testified had been imparted in the year 1659, by the intercession of our Martyr, to one of the nuns subject to her — in a letter written to the father of Muri, and, as it stands in German in Pfleger, framed in well-nigh these words: The greater glory of God has impelled me, very reverend sir, to address you by this letter, and not to suppress in silence that in the year 1659 one of the nuns subject to me, the lady Anna Elisabetha Holl, born at Villingen, on account of an infirmity and a dangerous disease which was not to be described, went on pilgrimage to your venerable monastery and to the sacred body of the glorious martyr Leontius; and that hitherto (thanks be very greatly to God) by the manifest patronage of the holy martyr Leontius the said disease has been prodigiously and not without the greatest joy of myself and of my sisters thoroughly healed, so that she, the lady formerly afflicted, is now, equally with the other nuns, fit for frequenting the choir and for discharging the other offices. At Amtenhausen the fifth day of April in the year 1670. Since I find so great an interval of time, namely of eleven years, between the year 1659, to which Pfleger attaches the benefit, and the year 1670, in which the testimony is written to have been given, I suspect that an error has crept into one place or the other. The same, doubtless, Mayer suspected, and therefore noted the year of the benefit received as 1669. For my part, if it were my mind to change the one or the other, I should prefer to put 1660 for the year in which the testimony was given; the reason is that Pfleger everywhere observes the chronological order in each of his chapters; and here he presently subjoins a benefit of the year 1664, which, abridged by Mayer, is set out thus.
[81] Master Joannes Georgius Rüthi, counselor and secretary of the council to the most illustrious prince of St. Gall, pains of the stone for others, and also captain of the militia of Toggenburg, was seventy years old when in the year 1664 he was tormented with such monstrous pains of the stone, and with such a swarm of other diseases coming upon him, that it was very wonderful that a man of great age had not succumbed: since neither the industry of the physicians nor the power of medicines had availed anything toward healing the dying man. Destitute therefore of human aid, he directed his prayers and vows to God and to the merits of the holy martyr Leontius, and vows a pilgrimage to the seat and chapel of that same Martyr, and a gift befitting his station. And, to the astonishment of the physicians, the old man was freed from all his evils, and was thereafter a zealous devotee of his Deliverer, to whom he rendered his vow with signal devotion and thanksgiving.
[82] Catharina Forster of Stans, which is the chief town of Lower Unterwalden, Pleurisy and deadly sicknesses lay dying of pleurisy in the year 1665, and because all hope of longer life had failed, on the fourth day of April, which was Holy Saturday itself, by the reception of the holy Sacraments she was preparing herself for the last struggle, being about, in the opinion of her household, to pay the debt of nature that same day, the pleurisy cutting off all her breath. From human remedies, which profited nothing, she raises her hope to divine ones, and promises to visit and venerate the holy Leontius at Muri if she should recover her health; and forthwith the force of the disease so abated that on the following Easter day, rising from her bed of pain, she was present at holy Mass in the parish church, and in a short space, being restored to perfect health, discharged her vow.
[83] Here again we leave Mayer's lucubration for a little, are removed; that we may record two benefits which he passed by, abridged from Pfleger. The first happened thus. In the year 1665 the lady Margareta Gold of the city of Sursee had been brought by a deadly and incurable disease to such a pass that, seeing that she could be helped by no mortal, she already destined herself to certain death; yet, as she awaited its final stroke, there came back to her memory the twofold favor which in the year 1659 her daughter, and in the year 1660 her beloved husband, likewise dying and yet brought back to health, had obtained under the patronage of St. Leontius. Wherefore, trusting that a third favor also would not be refused her, she pronounced a vow to the same holy Martyr, and thus, escaping the death that was upon her, obtained health and entire strength.
[84] The other has nearly this sense: In the year 1667 Joannes Pfister of Dagmersellen, effusions of blood cease. a place in the territory of Lucerne, was so drained by copious effusions of blood that, when no effectual remedy could be found for staunching them, he was in the most present peril of losing his life, and therefore had himself fortified for the journey of eternity by the most holy Sacraments of the dying. So situated, he sent up a vow to St. Leontius, sought help, and obtained it. For presently, the flux of blood being checked, all peril of life vanished at the same time, and his former strength returned together with his health.
[85] In the year 1668 the most illustrious lord Carolus an der Allmend and the lady Dorothea Pfyffer had a five-year-old son Josephus Christophorus, A boy is suddenly healed. whom a certain fatal defluxion so invaded that for fourteen whole days he lay speechless, and lay in his little bed palsied on one side as if from apoplexy. The power of healing was wanting to the medicines also: on that account the parents by mutual counsel invoke the wonder-working Leontius, and send up a vow of a pilgrimage and of a votive tablet to be hung up at his sepulcher and chapel. Wondrous thing! Both the pronouncing of the vow and the healing of the boy coincided in one moment, as it were, so that the boy, restored to health, came with the maidservant who nursed him to Muri on the first day of September, the eve of the holy Leontius, for the discharging of the vow: from Lucerne, that is, where, on Pfleger's testimony, the parents dwelt.
[86] Pain of the head, A woman of the parish of Starrkirch in the territory of Solothurn, Anna Catharina Lach by name, was held for six or seven days by so intense a pain of the head that she could in no wise enjoy any rest whatever, nay, believed that for the violence of the pain she would die. What should the afflicted woman do? She turned all hope of averting the pain to the holy martyr Leontius, and binds herself by a vow to visit his sacred body at Muri with a reverent mind, together with a sign or testimony of gratitude. And behold, in that same hour it seemed to her as though an icy chill had slipped down from her head into her stomach; from which moment all torment vanished, and she recovered entirely. In the year 1679.
[87] flux of blood, But in the year next following, Anna Barbara Keller of Baden in Switzerland (daughter of the spouses master Jacobus Keller and the lady Anna Margarita Offinger) for three days and nights poured forth from mouth and nostrils blood so copious that, since the flux could be stayed by no remedy, she seemed about to shed her last drop. Her pious mother Anna Margarita Offinger, moved with compassion over her daughter, sends up a vow of a pilgrimage and of a Mass to be read at the altar of the holy Martyr (and of a votive tablet to be hung up); and at once, after the vow was sent up, that fatal flux so ceased that she was seen to shed not even one more drop, and wondrously escaped from the jaws of present death.
[88] convulsions In the year 1682 convulsions so cruelly shook and twisted the ten-year-old boy Carolus Rudolphus Lüthoff of the borough of Münster that, being despaired of as to longer life, he was provided with the Sacred rites by the parish priest Joannes Udalricus am Stein, as one soon to be the prey of death. For the medicines availed nothing. It remained that his parents, master Stephanus Lütholff and Maria Schindler, should direct their hope and prayers and vows to heaven and to the holy Leontius: which when they had done, the boy, freed from the convulsions, rose from his bed, though somewhat weakened, and together with his lady mother discharged his vow to his Helper at his chapel with much thanksgiving.
[89] and pleurisy are driven away. In the same year Anna Catharina Schmid of Tuggen in the March of Schwyz lay most perilously sick of pleurisy, so that, the drugs failing of their power, she saw before her eyes a death all but immediate. But after she had bound herself by a vow to the holy martyr Leontius, the deadly plague in that moment, as it were, gave way like a shadow and withdrew from her. Whence afterward she satisfied her vow at Muri.
§ VII. Life and health granted to several who were dying, and to others the power of receiving the Sacraments of the Church.
[ ] Persons brought to the last extremity The first whom the holy Leontius had delivered from death was an infant begotten by his father Fridolinus Meyer at Neuenkirch, of the lordship of Rothenburg (in the canton of Lucerne). The tender child languished from its mother's womb, and the harmful languor increased with the days of its life; until, coming to the end of its brief life, it lay half dead in its little bed and was drawing its last breath. The parents, with heart and mind bent upon the intercession of the holy Leontius, promise to venerate his relics at Muri; whereby they at once obtained for the infant its life entire indeed, but not deliverance from its former infirmity. Therefore, about to discharge the vow itself, both parents set out upon the journey of pilgrimage with the ailing infant, and venerate the sacred bones of the Martyr with what piety they could in the church of Muri; and from that time the infant began from day to day to recover, until it was endowed with the perfect health which it had never before enjoyed. In the year 1647, on the twenty-first day of November.
[91] In the year 1650 measles, or red pustules, were afflicting to the point of death a two-year-old baby girl of certain noble parents. two infants And when at one time, straitened by the violence of her pains, she begged her lady mother to lift her from her little bed, the mother in her compassion bound her by a vow and took her into her lap. But she straightway began to grow pale, to be bereft of strength, to close her eyes, not unlike one dying or dead, without breath or any other sign of surviving life. The mother, terrified by the sudden event, lays the child back in her bed, binds herself by a vow, after God and the holy Mother of God, to St. Leontius (namely of going on pilgrimage, as Pfleger writes, to his sacred relics in the church of Muri), and falling upon her knees begins to pray the Psalter of the most blessed Mother of God with those who were present. And in the midst of her praying she sees, with the tenderest gladness of heart, her little daughter, as one hitherto dead, grow strong, move, draw breath, and show other signs of life, to the astonishment of all, who affirmed with one accord that this could by no means have happened without a present miracle. And within fourteen days the little daughter recovered entirely, and much better than before her sickness, and was well thereafter.
[92] In the year 1654 Catharina Ruoff, a girl of marriageable age,
(daughter of the spouses Wilhelmus Ruoff and Margareta Suter) of the hamlet of Egg in our parish of Muri, and a maiden are preserved unharmed. being seized with a violent and unknown disease, swelled up so over her whole body with the bitterest pains and torments that she was to household and neighbors alike a sad example to look upon, and a most certain spoil of death. (Her parents therefore, as we learn from Pfleger, seeing that her life was despaired of, had her fortified for a happy passing by the accustomed Sacraments of the Catholic Church, and were now awaiting that passing at every moment;) for twenty times she drew her last breath under death close at hand; until her pious mother, whom love made resourceful, poured into the dying girl's mouth some of the water blessed by the relics of the holy Martyr. When this had been taken by the sick girl, her spirit was somewhat strengthened. Which when the bystanders observed, they gave her by degrees more of the same water to drink, adding a vow of a holy Mass to be celebrated at his sacred remains, with so happy a result that from her hands and feet, the skin breaking, a great quantity of pus flowed out with corrupt matter, and at length the scars closed of their own accord; and thus the girl, already destined for death, recovered entire and perfect health.
[93] To a woman the power of receiving the Sacraments is granted; In the same year, on the ninth day of January, Apollonia ander Huob of Baar (a place near the city of Zug, the chief town of the canton of the same name), a woman otherwise pious, of about fifty years, suddenly and unexpectedly took to her bed in such a state that, bereft not only of speech but of her other senses also, she lay for twenty-five hours as though about to breathe out her soul. Her household, anxious for the salvation of the departing soul, lest she should pass out of this world without the accustomed Sacraments, pronounced a vow to the holy Leontius. In that same hour the vital spirits began to return and all her senses to be restored, so that, being brought to full possession of her mind, she was fortified by the priest with the sacred Sacraments of the dying, to her own and her household's greatest consolation. Having received these therefore, she relapsed into her former swoon, and on the thirteenth day of the same month rendered her soul to her Creator.
[94] a man in his agony is granted life and health, In the year 1661 there were at Altendorf in the March of Schwyz two spouses, Beatus Egger and Maria Stähelin. The husband, on the very day of his birthday, seized with a fatal disease, was drawing his last breath, and lay for the space of half a quarter of an hour without any sign of present life: so that much weeping and wailing filled the house. His wife nevertheless, like a faithful Rachel, weeping as she was, commends her husband and his life to the holy Leontius, vowing a sacred pilgrimage to be undertaken to his tomb, and with such efficacy that her dying husband — or, in the opinion of the others, already dead — breathed again immediately after the vow, and that very day rose from his bed, and was restored to strength so firm that he himself with his wife carried out the vow at Muri.
[95] another obtains the use of his tongue for confessing his sins, The benefit which Mayer subjoins to these is reported in Pfleger in a testimony written out in German by the parish priest of the place with his own hand, in well-nigh these words: Melchior ander Huob, an honest man of my parish, more than eighty years old, was in the year 1661 found by his wife Verena Müller in his bed afflicted with a grave infirmity, and deprived of the use of his tongue. And when he had lain thus speechless for about half an hour without any change, the said wife conceived a vow of making a pilgrimage to the wonder-working martyr St. Leontius in the monastery of Muri — not indeed in such wise that the old man Melchior himself should be bound by the vow, but so that it might be fulfilled by other persons. And behold, as soon as the vow was sent up, the sick man's tongue was loosed, so that he was able to confess his sins by word of mouth, and to be cleansed of them before his departure from life.
[96] a third is freed from the punishment of a neglected vow. Afterward the said Melchior's son Georgius ander Huob with his daughter Magdalena fulfilled the vow on the day sacred to St. Martin the bishop. But the tablet which had likewise been promised he did not offer at all, although he was asked to do so: whence it was not without reason believed that the said Georgius, on account of his negligence in fulfilling the vow and his omission of the tablet to be offered, was punished by God with the infirmity and monstrous pain with which he was presently afflicted in his right foot. Yet, so situated, and animated by a firm hope of recovering his soundness, he took refuge with St. Leontius by sending up a vow. Nor did his hope deceive him; for at once, from the sending up of the vow, and before it was even then fulfilled, all pain abated and wholly ceased. Given at Ruswil the sixth day of August in the year 1662. Thus I attest, Joannes Fridolinus Lindacher, dean and parish priest there. Ruswil is a place in the territory of Lucerne.
[97] The little son of Joannes Georgius Zum Bach, a citizen of Zug, four and a half years old (Pfleger calls him Henricus Gebhardus), had so failed in strength To a dying boy life and health, that he neither would nor could take any food whatever (besides this he was tormented with a most violent thirst), and had therefore come to the last extremity (so far, adds Pfleger, that on a certain day he seemed to be on the very point of giving up the ghost). His father commends the dying boy to the holy Leontius with a vow; nor in vain: for the little boy on the next day was eager to spring from his bed, although his weakened strength did not allow it: yet he took food and nourishment, and thus was wholly restored to health by the intercession of the holy Martyr. Pfleger notes that the vow was conceived in honor of the most holy Trinity, of the most blessed Virgin Mary who is venerated in the monastery of Einsiedeln in the canton of Schwyz, and of St. Leontius in the monastery of Muri; and he notes the year 1662.
[98] In the year 1665 convulsions, or, as others more truly judged, an apoplectic flux, were pressing to death on the seventeenth day of June Jacobus Petrus de Roth, parish priest in the lordship of Sargans (Sargans is a district of Switzerland, and to a priest the favor of the sacred Viaticum is obtained. called by the inhabitants Sarganserland). It was all over with him; and because he was bereft of his senses, he had of necessity to go without the sacred rites also. And when his kinswoman (Margareta Brüödler) had made a vow to St. Leontius (namely of going on pilgrimage to the church of Muri, of procuring the sacrifice of the Mass, and of hanging up a votive tablet, as Pfleger explains), he returned to his senses, confessed his sins, received the sacred Viaticum, and on the following day, with great consolation of heart, fell asleep in the Lord.
[99] Anna Catharina Bracht of the town of Uznach was so violently harried by headache Others drawing their last breath, that, being driven to madness, she had for nine days to be bound with iron chains and ropes. Until, coming to the last extremity (and fortified with the sacred Oil, as Pfleger has it), she was drawing her last breath. Her husband Daniel Wyssman, having made a vow to St. Leontius, sends men to discharge the vow at Muri. In the same hour in which they went out of the house, the madness departed together with the pain, she returned to a sound mind, and thereupon to entire health. In the year 1666.
[100] Master Joannes Hog, parish priest of Illfurth in Upper Alsace or the Sundgau, a vow having been made, and dean of the rural chapter throughout the Sundgau, was detained by a grave infirmity at Mulhouse, a Calvinist city, to which he had fled on account of the tumults of war which were then blazing up between the French and the Austrians; in which infirmity, because medicines went for nothing, he so failed in strength that, as though the course of his life were completed, he lay for a long time destitute of all his senses; and, his life being despaired of by the bystanders, there was talk and counsel of nothing but his burial. There was present among the bystanders Henricus Stecklin of the city of Ensisheim (Ensisheim is a town of Germany in Alsace, and is distant two German miles from Mulhouse), otherwise a native of the lordship and district of Muri, who, moved by love, reverence and compassion (over a man who had not yet passed his forty-sixth year, on Pfleger's testimony), falls upon his knees before the dying man's bed, and with hands uplifted sends up a vow of going on pilgrimage to the sacred relics of the holy Leontius at Muri (and of offering a votive tablet). And behold! Scarcely could one have said five Our Fathers when the dying man came to himself, and ratified the promises, and commended himself and his recovery to the holy Martyr; and after a few days he rose sound from his bed, and a little afterward had the vow discharged by that same cooper Stecklin. 1674.
[101] regain life Nearly the same benefit was obtained by the intervention of the holy Martyr by Franciscus Leontius Meris at Kaiserstuhl (in Switzerland), commonly Kayserstuel, the treasurer of the city, on behalf of his son, whom in the year 1684 the heat of disease so drained of strength that, far removed from all sense, he lay motionless in his bed like a dead man. The father and his friends therefore, being called, were exchanging talk of his burial. But the father, not unmindful of his patron Leontius, whose name indeed he bore, lets himself down upon his knees, and with a vow to that same holy Martyr entreats the Lord with ardent prayers that he would graciously grant life to his son, and his son alive to himself. And when he rose from praying, he saw his son suddenly hastening from the gates of death to life, and received him most lovingly and gladly, in a short time entirely safe and sound.
[102] and health. There are wanting here in Mayer's Lucubration two benefits, which we supply from Pfleger's German booklet. The first is narrated nearly thus: Maria Catharina Nussler, wife of Christianus Bernhards in Uznach, a town of Switzerland, having on the fourteenth day of March 1685 happily brought forth a healthy child, herself a little afterward fell into a most grave sickness. Three physicians, and those most experienced, were summoned to her, but however great the diligence they employed, every attempt fell out in vain, so that they accordingly declared her to be a victim of death. A hard sentence indeed for the sick woman and for her husband. Nevertheless both, mindful of the benefits which God was continually bestowing by the intervention of St. Leontius, vow a pilgrimage to Muri to be undertaken by them both together, and a devout veneration of his sacred bones; and presently the dying woman was better, and after a short time was restored to entire health; and the promised pilgrimage she herself fulfilled on the ninth day of June of the same year.
[103] They recover. The account of the second benefit is comprised in the following testimony, translated from the German tongue into Latin: Let it be known and manifest to all that Maria Verena Zum Bach, an upright, devout and pious woman of Baar in the canton of Zug, about forty-three years of age, in the month of May of the year 1691 was seized with so grave a disease that after six weeks, during which she lay sick of it, she was believed at every moment to be about to give up her last breath. At length, being even then in possession of herself, taking refuge together with her husband and children with the divine omnipotence and with the intercession of the Saints, she made a vow to St. Leontius in the monastery of Muri, that the merciful God, through the glorious merits and patronage of St. Leontius the martyr, would mercifully grant health to her (the said Maria Verena), if only it were in accord with the divine will. In the meantime she duly confessed her sins with uplifted hands and with an inmost sense of sorrow, and was fortified with both the most holy Sacraments of the Church. And at the same moment of time in which she had pronounced the vow she began so to recover that (greatest be the praises and thanks to the divine goodness) she was restored to entire health. And since that vast benefit could, after God, be ascribed to the patronage of none but the glorious martyr Leontius, on that account I the undersigned, as witnesses of the thing accomplished, the father
and the children, and other persons worthy of credit, and summoned them to me; after a diligent examination I found each particular, as they have hitherto been narrated, to be true, and for the sake of fuller confirmation, being asked, I wrote it out with my own hand and secured it with my seal. Done at Baar the fifteenth day of September in the year 1692. Franciscus Müller, unworthy parish priest there.
§ VIII. Solace and help afforded to women in hard and perilous childbirth.
[ ] Many laboring under difficulty of childbirth Benedictus de Wangen, a citizen of the township of Einsiedeln, had had by his wife Verena Sultzer three children, none of which came to the grace of Baptism; and when in the year 1647 his wife was pregnant with a fourth child, and the time was at hand for her to bring forth, she was shaken with violent pains through the whole night, about to perish, as she herself feared, together with the child. And the opportune counsels and remedies availed nothing to further the birth; until the Reverend Father Wolfgangus Wisshaupt, curate of the parish of Einsiedeln, sent to the husband a rosary blessed by contact with the sacred relics of the holy Leontius, that he might hang it about the neck of the woman in labor with a vow that, if the child to be born should be a male, he would call him by the name of Leontius, and would undertake a sacred pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Leontius. It was done as commanded: and the woman within the space of a quarter of an hour brought forth without pain a healthy boy, those who were present being astonished with wonder and joy, and praising God and St. Leontius for a signal miracle of the divine compassion. And what the husband had vowed he fulfilled exactly and promptly; and he named the boy in holy Baptism Josephus Leontius.
[105] The document here subjoined, Mayer's rendering being again laid aside, are helped, I have rendered into Latin from Pfleger himself. To the most holy Trinity, God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, be praise, honor and glory; thanks be to the glorious Queen of heaven, the Virgin Mother of God Mary; praise be also to St. Leontius the martyr, the powerful patron of the most famous church of Muri, and the helper of the Christian faithful placed in calamity. It is just that the signal benefit of God which he has afforded through the efficacious intercession of the Mother of God and of the holy martyr Leontius be not passed over in silence, but be proclaimed throughout the world. I, Mathias Bochssler of Cham in the territory of Zug, beholding with the utmost grief of mind my beloved wife Catharina Mayer — when she was about to bring forth into the light the first fruit of her womb — lying now for the third day in the last extremity and in peril of life, so that every remedy, aid and counsel of the religious as well as of the secular persons who had been called for this purpose profited nothing at all, and both the mother, inasmuch as she was already bereft of her senses and had been fortified for death with the holy Sacraments of the Church, and the child were despaired of by everyone — I therefore in that supreme necessity vowed a pilgrimage to the most blessed Virgin of Einsiedeln, and together with it another to Muri, along with a sacrifice of the Mass to be celebrated at the altar of St. Leontius, and added that I would name the child in holy Baptism after the name of St. Leontius, if God should restore the boy alive to us and the mother with the favor of health and life. Thereupon a living child was born, baptized by the women on account of the urgent necessity, and presently after receiving Baptism it died again; but the mother (praise be to God and everlasting thanksgiving) enjoys good health once more. Done the twenty-ninth day of November of the year 1653.
[106] With greater peril, says Mayer, did Margareta Koch of Buttikon (wife of Conradus Stoklin) come off. by making a vow For nine whole days (from the third to the twelfth of February, according to Pfleger) overwhelmed with the pains of childbirth, she labored to bring forth her child, physicians and suitable medicines being summoned to advance the birth. All went for nothing; until the woman in labor herself (for she was a native of Muri) made a vow to the wonder-working Patron of the men of Muri, to venerate his sepulcher on a sacred pilgrimage, with so speedy a fruit that, the pains being immediately removed, she brought forth her child most happily. In the year 1653.
[107] to the Saint, Of the patronage of the same Martyr Adelheidis Fuchs of the parish of Cham had the joy, when an untimely child, which she had carried in her womb only six months and two weeks, (she brought forth). After the time just mentioned had passed, the pains of childbirth laid hold of her, in which she labored three days to bring forth the child, but with fruitless effort, so that nothing but an unhappy miscarriage was expected. Her husband Rudolphus Werder and the woman in labor, that they might forestall the evil, commend the child with a vow to God, to the Mother of God, and to the holy Leontius, that it might at least be brought forth alive: (and they vowed, as Pfleger writes, a pilgrimage to be undertaken to Muri and a Mass to be procured at the altar of St. Leontius). Without delay the infant is born, and because it showed sure signs of present life, it is baptized (and receives the name of Leontius), and almost before it beheld the light it departed to the light inaccessible. Pfleger indicates that this happened on the second day of April of the year 1654.
[108] The present From the same Pfleger I render into Latin a twofold testimony, embracing benefits not unlike one another. The first runs well-nigh thus: To the greater glory and honor of God, of the most blessed Virgin Mary, and of all the Saints, and namely of St. Leontius the martyr, I, Maria Meyer, dwelling with my beloved husband Joannes Gaspar Mayer at Cham, testify that the highest help and favor was imparted to me by almighty God through the intercession of St. Leontius the martyr in my greatest calamity. For when I, Maria Meyer, on the sixth day of February of the year 1655 was tormented from morning until evening with exceedingly bitter pains of childbirth, and yet with all straining and labor was unable to bring forth the child, I plainly feared, as also all who were present rightly feared, that I should miscarry. At length an upright and pious woman came in, who cast about my neck a rosary consecrated by contact with the relics of St. Leontius the martyr, admonishing me to conceive a firm confidence in the help of the holy Martyr: and suddenly, without any labor, without human assistance, without any pain, a sound and vigorous boy came forth. The name of Leontius would have been given to the boy in holy Baptism as a perpetual memorial of the benefit received, had not in the past year my firstborn son, because in a like peril, by the aid of the blessed Martyr, I had happily brought forth, been called by that same name. The German word psalter-bethlin Mayer renders as Rosarium, and I have followed him, because I did not know what it properly signifies.
[109] help of St. Leontius The sense of the other testimony is likewise nearly this: Let it be known and manifest to all that in the year 1658, on the fourth day of October, on which falls the feast of the seraphic father Francis of Assisi, the most noble and pious matron the Lady Maria Magdalena Läw, wife of the Lord Franciscus Ackermann, treasurer in Lower Unterwalden, was in childbirth in such peril that everyone judged her life to be despaired of; nay, that not only did the loss of temporal life threaten her, but the loss of eternal happiness threatened the child also, inasmuch as it would die with its mother and be destitute of the hope of receiving Baptism. Wherefore, laying aside the remedies of human art, and directing her mind to heavenly things, in that supreme and most present peril she promised to the wonder-working martyr St. Leontius a pilgrimage to the monastery of Muri, to be performed by two or three persons, with a small gift for the celebrating of the sacrifice of the Mass. Immediately after the vow she happily brought forth a boy, who received the name of Jacobus Franciscus, and who is living even now. Praise be to almighty God and to his Mother. Wherefore it was just to extol with repeated praise the supreme Godhead together with the Virgin Mother, and to celebrate, and to declare to everyone in thanksgiving and to make public, the patronage of St. Leontius, in witness whereof I have added these slight verses. To this testimony no one's name is read subscribed; Pfleger nevertheless advises that it was given by the most noble lord Ackermann himself, the husband of the woman in labor. And the verses are subjoined immediately to the testimony itself, and in them the woman is brought in speaking, and with the greatest expression of a grateful mind briefly repeats the history of the benefit received. Further, in the titles of the said lord Ackermann I have omitted two or three words, not knowing in what manner I should render them.
[110] Then the praised Pfleger sets out the benefits which two other women in childbirth reported as received from St. Leontius. is experienced. Receive the summary of each narration. Catharina Filiger, wife of Joannes Bütler of Hünenberg, was twice — namely in the year 1656 and in 1660 — while she carried a child in her womb, so struck by the sudden terrors to which she was much subject that she was believed to be about to bring forth before the appointed time, or rather to suffer a miscarriage; for through nearly eight whole days she was shaken with the pains of childbirth. She vowed to St. Leontius a pilgrimage and a sacrifice of the Mass, and on both occasions, having escaped the peril, completed the time of her pregnancy and happily brought forth.
[111] In the year 1660, on the twenty-second day of May, Margareta Lüthi of Werd, They experience it. a place of the parish of Lunkhofen in the diocese of Constance, wife of Joannes Jacobus Burgiser, had already for three days been in labor amid the most violent pains, nor, whatever help was brought to her, did any hope appear that she would bring forth a living fruit. At length she cried aloud for the aid of St. Leontius, and promised that, if she were granted a living child, she would go on pilgrimage to the church of Muri, would procure a holy Mass, and would offer a votive tablet. Scarcely had she sent up the vow when at once the infant came forth into the light, to the wonder of those who were present and their praise of God. Of these things Mayer makes no mention, whose rendering I again take up.
[112] Joannes Jacobus Kälin, otherwise a citizen of Einsiedeln, from Lauingen in the county of Sulz, [[ ]] confessed, and set down as received from the holy martyr Leontius, the life of his wife Anna Eberlin, and likewise of the child born of her. For when she, on the second day of the month of September in the year 1661, being close upon her delivery, had undergone with her child the utmost peril of life — inasmuch as for six or seven whole days before she had been wretchedly racked with convulsions, so that it seemed to be all over with the safety of both child and mother — her husband, recalling that on that very day the solemnity of the holy Leontius was being celebrated at Muri, falls upon his knees and begins earnestly to entreat the holy Martyr for the safety of those in peril. And scarcely had he begun his prayer when the woman in labor at once brought forth her child into the light alive. Another sorrow followed the joy. For the pious mother, stripped of well-nigh all her strength by the pain and labor of the birth, fell into a deadly swoon, not to be turned aside by any fomentations or restoratives. (Pfleger, describing the woman's wretched state at greater length, says that all the signs of death close at hand were present, and that indeed the women who had attended her in labor, as they left the house, affirmed that it was all over.) The husband returns to the fountain whence the former favor had issued, vows a vow to the holy Leontius, and without delay his dying wife returns to her mind and her strength, and recovers.
[113] in an unhappy Sorrow was suffered by Verena Egli, wife of Wilhelmus Weibel of Schongau (in the territory of Lucerne), when, being about to bring forth an infant in the year 1665, she was in the greatest peril of her own life and of her child's. The infant, its little arm being thrust out, was baptized, and was found by sure signs to be still living for six hours afterward; but afterward it ceased to live. The woman lay two days, the child being now dead, burdened beyond measure, and unable to bring it forth, although medicines were employed. At length, after three Masses had been celebrated in honor of St. Leontius, as had been agreed by vow, the lifeless child forthwith
was brought forth, and the mother a little afterward rose safe from her bed of death and pain.
[114] childbirth Elisabeth Zimmermann of Sulz in the territory of Laufenburg (in Swabia) bore to her husband Andreas Weis four lifeless children; so that the afflicted spouses lost all hope of begetting living sons by any precaution or natural remedy whatever. But the merits of the holy Leontius supplied the defect of nature, after in the year 1665 they had made a pilgrimage in full faith to his chapel at Muri. For Elisabeth in that same year, on the twenty-second day of August, bore her Andreas a living child.
[115] wretchedly situated The immediate help of the holy Martyr was obtained in the year 1669 by Barbara Schmid of Dottikon (a place is in that district of Switzerland which among the Germans is called die Freyen Ampter, among the Latins the Free Provinces). In the middle of the month of July of the aforesaid year the time of her bringing forth had come, and the pains of childbirth lasted eight days, to be advanced by no natural art or labor. When therefore, her strength failing, matters had come to the last extremity with the woman in labor, by the counsel of the bystanders she commended her wretched state by vow to the wonder-working Leontius, and forthwith brought forth into the light a healthy child. To God and to the holy Leontius be glory and thanksgiving!
[116] are succored. But how great a kindness did the Lord do to Maria Walthart of Neunkirch (a place of the diocese of Constance), that she might bring forth her fruit into the light! The day of her delivery had drawn near, and the pains began to tear at her vitals with such violence that, convulsions rushing upon her, she lay three days bereft of mind and senses, and, as one about to perish together with her child, was anointed with the sacred Oil for the last struggle. But after her husband Ulricus Stephan, at the persuasion of the parish priest Jacobus Hegglin, had implored the help of St. Leontius with a vow of a sacred pilgrimage and of one Mass, he obtained the saving effect of his petition. For not long after the vow there came forth from the womb, without the aid of a midwife or of any other person, a boy, whom on the next day they named Leontius in the sacred font. The mother nevertheless continued for two whole days to be without understanding and sense. But at length, when she came to her mind, learning with difficulty and only through the parish priest — since she did not know what had been done concerning her — of the infant's birth, she acknowledged that it had been mercifully granted her by the right hand of the Lord and by the strong arm of the holy martyr Leontius, giving thanks to God and to her Helper. In the year 1669.
[117] Joannes Gsandter of the March of Schwyz was so unfortunate in his marriage Lifeless children that he could not have a living child by his wife. Seven she had conceived, had carried the full number of months, and had brought forth at the due time of birth, yet all without life, and therefore without the grace of holy Baptism. So that the unhappy mother of death, consumed with grief, shortly laid down her own life also. Her husband, when he had afterward married another, obtained no better fortune: for she too brought forth a first and a second child lifeless. Then indeed friends and neighbors, led by compassion for the most afflicted spouses, praised and urged many things concerning the merits of the holy Martyr of Muri, and pressed them to take refuge in his patronage with full faith and confidence. They obey the opportune counsel, set out on the journey to his sacred bones, venerate and pray to the holy Martyr earnestly with what devotion they could, and effectually receive what they prayed for: for in that same year, which was 1672, the wife bore to her husband a living daughter.
[118] No less a favor obtained by the intercession of the wonder-working Martyr Jacobus Grosmann of Wangen in the territory of Lucerne, such as were wont to be borne to whom his wife Anna Buecher had brought forth three lifeless children in succession. For she, other remedies being scorned, hastened in her affliction to Muri, and, the accustomed duties of pilgrims being performed, carried home with her a blessed crown of flowers, and at successive times consumed a little of it mixed with her food, and at the time of her delivery placed it upon her breast; and on her husband's own name-day (the twenty-fifth of the month of July, the feast of St. James the apostle) bore him a vigorous boy. In the year 1680.
[119] Nearly the same benefit was obtained from the patronage of St. Leontius in the following year 1681 by Anna Kauffmann of Schneisingen in the upper county of Baden, are granted alive. who from the three male children whom she had borne void of life sadly, and not unreasonably, foreboded that thereafter also she would not bring forth a living child. Yet, that she might forestall the evil by anticipating it, she called upon the holy Leontius in her vows with tears rather than with eloquent words, in well-nigh these simple words: "If thou help me and make me obtain my vow, the child which I trust to bring forth alive through thee, I shall name by thy name, and shall make a pious pilgrimage to thee at Muri." The holy Martyr heard the tears and vows of her who prayed, and on the first day of May of the same above-written year granted the woman Anna a living male child. Ordering the boy, on Pfleger's testimony, to be called Leontius in Baptism, she openly professed that she had been enriched with him not by the benefit of nature, but by the patronage and merits of St. Leontius.
[120] Maria Vögeli, wife of Adam zum Steeg of the valley of Mettau near Laufenburg, They are granted, not only bore her children in pain, but with greater pain and grief brought forth all of them, namely four, lifeless and deprived of the grace of holy Baptism. Meanwhile many things were reported among the common people concerning the merits of the holy Leontius, how far he had brought immediate help to several other women in the same necessity. Stirred by these, Adam and Maria made a vow that they would go on pilgrimage to the holy Martyr, and that, if they were blessed with a living male child, they would call him by his name. Nor indeed did Leontius delay his help. For the woman at once, in the first birth after the vow, brought forth a living boy on the ninth day of July 1683, whom she called Leontius. And as this miracle spread abroad through the whole valley, seven families gave their sons the name of Leontius.
[121] A woman in hard labor is relieved; Maria Catharina Stultz, wife of Melchior Liembt at Stans in Unterwalden, had already for two whole days undergone the exceedingly sharp and dangerous pains of childbirth, and it was rightly feared that the birth of the child might bring about the death of the mother. A pilgrimage to the church of Muri was promised to St. Leontius, and the woman in labor herself was girded with one of those bands which are consecrated every year in the name of St. Leontius in the aforesaid church, of great profit to women with child and in labor, as was said in n. 24. Straightway the peril ceased, all the pains subsided, and a living child was born on the thirtieth day of July in the year 1684. These things, but at greater length, Pfleger has, Mayer being silent.
[122] a barren woman conceives fruit. And the holy Leontius is present not only to women bringing forth by the power of his intercession, but also makes the barren fruitful. Elisabeth Schmuck endured for a long time from her husband Jacobus Ritz of Hummelwald, because she was barren, many injuries, stings of words, and other troubles and evils. What should the woman do, well-nigh worn out with grief and destitute of all solace? She resolved and vowed to visit and venerate the sacred relics of the holy Leontius with pious prayers and a Mass to be read; and immediately after some weeks she perceived that she was with child, and, God being favorable, through the merits of that same holy Martyr in the year 1685 brought forth a healthy infant into the light; whereupon peace and concord between the spouses was reconciled and made firm.
§ IX. Infants, thought to be dead, granted life and holy Baptism.
[ ] Infants When in the year 1655 Verena Mittler of Döttingen near Klingnau (a town of Switzerland in the county of Baden) lay perilously for two days in the bitterest pains of childbirth, and the child was believed to have been killed both by the pregnant mother and by the midwives, so that none of them ventured to wash the little infant with the sacred water on the little arm which it stretched out. But when they had commended with a vow to St. Leontius the child, in the opinion of all dead, after two hours had passed the infant in its mother's womb gave signs of life once more, and presently came forth alive into the light, and was publicly washed with the sacred water in the church by the parish priest of Klingnau on the fourth of September in the year 1655, and was called Joannes Henricus, after the name of his father Henricus Kessenberg, and thereafter went on to live a sound life. This event, the witnesses having been heard and examined, the Reverend Lord Rudolphus Schmid, parish priest of Klingnau, wrote out for Muri; whose letter, which stands in German in Pfleger, it has not seemed good to render into Latin, because it is stuffed with circumlocutions and unnecessary details.
[124] thought to be dead So Barbara Henneler of Beromünster in the year 1658 (on the seventh day of December) with the greatest difficulty (in her first delivery) brought forth a lifeless boy, who, when he had lain half an hour like a bloodless corpse, his anxious and sorrowing parents (namely Barbara herself and her husband, whom Pfleger calls Wilhelmus Spani) set their minds upon this, that at least through the grace of holy Baptism he might enjoy eternal life, of whom the weakness of nature had taken away the temporal; and they called to their aid the holy Leontius with a vow (of a pilgrimage to the church of Muri) and with unbroken hope. Nor did their holy hope deceive them: for at once after the vow, in successive order, the vital spirits, and then motion, took possession of the little body, and, life being restored and given back, and the child washed also by holy Baptism from the original stain, he was thereafter always sound.
[125] Elisabeth Hegglin of Menzingen (a place not far distant from the city of Zug), lawful wife of master Fabianus Schön, happily come to life again; being pregnant with child, for the space of some weeks felt the child no longer. Anxious therefore and troubled lest she should carry and bring forth a miscarriage, she went on pilgrimage for the sake of a vow to the holy Leontius, that by his intercession she might enjoy a happy delivery. The pilgrimage being completed, the mother perceived that the child had come to life again, and afterward happily brought it forth into the light. In the year 1659.
[126] In the following year 1660 there was born to Jacobus Rey of Geltwil (a village of the territory of Muri) an infant (by Maria Langi his lawful wife), which, when it was being carried to the church others to be cleansed at the sacred font, died on the way. Those who were carrying the infant, in their terror, left nothing untried by which they might draw out signs of life, but in vain. But when afterward they had taken refuge in the patronage of the holy martyr Leontius with a vow (of a pilgrimage to the church of Muri), the dead infant gave tokens of returning life, and was baptized, and after Baptism was carried home alive, and on the same day happily died.
[127] I the undersigned have examined repeatedly Saloma Schuomacher, midwife of Beromünster, and Catharina Schlegler concerning the pitiable infant likewise which was born to Joannes Jacobus Krusi by Elisabetha Weber his lawful wife on the eighth day of June in the year 1660, its belly namely being burst, its bowels hanging out, its back pierced in various places, its feet and shins grown together. Both these women, therefore, worthy of credit and no otherwise than as if bound by oath, testify that the mother, when she was in labor and feared lest she should bring forth a lifeless child, bound herself by a vow of a Mass to be read before the sacred and wonder-working body of the martyr St. Leontius, that through the merits and the powerful patronage of the glorious Martyr Leontius the child might come forth into the world alive. Thereupon the woman in labor herself, in the utmost fear of losing her life,
was placed, seeing that against the order of nature she brought forth the child in a wholly unwonted manner. But they say that the mother, once delivered of the child, repented of the vow she had made, and said that she was unwilling to procure the promised sacrifice of the Mass, since she had obtained not a living but a dead child.
[128] Meanwhile, while the mother, feeble and much weakened by the labors and pains of childbirth, was being laid back in her bed, held for dead, the midwife labored for a whole hour, employing every remedy whatsoever, to draw forth some sign of life from the child she had borne, but obtained no token of it. At last she began to test for life by blowing; but she noticed that the breath she blew in burst out through the opening in the back. Wherefore she laid aside all hope of the infant's life, since by all indications she judged the infant's very inward parts to be mutilated and broken through. Then the mother, weeping both over her own unhappiness and over the lot of her dead child, returned to herself and took better counsel, renewed the vow, and firmly resolved to procure the Mass to be read in honor of St. Leontius the martyr which she had promised before. And behold: scarcely had she so resolved when the midwife noticed that a pulse was beginning in the vein of the breast of the infant, in the judgment of all deceased: and presently, the other women being called together with great joy, the infant was baptized, and then, since that pulse beneath the breast was constantly and plainly observed, he was carried to the church, that the due and necessary ceremonies of Baptism might be supplied. At length — a thing which I myself saw — in the church he opened his little eyes, and did this afterward again, as not a few witnesses worthy of credit affirm. But being carried home, after the space of an hour he breathed his last again. Highest praise be to St. Leontius the martyr, to whose patronage indeed I most humbly commend myself. Given at Beromünster the twenty-sixth day of May in the year 1662. Lowest servant Hieremias Meyer, unworthy parish priest of the place. This letter, which Pfleger has in German, I have rendered into Latin; for Mayer, as is his custom, produces only a summary of it.
[129] after being touched But concerning Barbara Roner (wife of Laurentius Steimann) of the city of Zug, Jacobus Haffner, dean and parish priest of Zug, gave testimony that she brought forth a lifeless little body on the ninth day of February 1661, which for twenty hours after the birth lay without any token whatever of life, a sad example of misfortune to its parents and neighbors. The parents, their minds raised to a living hope, and confidence being conceived in the help of the holy Leontius, had the cold corpse carried to Muri on the following day, the tenth; where, by repeated touching of the relics of the holy Martyr and by pious prayers, color returned to its face; and by opening and closing the lids of its eyes it drew from the eyes of the bystanders the most abundant tears of joy. Thereupon, the grace of Baptism being received, the revived infant held the life restored to it just so long as until it had been carried back from Muri to Zug and presented to the parish priest: before whose eyes it yet a third time opened and closed its little eyes, and, having given three little sighs, sent its soul to heaven. The same account Pfleger has, and he gives the words with which the said lord dean subscribed to it: they are these: That these things are so, and that I saw the said infant opening and closing its eyes, I attest, Jacobus Haffner, dean and parish priest there.
[130] by the relics From the same city of Zug the lady Martha Brandenberg, wife of master Franciscus Letter, on the first day of May 1663, the time of bringing forth the child she carried beneath her breast having arrived, was troubled with such bitter gripings of the vitals that she seemed to herself likely to perish rather than to bring forth. Her husband in so great a peril implores by a vow (of a pilgrimage to Muri) the patronage of the holy Leontius; after the vow the wife, freed of the gripings, brings forth her child, but lifeless. The little body remains lifeless for twenty-four hours. Meanwhile it is carried to Muri with the hope of recovering its life, is touched and blessed with the sacred relics of the holy Martyr, and a Mass is celebrated at his altar for the safety of the child. When meanwhile its chill limbs had received warmth, its livid face a ruddy color, and the pulse of the arteries began to move, and the breath went more freely. Thus reviving, one of the fathers of our convent baptized it, and after receiving Baptism the infant survived two hours and exchanged a very brief life for the eternal one.
[131] of St. Leontius, Another example of this wonder-working power the holy Leontius displayed in that same aforesaid year, in that same aforesaid city. Maria Barbara Weber (wife of Michaël Keyser) of Zug brought forth a child void of life, so that up to the twelfth hour from the moment of its birth there was no breath in it. The parents sent the dead body to the relics of St. Leontius, that at their presence and touch it might come to life again; (for the year before also they had obtained from him life for their infant, which had died newly born). The boy therefore is touched with the sacred bone and blessed, and at once returns to life; (for presently, as Pfleger sets forth, both the pulse of the arteries and other tokens of present life were observed in him, namely in the left eye, which he opened). He is baptized by the reverend lord Michaël Stadlin, curate at St. Wolfgang's, in the presence of the fathers Hieronymus Troger, prior; Leodegarius Holdermeyer, sacristan; and Anselmus Weissenbach; and thus is made capable of the eternal graces and rewards.
[132] Likewise Dorothea Iten in the year 1667 bore to her husband Waltherus Staub (of Menzingen near Zug) a boy suffocated, or a vow whom, after an hour during which he lay without token of a surviving soul, they commended to the holy Leontius, adding a vow of a pilgrimage to his church (and of a Mass to be celebrated there). The boy came to life again, and, regenerated by the spiritual washing (by master Petrus Zurcher, chaplain of the place, as Pfleger adds), survived half a year.
[133] Then in the year 1669, at Adorf in the lordship of Thurgau, Barbara Ramsperger (wife of Udalricus Erni) was so tormented with bitter pains in her delivery, up to the fifth day, pronounced to him, that she was reckoned soon to become the sepulcher of the child she had conceived. The parish priest, master Romanus Besler, heard of this, and presently sent an image consecrated by contact with the relics of St. Leontius, that they might lay it upon the breast of the woman in labor. And it came to pass that the laying on of the sacred image and the delivery of the child happened, as it were, at the same moment. But because the boy whom Barbara bore was found to be without life (for through three hours he showed no token of a living soul), a vow is made to St. Leontius; after the vow the boy recovers life and strength, and, sound and safe, is publicly washed at the sacred font in the church by the parish priest, and is called Leontius after the name of the Martyr who was his patron.
[134] There occurs again in Pfleger's German booklet a testimony give sure tokens of life which I render thus into Latin: When to me, Balthasar Frantz at Stans in Unterwalden, there had been born by my beloved wife Margareta Arni in the year 1679 on the festival of the Exaltation of the holy Cross a boy, he lay without life or any token of it. There befell me therefore what is wont to be the greatest of griefs and miseries for persons joined in the bond of matrimony. And although the women who were present, and others, omitted no kind of experiment to draw out some sign of hidden life, they labored in vain through the space of half an hour. Accordingly, since there was no power in human remedies, I in tears turned my mind to almighty God, the arbiter of life and death, and to his Saints. And I vowed a pilgrimage and a Mass to the martyr who works wonders in like calamities, St. Leontius of Muri, if only he would obtain this from God, that the boy, upon sure previous tokens of life, might be cleansed at the sacred font. The vow being made, at once the boy, who for half an hour had lain dead and cold, moved the finger which we call the index, as though by it he wished to indicate that he was possessed of life, as indeed he was. For after the movement of the finger, a strong pulse of the arteries began to move, breathing came on, and life in its fullness. He was then baptized, and after an hour died again and was added to the angels in heaven. O most merciful God, O St. Leontius, truly wonderful! Let the grace be granted us that ungrateful forgetfulness of so great a benefit may never lay hold of us. To this testimony there subscribed also, in all likelihood, the priest who baptized the boy, with the following words: I testify, Franciscus, chaplain at Stans.
[135] Three prodigies of the same kind here attributed to the patronage of St. Leontius Mayer passed over, which I have abridged from Pfleger with all the brevity I could, and rendered into Latin. afford, To the spouses Antonius Koni and Elisabetha Marcher at Eschenz, a place of the county of Vaduz in Swabia, in the year 1680 on the fifth day of July there was born a firstborn son, but discolored in body and destitute of every token of life, and thus he had lain for five hours like a dead corpse; when the parents promised to St. Leontius a pilgrimage and a tablet to be hung up in the church of Muri, with an altogether happy result; for undoubted signs of life were presently detected in the boy, he was washed with Baptism, and after two hours of continued life departed.
[136] and are washed with holy Baptism. In the year 1681 Maria Helena Gugger, wife of Victor Gritz, at Solothurn in Switzerland labored for three days with continual and most bitter pains of childbirth, nor did hope appear that she would bring forth the child. And so on the third day, namely the thirtieth of September, when all despaired of her safety and her child's, she bound herself by a vow of a pilgrimage to St. Leontius, and, the pains ceasing, presently brought forth, but a child, as was then believed, lifeless: for after very many attempts and every kind of test employed, no token of life could be detected. Meanwhile the mother together with her husband cries out a second time upon St. Leontius, and they pray that at least so much life may be granted to the unhappy child as might suffice for receiving Baptism. At those prayers the infant straightway seemed so far to live that, far from all danger, it could be carried to the church to be washed at the sacred font; which done, it was carried back to its mother, and survived no small space of time, and departed to a better life.
[137] In the year 1682, on the fourteenth day of January, Maria Müller, wife of Joannes indem Bodem of Ruswil in the canton of Lucerne, had likewise brought forth a child thought to be dead; wherefore the poor woman, seeing that every attempt spent through a whole hour upon drawing out signs of life had fallen out in vain, conceived a vow of going on pilgrimage to the relics of St. Leontius, and exhorted her husband to do the same; and he obeyed her exhortation, and, the vow being scarcely sent up, life showed itself in the boy; he was baptized forthwith, and on the next day was carried to the church for the completing of the ceremonies of the Sacrament, and received the name of Sebastian, whose feast was being kept, nor did he depart this life before the third day.
§ X. Foul and dangerous ulcers removed.
[ ] A woman's dangerous ulcer, Ottilia Herlimand of the territory of Zug (the words are those of the undersigned parish priest of Einsiedeln, turned from German into Latin), while she had charge of the kitchen with master Augustinus Reymann, praetor of our monastery of the most blessed Virgin Mary in the lordship of Einsiedeln, labored for a whole year under her left armpit with a very dangerous ulcer, which crept continually further, and from which day by day (saving your reverence) there flowed a putrid and clotted gore; nor was any remedy at hand for staunching it. She suffered (as is credible) the most violent pains, and passed her days most wretchedly: yet with an even and wonderfully tranquil mind. But when with such pains and miseries
to be borne she was unequal, she sought help and counsel of me the undersigned for the easing of them. I had then very recently returned from the solemn translation of the glorious martyr Leontius, who had been laid to rest in the venerable monastery of Muri with special pomp and preparation, and where it had been permitted me to hallow my rosary by contact with his relics. That rosary I held out to the said Ottilia, charging her to touch her ulcer with it and to recite some prayers in honor of the aforesaid Saint. She performed what was bidden, and experienced so great a power in the patronage of the holy Martyr that within three days the whole evil together with the pain vanished. This she herself, being questioned, professes to be most certain. In the principal monastery of the most blessed Virgin Mary at Einsiedeln, the twenty-seventh day of September in the year [ ]. Friar Wolfgangus Weisshaupt, professed religious and parish priest at St. Mary of Einsiedeln. Thus he in Pfleger. Let us now go on with Mayer.
[139] Maria Furer (wife of Henricus Furer) of Lungern in Unterwalden labored four years with an eating ulcer in the neck; another's eating ulcer, and, although she used the help and counsel of physicians, she yet did not cease to labor under it. At length in the year 1649, in the days of Pentecost, she betakes herself with the other pilgrims to Muri, famous for the miracles of the holy Leontius, lets herself down upon her knees to receive the touch of the sacred relics, devoutly receives the blessing by that touch, and presently feels an itching in the skin, as a forerunner of health. Then she washes the affected part with water blessed by the aforesaid relics; until a little afterward, the pus having gathered, it swelled, and at length, the corrupt skin breaking, the putrid matter flowed out, the scar, purged of corruption, closed, and thereafter the woman remained free of the evil until her death.
[140] There follows in Mayer and in Pfleger the narration of an evil not much unlike it that was thoroughly healed, and a third's foot discharging matter are cured. which, on Pfleger's testimony, the woman who was healed willed to be set forth inscribed upon a tablet in the church of Muri, and which accordingly, as it is printed in German in that same Pfleger, I here transfer rendered into Latin. Late indeed, but not in vain, did Barbara Vogel, dwelling in the lordship and district of Entlebuch, implore in her long misery the said help (of God and of the Saints), who for eight years had endured no slight pains from an open foot which (saving your reverence) discharged matter; for the easing of these and for the removal of the evil many and great expenses had been laid out, but little or no help was found thereby. Until at length she pronounced a vow of a pilgrimage to the holy wonder-worker Leontius at the monastery of Muri, whose wondrous light shone upon her forthwith and so effectually that by the divine help and the present intercession of Leontius she was freed of all pains and wholly healed in the year 1651. Let God be praised in his Saints for ever; and to the holy martyr Leontius, for his most powerful and faithful intercession, be among all the faithful the highest praise, honor, glory and thanksgiving from now unto the ages. Amen.
[141] There were in the same year 1651 at Baden in Switzerland two girls, Two girls afflicted with an eating ulcer, each affected with the contagion of an eating ulcer. The one, Barbara Kuch, her father handed over to a surgeon to be cured, but after he had long tortured the poor girl well-nigh to death with cruel iron, he gave her back as incurable. For the other, Margareta Keller, her pious mother Elisabeth Keller (widow of master Gaspar Keller) likewise left nothing undone, whether in expenses or in care and attendance. No remedy had profited so great an evil. At length the parents, means and remedies going for nothing, turn themselves to the holy Leontius, and by one single vow of undertaking a pilgrimage to his sacred relics procured for both girls, without charge, an entire cure of an evil well-nigh incurable.
[142] Gasparus Stüber and Maria Schreiber of Risch in the territory of Zug had a little son a boy with many ulcers, who for half a year from his birth was sound, but afterward had begun to sicken and to swarm over his whole little body with suppurations and ulcers. For a whole year the little one lay thus wretchedly. His anxious parents, considering what remedy they might bring, judged that they were being often enough admonished by a certain inward inspiration to carry their little son to St. Leontius at Muri; and they carried him indeed with great devotion on the Wednesday of Easter week, and from that day he began to be better, went on recovering, and on the holy day of Pentecost enjoyed full health. In the year 1657.
[143] another infected with a horrid wen, are healed. With so horrid a wen was Jacobus Schäll of Zug ulcerated upon the head in the year 1659 that he could not be looked upon without grievous nausea and horror; besides this the physicians openly professed that this evil would in no wise be cured by natural remedies. Jacobus therefore, nature playing the stepmother and failing in her office, casts his hope upon the heavenly help of the holy Leontius, promising to venerate piously his sacred remains by going on pilgrimage to Muri, and forthwith the pain together with the putrid ulcer began to depart and to close into a scar, and thus in a short time, his head being cleansed of all corruption, Jacobus recovered.
[144] Various persons with ulcers in the side, Mayer passed over the following, abridged from Pfleger's German booklet and set out in Latin. In the year 1659 a two-year-old infant of Joannes Eggli and Maria Buochmann of Wangen in the territory of Lucerne was distressed with a foul ulcer in the side; likewise in the year 1661 the son of master Burchardus Schmid of Zug, after he had already labored three years with an ill-affected arm, was likewise afflicted with an ulcer in the neck. The evil of each seemed past healing: but the parents, turning to a better physician, invoked St. Leontius, and bound themselves by a vow of going on pilgrimage to Muri; they were heard, the boys being cleansed of all their evil not long after the vows were sent up.
[145] in the neck, A venomous canker also seized Magdalena Keigel in the city of Lucerne upon the neck, which the physicians judged to be a gangrene, and therefore labored to forestall an evil otherwise past healing: but the force of the disease was greater than the power of the medicines. Rejecting these therefore, and taking refuge under the patronage of the holy Leontius, she vowed to visit with reverence his sacred relics at Muri; by which votive remedy alone she came away wholly free of the horrid and incurable disease. In the year 1663.
[146] in the nostrils, Elisabeth Grob of Kaltbrunn, commonly Kalt-brunnen, in the March of Schwyz, forty years old, daughter of Meinradus Grob and Christina Dobler, was so foul with a horrid ulcer in her nostrils and face that she scarcely dared any longer to appear among men. Physicians being called into counsel, some declared that a remedy could scarcely or not even scarcely be brought, while others supplied remedies, but with vain effect. At length in her utmost necessity and misery she implored the help of the holy Leontius, and, a vow of a pilgrimage to the tomb of the holy Martyr having been pronounced, she had the drugs prescribed by the physicians touched to his relics and blessed: and when she had applied these to her ulcerated nose, they straightway worked their power, and healed the ulcer, all the stench being wiped away and driven out, and her face restored to its former and comely shape. In the year 1661. The same year Pfleger too wrote, contrary to his custom, since, as I advised above, he is wont to keep to the chronological order in each of his chapters, and the benefit narrated before is attached to the year 1663.
[147] in the knee Concerning Petrus Suter of the parish of Rothenburg, Nicolaus Rütiman, curate of the place, testified thus by a written reply: Not long ago the intercession of St. Leontius wrought a memorable miracle upon one of my parishioners, Petrus Suter. He had come to me, reporting that at the beginning of the month of April of this year 1664 he had been so tormented by a dire and dangerous abscess in the knee that day and night he could enjoy well-nigh no rest, and could neither stand nor walk upon his feet, and that therefore he had of necessity to lie continually in bed. Besides this, the incision by which a well-experienced surgeon had purposed to heal the ulcer increased the evil and the pains beyond measure. Since therefore natural medicine could not heal it, he took refuge in the patronage of the holy Leontius, sending up a vow (which his daughter Anna also had pronounced for the health of her beloved father). Scarcely had the words of the vow slipped from his mouth when the fatal carbuncle at once disappeared, the pain abated; and Petrus himself obtained full health. Truly a great favor and a signal miracle! proved by the testimony of many, who together with me praise and glorify God in his wonder-working Saint. Given (at Rothenburg) the twenty-first of June 1664. The testimony agrees with that which Pfleger too gives in German, with this subscription: Nicolaus Rütiman, unworthy curate and vicar there.
[148] Michaël Huger, son of Conradus Huger of Löffingen in the Black Forest, in the breast, had on the right side of his breast an ulcer which penetrated to the inward parts with so deep a gap that, when he coughed, the breath bursting out thence would put out a lamp. His father accordingly put his son under the care of a surgeon, who through fifteen whole months, for all his art and industry, had accomplished nothing more than that the evil grew worse. To the wonder-working physician Leontius therefore the father directed his vows and his hope and prayers, with a faithful promise of a pilgrimage to his chapel and sacred body at Muri. On the next day toward dawn, when they came to look at the ulcer, they found neither ulcer nor scar of the eaten wound. In the year of recovered salvation 1680.
[149] Balthasarus Troger, a native of Alagna in the territory of Milan, afflicted over the whole body, are restored to soundness. but then a settler at Wermbach in the territory of Rheinfelden, a stonecutter by trade, had a daughter (Elisabetha Troger) of fourteen years seized with an eating ulcer over her whole body, but most of all in the neck, which had already eaten out several fistulas, and had mocked the art and drugs of the physicians. Meanwhile the poor girl heard many things concerning the merits of the holy Leontius, and since she did not doubt that this same holy Martyr would be favorable to her also, she bound herself by a vow to make three times a sacred pilgrimage to his relics. The first she made with her father within the week of Quasimodo. There, the Sacred rites being discharged, she had her neck blessed and touched with the holy bone, and at once perceived the pains greatly diminished. The second she made not long after in the same manner. And when about the feast of All Saints she came a third time (and brought, as Pfleger has it, a votive tablet), she was thoroughly freed of all the aforesaid evil. In the year 1685.
§ XI. Swellings of the limbs and of the whole body driven away.
[ ] Swellings of the hands, We, Anna Maria, by the mercy of God abbess in the Vale of Grace, a convent of the Cistercian Order, by the present public testimony profess before the whole world, to the glory of God and of the glorious martyr Leontius, that in the month of August of the year last past, 1647, we were afflicted in our right hand with a most bitter swelling, and for that cause were persuaded to betake ourselves to the baths of Baden in the Aargau. But there the bitterness of the evil increased in such wise that we could not so much as move one finger, much less bend it, without the most violent torment. Then, no relief being perceived, we returned home; and since the inhabitants of the neighboring village of Niederwil were undertaking a supplication to St. Leontius the martyr at Muri, we sent thither by some of our sisters a clean cloth to be applied to the relics of St. Leontius. And when it had been brought back hither, it was presently applied to the afflicted hand, and presently too the most merciful God, by the intercession of the glorious martyr Leontius, granted remission of the evil;
and, that the benefit afforded might appear the more evidently, first the fingers returned to their former state, two excepted, and then all, one excepted; wherefore we ordered the cloth to be applied a second time to the relics of St. Leontius; until at length the hand was fully healed. And when afterward the left hand also was affected in the same manner, so that we were in fear of a palsy, we applied the said cloth to that hand also, and forthwith found that it was better with it. Besides this, even now, when any token of the evil shows itself, it is healed by the touch of that same oft-mentioned cloth. This public testimony, with our seal and the subscription of our own hand, we have given to the greater glory of God, and in grateful acknowledgment of the divine mercy and of the most powerful patronage of the glorious martyr St. Leontius. Done in the Vale of Grace the second day of February in the year 1648. Sister Anna Maria, abbess. This document was taken from Pfleger and rendered into Latin, since Mayer had given only a summary of it. Further, the said abbey is called in German Gnaden-Thal.
[151] of the whole body, A certain youth of Lucerne of a most noble family, Carolus Ludovicus Zur-Müle, in the year 1650 in the month of June began to be gravely sick, so that the deadly disease occupied his whole body by degrees, and the youth himself, from the sole of his foot to his neck, with a very great swelling, as though blown up with wind, could not merely not stand or walk, but not even lie down. The swelling cut off his breath, the vital spirits failed together with his strength, and nourishment as well as medicines worked nothing further. His father, in the utmost necessity of his dearest son, bereft of human counsel, raises his mind with confidence to the patronage of the holy Leontius, and vows a vow of a sacred pilgrimage to his relics. On the same day on which he bound himself by the vow, toward evening the breath went more freely, the pulse of the arteries became more vigorous, his strength returned, the swelling declined, and at length within a short time all the infirmity departed.
[152] of the arm, In the same year 1650 a little boy, son of the most noble master Wernharius Gugger of Solothurn, who at that time was governor at Gösgen, from smallpox, through want of sufficient care, conceived in his arm so monstrous a swelling with great pain that no medicines availed for their cure. A vow therefore having been made, the little boy was carried to the monastery of Muri and to the sacred bones of the holy Leontius which are there exposed to the veneration of the faithful, and afterward recovered.
[153] of the hands, Maria Elsener of the parish of Neuheim, commonly Neuen (in the territory of Zug), suffered from an unwonted swelling of the right hand pains so violent that she passed the better part of her life in idleness, unfit for any handicraft or labor. And although she omitted no counsel or medicines by which she desired to heal her evil, yet she perceived no relief either of the swelling or of the pain. She goes therefore in fulfillment of a vow to the sacred remains of the holy Leontius, before which, while on the thirtieth day of January in the year 1654 she was performing the works of devotion with the greatest effort she could, the swelling began to subside, the pain to vanish, the hand to grow supple unto nimbleness, so that thereafter it was made fit for doing any labor whatever.
[154] There follows now an account which Pfleger indicates that he transcribed from a tablet and of the feet, are driven away. once affixed in the church of Muri, and which I render thus from the German into Latin. To the greater glory of God, and for the propagation of the cult of the glorious athlete of Christ Leontius, testimony is borne by this present votive offering that Joannes Gaspar Pfister, a citizen of Koblenz in the parish of Klingnau, had by his wife Maria Feldmann a daughter, Anna by name, who, when she was about three years old, being seized with a great swelling in her hands and feet, fell gravely sick. The very many remedies of human art which at very great expense were applied to her through a whole year profited nothing. Since therefore all went for nothing, after God and Mary we took refuge with St. Leontius, devoted the child to him at the monastery of Muri, and within three days the pains were lessened, the swelling which was past healing subsided, the girl was set upon her feet, and after a short time was restored to entire health. And since we rightly report all this as received from the patronage of St. Leontius, we have willed it also to be public and attested to all. Done in the month of March in the year 1655.
[155] When I, Catharina Fritz, born in Alsace and exiled thence on account of the incursions of the war then raging, A woman with swollen limbs was staying at Wangen in the territory of the March of Schwyz, at the beginning of the year 1650 I was seized with so great a swelling that I could move neither foot nor step without violent torment, but, being wholly bedridden for about half a year, awaiting soothing and relief, and having employed to no purpose the labor of surgeons and many medicines, I was compelled to keep myself at home. Wherefore some persuaded me to betake myself to the baths of Baden, for that it was credible that by the power of the waters and their right use my former health would return to me: obeying whose kindly counsel, I for my part rose up, lifted my greatly swollen and at the same time numb limbs with great pain, and set out upon the road to Baden. When I had arrived there (which, on account of the grievous trouble of my swollen body, was accomplished only in four weeks), without further inquiry I committed myself to the waters, and used them for four days together: but where I supposed I should find health, I met rather with an increase of my infirmity; on account of the growing swelling I had of necessity to abstain from the baths and to enter the hospital of the poor. When I had already lain sick there for four weeks and expected nothing but death, I turned my thought to various things, but especially to Muri and to the holy martyr Leontius, where I hoped I should recover solace and health by the patronage of the holy wonder-working Martyr.
[156] Wherefore again and again I presently asked to be carried to Mellingen; is restored to health. whither, as I had asked, I was brought together with another woman crippled in her limbs: I stayed there two days, bewailed my calamity to others, and set forth the purpose of my mind, and they confirmed me in it, and that the more strongly because with one accord they promised that, if I arrived there, I should experience in very deed the patronage of the most holy Martyr. Wherefore, resolved not to desist from my purpose, I pursued the journey so far that, however great the pain and bitter the difficulty, I reached the place made illustrious by favors, beheld the relics of the holy wonder-worker Leontius, and with devout prayer invoked his help. And I obtained that a bath should be prepared for me from the water consecrated in his honor, and when I had used it four times and had washed my greatly swollen feet (wondrous thing!), the pains were lessened, the swelling subsided, my feet and knees returned to their even shape — in a word, I experienced a most evident healing. And when in the highest hope and confidence toward St. Leontius I had gone on washing in that consecrated water, I was so increased in strength that I reckoned nothing at all further to be wanting to me, but judged myself whole and sound. When therefore I had shown myself grateful in every way I could to this excellent Patron of mine for the health so wondrously granted through his powerful intercession, I set out thence vigorous, doing five hours' journey in one day, who before could scarcely accomplish in one day the space of one hour. That therefore the signal benefit afforded me by the most powerful intercession of the holy martyr Leontius who rests there may be made known to all who go on pilgrimage thither, I, named above, have had this very thing publicly set down, as has now been related, in the year 1657 on the ninth day of August. So nearly it stands in German in Pfleger.
[157] Foul abscesses, Jacobus Büel (so Mayer now goes on) of Altendorf in the same March of Schwyz was seized with a fever in the year 1659; and the fever itself passed into dropsy, so that his feet and half his upper body up to the crown of his head were distended with the malignant humor, and the sick man lay fast to his bed for ten weeks. Although, remedies being applied and the skin opened, the aforesaid dropsical humor had flowed out, yet the malignancy of the deadly poison, having drawn together to the left side, cut off his breath and threatened immediate death. Nevertheless by the intercession of St. Leontius, whom they called upon in their vows, the sick man escaped the peril of death, the abscess breaking and eight or ten sextaries of pus and blood being cast out through the mouth. Nor did the infirmity here cease to harry the poor man; for the remains of the corruption thrown off gathered in the ulcer, healed though it was, into another abscess, outward, and no less painful and no less dangerous. They therefore repeated and confirmed the vow, and the matter, as above, flowed out by degrees equally copiously, yet without hope of recovering health through natural remedies. Jacobus, as soon as his broken strength allowed, went to Muri for the discharging of his vow, and within three days, in which he fulfilled the conditions of his pilgrimage, the ulcer closed over, and he himself was granted full health.
[158] dropsy; With dropsy also there labored in the year 1666, for fifteen weeks, the Reverend Lord Udalricus Spahr, chaplain at Schänis (a place of Switzerland on the river Linth), where there is a college of noble damsels, so that all despaired of his recovery. His father, Adamus Spahr of Bludenz, pronounced a vow both to the blessed Virgin of Einsiedeln and to St. Leontius of Muri, that he might be restored to health; to which vow the sick man himself assented, adding besides a promise of offering in each place so much wax as should equal the weight of his body. And indeed by this promise of his he brought so much to pass that he then abundantly and plainly experienced the dropsical affection subsiding, and afterward recovered wholly. The chaplain himself, sound and safe, satisfied his vow on the twenty-seventh day of September of the above-said year, glorifying God in his Saints, and, as Pfleger has it, besides the wax that he brought, offering a votive tablet as a perpetual memorial of the benefit received.
[159] Most wretched indeed was the condition of a certain girl at Baar in the canton of Zug, an incurable protuberance of the limbs, Anna Barbara Reythofer, into which she had fallen in the fifth year of her age. It was a protuberance which had occupied her whole body, and had so cut off the breath of life that twice and three times in one day she struggled with death; and — a thing to be wondered at — while she remained three whole years in this sad and unchanged state, the lower part of her body growing, her head nevertheless with the upper part took no increase, as though it had dried up, although her parents did not omit to succor her with spiritual as well as with bodily remedies. Until her pious mother, taking her little daughter with her, went to Muri and to the sacred relics of St. Leontius. There, while both of them prayed devoutly before the sacred body itself of the Martyr, the little daughter stretched out her withered hand and moved it; then, rising upon her feeble foot, she began to walk, and thereafter within the space of five weeks recovered wholly. On the fifth day of October 1671.
[160] In the year 1680, when Maria Ludi of Olten, which is a town in the canton of Solothurn, breasts ill affected are cured. had happily brought forth a boy, her breasts not only swelled monstrously, but instead of milk gave back a putrid and stinking matter; so that she could not suckle her little son with a mother's service. The sorrowing mother consulted the physicians and employed fitting medicines; but all in vain. She therefore appeals with a vow to the holy Leontius, and by the intervention of that same wonder-working Martyr, on the very day on which she made the vow, her breasts went down, and the matter was turned into pure milk.
§ XII. Limbs enfeebled, weak and contracted restored to their natural vigor.
[ ] Infants This § also I begin from a German document, which I have rendered into Latin from Pfleger. I, Joannes Küechler of Muri, testify by these presents that my beloved little son, whose name is also Joannes, had both his hands so twisted and enfeebled that in the judgment of a surgeon experienced in his art they could not be cured by human remedies. I therefore directed my mind to God and to the glorious martyr Leontius, and, most earnestly begging his pious help, I had the boy's weak hands touched with his relics, and willed that consecrated water to be used for cooking his food, with a firm confidence that by that remedy my enfeebled child would be freed from an evil otherwise past healing: as indeed came to pass. For shortly after, both the boy's hands, and the right indeed on that very day, were strengthened, and by degrees restored to entire health. In the year 1647. Praise be to God and to the glorious martyr Leontius.
[162] Magdalena Keller, wife of Nicolaus Brunner of Ettiswil in the county of Willisau in the territory of Lucerne, contracted in their limbs, had borne a healthy little daughter. But scarcely half a year from her birth she began to sicken, her strength to be enfeebled, and at length all her limbs to be drawn together. The afflicted parents, after medicines had been applied in vain, made pilgrimages to various sacred places, but without effect: heaven reserving the honor of the healing for the martyr Leontius. For the father, admonished by pious churchmen, submits his contracted little daughter, with a now freer faith, in the year 1647, to the patronage of that same St. Leontius, with a vow of undertaking a pilgrimage to him. A thing very wondrous. The daughter, while her parents were fulfilling the vow of the pilgrimage, received at Muri the entire health which she had not found elsewhere. Beneath this evident miracle Adamus Lindegger, chaplain of the most holy Sacrament at Ettiswil, set these words: Holy Leontius, martyr of Christ, intercede for our salvation and that of all men. These same words of Adam Pfleger also gives in Latin.
[163] weak; With no less a favor did the holy Leontius bring help to Joannes Nastberger of Müswangen in the Free Bailiwicks (it is a district of Switzerland in the Aargau, which others also call the Free Provinces, as was said above), when in the year 1649, having lost the vigor of his sinews, he came to be weak in hands and feet. He at once with ardent sighs, vows and prayers implored the patronage of that same Saint, with so happy an issue that, when he had discharged the pilgrimage to the sacred remains of Leontius which he had vowed, he straightway rose loosed from the bonds of his contraction, was made whole, and walked.
[164] enfeebled; The same contraction of the sinews laid hold of Sybilla Meyer of Dengen in the parish of Kaiserstuhl, commonly Kayserstuel, a girl of three years, and held her so wretchedly that she could neither stand nor take a step, but could only creep like a four-footed beast, or rather like a little worm. Her parents, saddened beyond measure, as was fitting, by the most sorrowful sight which met their eyes daily, invoke the holy Leontius with faithful heart and mind to bring help to their daughter, a promise being made to venerate him at Muri, the place of his rest. Without delay the girl was found evidently to improve, to breathe freely, and to be set toward health. For, her weak and contracted limbs being by degrees made supple and strengthened, she recovered entirely, and on the eighth day of June in the year 1649 was presented sound and safe by her father (Rudolphus Meyer), by the lord parish priest and by others, and afterward at Muri also to the religious fathers of the monastery.
[165] their natural Margaritha Rinderli of Abtwil, commonly Abtwyl, healed her four-year-old little daughter in the year 1648 by water alone blessed with the relics of the holy Leontius. For when the said little daughter, on account of her enfeebled feet, could up to the fourth year of her age neither stand, much less walk, the mother hoped that with age the vigor of those feet would grow and increase. But when she perceived that she was deceived in her hope, in her straits, such as they were, she began to consider whether perhaps the aforesaid blessed water might not be an unfitting remedy for strengthening the weak feet. She takes the water therefore, and with it washes the little child's feet, and in wonder finds that by this washing alone her little daughter — or rather her enfeebled feet — has been restored to natural vigor.
[166] vigor. To another little girl of three years, Anna Lüthart, daughter of Joannes Jacobus Lüthart of Winterschwil in the territory of Muri, Leontius, the helper of the innocent, imparted an equally great favor of healing in the year 1649. Up to the third year of her age she could neither stand, still less go forward; because she had no vigor in her sinews: besides which she failed rather in strength over her whole body than took increase with age. The parents therefore, the little daughter being taken into her mother's arms, hasten with pious confidence to the church and chapel of St. Leontius, and there with pious prayers and other works of Christian devotion offer and commend their wretched child to the holy Martyr. Then, having returned home, with astonishment they behold their little daughter raising herself upon her feet and, after the manner of infants, trying to go forward by holding to the benches with her hands. From which time she did not cease to grow and to be strengthened more and more, until together with health of body she also obtained the full use of her feet.
[167] Wilhelmus Lang of Lucerne had also a three-year-old boy Joannes Wendelinus (by Catharina Huober his wife), they receive. who on account of the weakness of his limbs not only had been unable to stand or go forward upon his feet, but had besides so wasted and dried up in his whole body that he could not be touched, much less carried. It was moreover superfluous to have wished to heal by drugs a disease which appeared thoroughly incurable: the parents therefore seek the doors of the holy Leontius, ask and knock, that by his merits solace might be imparted to themselves and health of body to the boy. And when in the year 1650, on the third day of May, they had venerated at Muri the consecrated relics of the holy Martyr according to the vow which they had vowed, forthwith, and from day to day, the little boy returned to vigor and health.
[168] To the honor, praise and glory of the most holy Trinity, A woman with an arm, of the most blessed Mother of God Mary, and of St. Leontius the martyr, and especially as a due expression of a grateful mind toward him, and as a true testimony of his most powerful patronage with God, I, Anna Hertzog, wife of the praetor at Sursee, have destined the present picture or tablet for the chapel of St. Leontius the martyr in the most famous monastery of Muri: because that common Patron of the wretched showed me his special help in my utmost misery. I had been seized with a grave evil in my arm, so that it was enfeebled, dead, fit for no use, and curable by no help of human art. Wherefore with special devotion and firm confidence I pronounced a vow to this wonder-working Patron, and promised a pilgrimage to his sacred remains and a Mass to be celebrated there: then I ordered water consecrated by those same sacred relics to be brought to me, and used it in washing my enfeebled arm; in that very moment I felt relief of the evil, and by the use of that one remedy I shortly came away wholly safe and sound. On that occasion I held out the said water to another honest person afflicted with a like evil, who, when she had used it in like manner, obtained a like effect. Everlasting praise be to God. Done in the year 1654. The testimony just recited, which was once inscribed upon a tablet, as is abundantly clear, I have taken from Pfleger and set out in Latin.
[169] In the year 1656, on the fourth of June, on the very sacred day of Pentecost, Maria Signer of Menzingen, and another in all her limbs, of the canton of Zug, was languishing, and the languor, holding her fast to her bed for six weeks, afflicted her so grievously that, her sinews being contracted, she was thoroughly deprived of the use of her limbs, and even with very many means could not recover her health. She turned her mind therefore to seeking higher (why not also surer?) remedies, sending a person to make in her name a pilgrimage before the relics of the holy Leontius, to whom she gave it in charge in particular that among other pious works she should devoutly pray the Psalter of Mary. And behold! In that same hour in which the pious envoy, as she herself afterward affirmed on her return, recited the Psalter, the sick woman perceived herself wonderfully so relieved and strengthened in her limbs that on that very day, rising from her bed of pain, she stretched out her hands to action and her feet to walking, and not long after recovered her strength entire together with her soundness.
[170] In the year 1647 Felix Spöri of Untersiggingen in the parish of Kilchberg (Pfleger writes Kilchdorff), in the county of Baden, a boy likewise, had by his lawful wife a son, called Joannes Jacobus in the sacred font of regeneration, but, nature playing the stepmother, so wretchedly circumstanced with crooked and contracted feet that up to the tenth year from his birth he could neither walk nor stand. The parents, greatly saddened because the remedies applied likewise did not conduce to the boy's health, when they heard many things being spread abroad concerning the signs and miracles which God was working through the holy martyr Leontius at Muri, hastened to Muri itself, taking the boy with them in a portable basket. There, when they had arrived, on the third day of May, sacred to the Finding of the holy Cross, in the year 1657, they set down the boy, placed in the aforesaid basket, at the chapel of the holy Martyr, and dispose themselves to make sacred confession. When meanwhile the boy of his own accord and without the aid of any man raises himself from the basket, gets clear and comes forth, and, taking hold of a light staff, goes alone hither and thither, not only his parents but very many of those present being caught up in wonder and astonishment, and glorifying God in his Wonder-worker, their tears rushing forth for gladness. And from that day the boy stood and walked all his life upon straight and firm feet. The implement upon which the boy was placed to be carried to Muri, Pfleger says is called in German hutte: but I have found that word inserted in no German lexicons: I should believe that a hamper is meant by it.
[171] a woman, Anna Bentz of the Black Forest, crippled in her feet for nine years, could go forward only leaning upon crutches. Medicines profited her nothing; she obtained no relief in the sacred places which she had visited on pilgrimage: until, God wondrously disposing it, she came to Muri, where on the feast of the Assumption of the most holy Virgin Mother of God she prayed with the greatest effort and urgency she could, and, having most piously venerated the holy Leontius in his sacred relics, besought him that she might recover her health. She was heard on that same day, and, in testimony of the truth having hung up her crutches in the chapel of the holy Martyr, rising upon sound and firm feet, leaping and praising God, she made her way home again.
[172] and an infant, crippled in the feet, are healed. Joannes Ulricus Stoffer of Littau in the territory and parish of Lucerne had begotten by his wife Barbara Sager a child which, by I know not what sudden accident, was so made helpless in the use of its feet that it could neither stand nor walk, nay nor even sit at all. Fruitless was the use of the frequent medicines by which the anxious care of the parents sought to heal it. At length by the counsel of churchmen (namely of the Capuchin fathers, on Pfleger's testimony) they undertake with devout mind a sacred pilgrimage to the body of St. Leontius in the church of Muri, implore the help of the holy Martyr, and have stockings to be put upon the little child blessed and touched to his sacred relics: which, when the pilgrimage being completed they fit upon the aforesaid child, at once the strength of the sinews is diffused into its feet, the infant raises itself to stand and to walk; and so far the entire
health of its feet it shortly recovers. In the year 1657. And the parents, according to Pfleger, had a tablet hung up in the chapel of St. Leontius as a token of a grateful mind and a testimony of the benefit received.
[173] Enfeebled limbs, In the following year 1658 Joannes Schreiber of Boswil (a place not far from Muri, of which a religious of that same monastery has the charge) was through a grave infirmity so deprived of the use of his limbs that he could neither put food to his mouth with his hands nor stand or walk upon his feet. His beloved wife, and his friends and neighbors, urged him to provide himself with natural remedies: he refused, and placed all his confidence in the help of the holy Leontius. "The holy Leontius," he would say, "is the best physician; unless he heal me, no one will cure me, and it will be fruitless to apply medicines." So he, with a faithful, upright and sincere mind. He sends off therefore his wife on pilgrimage to the relics of the aforesaid St. Leontius, has one Mass read for the honor of the Martyr and for his own health, and has water blessed with the Saint's relics brought to himself. The wife did on the sacred expedition what she had been bidden. And when Joannes had partly drunk of the water and partly washed his languishing limbs with it, on that same day he put food to his mouth with his own hands, and after three days sprang from his bed unaided, and walked in the strength of that water as far as Muri and the chapel of St. Leontius, that he might repay due thanks for so vast a favor.
[174] Ludovicus Müller of Mettau in the territory of Laufenburg had a daughter (Anna Müller, twisted feet,) who for two years, both soles of her feet being inverted, that is, with her feet turned backward contrary to nature, walked forward — a sight worthy of everyone's compassion. The parents omitted nothing, whether in care, or in medicines, or in prayers; and by repeated pilgrimages also to various sacred places they called God and the holy Citizens of heaven into their vows, that they might obtain health for their poor little daughter. And although they had not obtained their vow, yet they did not desist from their hope. For Ludovicus together with his people betook himself in the year 1658 to the holy Leontius, and in the chapel dedicated to him asked him with all the effort, faith and urgency he could that he would heal his daughter; and the duties of the pilgrimage being completed, he returned to his own hearth, not knowing what in the meantime had happened to his daughter. And when, now on his way back, he drew near to his house, his little daughter ran to meet him with joy, and showed her father her feet, lifted a little, returned to their natural form, and at length rushed into her father's embrace, freed of all her sickness; and her father in turn, bedewed with the tender tears of a pious gladness, embracing her, did not cease to praise God in his holy Leontius with full heart and mouth.
[175] Magdalena Stähelin, wife of Ulricus Hübscher of Engen (in the diocese of Constance), hands being deprived of the movement and use of her hands, led a wretched life for eighteen weeks, not to be relieved by any remedies. Meanwhile there had arrived the reapers whom her husband was accustomed to hire every year for the reaping of the crops, from Villmergen (that place is marked on the maps in the Free Provinces near Bremgarten), who, moved with compassion over the afflicted Magdalena, urged her to become a suppliant to the holy Martyr, and to bind herself by a vow of a pilgrimage to his sacred relics. She accepts and follows the counsel, and promises that she will go thither if she should recover her health. Nor does the help of the wonder-working Martyr fail her any longer: for on the very next day, her hands being restored to entire vigor, she went out healed to her labors without hindrance. This miracle happened on the fifth day of the month of August in the year 1660.
[176] What St. Leontius wrought for the aforesaid Magdalena in her hands, and feet this he afforded to Anna Mol of the Canton of Solothurn in her feet. She, from troublesome defluxions, had her feet so wretchedly contracted that, unable either to stand or to walk, she had for a long time to keep herself at home, as though bound with chains in a prison. The remedies applied availed for nothing, save that they increased the pains and the evil itself. Harried therefore by these pains, she commends herself to the protection and aid of St. Leontius at Muri with a faithful promise that, if he by his intervention should restore her health, she would visit his venerable bones and honor him according to her measure. It was well-nigh one and the same thing to send up the vow and to receive health: for she was straightway freed from all infirmity of the feet, and thoroughly healed. In the year 1662.
[177] contracted In this same year Joannes Gutzwiler, of Therwil in the territory of the prince of Porrentruy, lay for eighteen weeks, on account of a contraction of the feet, unfit for walking and standing, nay even for moving. Besides this, neither did the ointments or poultices which were employed avail for health, nor did the sacred places which he had ordered to be visited in his name work the desired effect. At length by God's providence, on the counsel of a certain honest woman (Eva Eber), he turned his mind and vows to the holy Leontius, and at once sent that same woman just mentioned to discharge the vow to the holy Martyr before his relics in the monastery of Muri. Meanwhile Joannes, before she had returned from her pilgrimage after eight days, recovered, his feet being restored to their former state. Whence she on her return found Joannes safe and sound, to her wonder.
[178] are brought back to their natural state. About the same time Verena, the little daughter of Henricus Baur (and Elisabetha Schreiber) of Sarmenstorf (not so far from Muri), contracted in her feet, received an entire power of walking by the power of the holy Martyr. Her parents had vowed to visit his chapel by a repeated pilgrimage, and to entreat for their daughter's health by a Mass to be read, and also to make his merits attested to the people by a votive tablet. Health followed at once upon the vow; for the daughter was granted the right use of her feet and a perfect gait. The promised tablet was brought to Muri in the year 1663 on the twelfth day of November; and upon it was inscribed the whole series of what had happened in German verses, which Pfleger recites.
[179] A young man is struck a second time with the same evil and is healed. In the year 1665 Sebastianus Tieffenawer of Kaltbrunn, commonly Kaltbrunnen, in the lordship of Gaster, came out of a sickness contracted in hands and feet. And when, a vow of a pilgrimage to the sepulcher of the blessed martyr Leontius having been sent up, he had at once been healed, he put off the discharging of his vow: so that, a divine Nemesis so disposing, he fell back into his former misery. Whereupon his afflicted mother, the vow being repeated, exhorted her son to send up prayers anew with a more earnest mind to the holy Martyr for the restoring of his health. The son acquiesced in his mother's counsel, and by the second intervention of the holy Martyr recovered wholly.
[180] others laboring wretchedly There had come to Muri in the year 1667, God wondrously directing her journey, Regina Reithofer, an unmarried woman of Ehingen in the duchy of Bavaria, who from convulsions was so contracted that only with her body supine could she creep, rather than walk, upon her hands and feet like a four-footed beast; and on that account she had of necessity to be carried and conducted from hospital to hospital. At length she was carried also to the hospital of Baden, and thence to that of Bremgarten. From Bremgarten she purposed to journey to the most blessed Virgin of Einsiedeln. But because she would have to pass for a long way through the lands of the heterodox, the inhabitants of the town urged her rather to betake herself to the holy Leontius, resting in the neighboring monastery of Muri, since he wrought signal miracles for the solace of wretched people of this kind. Following their counsel, Regina is carried to Muri.
[181] from such a defect of their limbs, And the nearer she drew to the place, the more did hope and desire of health grow in her mind. On the twenty-ninth day of June therefore, being brought to the door of the basilica, she creeps in her aforesaid manner of going to the confessional, meaning first of all to cleanse her soul by sacred Confession. And while she was awaiting the confessor there between the eighth and ninth hour of the day, it seemed to her first as though her whole body were being drenched with cold water; whence also a shudder ran through all her limbs. Then she declared that she heard a voice saying to her: Rise, for thou art healed. And now about to go to the sacred tribunal, in order to test whether what she seemed to hear was true, she raises herself, and, her body now upright and her feet made firm, walks in, though scarcely in possession of herself for wonder and joy; those who were present at the Divine offices being astonished, and praising God and the holy Martyr together with the healed woman. Pfleger adds that the men of Muri, to remove all suspicion of pretense or fraud (for the woman was there wholly unknown), wrote to various places and ordered inquiry to be made whether she had really been so afflicted; and that it was confirmed by the written testimonies of very many men, both secular and ecclesiastical, of whose good faith it was impious to doubt, that every particular was most true, and that she had never been seen in any other posture or manner than that set forth above.
[182] To Henricus Wild of Lucerne there was born in the year 1667, by his wife Anna Maria Büttler, a boy by the aid of the Saint, contracted from his birth up to the fourth year of his age, and, because he took no solace from remedies either spiritual or natural, likely perhaps to drag out a wretched life for many years more. Great care and sadness accordingly came upon the parents: nor yet did they lose heart, but had the boy (his name was Cornelius) carried in fulfillment of a vow to the sacred church of the holy martyr Leontius and offered there, a second vow being added, that, if the holy Martyr should heal their son, they would themselves undertake a further pilgrimage to venerate his body (and would offer a notable gift befitting their station, as Pfleger has it). Leontius did not delay to be present to the supplications of the parents, for from that time all his limbs began to knit together into their proper order and straightness, so that in a short space of time he obtained the entire use of them all. That this was an evident miracle, Pfleger says, and that it was acknowledged as such both by the neighbors and by all the physicians.
[183] Petrus Frey in the canton of Solothurn, lame in hands and feet from his mother's womb (Magdalena Mauter's), up to the fifth year of his age are healed, crept upon the ground only after the manner of four-footed beasts. Him his parents, since other remedies were not at hand, a vow having been made, carried in a back-basket to the church of Muri, and there, taking him out of the basket, set him down upon the pavement, that by that pitiable manner of going, as has been said, he might himself creep, the people present looking on and pitying him, to the chapel of the holy Martyr. There, after a few hours, to the wonder of all, he lifts himself upon his feet, and, though still limping, walks in, hangs up himself two waxen feet, which his parents had promised to offer, upon the grating placed before the chapel, and with straightened feet returned home safe and sound to his parents, and with his parents, the duties of his pilgrimage and thanksgiving being completed. About the year 1654. Pfleger again subjoins that this same Petrus Frey in the year 1669, on the third day of the month of May, being then twenty years old, appeared at Muri bringing a votive tablet, and confirmed with his own mouth, before witnesses who were questioned, the things already related.
[184] The son of Nicolaus Häusser (and of Eva Schneuniger) of Ägeri, commonly Egeri, in the canton of Zug, the Saint bringing aid, was through a malignant defluxion so ill in one foot, with the most intense pains, that the surgeons, since they had failed in healing it with other drugs, judged and determined that a remedy could be brought only by the cutting away of the corrupted foot. And although the parents, to preserve for their son
life, however wretched, they had consented to that cruel and exceedingly dangerous amputation; yet hope and confidence prevailed of obtaining health for their son from God through the heavenly ones, when they pronounced a vow to St. Leontius, whose sacred pledges are venerated at Muri. Nor was there any delay: the healing they had asked for was present with so evident an effect that within a few days the boy grew wholly sound. In the year 1670.
[185] strength Magdalena Sidlerin, of Zug, lawful wife of Master Johann Melchior Herster, had borne two daughters, the one Maria Gertrude, the other Maria Regula. Each of them, in her earliest bloom — for one was three years old, the other four — had failed very greatly in strength, and each was afterward drawn up in the feet, to the immense grief of her parents; and this the more because the deadly malady baffled all the arts of the physicians. The mother therefore brought both of them, in accordance with a vow she had made, to the church of Muri and to the chapel sacred to St. Leontius, and offered from her heart the most intense prayers for the health of her daughters. And behold! In the chapel itself there flowed from the mouth and nostril of the elder a huge quantity of foul pus. But the younger, when she had gone off from the church to the lodging with her mother, vomited up the like corruption with far greater violence and in so great a quantity that she was thought to be on the point of choking. But by the grace of God and the intercession of the holy Martyr, together with the aforesaid corruption all her weakness likewise departed, and the daughters, with strength restored to their little bodies and with the entire use of their feet also recovered, grew well. Pfleger notes that the thing was accomplished in the year 1677.
[186] and health Nor must silence be kept concerning two other infants who, seized in the use of their feet from the womb, could neither stand nor direct a step. The first was Joseph Leontius, son of Caspar Glaus (and of Maria Salome Steiner) of Schänis. The other was the daughter of Heinrich Schärer (and of Anna Heuchlerin) of Hiltisrieden (in the canton of Lucerne). The boy, two years old, in the year 1674, and the girl, five years old, in the year 1679, obtained the longed-for vigor and use of their feet before the relics of the lord Leontius at Muri, whither their parents had betaken themselves with their children in fulfillment of a vow.
[187] recover. Johann Ruoff of Kadelburg, in the parish of the noble college of Zurzach (Zurzach is situated in the county of Baden on the river Rhine), from a bloodletting too negligently attended to, was so tormented by an abundance of malignant fluxions that, besides the most intense pains, he was utterly deprived of the natural use of his hands and feet. Wearied of the remedies which he was applying to no effect, he directed vows and prayers to St. Leontius, on this stipulated condition: that if by his intervention he should be made whole, he vowed a vow of visiting and piously venerating him at Muri. And at once, with all weakness and contraction removed, he came away unimpaired, on the eighth day of February in the year 1683.
§ XIII. Various parts of the body, injured and afflicted with grievous pains, restored to their former state.
[ ] Various parts of the body On the very day of the first translation of the relics of St. Leontius (namely the fifteenth of September in the year 1647), Anna Maria Huober of Jonen in the parish of Lunkhofen (between Bremgarten and Muri on the river Reuss), a girl of thirteen years, was freed from the pains of a foot pierced with ten openings. Her parents were going with their daughter to the aforesaid solemnity, and they caused a cloth to be touched to the sacred bone of the blessed Martyr and to be blessed. When with this they had bound up the injured parts, first a small fragment of bone slipped out from the wound; and then a larger one, when they had laid the cloth on a second time. From that moment the pains diminished, and Anna Maria herself in a short time recovered from the troublesome malady. Pfleger adds that the girl's father, Heinrich Huober, who at great expense had employed the art of physicians and surgeons in vain for the healing of his daughter, testified to each of these things before the parish priest at Lunkhofen and other honorable men.
[189] At the same solemnity there was present, in fulfillment of a vow, Johannes Renger of Zufikon in the district of Bremgarten, most grievously affected who for ten whole years, on account of very intense pains in the back, could enjoy no rest by day or by night, much less procure a living for himself by labor; he bound his loins with a girdle blessed as above and came away free of the pains. At the same time Johannes Müller of Rohrdorf in the prefecture of Baden, from violent torments in one of his feet, for three years directed a wretched step, leaning on nothing but a support. But as the report of the miracles of the holy Leontius spread abroad, he himself, roused, visited Muri several times, where his sacred body rests, and, delivered from his pains, obtained by the merits of the holy Martyr a sound foot and a free step.
[190] In the year 1648 Caspar Roth, a citizen of Willisau in the canton of Lucerne, are healed. was afflicted a whole year with a certain hidden disease of the joints in both arms, and endured pains so grievous that he had no rest by day or by night; and besides this neither sacred nor natural remedies effected any relief. Therefore on the first day of June he came to Muri in fulfillment of a vow, venerated the holy Leontius in his sacred relics; and when the priest applied the sacred reliquary with a blessing to the diseased arms, it seemed to him that a certain icy and fierce whirlwind burst forth from both arms, whereupon all the weakness and pain vanished.
[191] A well-nigh intolerable pain had long occupied the hand of Burkard Lang of Hemikon in the parish of Hitzkirch (in certain geographical maps of Switzerland I find it written Hitzkilch, not far from Muri): The hand, in the judgment of the surgeons, to be amputated, the surgeons judged the malady incurable, and that it could be removed only by the mutilation or cutting off of the hand. But Burkard, shrinking, as was natural, from being mutilated in a member so necessary to him, directed his vows to St. Leontius as to a most powerful physician, as he hoped: he went himself to Muri, and before his relics devoutly fell upon his knees and prayed, and at once, the pain having remitted, received back his hand sound and fit for every work. In the year 1649.
[192] an incurable arm, By a like power Johann Jakob Seller, of the parish of Buchenrain in the canton of Lucerne, was healed. For three months he felt the bitterest pains in one of his arms, fearing not without reason that it might stiffen into a contracture. The physicians despairing of the restoration of the arm, he himself poured out prayers as a suppliant and devoutly in fulfillment of a vow before the sacred ashes of the wonder-worker Leontius for his own health; and when the supplication was finished and he had returned home, his pains being straightway soothed, he began to grow well and in a short time to knit together for the labor and motion of the arm, ever after sound. In the year 1650.
[193] and a hand likewise dangerously injured are cured. Jakob Kauffmann, son of Bernard Kauffmann, sacristan at St. Catherine's, when he wished to lift a log of great bulk, had a needle which he was incautiously carrying fastened in his clothes break off at the eye and penetrate within his hand so deeply that it could be drawn out by no art. The immense torment which Jakob thereupon conceived was a goad to imploring the aid of St. Leontius the martyr; to whom he bound himself by a vow to venerate his sacred bones resting at Muri, with so favorable an effect that, although he carried the needle fixed in his hand about with him for eight weeks, yet he felt no more pain. At length the needle also came out behind his fingers without human help and without any sensation of pain, and fell away on the first day of December 1652.
[194] Those infirm in the feet Verena Burkaert of Rustenschwil in the parish of Auw (it is a place of the diocese of Constance, which however I have not found marked on the maps) labored for a long time in her feet, and tottered, nor was she able to walk without difficulty and pain. The wretched condition of her walking was increased when on a certain day she was going to the parish church to attend the Divine Offices. For by a sudden occurrence, the vigor of all her limbs having been lost, she fell to the ground, as though drawn together in hands and feet. In this plight of misery she called upon the holy Leontius with eyes and mind intent upon heaven, and made a vow that every year, as long as she lived, she would have a Mass read in his honor. Nor was the holy Martyr's timely aid lacking from that moment; for the woman, her limbs being made firm, rose up, and together with soundness recovered her former step. In the year 1653.
[195] recover their step. Concerning Johann Chöll, Pfleger sets forth the following testimony, drawn up in German: Johann Chöll, born at Schwaningen, a parish committed to my care, a good Catholic and honorable man, had in the year just past endured bitter and dangerous pains in his feet: that he might be freed from these and obtain the soundness he desired, he invoked the help of St. Leontius the martyr, resting in the church of Muri, and bound himself by this vow, that if the pains should cease and he should be granted the grace of walking rightly and the use of his feet, he would make a pilgrimage to Muri in honor of his holy Patron and as a due token of a grateful mind toward him. Hear the wonderful power of God and of the merits of Leontius. Scarcely a quarter of an hour had passed when the pains of his feet were so mitigated that shortly afterward, without the crutches under his arms which he had needed to use before, he could both stand and walk about without trouble or discomfort. And since the aforesaid inhabitant of my parish very earnestly and humbly asked of me, the undersigned, a written testimony of the thing done, which he might exhibit on his threefold pilgrimage to that sacred place, I for my part judged that his just petition should be granted. I therefore assert and attest in fullest good faith that all the things which have been recounted are entirely consonant with the truth. Given at Schwaningen in the year 1654, on the twenty-first day of April. M. Matthias Malabrerg, parish priest of the said place and dean of the venerable chapter of Stühlingen. Geographers place Stühlingen in Swabia near the borders of Switzerland.
[196] Thomas Waller, of the city of Zug, when the war of religion had arisen between the orthodox and the heterodox Swiss in the year 1656, A hand wretchedly wounded, had discharged his gun; but the barrel being burst and shattered into fragments, his left hand, with two fingers almost torn away, was split down the middle, a horrid sight to those who beheld it. A surgeon most skilled in his art, whom the wounded man had summoned to restore the hand, applied the most suitable remedies, but with frustrated effect; until that Thomas pronounced a vow to the holy martyr Leontius. For then the poultices and ointments applied worked so happy an effect that the hand, restored to its former use beyond the hope of the surgeon himself, knit together fit for any motion and labor. The hand had been so affected, says Pfleger, that in the judgment of all, and first of all of the surgeon, it could not be brought back to its former state by natural remedies.
[197] Elizabeth, a girl of nine years, lawful daughter of Jakob Brunner of Schongen, a contracted foot, whose foot in the year of the Lord 1660, on the fifteenth day of August, was seized with the most intense pains and for eight weeks, drawn together, almost withered away. After remedies applied in vain, being commended by her father to the holy Leontius with a vow on the eleventh day of October, at once, as the pains decreased, she began to grow well, and on the fourth day of November she herself, with an upright and sound step, fulfilled the vow at Muri together with her parents. Pfleger adds that this miracle is very well known to everyone in the parish of Schongen (whose situation I do not find, unless perhaps Schongau is meant, a place marked in the more recent maps near Muri), and that a painted tablet was hung up by the father in the chapel of St. Leontius on the twenty-fifth day of November of the year named above.
[198] There are wanting in Mayer three benefits attributed to the patronage of our Saint, thighs, by a burning and long-continued and appended by Pfleger to those just recounted, which, reduced to a compendium, I set forth in Latin: Fridolin Fach, a countryman in the Grisons, for some months, by a burning
abscess or carbuncle, so that twice, from the violence of the pains, he was confined to his bed for three or four days. He had consulted various persons, both ecclesiastical and secular, but the remedies which were prescribed by them profited nothing; rather they increased the malady. Turning to the heavenly medicine, on the very day of Pentecost in the year 1662 he undertook a pilgrimage to the monastery of Muri, and saw to it that another was likewise instituted in his name to the most blessed Virgin at Milla near the Danube. When the pilgrimages had been performed, he did not at once obtain relief; once and again he endured the force of burning pains; nor yet did he lay aside the confidence he had conceived before: he bound about his afflicted thigh a cloth dipped in water hallowed by the relics of St. Leontius, and was freed from every malady.
[199] The six-year-old son of Melchior Kuontz and Barbara Fischholtzer, by pain a married couple at Wangen, a place in the canton of Lucerne near Sempach, from the bitterest and continual pains in his thigh scarcely caught any rest by day or by night; he wailed and lamented without intermission, and since his torments were soothed by no remedies, sought out from every quarter, he lay thus abed for thirty whole weeks; for he was able neither to stand nor to walk. Until at length his parents bound themselves by a vow of a pilgrimage to Muri and of the sacrifice of the Mass to be celebrated twice in honor of St. Leontius. Soon after the vow was uttered the pains were diminished, their cause was little by little removed, and at last the boy was granted entire health and the full use of walking. His parents, to the greater glory of God and the honor of the holy Martyr, and in testimony of the benefit received, hung up a votive tablet here on the sixth day of the month of July in the year 1665.
[200] and a foot seized by a deadly malady are restored. Simon Kessler of March, a prefecture of the canton of Schwyz, was afflicted with the utmost torments in one of his feet: the root of these appeared indeed slight on the outside; yet it was of such a nature that both physicians and surgeons, after much and long-continued labor expended upon it, despaired of a cure, and abandoned the wretched man as one who would thereupon, as they supposed, die. Having struggled with these pains for eight or nine years, he invoked the holy Leontius, binding himself by a vow of making a pilgrimage to the church of Muri; and by that remedy he warded off the danger: the pains, before most acute, ceased, and entire soundness followed, in the year 1665. Thus Pfleger, but much more diffusely; let us hear Mayer again.
[201] wounds A certain youth was discharging a musket of war, and a girl of ten years, Anna Bawwart of Bach, either incautiously or freely threw herself before him as he fired, from whom she received in the thigh a wound so grave, reaching to the intestines, that the food she took went out through the gaping of the wound. Her parents, whom not so much the sad accident as the peril of their daughter, who was likely to perish, made anxious, handed her over to a surgeon to be cured: but he, when three weeks had been spent in the cure, failing in his art, abandoned her as nearest to the jaws of death. But because her pious mother, Verena Jost, devoted her daughter to the intercession of the holy Leontius, at once the deadly wound began to incline toward health, to knit together and to close over, so that not long after, delivered from all danger, she recovered. In the year 1665.
[202] are healed; In the year 1667, on the thirteenth day of January, Maria ander Matt (wife of Jakob Halter) of Baar in the canton of Zug, when she was sitting at the distaff drawing out threads, the stool on which she sat having broken, fell to the ground by a truly disastrous accident; for the spindle which she held in her right hand flew apart into three pieces, two of which pierced through her hand with horrible torment: and although the larger of the two was soon drawn out, the other could nevertheless be extracted by no art, so that for twenty-six days, with her hand and arm swelling up, she endured pains all but intolerable. But when on one day those same torments burned more fiercely, she made a vow with great feeling to St. Leontius for her own health (of making a pilgrimage to his relics and of offering a wax hand), whereupon the spindle, loosed from the flesh, was extracted with easy effort; and the hand was healed in the space of six days. Pfleger adds that the persons named above, namely Maria ander Matt herself and her husband Jakob Halter, recounted the matter as it had been done and attested it to the parish priest of the place, master Peter ander Matt, who transmitted it written out in his own hand, signed, and fortified with his seal, on the twenty-seventh day of August of the year named above.
[203] grievous pains of the arm are taken away. From the same Pfleger I translate into Latin two German testimonies: Master Jakob Graff, of Abbatis Cella (commonly Appenzell, a canton of Switzerland), a shoemaker by trade, sets forth to me the undersigned in fullest good faith how in the year 1676 he suffered in his right arm pains and torments so violent for eighteen weeks that he was without any rest and unfit for any labor whatever. For this cause he implored the help of six physicians, but with frustrated effect. But after a pilgrimage promised and fulfilled to the glorious martyr Leontius at Muri, at the altar of this holy Wonder-worker, at once and as it were in the first hour, he noticed and felt himself so much the better that, returned to his home, he could take up and complete his labors without any hindrance. To God and to St. Leontius the martyr be eternal praise and thanksgiving. Given at Abbatis Cella on the eighteenth day of August in the year 1682. Johann Martin Suter, unworthy parish priest of the place.
[204] The bearers of these, Johann Listicher and Catharina Wattmann, husband and wife of my parish of Malters (in the canton of Lucerne), have declared before me and before trustworthy witnesses misshapen swellings on the neck that two of their daughters, of whom the one is thirteen and the other eleven years old, were at the same time wretchedly afflicted in the neck with an overgrowth of flesh, that is, with scrofulous swellings. But when, to avert the malady, in the year just past they had made a pilgrimage in fulfillment of a vow to Muri to the relics of the glorious martyr Leontius, and, being now returned, had applied to the afflicted parts cloths and bandages consecrated in that same place, the whole malady together with the swellings vanished from the neck; which grace, with a safe conscience, they can ascribe to none but to God alone, who is glorious in his Saints. At Malters, on the twenty-second day of October in the year 1649. Johann Heinrich Fleischlin, unworthy parish priest in the same place.
[205] An excrescence of flesh not unlike a scrofulous swelling Margaret Biber of Lostorff bore on her neck for fourteen years, disappear. which, after the woman had pronounced a vow to the holy Leontius, the skin having broken and the corrupt matter having flowed out, closed up and disappeared without any other remedy. In the year 1658. This place here named does not occur to me in the geographical maps, unless perhaps Listorff is meant, a village, as it appears, near the little town of Olten in the canton of Solothurn: nor do I know why Pfleger appended both the letter recited under the preceding number and this brief account of a benefit received to the rest of the accounts contained in this whole paragraph, since he thus departed from the order of years and subjects observed almost everywhere.
§ XIV. Various persons snatched from the peril of drowning, others thought dead recalled to life.
[ ] A girl is saved from drowning, In the year 1653 a little girl of two years, Anna, daughter of Heinrich Büttler of Auw, fell into the stream which flows into the mill. When another girl of four years (her sister) noticed this, she reported it to her grandmother with wailing. But she, raising her hands to heaven, cried out: O holy Leontius, I commend the infant to thy protection! Meanwhile the little girl was thrust by the force of the running water within the water-channels and conduits, and so was driven into the opening in which the mill-wheel turns, paved with hard stone; where she was found by those who sought her, with her head turned down upon the stone pavement; yet safe by the merits of the lord Leontius, and unharmed. Now the place where the little daughter was swallowed by the waters was one hundred and forty-six feet distant from the end of the water-channels. The conduits through which the girl was swept were covered with heavy planks, so that the bulk of her little body might well have held back the swelling waters, and she should by these alone have been suffocated. The end of the last water-channel was but five inches and a half in width, that is, an opening much narrower than the head of the infant herself. The fall of the water was twenty-four feet in height. The girl fell dashed against the stone turned toward the ground. From these circumstances the greatness of the miracle is to be measured. All these particulars, but more fully, so as to set forth the evidence of the remarkable prodigy, Pfleger likewise observes, adding that the girl's father, for a perpetual memorial of the thing done and a due attestation of a grateful mind, caused it to be painted and described on a tablet, which was hung up in the chapel of St. Leontius in the year noted above.
[207] a boy suffocated in the waters and thought dead comes to life again; Famous is that which happened in the year 1655 at Lunkhofen. Johann Jakob, a boy of four years and a half, son of Jakob Lutz, having with childish thoughtlessness followed his father unnoticed as he was making for the country, and having incautiously crossed a little bridge set over a deep whirlpool of waters, fell in, wholly plunged in the marsh, so that nothing of him could be seen but his cap floating on the surface of the water. There had chanced to pass by a citizen of Bremgarten (Christopher Kappeler), going to visit his brother (master Nicholas Kappeler), who at that time administered the cure of the parish of Lunkhofen; and seeing the cap, he prudently suspected that someone might perhaps have been swallowed in the deep whirlpool. When he had surveyed everything more carefully, he saw the boy lying face down at the bottom of the water, suffocated by the waters. Those therefore who were nearer at hand were called together and expended every effort to draw the boy out of the waters and to elicit some sign of life from the submerged body, but the care was in vain: since indeed the boy had stuck in the deep for more than two hours. The parents, saddened beyond measure, called upon the help of the lord Leontius in the straits of their soul, and together vowed a pilgrimage to his sacred body. But the parish priest, who was present at the sad spectacle, hung upon the neck of the lifeless boy a rosary consecrated by the touch of his sacred relics: and immediately the boy, as though roused from a heavy sleep, breathed several times with a deep and difficult breath, and straightway after that raised himself upon his feet, and was restored sound and unharmed to his parents, who poured forth tender tears for their immense joy. I subjoin the testimony from Pfleger set forth in Latin; but because the rendering seemed difficult, I have been less careful about changes of words here and there and of senses, provided only that I attained the thing itself and its sequence.
[208] a wagoner, with his horses I, Johann Jakob Stählin of Millaw, declare that on the sixteenth day of November in the year 1665, having set out with a four-horse team and my servant Johann Schärer into Alsace, I came to Nieder-Ercken, a place half an hour distant from the town of Sainte-Croix, at the flood of the river Helell, where it is deepest. Now when at Nieder-Ercken I had crossed the bridge at that place where the waters with a doubled arm had eaten out a huge whirlpool, and one, as I for my part did not know, by no means fordable, the three foremost horses slipped down into the water, and my servant himself would have been drowned, had not another wagoner of Rothenburg, whose name was Walter Höltschin, quickly lifted him up from the horse. Seeing the wretched accident, I leapt down from the wagon, and of the reins attached to the pole I cut one and untied the other, so that the horses, being freed, might swim out. But these, going forward with further swimming, were caught fast among the thickets, whence they were in no wise able to extricate themselves. Having noticed this second misfortune, I untied the stronger horse, hitherto bound to the wagon, and, meaning to free the others from the danger,
I followed after them by swimming; but having reached them and having tried to extricate them, I found the thing to be utterly impossible; nay, I myself underwent the most immediate danger of losing my life: for I was plunged in the waters up to the neck, and it was often necessary to support myself on the toes alone, lest the waters should get into my mouth. Besides this, from the horses kicking against me and entangled together, an even greater peril threatened than from the waves.
[209] In this extremity of calamity I suffered by a greater misfortune the loss of the draught-horse, wonderfully escapes drowning. most precious to me and more to be valued than all the rest together: for he was taken from my sight, and whither I did not know. At length, as I considered my condition more attentively and perceived that it was all over with my life and with the horses, the eyes of my mind were opened; then first I began to think of God, to implore his help more urgently, to promise a votive tablet to the wonder-working martyr Leontius and a pilgrimage to the church of Muri. I therefore most earnestly besought God and his Martyr to come to my aid in that calamity: as also came to pass. For soon, drawn out of the thickets and separated from the horses, I got wonderfully to land; and scarcely had there passed an interval of time in which you might recite the Lord's Prayer three times, when there followed the three horses safe and unharmed, only the stronger draught-horse being still missing, whom nevertheless I likewise recovered, not without a prodigy, on the following day. On account of so many and so great benefits I have caused this tablet to be hung up here in honor of God the best and greatest and of St. Leontius, thus praising him in his Saint through the ages. Thus he. Further, I find Millaw or Müllaw marked in the maps near Muri; and the town of Sainte-Croix near Colmar or Columbaria, a city of upper Alsace on the river named above.
[210] At another time Ludwig Kronenberg of Damersellen in the county of Willisau in the canton of Lucerne, Infants suffocated in the waters, who was in the sixteenth month of his age, on the twenty-fifth day of the month of March, sacred to the Annunciation of the most blessed Virgin, fell into a pond adjoining his father's house; and when they had long sought for him and had not found him, his mother at length, Maria Meyer, casting her eyes more carefully upon the pond, saw him lying on his back at the bottom. Wherefore, running at speed, filling the whole neighborhood with loud shouting and wailing, she called them out to draw the little boy from the waters. The boy accordingly, liker to a dead than to a living child, wholly suffused with pallor, having been drawn out onto the land (by Jakob Rhiner, who had run up first, as Pfleger writes, and who had lifted him with his head turned toward the ground, so that, the water he had swallowed being cast out, he might be brought back to his senses and to his lost vigor), lay for half an hour without indication of present life, and, as they undoubtingly believed, suffocated by the waters and dead. His father Karl Kronenberg meanwhile bound himself by a vow to visit and to honor in his sacred remains the lord Leontius, the wonder-working patron at Muri (and to procure there the sacrifice of the Mass, and to offer a votive tablet). And when the vow was uttered the boy first began to gnash his teeth, then, stretching out his limbs, yawned seven times, and so thereafter returned more and more to his mind and his strength, and revived and recovered entirely, after he had spent at least half an hour in the waters and another half hour out of the water without life. In the year 1671. But the parents, according to Pfleger, discharged the vow on the fifteenth day of May in the year 1672.
[211] The little boy Leontius of Bäsenbüren, son of Peter Moser (and of Catharina Bochsslerin, his wife), and, as was believed, when he was playing after the usual manner with others (at Bossweil, a place not far distant from Muri) on the bank of the stream which flows into the mill, chanced to slip into the stream and was snatched away and thrust by the force of the waters through a water-channel fifty-two feet long, and at last was cast over the mill-wheel into the deep and beneath the waters and submerged: where he lay stretched out for about a quarter of an hour. His mother, informed of the sad event by her six-year-old daughter, at once uttered a vow to the lord Leontius for the safety of her son (and she promised, Pfleger being witness, a pilgrimage to the monastery of Muri, a Mass to be celebrated there, and a votive tablet); and, seeking the boy, she found him in the deep pit, his head wrapped in his clothes, in all else like a dead child. (There had come thither by chance, as the same Pfleger relates, master Kuon, a leading man at Waldhausen, and Pancratius Schreiber, of whom the former at length noticed some indication of life at the belly of the boy, now drawn out of the waters, while the latter drew a great quantity of water from his distended mouth.) After half an hour, as though waking from a gentle sleep and having become master of himself, he appeared before the eyes of all safe and unharmed, as if nothing adverse whatever had befallen him, without any injury or sign of injury. In the year 1675.
[212] dead, are recalled to life. In the year 1678 Ursula Blatner, the two-year-old daughter of Nicholas Blatner (and of Anna Egglin) of the parish of Beromünster (in the territory of Lucerne), fell into a water-trough, no one noticing it, and lay sunk beneath the waters themselves, with her hands stretched toward heaven: until a certain young man (Jakob Brengarter) chanced to pass by, and, having caught sight of the infant in the waters, trembling drew her out of the waves, and carried her home sixty-one paces, where for half an hour she lay a cold corpse without sign of life. But after her grandmother (Maria Lucia Schoss), who had come up, consecrated and commended her granddaughter with a vow to St. Leontius, at once Ursula uttered a small cry, or rather a deep sigh, and, the red color being restored to her face, she came to life again and recovered. On the thirty-first of August in the year above said.
[213] A boy fallen into the waters is snatched from manifest peril of death; In the following year 1679 a very small boy, the two-year-old son of Melchior Widerkehr (the magistrate) of Dietikon (a place near Bremgarten), Joseph by name, when he had tumbled into the stream flowing past and to the mill, was cast by the wave with violent force through the conduits over the wheel itself and whirled about, until he was caught between the pavement laid with stones and the millstone of the wheel and so tightly compressed that, if you had chosen to regard the measure of nature, you would have affirmed that it was all over with the boy's life. Yet after and because his parent, having received the sad news (from Jakob Widerkehr his brother, who, seeing the mill-wheel obstructed, had gone to look what the cause might be, and, catching sight of the infant's unhappy accident, had cried aloud), and having beheld the thing with his own eyes, had in his straits and affliction commended his little son to the protection of St. Leontius with a vow (of making a pilgrimage to Muri and of offering a tablet), the boy was drawn out from beneath the millstone with much labor safe, and not only without a wound, but without a weal or a bruise of a wound.
[214] drawn lifeless from the waters, a girl But in the year 1680 a girl likewise of two years (Barbara Schäncker, daughter of Johann Schäncker and Elizabeth Freyin in the parish of Grätzenbach in the territory of Solothurn), when she was playing after the manner of infants at a basin or trough filled with water, was incautiously carried headlong and fell into and beneath the water itself, no one seeing it. After an interval, whose duration is uncertain, one of the household, noticing it, ran up and lifted the girl from the deep to be snatched from death. But since neither then nor for four whole hours afterward had she given any sign of surviving life, her parents, having made a vow, offered her to the holy martyr Leontius at Muri, and at once, as the water which up to then had been shut up and retained in the cold corpse flowed out copiously, her breath began to pass freely, and immediately she came to life again unharmed.
[215] The same grace, by the intercession of the most blessed Virgin and of St. Leontius, was had by the little boy Leodegar Studer of Lucerne. and a boy receive life. He fell by accident into the basin of a fountain: from which, having been drawn out by passers-by after an interval whose length I do not know, he was lifeless for a whole hour, though fomentations were applied in vain to elicit some indication of life. Those present pronounced vows, the one to the most blessed Virgin at Wertenstein, the other to St. Leontius at Muri: and after the grandmother (mistress Dorothea Schindler), coming up to the sad spectacle, ratified the vows, at once the little boy, who had been dead, opened his right eye, and so received life and entire health, on the sixth day of June 1680. Thus far Mayer setting forth Pfleger, who then subjoins the following, all of which certainly the same Pfleger could not have known, being already long dead: Now Leodegar (whose parents were Johann Jodocus Studer and Maria Catharina Keller, of patrician family) lived to the seventy-second year of his age, having become a monk in the monastery of Muri, in which, after he had discharged the professorships of all the classes, he presided as master of novices, then as subprior, and at last for sixteen years as dean or prior of the convent.
[216] Nor ought that singular grace to be omitted which Gregory Neff of Tuggen in the March of Schwyz In the midst of the waters a man received from the lord Leontius in the same year. When about the feast of St. Martin the bishop he was crossing on horseback the bridge at Greinau, and was dismounting from his horse upon the bridge itself, one foot slipping, he fell suddenly from the bridge into the river Linth, which afterward pours itself into the lake of Zurich, certain to be drowned had he not in the very fall invoked with a vow the aid of the holy Leontius. For it seemed to him that he was held by someone by the hair so firmly that, though his whole body was plunged in the waters, he always kept his head raised above the waves; until, after being long tossed hither and thither by the billows, he was rescued by boatmen and carried unharmed to the shore.
[217] A frenzied woman of Rheinfelden, Kunigunde Solander (wife of Martin Cötscher), in the year 1681 threw herself into the Rhine flowing past, and a woman are prodigiously preserved unharmed. and, snatched away by the force of the water, was already beginning to be swallowed in the eddy and to sink. When those who saw her had commended her with a vow to the patronage of the holy Leontius, at once, emerging from the billows, she floated long and quietly upon the waters, until, lifted into a boat by boatmen who were sent out, she was carried to the shore, freed not only from the peril but also from the frenzy.
§ XV. Those who fell from a height and were in peril of life, preserved.
[ ] From a high rock The reverend father Athanasius a Castanea, a monk of the abbey of Engelberg of the Order of St. Benedict (in Unterwalden), testifies in writing to nearly these words: It happened in the height of summer, when the snows are wont to melt away and the hardened ice to appear again, that father Ignatius, afterward abbot, but then professor of Philosophy, on a certain day so far as I remember, in the year 1652 went out for the sake of recreation to walk, having taken me as his companion, with the intention of climbing the Mount of the Angels, so called, which rises up close to the monastery. But because we turned aside from the ordinary road, through long windings and turnings we came to a rock and to sheer and slippery ice, which father Ignatius climbed over without dread, and by a leap flung himself up to a higher brow. But upon me dread came, the position of the place struck terror into me, and I began to tremble in all my limbs and to totter on my feet: until, holding a staff in my hand, I reached about the middle of the rock: where, slipping, with hands and feet flung out, I fell face forward headlong with great force down the slopes to the bottom. Below there was a frightful valley, and there was a sharp crag in the way, fit either to tear my body open or to wound it mortally.
[219] having fallen At this perilous juncture of affairs, twice and thrice
I repeated "Jesus, Mary," [but I was being swept further toward the depth. The lord abbot, placed in a more elevated spot, was struck by that cry, cast his eyes to the depths below, and himself perceived the manifest peril of death, which for my part I did not apprehend, being unable to see what lay beneath me. Wherefore the lord abbot raised his right hand to impart to me absolution of my sins, as to one now placed at the last point of life and in the utmost peril. And so indeed it was. But almighty God turned the whole matter to the greater glory of St. Leontius the martyr. For when I was still being carried further along, and cried out a third time "Jesus, Mary," and profited nothing,] at length there came to my memory the holy Leontius, whose image, hallowed by his relics, I wore about my neck, and shall wear my whole life as a token of a grateful mind, saying nothing more than: Holy Leontius! And these words being scarcely uttered, on the instant I lay motionless, as though caught by someone in the middle of my fall, although the lower part of the slope was far steeper than the upper. [The lord abbot, who beheld these things, marveled greatly, and was filled with the utmost gladness along with me. May there be the greatest and perpetual thanksgiving to St. Leontius the martyr.]
These things Mayer has, except for those which I have enclosed in brackets, which, taken from Pfleger's German document, I have rendered into Latin, as also the following clause, which he had passed over, perhaps for brevity's sake. All this I, Fr. Athanasius a Castanea, priest and professed monk of Engelberg, attest, and the same the most reverend lord abbot will attest particularly and with his own hand, if anyone shall require it. Fr. Athanasius a Castanea, professed monk of Engelberg.
[220] and another from the roof of a house are preserved unharmed. Jakob Küssenberg of Döttingen in the parish of Klingnau (it is a town in the county of Baden), a carpenter, fell from the roof of a house, from the height of three stories, to the ground with so violent a force that the earth gave way rather deeply beneath the mass of his body. But in the very fall he committed his safety as a suppliant with a vow to the holy Leontius; and thus, though the nature of the fall would have broken either his neck or at least his limbs, by the intercession of the holy Leontius he raised his limbs whole from the earth without noteworthy harm, and rose up unhurt. In the year 1655.
[221] To others likewise in a perilous fall Oswald Strebel, miller in this our abbey, on the twenty-second day of the month of December in the year 1656, being about to go down into the mill, his foot slipping, fell down the ladder, while the mill itself was completing its course with violent force. Now he fell upon the capstan, and, thrust in and compressed among the pestles, stuck long in a dreadful position, calling for help in vain. Destitute therefore of human aid, he loaded heaven with vows (God, his most blessed Virgin Mother), and called St. Leontius into his vows (promising him that, if he should be snatched from this present peril, he would recite some prayers in his honor and would offer a votive tablet). This done, the mill suddenly stopped, until the wretched man extricated himself from the machinery and rushed out; and so he came away free and unharmed from the most immediate peril of his life. In thanksgiving and for the perpetual memory of the thing he had its course painted on a tablet and hung up in the chapel of St. Leontius, that he might thus stir up everyone to sing the praises of God in the holy Martyr; as Pfleger subjoins.
[222] In the same current year 1656, on the ninth day of July, Johann Jakob Huwiler of Auw, the Saint being invoked, when he had climbed a tree to pluck cherries, the branch on which he stood being broken, fell to the ground from the height of several pikes' length, in the opinion of all destined to be deprived either of life or at least of the use of his limbs. But because Jakob during his fall raised his mind and a vow to the wonder-working Martyr, by the merits of the holy Leontius, however heavily he dashed his body against the ground beneath him, he rose up from the earth uninjured and unharmed.
[223] By a graver fall Jakob Schwendiman of Inwil in the canton of Lucerne came down on the second day of October in the year 1658. yet it is piously believed, Being about to gather apples from a very high tree, he bound two ladders together, one not being sufficient, and set it against the tree and climbed it. And while, intent upon his work, he suspected no harm, the upper ladder, the ropes by which it had been bound to the lower one being loosed, fell down with Jakob to the ground far below: and because by the weight of this the lower one was broken into fragments, Jakob in the very fall received a grave wound from a large splinter penetrating into his thigh, but was otherwise in nothing injured; nay, the wound itself was entirely healed within the space of one month by a surgeon of no great experience. For Jakob bound himself by vows to the patronage of the holy Leontius and commended himself with intense devotion, when in falling he had the peril of his life before his eyes. Nothing indeed occurs here so wonderful that it ought to be said absolutely that divine aid intervened.
[224] In the year 1661 a boy of thirteen years from Hünenberg in the parish of Cham (according to the maps, in the canton of Zug), Johann, comes to their aid. son of Peter Filliger and Barbara Buecher, fell in a barn from a height of more than thirty feet onto a hardened threshing-floor. And yet (because those present uttered a vow to our holy Martyr for his safety) he neither felt nor bore in his body even a slight weal of injury from the fearful fall. He afterward performed the promised pilgrimage with his parents on the twenty-fifth day of April of the same year, that is, on the nineteenth day after the fall, according to Pfleger.
[225] The same Pfleger presently produces the testimony of another benefit written in German, A woman, from a fall which in the Latin tongue runs nearly thus: In the year 1661, on the fifteenth day of September, Elizabeth Vogel, wife of Jakob Dossenbach of Egonis-villa, climbed to a height in order to throw down sheaves to the threshers onto the floor below: but when she was pursuing her labor too incautiously, and had set her foot further than was fitting upon the pole that supported the sheaves, she was carried headlong, and from the height of about two stories struck head-foremost upon the hardened floor. From that fall, as is easily understood, she injured her head so wretchedly that, lying as it were plunged in her own blood, she gave no indication of surviving life. About the same time at which that accident occurred, I the undersigned, parish priest of the place, was passing by her house, and because I heard the mournful wailing of the household, I straightway entered the floor on which the woman lay drenched in blood, in order to learn what the cause of this sad wailing might be. But soon I found the woman wretchedly injured in the head and streaming with blood without any sign of life. I then waited more than half an hour, in case she might perhaps become master of herself and be able to be fortified with the most holy viaticum of the Sacraments of the Church for a happy passage.
[226] mortally wounded, recovers. But after a long delay I could observe nothing else than that she drew breath a single time; observing which, I anointed her with the sacred Oil at least upon the breast (because by reason of the danger it could not be done otherwise). Meanwhile I sent her husband off to Bremgarten to fetch a skilled surgeon. But he, revolving with himself the wretched state of his beloved wife, turned in mind to a far more skilled surgeon, namely to St. Leontius the martyr, to whom, as to a most kindly and altogether wonderful surgeon, he most earnestly commended his unhappy wife with a vow of a pilgrimage to Muri and of a tablet to be offered. But when the summoned surgeon, master Hartmann Seyler, had arrived from Bremgarten, and had found the woman in the state which has been described, after a further inspection he noticed that by the fall one of her shoulders also and her arm had been driven from their place. Nevertheless he would set his hand neither to the shoulder nor to the arm, to force them back into their seats, on account of the excessive weakness of the woman lying there; indeed he thought she would altogether not survive to the following day. But when on the next morning I had returned to her, I found that an immense miracle of the divine omnipotence had been wrought in her through the intercession of St. Leontius: inasmuch as, fully mistress of her mind and of her speech, she was able to confess her sins and to receive the true body and blood of our Redeemer. Then within a few days she came away sound and safe, could walk without difficulty and perform without discomfort any household labors whatever; and she praised God, who is wonderful in his Saints. To this account I have subscribed in support of the truth, and have willed that it be fortified with my accustomed seal. I, Matthias Honegger, testify as above. Egonis-villa, commonly Egenweyl, is not far distant from Bremgarten, as is sufficiently understood from the account.
[227] Draught-animals fallen from a height are preserved. Michael Lüthart of Merenschwand (of the territory of Lucerne) and his sons (Philip and Rudolph) were accompanying a wagon drawn by three oxen and a horse into the wood, meaning to fetch timber for household use. Close by there was a slope bristling with thickets and thorns, stretching down into a chasm below. The draught-animals therefore, suddenly driven into a frenzy, rushed off with a plunge toward the aforesaid slope, and rolled with the wagon down the descent to the bottom, to certain destruction. Michael in the meantime as a suppliant consecrated a vow to the holy Leontius, whereby he merited that by the merits of the Martyr the animals with the wagon were brought back unhurt to the higher ground again with joy and thanksgiving. In the year 1663, on the twenty-second day of February. Pfleger asserts that this history, which he proves at length could not have happened without an evident miracle, was painted on a tablet and publicly displayed in the church of Muri, and then subjoins the testimony of another benefit, which I have turned from German into Latin, as follows.
[228] A boy brought to the last extremity by a fall, Be it known to all that on the thirteenth day of June in the year 1667 in the city of Zug, when new buildings were being erected, my little son, nearly eight years old, called Karl Joseph, who among other boys was handing up bricks, was at length left alone upon a high and heavy ladder, such as we are wont to use in a fire or in the erection of buildings of that kind, and for the carrying of which three or four men are required. Meanwhile the ladder fell, and he clung to it as far as about the middle of its fall, at the thirty-second rung, twice crying out "Jesus, Mary," and at the same time letting go of it, he fell breast-foremost upon a tall oaken stake, and then upon a heap of stones, and was taken up for dead. While that unhappy accident was occurring, I had kept myself at home, but presently, as I ran up, a certain man presented to me the boy, carried in his arms, without any indication of life and as though wholly lifeless: in this sorrowful case, when I had withdrawn myself, I devoted my son with the fullest faith and confidence to God, to the most holy Mother of God, to the Virgin Mary at Einsiedeln, and to St. Leontius in the church of Muri. Upon this he at once gave signs of present life, and so recovered that on the next day he enjoyed full health again, no remedy having been applied; only a vein was opened for him as a precaution, in case perhaps some evil might lurk in the blood. Of these things I, Melchior Brandenberg, the boy's father, and many other honest men, who beheld with their own eyes both the fall itself and the immense prodigy, are witnesses.
[229] From a ladder likewise (so Mayer continues), in the year 1668 on the twenty-third day of May, there fell Catharina
Weber, a pregnant woman injured in a frightful manner, of Lachen in the March of Schwyz, pregnant wife of Andreas Schwieter, a rope-maker by trade, and fell upon a machine set nearby, by which tow is commonly prepared, which penetrated nearly half an ell into her belly — a thing as horrible to tell as to hear — a blow assuredly deadly both to the mother and to the unborn child, had not the preserving power of the holy Martyr checked the force of death. For the woman, while falling, bound herself by a vow to go and venerate the bones of St. Leontius at Muri, if he would preserve life for her and for the fruit of her womb. The wonder-working Helper did indeed preserve both by his intervention; and the woman, after ten weeks more had passed, bore her child safely, whom in honor and memory of her holy Intercessor she named Leontius in Baptism. To this miracle Caspar Scriba, doctor of sacred Theology and parish priest at Lachen, an eyewitness, gave his warrant. Pfleger gives the German words, and they run thus in Latin: That these things are so, I, who beheld that accident with my own eyes not without the greatest astonishment, and despaired of the safety of the fallen woman, do attest — Caspar Scriba, doctor of Theology and parish priest in the same place.
[230] Johann Keller of Schmärcken, assessor of the municipal court in the county of Uznach, a man set in the agony of death, come away unharmed. when after the council of the senate was concluded he was going away from the town hall, fell from the top of the stair to the bottom, rung after rung, and being carried thence to his bed, lay bereft of life and of his senses for a whole quarter of an hour: until, spirits and fomentations fitted to draw forth the vital spirits and senses having been applied in vain, seven men who were present with unanimous consent commended the aforesaid Johann to the lord Leontius, adding a vow that they would all go on pilgrimage to his sacred pledges, if by his merits he should impart to him life and his senses, at least so far that after the Christian and Catholic manner he might be disposed and provided for a pious death by the most holy Sacraments. For immediately the color of life returned, breathing returned, and with his eyes opened he who had been dead, or at least had been struggling with death close at hand, began to revive, and on the next day was safe and unharmed. And the men above said on the thirteenth day of the month of March in the following year 1670 rendered their vows at Muri, and affirmed on oath what is written above.
[231] But let us return to the earlier year 1669, in which the power of the holy Martyr shone forth singularly in the preservation of a little child. A certain small boy (Ursus by name), son of Adam de Arch of Neuendorf in the canton of Solothurn, An infant is prodigiously preserved, and is freed from a malady of the eyes. incautiously tried to cross at a run a plank laid over a lime-pit still seething: but his foot stumbling, he fell down, plunged in the burning lime head and whole body as far as the knees. After an interval of time the little boy's godfather, when he no longer saw him, prompted by an anxious and not groundless suspicion, ran up, and saw only his feet stretched out of the lime. Then indeed, moved with pity, with hands and eyes raised to heaven, he fell upon his knees and made a vow (of a pilgrimage) to St. Leontius (at Muri and of a tablet to be offered), that he would save the boy: and then, a mattock having been brought, he began to draw out the little body, in the opinion of men burnt up and consumed by the heat of the lime, and drew out the boy alive and unharmed, to the amazement of all, with little labor, save only for his little eyes, which for three days and nights the small boy neither would nor could open for the greatness of the pain, being full of pains and destitute of rest. (Pfleger adds that master Johann Studer, a very skilled surgeon, was called in; but that his diligence here availed little, since the boy from the violence of the pain hindered with all his might any hand or anything else from being brought near his eyes: and those same pains so tormented the poor child that for three whole days he rejected all food, so that it was thereupon feared that together with his sight he might also lose his life.) The parents therefore renewed the vow uttered by the godfather, adding a second, that a Mass should be read at the relics of the holy Martyr. It was about the seventh hour of the evening when the promise of the vow was made, and from that hour a quiet sleep took hold of the boy, prolonged to the seventh hour of the following morning; at which hour the boy, waking, asked to be refreshed with food, and, opening his eyes, clearer than before, looked upon his parents standing by and the others present, being wholly restored to health. So, besides many others, attests the reverend master Franz Stephan Haffner, parish priest at Neuendorf. Among the many witnesses, besides the parish priest, the boy's parents, and the surgeon above named, Pfleger expressly names Ursus Heini, his godfather mentioned above, and Maria Olterin, who had likewise received the infant from the sacred font.
§ XVI. Various persons crushed and mangled by wagons and by the weight of heavy objects, delivered from their wounds and from the peril of death.
[ ] A broken bone knits of itself; There had come in the year 1648, in fulfillment of a vow, Fridolin Näff of Ittenthal near Laufenburg (on the river Rhine) from the parish of Kaisten, who in the twentieth year of his age, crushed by an oak that was being cut down, was gravely wounded, his leg being broken off. For the restoring of it his parents squandered all their goods in vain upon surgeons, and were reduced to poverty. But when he was pouring out his prayers before the sacred body of the lord Leontius, his broken leg gave forth so loud a crack that he did not doubt that his mother also (Margaret Bachhoferin) and the others standing by had heard it. Whereupon the pain began to diminish, the broken bone of its own accord to join together and knit, and his foot without human aid so to be made firm that afterward he walked with an upright step, as if he had suffered nothing amiss.
[233] Nicholas Lüthard, a young saddler in Auw, a young man, by a heavily loaded wagon was standing with others like himself beside the road, along which a wagon of wine, holding eleven jars, was then being conveyed; but when his companions withdrew, he incautiously stood his ground, so that, thrust to the ground by the horse, he fell beneath the wheel with the middle of his body, and — what you may wonder at the more — the wheel, with the whole mass of the wine, came to a stop upon the young man, which would certainly have crushed even a breast of iron. In this extremity of life the prostrate young man, raising his mind and a vow to the holy Leontius, commits his safety to that same Martyr with so happy an outcome that, when the wheel was drawn back as quickly as could be done, he himself rose from the ground safe and unharmed. In the year 1650.
[234] When in the year 1660 Johann Ulrich Meyer of Birchi (a village about half a mile distant from Muri) went out to plough, and a boy, trampled by the draught-animals and the plough, without injury; the animals, that is, the oxen and horses, blazing up unexpectedly into madness, turned everything upside down, his young son Johann Caspar, who as usual had been sitting on one of them, being thrown down beneath their feet and trampled; and he would also have been thrown beneath the plough which they were drawing, and wretchedly torn by its iron points, had not the breastplate of faith and confidence in the holy Leontius forestalled the cruel butchery. For Ulrich the father, when he saw his son in peril of his life, betook himself to vows (he promised a pilgrimage to the monastery of Muri and a Mass to be read there), by which he called the holy Martyr to his aid. And indeed he bestowed his help upon the one who asked it, and the boy his son, although his clothing was torn, yet not injured a whit in body or skin, came happily through all the danger.
[235] About the middle of autumn of the same year 1660 Andreas Koch, a man likewise by a wagon of Weyden in the parish of Egenweyl, when he was bringing home turnips with a wagon, and the wagon, because of the steepness of the road, was in danger of overturning, and he himself presumed to hold up the leaning wagon, the mass of the laden wagon, being stronger, fell, and along with it crushed Andreas with such force that, after he was drawn out from beneath the wagon, the shape of his body was seen impressed in the ground; and he himself was held by all to be bereft of life, since no indication of breathing life was found in him. The parish priest Matthias Honegger too, being called, when he had found him lacking sense and the breath of life, exhorted those standing by to implore with him the help of the holy Martyr, that he might at least obtain from God for the wretched man so much space of life as would allow him to be provided with the holy Sacraments for a Christian death. A wonderful thing! Scarcely had the parish priest uttered the name of St. Leontius and the vows which he had made, when the man, crushed as above, gave such signs of returning life that he could be absolved from his sins and anointed with the sacred Oil. And after this, by the merits of the same Martyr (and using no other remedies), he was not only snatched from the jaws of death, but restored to the most entire health; which, as the surgeon attested (summoned thither from Bremgarten and) abundantly skilled, could not have come to pass without a most excellent miracle.
[236] At another time, namely in the year 1663, Adam, a two-year-old son, had gone out into the field with his father Caspar Müller of Villmaringen (in the Free Provinces) and two other elder brothers, and a boy, crushed by a tree and held for dead, recover their health. where the father was cutting apart with a saw a thick and very tall cherry tree; but Adam, ignorant of the danger, was sitting upon the tree that was being cut. And when the trunk, now cut through, rolled over, it seized the child sitting there, and buried him up to the neck, in which posture he lay until he was drawn out from beneath the huge mass by his father, who had pronounced a vow to St. Leontius for his son, and by his brothers, although in the opinion of those present stripped of life. Yet after a little while, beyond hope, he opened his eyes, and, having been given his mother's milk to drink for his refreshment, within half an hour he stood and walked; and scarcely two hours having passed, he played and ran about with the other children, as though nothing amiss had ever befallen him: by an evident miracle assuredly of the divine goodness and of the merits of the lord Leontius.
[237] A boy, by the shaft of a mill, In honor of the most holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, of the most blessed Virgin Mary the Mother of God, and also of the most powerful patron St. Leontius the martyr, I the undersigned testify that on the third day of the month of November of the year 1663 at Ottenhausen in the parish of Hochdorf an immense prodigy befell a boy of about five years, Peter Lang by name. For when the said Peter, in the mill where kernels are wont to be crushed for the pressing out of oil, had come rather close to the shaft by which the pestles are driven, it seized the boy and dragged him down with it with great force, so that it must needs have been that he was crushed and killed by the oaken shaft of that huge mass, had not a maidservant, Maria Schmid by name, uttering a vow, commended Peter to St. Leontius the martyr of Muri. For as soon as she had uttered the vow, of its own accord and without human aid the shaft withdrew from its place, and was moved aside a good ell's space, so that thereupon the wheel also stopped and the boy could be drawn out, who came away thence so sound and unharmed that he went home of his own accord, without any help.
[238] as was certainly believed, But when Johann Weiff, to whom the mill belonged, had run up and had seen the shaft moved from its place, he could not sufficiently wonder, since its size and weight required at least four or five sturdy men armed with levers. Thus the sequence of the thing done was reported to me, on oath interposed, by three honest and trustworthy persons, Johann Weiss, Maria the maidservant mentioned above, and mistress Anna Nüölman: and I for my part judged it to be of my office, this account faithfully, for the eternal memory and the honor and glory of God
and of St. Leontius the martyr to consign to writing and to fortify with my seal. Done at Hochdorf on the fourteenth day of February in the year 1664. Johann Gründler, parish priest at Hochdorf. This place, from which the testimony that I have translated into Latin out of Pfleger was sent to Muri, is marked in the territory of Lucerne between Sursee and Sempach.
[239] and another, by a heavily loaded wagon, Another boy of nine years, when his father Adam Stoll of Esch (in the Free Provinces) was carrying out dung with a wagon drawn by four horses and seven oxen along a narrow road, in that very narrow place slipped to the ground and beneath the wagon, so that the front wheel of the wagon with the whole mass of dung rolled across the middle of his body (and no one of those who beheld the wretched accident with horror but would have judged that the boy was crushed and dead, as Pfleger says). The trembling father with a vow (of making a pilgrimage to Muri) invokes the holy Martyr, by whose merits the boy, being lifted from the ground, after a quarter of an hour, unharmed, discharged his office of driving the beasts. In the year 1666.
[240] [and a man, on the point of being crushed by a mass of stones, are preserved unharmed;] In the following year 1667, on the seventh day of the month of October, Adam Satler of Müswangen in the parish of Hitzkirch, when he was digging out pumice-stones for the building of a new chapel, was suddenly crushed by earth and rocks slipping down from above, and, his foot being broken through the middle, held fast beneath the mass with his body doubled up, and could be seen by no one (and though he had had a thousand lives, as Pfleger again writes, he would not by human means have escaped death). But because, with the peril of destruction hanging over him, as has been said, he bound himself by a vow to the holy Martyr, by the diligence of the men who ran up he was drawn out of the ruin and — what no one believed — snatched from the jaws of death, yet not from all danger: for when those men were carrying Adam, thus dug out, away from the pit, a rock of huge bulk rolled down against Adam himself, to his certain destruction, had he not again doubled his vows to St. Leontius: for scarcely had he vowed when the rock by an altogether wonderful motion turned aside to another quarter and left Adam untouched.
[241] Mayer omitted the things which, reduced to a summary out of Pfleger, I subjoin: an infant mortally struck by a falling beam, In the year 1668, on the twelfth day of August, in the village of Bligenstorff in the territory of Zug, while Johann Schicker was standing with his three-year-old little son Johann Caspar beneath the eaves of a barn, there fell unexpectedly between them three stones, and besides these one of the beams of the roof, which, weighing thirty-three pounds, struck the boy on the temples and laid him flat upon the ground. Taken up, he gave no sign of surviving life; but those who were present admonished the father, stricken with terror, to devote the boy to the patronage of St. Leontius; and he, complying with the wholesome counsel, after no long delay received back his son, who had been despaired of, alive and unharmed and altogether uninjured, if you except a mark which was left upon the temples.
[242] Valentine Thoni of Pfeffikon, in the prefecture of St. Michael in the territory of Lucerne, and a man crushed and lifeless beneath the wheels of a wagon recover. by an unhappy accident slipped beneath a wagon overloaded with various kinds of timber and brushwood (when, on the descent of a mountain, the device by which the wheels are held, as I understand from Pfleger, was unexpectedly loosed, and the wagon with three horses went to the bottom with great force), so that two wheels rolled over his breast, and he himself lay as it were lifeless without indication of life. But at last, when other remedies availed nothing, the men who were present and whose concern it was, having made a vow, consecrated him thus crushed to St. Leontius, and forthwith, as though rising from the dead, he walked back home with no one supporting him, and within a few days came away sound from certain slight injuries.
[243] By a not very dissimilar misfortune Joseph Jung, Others (stepson of Johann Jakob Widerkehr) of Waltenschwil in the parish of Boswil (in the Free Provinces), by the intervention of the holy Martyr came happily through a danger in the year 1674 on the twenty-eighth day of March; when, his brother Heinrich driving the beasts, he himself was following a wagon of dung. For when they had climbed a certain little hill, the laden wagon, suddenly carried backward to the bottom with swift force, first overturned Joseph, so that, with the wheels rolled over his feet stretched out beyond the wheel-track, he was also trampled by the feet of the animals. But, a vow having been made to the wonder-working Martyr, he rose up unharmed and safe out of an evident peril of body and life, by an evident miracle.
[244] In the year 1679 a girl of four and a half years, Verena Wurmann (of Bünzen in the Free Provinces), was caught by the wheel of a wagon by various of this kind and thrown down, and at last was crushed by the wheel itself as far as the breast. And because the wagon stopped, the girl's brother Johann with a raised voice called out to the driver, who was noticing nothing. He flew up at a run, and strove with what diligence he could to free the girl from destruction. She seemed at first to have been killed; yet because she moved a foot, that driver, Luke Abbt, loosed his mind and tongue to vows to the holy Leontius (and drew the wheel aside with all the speed and gentleness he could), and immediately the girl raised herself upon her feet, and with her brother Johann returned home safe and without any mark.
[245] evils In the same year 1679, in which the monastery of the religious virgins of the Holy Cross at Altdorf of the Uri (Urania or the canton of Uri is one of the thirteen cantons of Switzerland, and its chief town is Altdorf), having been reduced to ashes, was being rebuilt, Augustine Stauffacher, on the twentieth day of January, when the ground was covered with ice, was hauling a fir of great bulk and length. And when he was going before the horses, he slipped on the slippery ice; whereupon the horses, being frightened and roused to madness, so quickened their furious course that Augustine was overwhelmed and crushed, not only by the wheel passing over him, but by the whole mass of the tree along its length. But because in this terrible plight he commended himself with a vow (of making a pilgrimage to the monastery of Muri) to St. Leontius, not injured a whit, but sound and whole, together with those who ran up and were astounded at the miracle, he set down his life and safety with praises as received from the merits of the holy Martyr.
[246] and perils In the next following year 1680 a youth of fifteen years (Jakob Fischer) of Dietikon in the county of Baden, thrust to the ground by maddened horses, was thrown beneath the plough which they were hauling to the field, and, caught by the ploughshare about the lower parts of his belly — in his clothes at least — was dragged nearly three hundred paces over rough ground, in the opinion of his father and his uncle, who were following, to his destruction. But because one or other of them, moved by the wretched spectacle, cried out: O God almighty! O holy Leontius, help the youth! — in a moment the horses stopped, as if held back by a strong hand. And after they had loosed the boy from the ploughshare, having examined everything, they found him uninjured and unharmed.
[247] after vows pronounced to the Saint In the year 1682 four wagoners, namely Johann Dull of Willisau, Peter Daman of Sempach, Balthasar Zimmermann and Melchior Daman, together with Johann Ulrich Hug of Ruswil, were hauling wine from Alsace. And when they were pursuing their journey, between Ottmarsheim and Blodelsheim Johann Ulrich, contrary to his custom, was slow in following. Whereupon the rest, made anxious, went back, and — what they had suspected — found the wagon heavily laden with wine overturned, and Ulrich laid low and crushed beneath the great mass, who also, after with much labor, as is easy to believe, he had been drawn out from so great a weight, lay stretched before their feet for a whole hour as though dead, without sense and without sign of vital breath. But those men, with unanimous consent falling upon their knees, joined vows to vows, that is, after vows of a pilgrimage to the most blessed Virgin at the Hermitage and at Werdenstein (and of procuring the sacrifice of the Mass at both places), they made a like vow also to the holy Leontius at Muri. And straightway he who was held to be lifeless began to draw breath, to have his face suffused with a lively color, and to revive: so that, raised upon his feet and led into the lodging, he was in a short time restored to entire soundness and safety. The places named at the beginning of this number, Willisau, Sempach and Ruswil, are situated in the canton of Lucerne; Ottmarsheim and Blodelsheim in upper Alsace not far from the river Rhine; by the Hermitage is meant the abbey of Einsiedeln in the canton of Schwyz; but Werdenstein is a place unknown to me.
[248] are withdrawn. In the same year Johann Landtwing with his wife Maria Elizabeth Cloter of Zug were striving to yoke a horse to a wagon loaded with flour; but the horse, suddenly seized with fury, thrusts them both to the ground, and cast them headlong beneath the wheels of the wagon, in most certain peril of destruction. The wife at this critical moment commended herself and her husband with full faith to the protection of the holy martyr Leontius, and cried out: Holy Leontius, help us! And the horse, its fury lost, at once stood still and unmoving, and the pious pair crept out from under the wagon free of all harm and unhurt, and went out again to their business.
§ XVII. Many freed from the falling sickness and from hernia.
[ ] Infants Jakob Geiliger, a citizen of Lucerne, had a little son of three years and a half, whom a disease not unlike the falling sickness held, and which shook him at first once every month, then every week, and at last on almost every day, so that, the vigor of his limbs being lost and distorted, he was deprived also of the use of his tongue. But when his aunt had established a vow to the lord Leontius for the boy's health, he indeed was seized by the same disease moderately once only, but afterward and thereafter remained always free of it. And the pious aunt rendered the vow at Muri together with her nephew in the year 1648.
[250] The two-year-old son of Christopher Kopp of Baden labored under the same disease from his mother's womb. laboring under the falling sickness And when on a pilgrimage, in which they were venerating the bones of the holy Martyr at Muri with pious devotion, they had offered him to be cured by his merits (and had ordered a Mass to be celebrated in his honor), they brought him home free of the deadly malady, rejoicing and praising God in his Saint. Pfleger marks the year 1649, the twenty-fifth day of the month of March.
[251] By a like power (in the year 1651) the eleven-year-old daughter of Bernard Biland of Gäbistorff in the county of Baden was freed from epilepsy, are freed, after in fulfillment of a vow she had been offered to the patronage of St. Leontius by a pious pilgrimage to Muri. For she who (the remedies of human art having been applied in vain) used to fall more than three hundred times in one year, from the time when the vow was pronounced and fulfilled, suffered nothing more of the deadly disease.
[252] In the year 1666 George Heini of Buttisholz in the territory of Lucerne, after the invocation of the Saint obtained health from the holy Leontius for his son, who was languishing with a like falling sickness, by a vow of pilgrimage and by prayers. For his son was hindered by the aforesaid malady with such violence that as often as he fell, so often was he believed to be drawing his last breath. But after the vows he remained wholly free, and continued to be sound.
[253] In the canton of Solothurn, at the place Biberist, Johann Schreyer, son of Isaac Schreyer (and of Maria Reinhartin), was held by the same infirmity; him his parents, since the human remedies which his anxious father had procured had brought no relief, to St. Leontius with vows (of making a pilgrimage to Muri and of hanging up there a votive tablet in thanksgiving)
they handed over to his patronage. But although after the votive pledge Johann was not at once delivered from the malady, yet after the fulfilling of the vow he fully recovered. In the year 1682.
[254] Besides this another youth of eighteen years, of Rudickon in the parish of Hitzkirch (of the territory of Lucerne), Johann Kretz by name, a young man likewise, on account of a deadly epilepsy unfit for any work (necessary for the sustaining of life), was long tormented. He too had implored and had called into his vows the lord Leontius, uttering a faithful promise to venerate him in person in his sacred pledges, and to honor him with a certain daily devotion. Nor was the holy Martyr wanting to his pious affections and prayers, but from that time by his merits and intercession freed the youth from the most troublesome malady (so that, being fit for any labor, he easily procured a living for himself, as Pfleger says). In the year 1684.
[255] and a man suddenly. Even beyond the bounds of Switzerland, namely in the parish of Löffingen in the Landgraviate of Fürstenberg, the lord Leontius stretched out a helping hand to Johann Heitzmann, laboring under a nearly similar disease. For he was so exhausted of his strength by the deadly malady that he had to keep to his bed for fifteen weeks. But when he had bound himself by a vow to approach and venerate the resting-place and the bones of the holy Martyr at Muri, he was on the spot restored in strength and released from the disease, so that the uttering of the vow and the healing of the epileptic came together as it were in the same moment. In the year 1685, on the twenty-eighth day of the month of March.
[256] Many afflicted with hernia Wonderful, moreover, are the benefits which the Wonder-worker bestowed upon those suffering from hernia. Jakob Graff of Riedsheim experienced this, who because of a hernia had to abstain even from necessary nourishment, since as often as he took any small quantity of food, so often were not only the pains but also the swelling in the afflicted part increased beyond measure. A vow therefore having been made (by his parents, who grieved over the lot of their unhappy child) to St. Leontius, and discharged at Muri in the year 1649, Jakob Graf, all the swelling and pain having been removed, thereafter took any foods whatever, safe and unharmed. Here Pfleger, and Mayer his interpreter, began a new series of years, because, as is plain, a new subject-matter of benefits presented itself.
[257] are freed, So in the year 1650 it befell Joseph, the three-year-old son of Jakob Hertzog of Beromünster or Münster (in Aargau), to be freed from a hernia by the merits of the holy Martyr. His father vowed (perceiving not without inward grief that no human help remained for curing his son except an incision full of danger, as Pfleger writes) to make a pilgrimage to the relics of the holy Martyr (with his afflicted son) and to bestow upon the sacred place, together with prayers, a chasuble (the outer vestment of a celebrating priest): and from the time when the vow was thus made, that malady, without any other remedy, decreasing from day to day, at length entirely vanished. And the father, Pfleger again being witness, praising God in his Saint, as a public testimony of the benefit received, ordered a tablet to be hung up in the church of Muri, on which was inscribed the entire course of the thing done.
[258] when a vow So in the same year Jakob Isenegger of the parish of Hochdorf in the territory of Lucerne, when he had heard from the parish priest's preaching that someone of the same parish had by vows and prayers to the lord Leontius been healed of the malady of hernia, with which Jakob too was held; having conceived confidence in that same Martyr, he vows a vow of venerating his resting-place at Muri (and of repeating this every year), if he should be healed: and he was straightway so healed that not a trace of the malady remained.
[259] has been uttered So in the year 1652 the ten-year-old son of Johann Fuchs and Barbara Halter of Arth, which is one of the chief villages of the canton of Schwyz, being afflicted with a painful hernia, when the lithotomist (a surgeon is meant who is especially skilled in removing the stone by cutting) or operator shrank from curing the boy by an incision (fearing, namely, according to Pfleger, that the boy's tender age might succumb to the pains); being offered in fulfillment of a vow to the holy Leontius (the boy was so offered by his parents, and led by them to Muri), as soon as he touched the sacred relics, he at once felt the help of the holy Martyr so present that, the intestines withdrawing within, he was in a very short time made whole again. His glad parents, after due thanksgiving to God and to St. Leontius, willed the benefit to be inscribed on a tablet and publicly hung up in the church; as Pfleger subjoins.
[260] Then in the following year 1653 a boy of Adelweil (in the canton of Lucerne), the little son of Nicholas Wolf (and of Margaret Lang), suffering from hernia and rupture from the womb, to the holy Martyr was healed by a wonderful outcome. His parents took care that the infant, twenty-one weeks old, should be delivered from his ills and pains by an incision: and it was done according to their will in the year 1647. Nevertheless even after the incision either the swelling or the protrusion of the intestines, of the size of one fist, together with immoderate pains, either remained or returned. But when the pious mother, pitying her son beyond measure, at one time composed herself to sleep, she dreamed that she had undertaken a journey and a pious pilgrimage to the body of St. Leontius. Wherefore, as though divine Providence had admonished her by this dream, on waking she at once girded herself for the journey, venerates the sacred bones of the holy Martyr, and pours out prayers for the health of the boy. And thus she obtained by the merits of St. Leontius what she had desired; for all the malady departed from the boy.
[261] With no less grace and power the holy Athlete of Christ freed from a like malady two little boys come away safe, of Werth in the canton of Solothurn, sons of Melchior Sänger and Ursula Morach, of whom one, Jodocus, came into the light in the year 1653, the other, Jakob, was born in the year 1655, each suffering from a rupture of the intestines. For when the anxious mother (having abandoned the plan of making an incision, which had been adopted before) implored by a votive pilgrimage the help of St. Leontius before his sacred bones at Muri for the health of her firstborn, he was without delay restored to soundness. And when, raised by this miracle to greater confidence, she had besought the holy Martyr by undertaking a second pilgrimage on behalf of her younger son, she received this one too free of the malady.
[262] Such a malady attacked Jakob Carli of Zufikon in the year 1636 from the lifting of a rather heavy mass, a man likewise and a woman brought to the last extremity, and tormented him right up to the year 1654, in which it began to be deadly, so much so that the hope of a longer life failed him. Nevertheless after he had redoubled his prayers with a vow to the renowned Martyr, not only the peril of death but also the aforesaid infirmity left Jakob unharmed, the intestines withdrawing into their place and order. To these Pfleger subjoins a healing which Barbara of Ried in the parish of Sattel in the territory of Schwyz likewise ascribed to the merits of St. Leontius, and of which we too subjoin a compendious account: About the year 1662, as she was laboring under a grave malady of the body, a malignant wind blew upon her and so infected her that she had scarcely a single limb unimpaired. Her old hernia too was seized by the infection, and for that cause she was committed to a well-skilled surgeon of Schwyz, who, on the counsel of others skilled in that art, so opened her side with a wide incision that, since all the intestines were laid bare, very little hope of her life remained. In the midst of her pains and in the extreme peril of death Barbara placed her hope in God and in the patronage of the Saints, especially of Leontius, to whom she vowed a pilgrimage to Muri; presently, to the wonder of many, her condition was changed, and she began to be better, so that the malady which had been despaired of was healed and she herself was brought to entire soundness. We go on with Mayer.
[163] By a memorable occasion and outcome the boy Johann, son of Christian Schurt of Kirchhofen in the Breisgau, received health by the merits of the holy Martyr, and others afflicted with a malady of this kind, whom, doubly ruptured, his mother Catharina Mentzenau had led to Vitodurum (commonly Winterthur), a heterodox city within the bounds of Zurich, to be cured by an incision at the hands of a skilled surgeon. And when the surgeon was preparing everything for the incision, there came a heterodox woman from that same city, and addressing the mother said: Come now, good woman; have you never been with your son at Muri? Many things are told of a certain holy Man there who can heal all diseases: why do you subject the boy to an incision? Take him back, and carry him to that Man; he will heal this one too. Whether this woman spoke with a sincere and serious mind, or in jest, the mother kept and pondered these words in her heart, and, as though they had been spoken or dictated by God, laying delay aside, she withdrew her son from the lithotomist's knife and, a vow having been made beforehand, carried him to Muri and to the chapel of the holy Leontius. But before she reached the monastery, the boy appeared delivered from all his malady; so that he entered the church appointed for him no longer to entreat a grace by prayers, but to render thanks to the holy Martyr, and there honored his sacred pledges that rest in it (and, Pfleger being witness, attested the benefit received in good faith before all), on the thirtieth day of the month of May in the year 1678.
[264] are healed. Lastly in the year 1681, likewise at Muri, the holy Martyr imparted his help and bodily soundness to Jakob Rey, a boy of fourteen years. He, while he was running with others to extinguish a fire, struck those tender parts against a certain projecting pole, and ruptured himself, being thereafter unfit for labors. And because either from shame or from horror he shrank from submitting to an incision, his father Peter Rey, having made a vow, leads his son with him before the sacred body of the holy Leontius (and orders two Masses to be celebrated there), and with what pious insistence he could commends him to the holy Martyr, intending afterward to return with him to the surgeon: and when, his devotion being finished, he was meditating his return, the son said to his father, I feel nothing amiss any longer; St. Leontius has helped me; everything has vanished; what then have we to do with a surgeon? And in truth by the merits and intercession of the Martyr alone the boy obtained restored health.
§ XVIII. Blindness and troubles of the eyes removed.
[ ] The blind are endowed with perfect sight Johann Käch of Bleulikon in the parish of Hitzkirch in the thirteenth year of his age lost all the light of his eyes from a cataract, so that without a guide he could neither walk nor take food without a serving hand. There were added intense pains, which drew from the wretched man nothing but groans, sighs and continual tears, since he could approach neither fire nor light. In process of time, admonished by certain persons, he placed his hope with a vow in the merits of St. Leontius, and promised to undertake a pious pilgrimage to his sepulchre. But because he was unable to render the vow himself, his parents took his place with pious confidence, and brought home with them some of the water blessed by the sacred relics. And when they had several times washed the eyes of the blind man with it, in a short time he returned to entire sight; and on the thirteenth day of March in the year 1648 he himself (with no guide) went reverently to his Enlightener at Muri with thanksgiving, and so forth. Pfleger says that this benefit, most celebrated and very well known throughout the whole parish, was confirmed by many trustworthy witnesses.
[266] With the same healing water Johann Graber of Burrka in the Breisgau in the year 1648 anointed his eyes, are granted. which had been bereft of light, and recovered his sight. For a whole year he was led by a guide from place to place by a staff, until at the feast of Pentecost of the same
year he came to Muri, where he venerated the sacred bones of the holy Martyr: he washed and he saw. For afterward, having dismissed his guide, he completed his journey alone, discerning and distinguishing all things clearly with his recovered sight. So far as I understand from Pfleger, that blind man went to Muri three times, and on each occasion found his eyes to be better; and on the last it was proved by experiment before witnesses, both ecclesiastical and secular, that his sight had been wonderfully restored to him.
[267] Francis, the little son of Oswald Spillman of Zug, To a blind boy the use of one eye was bereft of all light by sharp fluxions. After very many remedies, which profited the sufferer nothing, in the year 1649 on the twenty-fourth day of June he was offered in fulfillment of a vow to St. Leontius at Muri. There, while his mother (Anna Marckin) was engaged in the sacred rites, the little boy addressed her thus: O my mother! Look, what beautiful little children are set out on the altar! — meaning the statues and images of St. Leontius and of the other Saints. From which the glad mother learned that his right eye, its pupil being cleared, beheld everything distinctly. And thanks having been rendered to the holy Helper, she promised to name the child she was carrying, if it should be a male, Leontius, in memory of the great benefit, and when he was born she named him (Caspar Leontius); and he was the first who bore this name of Leontius in that city. Pfleger too records that of the boy's two eyes, which were both afflicted, one only, the right, was opened.
[268] George Weber of Kriegstetten likewise for a whole year did not see the light of heaven, and to a man the use of both is granted. and therefore dragged out a sorrowful life. He too sought to be enlightened by the protection of the holy Martyr; and therefore, giving himself to prayers at his chapel, as he had vowed, he implored his help, and washed his darkened eyes with water blessed in the name of St. Leontius, and therewith washed away and expelled his blindness, returning home in clear light in the year 1650.
[269] Romanus Besler of Altdorf of the Uri in the twelfth year of his age was deprived by smallpox of the light of his left eye, Grievous troubles and at the same time endured immense pains, so that from their violence he both loathed food and lacked the rest of sleep. (Much money was spent in seeking out remedies, but without fruit.) A vow having been made to St. Leontius and fulfilled, at once that corrupted eye recovered perfect sight and its former use. In the year 1651.
[270] A miracle nearly like this one followed in the next year 1652 in a boy of six years, of the eyes son of Ulrich zum Buel of Rustenschwil in the parish of Auw, who was dim in both eyes; the trouble of the dimness was increased by immoderate torments, which had taken from him almost all rest. After his parents in fulfillment of a vow went down with their son to the sacred body of our wonder-worker Leontius, the pains passed away together with the dimness, and the boy returned to perfect sight.
[271] A few years later Anna Frey (daughter of Heinrich Frey) of Kienberg in the territory of Solothurn, are relieved. blinded in one eye by malignant fluxions, and with the other also overspread by a cloudy dimness, could not walk alone without a companion. She went to the sepulchre of the holy Martyr, sought health by urgent prayer, and obtained it. For the one eye received entire sight, and the other so much light that she saw everything, but as if through a mist. In the year 1659.
[272] One bereft of both eyes is enlightened. The most noble master Johann Baptist Bircher, vice-secretary of the canton of Lucerne, in the year 1663 in the month of September unexpectedly lost the light of both eyes within the space of twenty-four hours. But when for three days, morning and evening, he had washed his eyes with rose-water consecrated by the name and relics of St. Leontius, on whom he had fixed his hope and his vows, and with which he also mixed the natural water blessed at St. Eugenius of Engelberg (we have made mention above of this most celebrated monastery of Switzerland): after the three days, waking in the morning, he saw not only the light of day, but all the other things which that light discloses to human eyes: and afterward he himself, that he might render thanks to his Physician, visited and venerated his sacred bones at Muri by a pious pilgrimage (and in testimony of the thing, which Pfleger adds, and to the greater glory of God, of the most blessed Virgin Mary and of the holy martyr Leontius, willed a tablet, on which the benefit was described, to be displayed in the chapel).
[273] Dimness of the eyes In the year 1675 to Macro Nägelin of Rapperswil (otherwise Rapersvilla or Ruperti villa, a town of Switzerland on the lake of Zurich), whose eyes not only grew dim as though overspread with mists, but often were destitute of all light, pious vows and a votive pilgrimage to our glorious Martyr so profited and prospered that he recovered entire sight.
[274] and sharp pains are removed. The same grace was granted in the basilica of Muri and in the chapel of the holy Martyr to Maria Widerkehr of Hägglingen (in the Free Provinces), who from malignant and sharp pains was in immediate peril of losing her sight and her very eyes. She came with confidence to the resting-place of the holy Martyr, a place of refuge and of graces: and having completed the observances of her devotion, she caused her suffering eyes to be touched and blessed with the sacred bone of the blessed Martyr; by which eye-salve alone, the humors being dispersed and wiped away, she recovered entire sight. In the year 1677.
[275] A blind girl, with the light of her eyes, But singularly worthy of remembrance is what the wonder-working martyr Leontius wrought at Colmar in Alsace; where, while by his intervention he restored sight to a daughter, he enlightened the mind of a heterodox mother with the light of faith. The mother's name was Maria Rischin, the daughter's Catharina, the father was called Jakob Masal, all of the heterodox faith. Catharina at two years old lacked the light of both eyes, nor was there anyone who applied an effective remedy for curing the malady, except her grandmother Catharina Weheger, who not long before, having abjured the errors of Calvin, had embraced the truth of the orthodox religion. She therefore asked the mother to permit her little daughter to be commended to the patronage of the lord Leontius, resting in the Swiss monastery of Muri, so that she might learn in fact how great was the power of the intercession of the Saints with God.
[276] and her heterodox mother, with the light of faith, are endowed. Maria heard her pious mother's voice and admonitions, and consented that she should devote the little infant to the holy Martyr, with the added promise that, if her little daughter should by this way recover her sight, she herself would profess the Catholic faith. The grandmother therefore with full faith pronounces a vow to Leontius on behalf of her two-year-old granddaughter, and forthwith the little girl opens her right eye, free of every blemish; and afterward, being enlightened in the left also, together with her mother, who, her husband having died, betook herself to the bosom of the Catholic Church, she performed the vow in the year of the Lord 1681 in the church of Muri before the sacred remains of the holy Martyr.
[277] Three other women Anna Senn, wife of Martin Coliger of Büren in the valley of Ganzingen, in the year 1681 after childbirth lost all the light of her eyes, so that for three whole days, eye-salves having been applied in vain, she was blind. When she had directed a vow and prayers to the merits of the lord Leontius, it seemed to her as though a splinter broke in her eye with a crack: whereupon the pain (which before had been most acute) fled away, and to her eyes there returned the perfect soundness of sight.
[278] In the same year, when Maria Barbara Lussi, a noble girl of Stans (in Unterwalden), had been deprived of the light of her eyes by measles, bereft of sight (and afflicted with pains so intolerable that she did not cease from weeping and lamenting, nor did the physicians called in, although they ascribed the cause of the whole malady to sharp humors remaining in the body from an illness she had had before, bring any relief or comfort, as Pfleger relates more fully), at the persuasion of religious men (the reverend Capuchin fathers) who had visited her father's house for the consolation of the suffering girl, her parents Johann Heinrich Lussi and Anna Maria Halter, becoming suppliants to Leontius, the universal physician of diseases, vowed to go to and venerate his sepulchre for their daughter's health. The effect answered to the vow, for Maria Barbara, her pains being removed and her eyes opened, recovered her sight.
[279] Catharina Underfinger of the city of Neuenburg (in the Breisgau on the Rhine, are enlightened. midway between Breisach and Basel) lacked her sight for fifteen weeks. She made use of medicines; but in these there was no power of healing. But after she made herself liable to a vow of visiting the chapel of the holy Martyr and of offering to him eyes formed of wax, by this slight little gift she merited that her sight should be restored to her by the wonder-working Athlete. In the year 1684.
§ XIX. The dumb and the deaf endowed with the use of speech and of hearing.
[ ] A dumb woman obtains speech. Barbara Huobschmid of Hiltisrieden (in the canton of Lucerne), while she was discharging the services of a maidservant at Lucerne, in the year 1647 utterly lost the use of her tongue, so that she remained tongueless for twenty-eight weeks; and because for loosing the bond of so necessary a member neither remedy nor counsel was at hand, she came on the nineteenth of October to the chapel of St. Leontius, and there, prostrate on her knees, prayed with strong feeling and sighs that he would heal her tongue. Nor did her hope deceive her; for having obtained her vow, on the next day, at the second hour of the morning, she loosed her bound tongue into words and into the praises of God and of the holy Martyr.
[281] In the year 1650 Heinrich Widmer and Elizabeth Burgin of Lower Elisbach, A girl, deaf and dumb from birth, in the territory of Solothurn, brought their daughter, deaf and dumb from the cradle, on the seventh day of June to the sacred body of the lord Leontius, and, prostrate in prayer for her health, asked long and much, and at length offered her to the priest, that he might touch her ears and her tongue with the sacred relics of Leontius. And scarcely had he touched the aforesaid parts, when the daughter, with a great crowd of people standing by, hearing and marveling, began to speak, and to call her mother with a clear voice. And from that time she heard and spoke rightly, and glorified God in his Saint together with her parents. Nor does Pfleger indicate how many years old the girl was when she was thus endowed with the faculty of speech; he only says that her parents had observed, when their daughter had reached a sufficient age, that she was dumb and deaf, and had suspected that she had labored under these defects from her mother's womb, yet none the less had applied every remedy of human art; but without any hope of obtaining a healing.
[282] and a boy likewise deaf are healed. Now Peter Schürmann of Emmen, in the territory of Lucerne, also had a son whose two ears had been closed from his mother's womb (Verena Kaufflin), so that he was deaf until the fifth year of his age. And when his parents, a vow having been made to the sepulchre of the holy Martyr, had offered him with devout worship and firm faith to St. Leontius for the bringing of help, on that same day his ears were opened to hear. In the year 1651.
[283] A girl's health and speech are restored. In the following year 1652 a girl (Anna Meyer) of Niederwil (in the Free Provinces) experienced the power of our Martyr. She in the year 1649, the tenth from her birth, on the fourth day of April, being seized with a grave disease, not only swelled up high over her whole body, but was also robbed of the use of her tongue, so that for three years and six months she could not utter an articulate word. Her parents, anxious for their daughter's health, in the year 1652 to the chapel of St. Leontius with
her went on, and, prostrate in prayer, implored his help, and thus obtained for their daughter, together with her former health, her speech also, the bond of her tongue being loosed.
[284] To a boy hearing and speech Sebastian Burcklin, son of Johann Burcklin (and of Anna Dubach) of Entlebuch, in the territory of Lucerne, from the fifth year of his age so failed in the senses of speech and of hearing that he could neither hear a sound nor bring forth a word. Whither should his afflicted parents go, if not to the physician of Muri, St. Leontius, whom frequent miracles had made so famous? They come therefore with confidence to his sepulchre, and, the offices of devotion which piety suggested having been completed before the bones of the holy Martyr, when the boy was blessed with the kiss and the touch of a particle of his sacred bones, he wonderfully obtained the use of both senses. For at once in the basilica he called upon his mother, though still stammering: but when he returned home, he made words with the entire function of his tongue, without hindrance or difficulty. In the year 1652.
[285] and to a man hearing is granted. After five years there came a certain man, Jakob Zürcher of the parish of Baar (near the city of Zug), whose faculty of hearing for four years had been so blunted that often he did not understand even a word of those speaking in company or with him. He bound himself by a vow to the holy Martyr thus: that if by his intercession his obstructed ears should be unstopped for him, he would come every year, so long as his strength allowed, to his venerable pledges, and would recall his benefits with a grateful mind. He had vowed: and when he had set out the first time on the journey to Muri, while still on the road he received words with a clearer ear, and took in voices and sounds; nor did the keenness of his hearing afterward cease to increase, until he came to the perfect use of his ears. In the year 1657.
[286] A sick and dumb woman recovers health and speech. I the undersigned attest with my own hand that Elizabeth Süter, a native of Freienweil in the county of Baden and the parish of Lengnau, fell into a deadly disease and evidently drew near to death: she lay sick unto death for more than four weeks, unable to utter even a single word, of which not only I, who, being her parish priest, visited her often in her sickness by force of my office, but also my mother, a matron of sixty years, and the whole community at Freienweil, are witnesses, who beheld it with our eyes and pitied the sick woman from our hearts, and the more indeed because we perceived that it was all over with her speech. Meanwhile there was one among those standing by, George Zeller, an inhabitant of this place, who, doubtless impelled by God, urged that the woman lying speechless should, by the uttering of a vow, be commended to the glorious wonder-worker Leontius, patron of the venerable monastery of Muri, adding that not long before, when he had gone thither on pilgrimage for devotion's sake, he had seen with his own eyes that a dumb person had there received the use of her tongue by the merits of St. Leontius. Hearing these things, the mother of Elizabeth Süter and her kinsfolk uttered the vow which he urged, and in that same moment of time the dumb woman, sick unto death, was better, nor was she only freed from the deadly infirmity, but obtained besides the most perfect use of her tongue (as is plain). Wherefore we all together render infinite thanks with proclamations of praise to the supreme Godhead and to St. Leontius the martyr. Done at Lengnau on the twenty-fourth day of November 1663. Fridolin Surlaulin, parish priest in the same place. The testimony here recited I have rendered into Latin out of Pfleger.
[287] Lastly in the year 1665 Nicholas Müller and Barbara Mertz of Zug came with their deaf daughter Anna Maria to the relics of St. Leontius in fulfillment of a vow, A girl is freed from a grievous trouble of the ears. that by pious prayers they might experience the power of the holy Martyr. For Anna Maria was so overwhelmed by thick humors or fluxions of the head that, her ears being obstructed, she heard nothing at all. The outcome proved the power of the Martyr, since at once on the same day, not indeed in the church but in the inn, a quantity of congealed blood flowing out of her ears, she recovered entire hearing.
§ XX. Demons expelled; sorceries removed.
[ ] A demon out of a possessed woman A certain woman of Menzingen (in the canton of Zug) uttered curses against her daughter Maria Frantz, a girl of fourteen years, and in a headlong movement of anger devoted her to the devil himself. Whereupon after a little while the daughter began to labor under an unknown disease and to swell up horribly over her whole body, and she remained in the same state until common prayers were offered for her by a public assembly of the faithful parishioners in the church. Upon these evils there followed disturbances, scruples, and anxieties of mind, which wretchedly harassed Maria up to the thirty-seventh year of her age; in which at length the evil spirit gave manifest signs of his dwelling within her: for he tormented and shook the body which he possessed so cruelly that she had to be bound and held with chains.
[289] Meanwhile, being adjured by the exorcisms of the Church to depart from his wicked possession, is driven out. he confessed, about two years before the body of St. Leontius had been taken out of its cemetery, that there was someone at Rome by whom he must be expelled. But after the aforesaid sacred relics had been brought from the city of Rome to Muri, that savage guest could not bear even the name of St. Leontius to be uttered, openly showing his indignation by horrible cries and ravings. Moved by this occurrence, her friends brought the possessed woman once and again to the chapel of the holy Martyr and to the kiss of the sacred relics, where, a blessing having been received, within a few days she was freed from a multitude of unclean spirits, and at last, on the thirtieth day of July in the year 1649, she was wholly delivered from the very curse of her incautious mother and from the infernal guide (after he had cried out with a clear voice that the most glorious Queen of heaven was present with the lord Leontius, to drive him out of his seat) by a blessing imparted in the name of St. Leontius.
[290] Those wretchedly afflicted Wretched had been the condition of Veronica Büttler of Rumeldiken in the parish of Cham (of the territory of Zug). A sorceress had in the year 1647 handled her right hand, whereupon she was so tormented with the greatest pains throughout her whole body that at first for ten weeks she was deprived of hearing, but afterward the pains poured themselves into her knees (by successions of three days each) and from her knees into the rest of her limbs, so that, her hands and feet swelling up, for seven other weeks she lay wholly drawn together; at which time the poison rolled and was driven about like a little ball through all her joints. These weeks having passed, she rested a little refreshed for seven others. But after these the former miseries returned, and lasted up to fourteen weeks; and nine other and milder weeks succeeded to these, so that she could stand, set a step, and perform a little labor. Now in those very days the enchanting sorceress herself was being haled to bonds and prison with other little women of her sort, who at the first examination under pain confessed that she had infected Veronica with a deadly poison by the touch of her right hand.
[291] by sorceries, And when she was asked by her confessors at the last period of her life by what remedy Veronica could be freed from such great evils, she answered (and the other sorceresses also asserted this same thing, although they had not spoken with one another, Pfleger being witness) that the best remedy would be if she should go to Muri and ask help of the lord Leontius. She went, with a churchman and her husband for companions, but with very grievous labor: for a journey of four hours she scarcely accomplished in the space of twelve hours. When she had prayed before the altar of the holy Martyr, and had afterward drunk of the often-mentioned water of St. Leontius, she felt herself so restored that within six hours she completed the journey from Muri all the way to Zug. And when she had returned to Muri a second and a third time with firm confidence, all the poison being expelled, she happily recovered from all her ills. In the year 1649.
[292] to their former state In the year 1650 Michael Constantine of Willenbroch in the city of Innsbruck (the chief city of the Tyrol), a most noble man, was poisoned by a raging spell. Religious and ecclesiastical men expended all their labor upon the afflicted gentleman to free him from the satanic bindings: but divine Providence reserved this glory for St. Leontius, to whom he had communicated the grace of healings. Willenbroch, roused by the fame of his miracles, entered upon the arduous and very long journey to Muri, and, setting aside all the difficulties of his wretched condition, comes before the relics of the holy Martyr, kneels down, and prays, and at last devoutly kisses, among other faithful, a particle of bone from the body of St. Leontius, and thus was wonderfully cleansed and released from the unclean bewitchment.
[293] are brought back. By a magical enchantment Maria Barbara Zehender of Menzingen (in the canton of Zug) suffered grievously in one foot for four years, and endured almost intolerable torments, with very many ulcers open about the foot, out of which, contrary to nature, there gushed straws and other refuse of that kind belonging to sorceries. And when the antidotes of physicians availed nothing, by the counsel of churchmen Barbara made a vow to the holy Leontius, to be fulfilled with due veneration before his relics; and having received blessed water from those same relics, she washed the bewitched foot, and, the ulcers closing up, in a short time she recovered, being wholly free from every magical binding. Pfleger ties the event to the year 1654.
[294] Johann Keiser, a carpenter of Wangen in the county of Willisau in the territory of Lucerne, A man, from a demon, being possessed by a demon, on the twenty-ninth day of March in the year 1658 came hither to the sacred relics of the holy Martyr with confidence and full faith, that by the Saint's power he might be freed from his unclean guest. To that end he first cleansed his conscience of evil works by the sacrament of Penance, and, having taken in the Eucharist the food of the strong, on the same day the wicked besieger was adjured by the accustomed exorcisms of the Church: and Johann was strengthened by the imposition of the reliquary of the lord Leontius; so that the wicked spirit, having lost all his strength, went out from the man and returned no more.
[295] The ancient serpent, ever the rival of the human race, a woman, from sorceries, was cruelly tormenting Catharina Müller of Zug by spells. But she, coming twice and thrice to the sepulchre of the holy Martyr, brought back relief and graces from his merits as often as she came (namely on the eighteenth day of July in the year 1658, and on the eleventh of July 1659, as Pfleger indicates). When she came a third time, it is a thing horrible and incredible to tell, had it not been proved by the undoubted testimony of churchmen both secular and regular, what refuse of bewitchments broke forth from Catharina in the chapel of St. Leontius: namely an oblong stone weighing nine pounds, and a fragment of a saw a foot and a half long and as broad as an outstretched palm, besides very many other things. All of which by the blessings of the Church and the merits of the most holy Athlete of Christ were expelled from Catharina's bowels, and thus all power of harming her was withdrawn and taken from the ancient serpent, on the eve of the feast of the holy Guardian Angels in the year 1659.
[296] The venerable priest (Maurus Vogel), parish priest at Hergiswil in Unterwalden, had also brought his brother Joseph, twelve years old, and of a boy who had had a demon from his tender years, desiring that he should be freed from the devil by the intercession of St. Leontius. And when on the twenty-seventh day of July 1658 they had already drawn so near to the monastery of Muri that they could see the basilica, the malignant spirit, unable to bear the sight of the holy Martyr's dwelling, to the amazement of all,
went out and left the boy unharmed, so that, when the most efficacious exorcisms had been applied and the relics of the Martyr laid upon his head, not the slightest indication of the presence of hell could be discovered. But after the venerable parish priest, having gladly set out on the journey home with his brother, was out of sight of the aforesaid church, the unclean spirit returned into his house whence he had gone out, and the last state of that boy became worse than the first; for besides this he was found deaf and dumb. Joseph returned, with the same venerable brother of his for guide, in the following year to the same relics, and after three days was wholly freed from the malignant enemy by the exorcisms and the merits of the holy Martyr.
[297] Another boy of eleven years, Johann, only son of Leonhard Lawener (and of Anna Müller) of Seedorf in Uri, are likewise freed from demons. was most grievously harassed by a demon; therefore, by God's inspiration, being brought by the aforesaid parents to the body of the holy Martyr, and having received a blessing several times and the touch of a particle of that same sacred body, to the very great comfort of his pious parents he was set free from the power of the demon. Then indeed, having returned home, as a preservative remedy he drank often, and in unbroken order, of the water blessed from the relics of the holy Martyr, so that thereafter the way of returning was shut off from every sorcery. This happened in the year 1660.
[298] Others likewise, from bewitchments Ulrich Bettig and Anna Jost of Hergiswil in the district of Willisau had a son of fifteen years, Melchior by name, whom torments so cruel, and beyond nature, tormented in his body that the suspicion was not undeserved that the young man was held by some binding. His parents went with him in fulfillment of a vow to the most blessed Virgin at Werdenstein, and to the remains of St. Leontius at Muri. Here, after he had drunk often of the blessed water so often mentioned, the sorcery appeared: for there broke forth and fell from his eyes fish-scales and cherry leaves; and from his throat and mouth thirty-three baked bricks, of which some weighed half a pound, some a whole pound. (How great pains and torments this brought upon the boy, anyone will easily conjecture, says Pfleger.) His body therefore being thus washed and purged of the sorceries, the young man entirely recovered. In the year 1663. To these Pfleger and Mayer subjoin a benefit which two married persons, harassed by bewitchments and freed from them, likewise set down as received from the merits of St. Leontius, and which it has not seemed good to set forth here at greater length.
[299] and from indwelling Then there follows in the same Pfleger the narration of three benefits, passed over by Mayer for a reason I do not know. Of the first, narrated at length in the German tongue, this is the summary: Maria Anna, daughter of Jakob Schoch and Agatha Blaserin of Schmalicken in Swabia, being possessed by an evil demon, was tormented in a horrible manner. But when her parents, being much distressed about her, had been persuaded by the counsel of pious men to take refuge with St. Leontius, the common patron in calamities of this kind, they entered upon the long and arduous journey to the church of Muri with their daughter, and she indeed on that occasion obtained much comfort, yet was not wholly freed. Wherefore with greater hope and confidence they undertook the troublesome journey a second time, and then by the power of the exorcisms and the touch of the relics of St. Leontius the wicked spirit was put to flight. This happened in the year 1679.
[300] demons The account of the second runs thus: Johann Leontius Bürgisser, five-year-old son of master Melchior Bürgisser and Maria Seylerin, a married couple of Bremgarten, had eaten a pear offered him by a coaxing little woman who was believed to be a sorceress, and from that time was afflicted with various infirmities up to the fourteenth year of his age, in which at length the demon who besieged the boy betrayed himself, wretchedly shaking him and violently torturing him in all his limbs, yet never more violently and horribly than when he was making his way to the church of Muri to venerate his Patron. Hence the conjecture arose that he would be freed from his troublesome guest through the patronage of that same Saint. His mother therefore (for his father was then dead), accompanying her son to the monastery of Muri, urgently demanded that the demon be adjured with the accustomed exorcisms of the Church, and that the sacred remains of the Great Leontius — by that title the demons themselves addressed the Saint — be laid upon the boy. What she had asked was done on the twenty-seventh day of August in the year 1681, and was repeated with greater urgency and ardor of devotion on the following day, on which the demon, though he had struggled much and obstinately before, at last, no longer able to endure the power of the holy Martyr, abandoned the boy.
[301] free The summary of the third account is this: Johann Joseph, son of Sebastian Zum Stein and Dorothea Im Feld of Lungern in Unterwalden, had likewise been harassed with many and various infirmities from infancy up to the eighteenth year of his age: when at last the author of all the evil, who had hitherto lain hid, manifested himself openly; namely an indwelling infernal spirit. Therefore by his kinsfolk — for by then his parents had died — not without immense labor and trouble, since the evil demon resisted with all his might, the youth was brought to Muri in the year 1683 on the first day of September, on the vigil of the annual festival of St. Leontius: where, after the exorcisms of the Church, together with the imposition of the relics of the holy Martyr, the savage enemy was expelled.
[302] Magdalena Müller of Sor, in the territory of Bern, by God's enlightenment come away. embraced the Apostolic Roman Catholic faith. Her constancy God tried and proved in many things. For besides that she incessantly endured very many persecutions and adversities, being possessed by a most wicked sorcery, and indeed by a demon, she was wonderfully harassed for four years. Yet the tempted woman did not fall away from her constancy and her confidence in God. But taking refuge with Leontius, the faithful athlete of God, and with his merits before God, by prayer alone, by the offering of Masses, by the veneration and the touch of the sacred relics, without the accustomed exorcisms of the Church, she was cleansed of all sorcery and delivered from the demon's possession in the very chapel of the holy Martyr, in which the sorcery itself (namely very large flints, rolled-up scraps of skins and cloths of various colors, hanging bolts, folded knives, and so forth) broke forth before the eyes of the beholders, on the sixth day of January in the year 1684.
§ XXI. Reason obtained for the mad, liberty for captives.
[ ] A frenzied man, There was a certain man at Risch in the territory of Zug, Caspar Schreiber, who from a most grievous disease, having lost all use of reason, was driven into frenzy, and after the manner of the despairing devoted everything to curses. Friends and neighbors had come together either as witnesses of the sad spectacle or as consolers of the afflicted household; and among them also Michael Stadlin, vice-parish-priest at St. Wolfgang's, who, moved with pity, in the presence of all made a vow to the lord Leontius in the name of the sick man and of his wife, that if by the merits (of the most blessed Virgin Mary and) of himself (the holy Martyr) he should return to a sound mind, they should stand bound to undertake a pious pilgrimage to the sacred remains of the holy Martyr (and to procure there in their honor the most holy sacrifice of the Mass). A few hours after the vow, a blessing having been received from the aforesaid priest, the frenzied man came to himself, and with his senses and reason entire, wholly released from his infirmity and unharmed, rose from his bed of death. In the year 1652.
[304] Under almost the same infirmity labored Maria Dahinden of the district of Entlebuch (in the territory of Lucerne), a woman, who on account of a strengthening madness was held bound with chains for several years. And the malady grew worse from the very use of medicines. Her two sisters therefore, Verena and Anna, come to the relics of the holy Martyr to entreat a cure from on high, and implore his intercession with God through the sacred labors of pilgrims, and obtain it, so that without any other remedy whatever, within the space of one month the sick woman recovered full health of mind and body. In the year 1659.
[305] In this same year Anna Schmidin, a daughter of the family at Niederwil in the district of the Free Bailiwicks, a girl, being useless for household business on account of mania, was a great cross to her parents; and that they might be freed from it they came to the sepulchre of the Saint, and there, prostrate in prayers and having offered the Sacrifice in honor of the Martyr, were so far held to their vow that within eight days their daughter was healed of her insanity.
[306] a youth In the following year 1660 there was brought to the same sepulchre in fulfillment of a vow a youth, Maurice Stäger of Glarus (the chief place of the canton of the same name), who, being not only bereft of reason but also full of rage, like a second Cain revolved the most desperate thoughts in his disordered mind. Five days he spent insane at Muri and in the chapel of the holy Martyr, namely from the nineteenth to the twenty-fourth of September. Meanwhile, the sacrifice of the Mass and other prayers having been offered in honor of the holy Leontius, Maurice himself on the twenty-second day, the feast of the patron of his name, returned to reason, and, entire health being recovered, on the aforesaid twenty-fourth day returned hence safe and unharmed to his own home.
[307] and two other mad women are restored to the use of reason. A like benefit two women ascribed to the patronage of St. Leontius, of whom Pfleger makes mention at greater length in the German tongue, we again more briefly: The wife of Johann Caspar Twärenbold of Cham in the territory of Zug, when she had brought forth a child, herself lost the light of reason, and was so blinded and disturbed in mind that she was continually tempted to cast herself headlong into the water, in manifest peril of her life. Having at one time obtained a space of time in which she had reason enough to apprehend the wretchedness of her condition, she uttered a vow of making a pilgrimage to Muri to the relics of St. Leontius, and thereafter retained the full use of reason. This happened in the year 1660. The same grace was obtained in the next following year 1661 by Anna Barbara Risin, wife of Johann Ackerman of Buochs in Unterwalden. For she after a grave illness was so alienated in mind that it was necessary to watch and guard her day and night as she raged and threw everything into confusion. Her husband, having uttered a vow, invoked St. Leontius, and commended to him his demented wife, and received her back in possession of her reason. Mayer, who had passed these over, then goes on to set forth Pfleger as follows.
[308] Others, stirred up by the fury Into a like malady fell Ludwig Starck, venerable curate at Lostorff in the territory of Solothurn, when, being for a long time bound with chains on account of a frenzied madness, he lived a most wretched life. (No remedies, even such as had to be procured at great expense, were neglected, according to Pfleger, but they profited nothing.) But a vow having been made to visit and venerate the relics of St. Leontius, he so recovered from the malignant infirmity that he discharged the vow himself, and, entire health having been obtained, returned home unharmed from Muri to feed his little sheep. In the year 1666. A summary of the thing done, comprised in German verses and inscribed on a tablet, the said priest ordered to be hung up in the chapel of the holy Martyr for the perpetual memory of the thing, as Pfleger attests, who also recites the verses themselves.
[309] of insanity Johann Moneth of Kerns in Unterwalden, being in the year 1668 reduced to a not dissimilar insanity, since whatever of pills and of bloodlettings was applied by the art of the physicians fell out in vain, so far from recovering, boiled up the more with rage. But when his people pronounced a vow to the lord Leontius, without delay Johann became so far master of himself that he was himself the first in discharging the vow at the relics of the holy Martyr at Muri.
[310] are brought back to a sound mind Besides these another man from the same canton of Unterwalden, Johann Näpflin, being harassed once every year with frenzy, had to be bound with chains because of his overflowing rage; but in the following years the deadly malady so gained strength that in the year 1679, driven on by his insanity, he escaped from hands and chains, and, wandering through woods and mountains and valleys, hid himself in caves and pathless places, while those of his household who had run out after him, and those whose concern it was, expended every effort in vain in tracking and finding him. And they feared, not without cause, that he might perhaps do himself to death. Meanwhile with a vow of undertaking a pious pilgrimage they asked the lord Leontius of Muri to be the guardian and guide of the man who was perishing, and to bring him back safe to them. And when, because of the length of his absence, they believed that it was all over with Johann's safety, a little while after the vow had been uttered he returned sound in mind and body, as though he had suffered no harm whatever in either, and remained unharmed until, after a long course of life had been completed, he paid the debt of nature.
[311] After this Pfleger repeats the benefit which, the help of St. Leontius having been invoked, Captives was conferred upon the frenzied woman Kunigunde Solander, and which has been narrated above at number 217. Hence he passes to another subject, and Mayer with him: But St. Leontius, when called into vows, frees not only those bereft of reason, but captives also. There was of Baar, in the canton of Zug, an upright and honorable man (Jakob Halter), who in the year 1658 upon a mere (and maliciously conceived) suspicion was held in prison for six weeks in a neighboring heterodox city. Now he perceived that the rack and other tortures were being prepared for him to extort a confession: therefore he raised his mind to God, the witness of his innocence, and to the Virgin Mother, and appealed with a vow to the lord Leontius as intercessor, that if he should free him from the danger, he would make a pilgrimage to his sepulchre, and would bring back the instrument of his deliverance to his chapel in testimony. The vow being thus pronounced, he saw and took hold of a rope, on which washed linens are commonly hung out in the sun, and by it, tied to a beam of the roof, he let himself down. But because the rope did not by many ells equal the height of the descent, having now before his eyes the perilous and unavoidable fall, he set himself again to entreat the help of the holy Martyr in these straits. And it came to pass that the rope not only grew within his hands, but, when Jakob Halter reached the ground (without any inconvenience, pain, or injury either of his hands or of his other limbs), it exceeded the height of the tower by three fathoms. This excess he cut off with a knife and carried with him, and on the morning of the same fourth day of February in the aforesaid year he came to Muri to discharge his vow. The truth of this thing Jakob steadfastly asserted on oath sworn upon the holy Gospels of God in the presence of his parish priest Peter Ander Matt. For my part I do not deny the truth of the thing done; but I wonder how the rope and the knife were left with a captive whose life was at stake, as Pfleger writes.
[312] There were besides two brothers of Esch (in the Free Provinces), Adam and Johann Hartmann Moser, come away free. who for some years followed the military service, while the war between Spain and Portugal was flaring up: and when, peace having been made between the belligerents, they were making for their native land with very many others, at Rora (perhaps Rhoda should have been written, which is a city of Spain) in Catalonia they were suspected of a false crime, arrested, consigned to prison, and condemned to the workhouse and to public labors. A grievous penalty indeed for the guiltless, by what way they might safely withdraw themselves from which they deliberated long and much in earnest. For their companions who tried to consult their safety by flight were caught, and some were condemned to the galleys, others perished pierced by a musket-shot. One night, at Adam's instance, they mutually agree to pronounce vows to the holy Leontius, that both would venerate the bones of the holy Martyr with a pious pilgrimage and a holy Mass. On the following morning, being led out from the workhouse to their accustomed labors, they depart before the eyes, or almost so, of all, and under the protection of the holy Martyr happily escape, being freed from a long, most harsh and unjust servitude. Adam on the fifteenth day of the month of May 1681, on which he acquitted himself of the vow of the promised pilgrimage, narrated and affirmed the course of the thing in the presence of lawful witnesses under the faith of an oath.
§ XXII. Various benefits conferred upon the same families or persons.
[ ] A woman in labor is helped; Concerning himself the most illustrious master Beatus Jakob Zurlauben, baron of Thurn and Gestellenburg, supreme commander of the militia throughout the Free Bailiwicks, testifies: thus Mayer, who then sets forth the course of the thing done. But since Pfleger gives the testimony itself, I have preferred, as I have done hitherto, to turn it from German into Latin: Praise be and thanksgiving to the powerful and kindly Godhead, that for the sake of his holy and faithful servants he shows himself so merciful and munificent toward us men and wretched sinners; even as it befell me, Beatus Jakob Zurlauben, and Maria Barbara Reding my beloved wife; when in the year 1649, on the second day of August, my wife labored for many hours in childbirth, and at length it was signified to me by several honorable women who were with her that she was in the utmost danger, and that no hope remained that she would come safely through by a happy delivery, unless almighty God should bestow a special grace. And so I took refuge with him, as was fitting, and resolved to honor him here in his faithful servant, the holy martyr Leontius. While I was already meditating alone in my chamber and with the utmost confidence imploring the help of St. Leontius the martyr, after God and his glorious Mother Mary, in that very instant my eyes were suffused with tears for gladness, as though I had obtained what I was asking; and indeed there had not passed so much time as would let the Lord's Prayer be twice recited, when a maidservant brought me the glad news that my beloved wife had happily brought forth a little son.
[314] Two boys, from a grievous swelling, At another time two of my sons were for some while afflicted with a grievous swelling, and after many medicines had been applied it was in no way at all perceived that they were better; so that my beloved wife likewise took refuge, after God, with St. Leontius, vowed a pilgrimage thither, and had water and their undershirts consecrated: and as soon as they had been clothed in these and had drunk the water, a night having passed, she perceived that the swellings were diminished; and when this had been done again on several occasions, the said boys were fully freed from the swelling.
[315] [and a man is freed from the peril of drowning and from the trouble of an injured hand.] In the year 1650, on the thirteenth day of February, Laurence Kurtz, a citizen of Mellingen, had cut wood at Wolischweil, a place of the Free Provinces, and, meaning to carry it home laid upon his back, had come to a little wooden bridge, which broke in the middle beneath him, and so the unhappy man fell with his load — by which one of his hands was wretchedly crushed — into the water. On the one side the pains of his injured hand afflicted him, on the other the intense cold, but above all he was distressed by the peril of his life hanging over him both from the water and from the cold, for he was not able to get out without a helper. He cried out at first as loud as he could, but no mortal was there to hear. And so he directed his voice to heaven, and earnestly asked the helping hand of St. Leontius, and obtained it. For, what before there had been no hope of doing, he drew himself out of the water and the danger; nay more, the hand, which he had believed would thereafter be useless to him, he received back sound in a short time, and fit for any work, as before. The whole outcome of the thing he himself comprised in German verses, which Pfleger copied out from a tablet formerly hung up in the chapel of St. Leontius, and appended to his fuller account of the thing done, whence we too have taken the summary here recited; for here again Mayer was silent, and passed on to the following account.
[316] Besides this the lord Leontius wrought three mighty works in the house of the most noble master Ludwig Schnyder, [A woman in labor is snatched from a double peril of death, and her daughter's eye is healed.] who had been receiver of the monastery of Muri in the town of Sursee. His beloved wife Elizabeth Pfyffer was in peril in childbirth both of her own life and of that of the child to be born; but a vow having been uttered to the holy Martyr, the danger at once ceased, the boy being brought safely into the light, whom on the following day they named Leontius in baptism. Three hours after the birth the mother from the preceding pains fell into a deadly swoon, in which, like one dead, suffused with pallor and without indication of breathing life, she lay for several hours. Another vow being added, as though raised up from death, she at once drew breath unharmed. And a little before these days the little daughter of the aforesaid lord and lady, Maria Anna, was on the point of being deprived of the light of one of her eyes, the remedies which were applied failing of their power. Her most pious mother in fulfillment of a vow offered her little daughter with pious prayers to the relics of the holy Martyr, and, taking water blessed by St. Leontius, washed the infected eye, and therewith washed away and carried off the danger of blindness, the pains, and all the harm. In the year 1650. The parents as a token of a grateful mind sent to Muri a tablet, on which that threefold benefit was described in a German poem, which Pfleger gives.
[317] To Peter Weiniger of Menzingen (in the canton of Zug) also the holy Martyr came to aid in his son with repeated help. A boy is endowed with the use of his feet and of an ill-affected eye. His son was four years and a half old, wholly bereft of the use of his feet from the cradle. His parents brought him in fulfillment of a vow to the sepulchre of the Martyr in the month of June of the year 1650; and when they were interceding, prostrate in prayers, for their son's health, the boy rose up with no one helping him, in the sight of all the people, who marveled and praised God in his holy Helper. About seventeen weeks later the same boy labored under a grievous watering in his eye, so that from the continued flux everyone believed that the eye would be ruined. The vow to the same Martyr is repeated, and, his eyelids being opened after a short delay, the eye appeared uninjured, sound and whole.
[318] Here again Pfleger brings forward a German testimony of a threefold benefit ascribed to St. Leontius, A boy receives back a foot most grievously infected which in Latin runs nearly thus: Since it is good to hide the secret of a king, but honorable to reveal and confess the works of God and of his Saints; master Heinrich Schuffelbuol, vice-magistrate here (at Zurzach in the county of Baden), desiring to report and profess in due place and manner, and with a grateful mind, the divine benefits which he acknowledges he has received through the intercession of St. Leontius the martyr, has asked me the undersigned to recount and attest what wonderfully befell his family. Since therefore we cannot but declare what we ourselves have seen and heard, I testify and confirm by this instrument that Johann Ulrich, son of the said master Heinrich, was two years ago most bitterly seized by an unexpected swelling, with pustules interspersed, in one of his feet; whereupon the pustules that had arisen ran together into an abscess, and broke out into many fistulas and wounds.
[319] sound; The labor of two well-skilled surgeons was employed for his cure, who, with all the diligence they could, having applied plasters and ointments, strove to remove the malady and to heal the infected foot, and spent all their zeal, labor and toil
in vain. At length the parents devoted the boy to God and to St. Leontius, and bound about his foot a little linen cloth which had touched the relics of St. Leontius and had been consecrated by them. And behold, after three days the swelling began to subside, all the ulcers and pains to vanish, everything to appear in a better state, and forthwith to be entirely healed: and when after half a year the same malady showed itself again, it was presently again fully driven away, when, as before, the sacred cloth was applied to him.
[320] a matron, contrary to her wont, brings forth a living child. Moreover, whereas the lady Euphemia, beloved wife of the said lord vice-magistrate, had hitherto given birth with the utmost difficulty, torment and danger, and had now twice been unable to obtain a living child, both of them, as a third birth was at hand, devoted themselves to God and to St. Leontius, with the added obligation of giving the child, if it should be born male, the name of Leontius. The vow fell out happily; for when she had renewed it at the time of bringing forth, the woman in labor within a quarter of an hour happily brought forth a little son, who, as had been promised, was called Leontius in holy Baptism: all of which, as it is written above, I confirm with my own hand. Therefore to God be glory, to the Saint honor, and to both thanksgiving for ever. Given at Zurzach on the fifteenth of April in the year 1652. So I profess and testify, I, Franz Brandenberg, dean of the venerable college of canons of the holy virgin and martyr Verena, and parish priest.
[321] Upon one and the same family a fourfold, In the year 1650 Elizabeth Stocker, wife of Jakob Baumbacher (of Zug), underwent in childbirth well-nigh the last peril of life. Yet beyond hope she brought forth a child without indication of a living soul, herself hastening to death. They were therefore laying the lifeless child in a little coffin, to commit it to the earth; yet the friends who condoled with him urge Jakob to become a suppliant with a vow to the holy Leontius for the safety of mother and child: he acquiesced in the good counsel, and commended both to the patronage of the holy Martyr. This done, the body of the boy, now on the point of being carried out in the coffin, is quickened; the boy is carried into the church for holy Baptism, and is given the name Leontius. Likewise the mother too, her strength being recovered, entirely regains her health. In the year 1655 this same Leontius, a boy of five years, having slipped from a little boat into the lake beneath the boat itself, and being swallowed up by the abundant water to his destruction, a vow having been made to his Patron by those standing by, was drawn unharmed from the deep whirlpool. And when the same boy in the twelfth year of his age had incautiously climbed a lofty tree to gather apples, he fell by chance from a height of thirty feet to the ground unharmed; because as he fell they commended him with a vow to that same Deliverer of his.
[322] upon another About the same times Melchior Stüber and Barbara Keusel of Holzhäusern in the canton of Zug begot a son, Jakob by name, who, four weeks having passed since the birth, when he was to be presented in the church and offered to receive the ablution of the chalice according to the custom of the church of Constance, redoubled his wailing beyond his wont. There was then standing by a certain old woman (condemned to death a little afterward for sorceries), who put a kind of sugar into the boy's mouth, and infected his tongue with a malefic poison; from which the boy, besides variegated colors on his tongue, suffered much inconvenience and pain in swallowing his food, right up to the eighth year of his age. And these too sought help from the holy Leontius at Muri with intense prayers: where, when they had touched the boy's tongue with the relics of the holy Martyr, and had washed it with the often-mentioned blessed water, all the sorcery being expelled, it was perfectly restored.
[323] At another time the same Barbara, being pregnant with another child, a threefold, chanced upon a man falling down in the Herculean (or falling) sickness, raging and drawing abominable snorting breaths, and passed on to her unborn child the horror which she had conceived from him, so that when he was brought forth into the light he drew not dissimilar raging and heavy breaths, as if he were on the point of breathing out his spirit. The aforesaid blessed water alone, which they gave the infant, having brought it back from a pilgrimage to the Saint, removed all the malady and made the child unharmed. Lastly Barbara herself too in the year 1655 lay sick unto death of pleurisy; in fulfillment of a vow she again invokes her Helper, drinks water blessed by his name and relics, and obtains at once both life and perfect health.
[324] Eva Elsener, wife of Heinrich Etter of Menzingen a twofold benefit is conferred upon another. (of the territory of Zug), in the year 1658, having fallen into frenzy and rage, made gestures more like a beast's than a human being's. After remedies had long been applied in vain, her household went with confidence to the relics of St. Leontius, and on their return laid upon the frenzied woman's breast a rosary blessed in his name and by the touch of his sacred skull. After a quarter of an hour a crack was heard within her bowels, clearly by those standing by as well, as though a staff had been broken in the middle: by which crack the infirmity was broken, and the woman was restored to a sound mind. Her son Johann Peter in the previous year 1657 so wasted away in strength that from weakness he could neither support himself nor walk (nor had he anyone to cure the malady). But after he was carried to the holy Martyr at Muri, piously honored his sacred body in prayer, received a blessing from his relics, and drank of the water blessed in his name, he at once began to be strengthened in his powers, and so at length attained entire health.
[325] In the same year an untamed horse threw its rider Johann Schwander of Lachen in the March of Schwyz An injured eye and feet to the ground, and struck its shod hoof into his eye with such force that, the blood flowing rather copiously down his cheeks, the surgeon judged it lost. Johann, having pronounced a vow, raises his mind and his voice to the lord Leontius, and on the third day after receiving the wound he saw and rejoiced in the proclamation of the holy Martyr, because he recovered the entire keenness of his eye. The same man in the following year 1658, after an infirmity of seven weeks, being grievously feeble and in pain in one foot, so that he could walk only with difficulty, leaning upon a staff, repeats a second vow to that same Physician of his, and, recovering in a short time, discharged himself of the vow at Muri with thanksgiving.
[326] Jakob Steiner, of the prefecture of Gaster, had been accustomed to come every year to the relics of the blessed Martyr. of the infirm are restored; fevers are removed. Now in the year 1659 his three-year-old son suffered from a painful affliction in his foot, so that not only could he not direct a step, but he could not even move the foot (except with the utmost torment). The father had determined within himself, as soon as he should make his customary pilgrimage to the lord Leontius, to offer something as a sacrifice on the boy's behalf; and in view of this purpose alone St. Leontius by his merits with God within the space of five days delivered the boy from all his malady and healed him. But both of them, namely father and son, in the same year on the twenty-sixth day of September were seized by a deadly and almost incurable fever; for the physicians' drugs profited nothing toward a cure. But the father saw to it that a Mass in honor of the holy Martyr should be offered for them both in his parish church of Oberkirch, and in the same hour in which the Mass was said both were restored to health.
[327] A boy is twice snatched from grave peril; Thomas, a boy of four years, son of Andreas Grob of Kahm, in the year 1654 on the eighth day of June had with childish thoughtlessness climbed by a very tall ladder into a cherry tree, in which, as he was behaving too incautiously, he suddenly fell from a height of sixty feet to the ground, destined to be shattered in his neck and limbs, had not a pious woman passing by chance commended him with a vow to the holy martyr Leontius as he fell. Eva Filiger was the name of the aforesaid woman; she lifted the little boy from the ground as one having no breath, carried the sad corpse to his parents, and announced the vow which she had made for the boy's safety. They, as one may rightly believe, being vehemently terrified, had scarcely ratified the vow when the boy opened his eyes, moved his hands and feet, and, to the wonder of all, raised himself up and walked about the place, as though nothing amiss had ever happened to him. Afterward, when the same Thomas was eleven years old, having accompanied his father into the wood to haul timber, he was struck in the belly by a kicking horse, and was laid flat on the ground three paces back, all his breath being cut off. His father therefore, who believed his son would certainly perish, again makes a vow for him to the sepulchre of St. Leontius, and the boy, his breath being resumed, revives, rises, and returns home sound with his father. In the year 1661.
[328] a woman sets down four benefits Anna Martin of Zug congratulated herself singularly on the benefits of the holy Leontius. She in the year 1648 was bereft of the sense of hearing, and was deprived of it for a whole year. But she came in fulfillment of a vow to venerate the remains of our Martyr, and when, the offices of devotion being completed, as she was about to go out of the church she had bowed her head to the sacred relics, it seemed to her as though a certain liquid, like cold water, ran from her ears within her head, and she perceived that, the malignant humor departing, entire hearing had been restored to her. Then in the year 1659, from a monstrous pain in an ailing foot, she could enjoy solid rest neither by day nor by night, nay, could neither stand nor go about her household business. She was often admonished by restless dreams to undertake a pilgrimage to the holy Martyr again: and when she had come a second time (led thither doubtless, or carried in a wagon), she obtained by her vows and prayers that, every medicine being set aside, by a sweat boiling out from her foot she fully recovered within the space of fourteen days.
[329] as received from the Saint; At another time, when she was eating some fowl, a lump of meat mixed with sharp little bones, which she incautiously swallowed, stuck so firmly in her throat that by no art could it be moved either into her mouth or into her stomach, so that she feared, not without cause, that she would at last be choked. Therefore by a repeated vow she commended herself especially to the holy Martyr, and suddenly the lump, loosed from her throat, came up into her mouth, and, being cast out, left the pious woman unharmed. Nor did the wonder-working Martyr cease here from working mighty deeds. For when the same Anna's ten-year-old nephew, Johann Rogenmoser by name, was suffering from an abscess on his neck, and besides this was stripped of almost all the skin of his face, and by the greatness of his pains was debarred from natural sleep; once and a second time they made and fulfilled a vow to the sacred remains of our holy Martyr (namely the aforesaid Anna and her sister Anna Maria Martin, the boy's mother, likewise very greatly devoted to the cult of St. Leontius). And the boy in the space of eight days (namely after the pilgrimage undertaken the second time; for after the one undertaken the first time the malady with its pains had indeed been somewhat diminished, but afterward returned to its former state, as Pfleger notes) was freed from both maladies and obtained perfect health.
[330] There was also a remarkable miracle which the holy Athlete wrought in the son of the free baron (Franz Ernst) Zweyer of Evenbach, a boy is freed from a double malady and from a deadly disease; prefect at Forum Tiberii (commonly Kaiserstuhl in the county of Baden), who was harassed in his tender years by a double and most grievous calamity, namely of rupture and of weakness of the feet. His most illustrious parents had bound themselves by a vow of a double pilgrimage to the most blessed Virgin at the holy Hermitage (commonly Einsiedeln) and at Arkenberg (a place situated not far from Klingnau, a little town of the said county of Baden). But the most holy Mother of God, willing to have Leontius also a partner in the miracle, deferred healing the boy; until, the same Martyr having been called into their vows,
with a promise of going to and venerating his sepulchre, the boy (Franz Ignatius) was freed from both deadly maladies. (Pfleger notes the year 1666.) The same illustrious boy, when in the year 1666 he lay brought to the last extremity by a deadly disease and abandoned by the despairing physicians, was by the intervention of that same holy Martyr, to whose merits he had been offered by a like vow (made by his pious mother), snatched from the jaws of most immediate death and restored to the best of health.
[331] Another nobleman also of the family of Pfyffer, a patrician of Lucerne, another obtains speech, and a third the use of an eye. had two sons, Franz Ignatius and Johann Walther, of whom the former up to his third year and a half could utter no articulate word; and the latter in the first year from his birth was deprived of the keenness of one eye, neither of them curable by any medical art. Yet St. Leontius came to the aid of both, after a vow had been made by their parents to his remains, and procured by his intercession speech for the one and the light of the eye for the other. All this Mayer drew from Pfleger, but besides this, concerning Franz Ignatius, on whom the use of the tongue was bestowed, he says: His first word, which he brought forth, was: Muri. And this without doubt he learned from Franz Ignatius himself, since concerning him he again adds the following: The former afterward became a monk at Muri, an excellent orator and poet, and died in 1739, a jubilee priest, in the seventy-sixth year of his age.
[332] Very famous is what the holy Martyr did for the four sons of Maria Schnellerin of Bacheneydt in Toggium (commonly called Toggenburg, A mother obtains a benefit for four sons. and it is a county of Switzerland). All four together in one night were seized in their hands and feet (the cause unknown) and were afflicted with a contraction; besides this they lay infected with festering pustules over their faces and necks. And there was none of the physicians (although the mother neglected no timely help) who could cure such great evils. When therefore the mother, raising her mind to things above, made herself liable to a vow to the holy Leontius (of a pilgrimage and of a tablet to be offered in the church of Muri), suddenly and all at once the four were granted the former use of their hands and feet, the purulent pustules remaining on the head. And that she might obtain a cure for these too from the same Martyr, she set out on a journey to Muri with her eldest son for companion: where, when the boy set foot in the basilica in which his venerable body rests, the plasters with which his ulcerated face was covered here and there suddenly fell to the ground, and his face appeared wholly clean. Nay more — which redounds to the increase of the holy Martyr's honor — on the same day, and at almost the same hour, the same grace came to the other two left at home. What became of the fourth, the written account does not say, except that the mother hoped that the Martyr's merits would be favorable to this one also.
[333] A boy is endowed with walking and with speech; By a double and equally most grievous calamity was Michael, little son of Leopold Grusing and Anna Felder of Brigantium (it is a town in Swabia, called by its inhabitants Bregenz, the head of the county of the same name), oppressed. He, being contracted in both feet from his mother's womb, was also up to his sixth year bereft of the use of his tongue and dumb. His parents, having heard the fame of the miracles by which the holy Leontius was everywhere celebrated, sent Anna Buolmann of Abbatis Cella to the Martyr's relics, that she might in their name undertake a pious pilgrimage for their son. And while the woman thus dispatched was intent at Muri upon hearing the Mass which was offered for the boy, and upon the other observances of devotion, the aforesaid boy at his own home raised himself upon his feet with no one helping him, and in the sight of his father and others walked about the heated room, and loosed his tongue into approximately these words: See, father, how prettily I can walk! Am I not a fine little fellow, father? So that Michael was delivered from both inveterate maladies by the merits of the blessed Martyr alone; and his parents were dissolved for joy into tender tears and into the praise of God and of the Martyr of Christ, on the twenty-fifth of March 1680.
[334] a fever is taken from a man and ulcers from a boy. Wonderfully too did Nicholas Steiner of Lichtensteig in Toggium experience the mighty works of St. Leontius; he lay seized and held for twenty-three weeks by an obstinate fever incurable by drugs. But after he vowed to make a pilgrimage to the sacred sepulchre of Leontius at Muri, the fever at once left him. But the holy Martyr made a greater portent than this in Nicholas's son Johann. He in the fourteenth year of his age, being infected with a poisonous scab and with many ulcers eating away the flesh over his body, was wretchedly harassed with great pains; and for curing him the medical art fell short of its power. By another vow therefore Nicholas the father offered his son Johann to our wonder-working Martyr, that by a supernatural power he might supply the defect of nature. Night had come, and all were going to bed; but in the morning, as the light rose, Johann himself got up from the bed of pain: and when those came who were according to custom to wipe away the corruption of the ulcers, they found nothing more on his whole body of scab, wasting, or ulcers, save certain scars or marks of the ulcers he had had. In the year 1682.
[335] Three benefits one and the same man obtains. I again leave Mayer for a while, that I may set forth in Latin the document which Pfleger next subjoins to these in German. It runs thus. I, Christian Baumgartner, parish priest at Sulzmatt in Alsace, attest and confirm by this votive offering and tablet that I have obtained from God three remarkable benefits through the intercession and patronage of the wonder-working martyr Leontius at Muri. For in the year 1650, when I had committed myself to be carried thither on horseback not without torment, and had rejoiced in the contact of his relics, I was evidently by the merits of that same Saint freed and healed of an incurable contraction of the sinews and a swelling in both knees, of which the physicians despaired; and so indeed that I, who had been brought to Muri on horseback with difficulty, as I said just now, returned home on foot. At another time, namely in the year 1681, on a pitch-dark night, with the sky violently flashing with lightning and thundering, I was thrown by a specter (which perhaps the horror of the night and of the storm had formed in my imagination) from a wall fifteen feet high, together with my horse, down into the vineyards; but invoking St. Leontius with an added vow, I came off unharmed together with my horse. In the said year 1681 I suffered an indescribable pain in my left foot, which was swollen high, and while a surgeon by no means unskilled despaired of healing it, I for my part, having again uttered a vow of making a pilgrimage to his sacred relics, and no other remedy being applied, escaped this third time also and recovered my health. To God and to the holy martyr Leontius be everlasting praise. Given the ninth of May in the year 1683. So attests Christian Baumgartner, parish priest at Sulzmatt.
§ XXIII. A plague of cattle driven off; fires extinguished; other benefits conferred.
[ ] A plague of cattle ceases. In the year 1688 in the parish of Hägglingen a deadly and incurable pestilence among the animals was raging, with immense destruction of livestock and grave loss to the country people: and while the remedies which were applied contributed nothing toward removing the plague, at the urging of the parish priest, Jakob Maurice ander Allmend, they instituted a litany at the sepulchre of the holy Martyr; and two days later that savage contagion wholly ceased; nay, several beasts which they reckoned among the lost returned to health. Between this and the following account Pfleger has written out a benefit attributed to the merits of St. Leontius by Johann Büttler of the parish of Auw, who received back presently sound a horse of great price which had been suddenly seized by disease and despaired of, after the invocation of the Saint and the promise of the sacrifice of a Mass.
[337] But by a more frequent power the lord Leontius commanded the winds and the fire. Fires, For when in the year 1649, on the twenty-third day of July, a thunderbolt fallen from an angry sky had seized upon the highest house of the place at Boswil, a village near to Muri and subject to it, the flame, driven and scattered by violent winds, in a short time reduced twenty-four houses to ashes, and would have laid waste the whole village together with the church, had not the fire lost the force of its power by the help of Leontius. For father Bonaventure Honegger, subprior of the monastery (who a few years afterward became abbot), had vowed in the name of the community a certain number of Masses and prayers; and at the same time a certain other man, raising the relics of the holy Martyr on high and against the fire, had blessed the surviving lower village: when suddenly and in a moment there arose a contrary wind, which so turned the flames back and away from the untouched houses that thereafter no peril of further conflagration remained.
[338] A like benefit was ascribed to the help of St. Leontius by another place in the Free Provinces, a vow having been made, not far distant from Muri, whose name is Hitzkirch. The manner of the thing done, as it was formerly inscribed on a votive tablet, Pfleger gives in German, and we have thus turned it into Latin: The watching rod of the Lord thou hast surely felt, O Hitzkirch! when on the twenty-fifth day of April of the calamitous year 1565 a fire that had broken out in thee and was driven by a strong wind so raged that, against all the diligence applied, it not only wretchedly reduced within the space of three hours thirty-six houses and hearths to ashes, but also seized upon the parish church itself, with the utmost danger also to the house of the Teutonic Order of Knights. Wherefore the venerable priests together with the anxious people placed their hope in the glorious and wonder-working martyr St. Leontius, and uttered a vow of a public pilgrimage toward Muri. And presently — O heavenly prodigy! — the flames drew back from the aforesaid church, and were utterly extinguished without further loss. Hence this tablet has been offered here as a witness of due thanksgiving. All to the special praise, honor and glory of God, of his blessed Mother Mary, and of the holy martyr Leontius for ever. Amen.
[339] are extinguished; In the course of the same year 1665, but on the seventh day of October, at the ninth hour of the night, an unforeseen fire in the village of Weesen, set beside the lake of Walenstadt (so called from Walenstadt, a little town of the canton of Glarus), burned up seventeen houses, with violent winds conspiring toward destruction, with the present peril of the destruction of the whole village. But when the parish priest of the place, Beatus ander Matt, had taken refuge with the patronage of the lord Leontius, a vow having been made of a solemn pilgrimage to his sepulchre, and the inhabitants had confirmed the vow by common consent, at once a contrary wind coming up turned back and drove away the flames as though by a supernatural power, so that, the fire being extinguished more quickly, the remaining part of the village was delivered from further peril of conflagration. Immediately on the twentieth day of the same month a full hundred persons from the same village performed the pilgrimage at Muri, giving thanks to the lord Leontius and to God through him.
[340] and roofs In the following year 1666, in the village of Oberbuchsiten, in the territory of Solothurn, on the seventh day of June, fire burned twelve houses with their barns and fishponds within the space of half an hour. Among the farmers were Jakob Studer and Maria Incker, husband and wife, who commended their house (over which, as over the whole village, the same fire already hung, as Pfleger adds) and their property with a vow to the protection of the lord Leontius, and preserved it wonderfully untouched by the flames.
[341] and a house from the flames Another house too in the same sad fire, standing almost in the midst of the burning and raging flames, the lord Leontius preserved uninjured. For when Johann Köliker (that was the name
of the head of the household of the house) from fear and distress did not know what to do, his wife, without her husband's knowledge, bound herself by a vow (of making a pilgrimage to Muri) to the holy Martyr. Whereupon the flame of the fire so failed to touch the house as though it had been walled about by a high hill or by a most solid wall.
[342] unharmed By a most wretched destruction from an accidental fire the hamlet of Rottenschwil in the parish of Lunkhofen was likewise perishing in the year 1682 on the eighteenth day of July, one single cottage of Jakob Hausheer surviving. For when Jakob saw the devouring flames driven toward it by the force of violent winds, with raised voice and outcry he made a vow to the sacred pledges of the lord Leontius, and suddenly another wind rushed against the flames, and delivered the thatched hut from the burning.
[343] are preserved. Most celebrated besides is the remarkable miracle by which the lord Leontius freed the village of Hägglingen (situated, like Rottenschwil named in the preceding number, in the Free Provinces) from destruction in the year 1685. On the thirty-first day of May, the feast sacred to the Lord's Ascension, a burning thunderbolt fell from an angry cloud upon a house, and the fire not only consumed it utterly, but seized upon other houses also, so that the whole village together with the parish church was in peril of ruin, the winds conspiring with their force. William Frey, curate of that church, having beheld the danger which threatened, with a vow earnestly commits the calamity of his people to the aid of the holy Leontius, and, the inhabitants consenting with one mind, promises to come to him at Muri, if he would succor the afflicted. And succor them he did, at almost that same instant. For the wind at once subsided, and, as though it had been commanded from heaven, the fire was extinguished; and so indeed that, although the leaves of the nearest trees burned and were consumed, yet in the roofs made of dry thatch no more fire appeared. Wherefore the aforesaid inhabitants immediately on the following twelfth day of June, a solemn procession having been instituted to the sepulchre of the holy Martyr, discharged themselves of the vow.
[345] Lastly (these are Mayer's words) the editor of all these miracles, A wound is healed; (Pfleger, often mentioned), subjoins in an appendix four no less famous ones, of which I judge that a summary should likewise be added. Johann Staub of Menzingen (of the territory of Zug) was in service with a certain miller in the territory of Solothurn; and a fellow servant of his, upon a false suspicion, brandished a sword at his head with a murderous stroke. Now so copious a stream of blood flowed from the deep wound that it could be stanched by no art of the healers. But after a vow was uttered to the sepulchre of the lord Leontius, to the amazement of all, the flow of blood immediately stopped, and the young man who had been struck recovered in a short time from the wound. In the year 1659.
[346] Another young man, Wolfgang Bechlin of Boswil, the innocence of a falsely accused young man is disclosed. a village near to Muri and subject to it, in the year 1679 was falsely accused by certain perverse men of an abominable crime before the ecclesiastical and secular magistrate, and was so unable to defend his innocence, with almost the whole people standing against him, that he was on the point of being tortured on the rack to draw out a confession. And the chief among his accusers was his own godfather from holy Baptism. In these straits the innocent young man took refuge with the patronage of St. Leontius, and directs his vows to him, and at once by a wonderful outcome it became known that his own godfather was guilty of the imputed crime and its author; so that in this was verified the oracle of the royal prophet: He has fallen into the pit which he made.
[347] Memorable besides is the vengeance with which God laid hold of a despiser of his Martyr. A blasphemer is punished, In the year of the Lord 1652 a certain Zwinglian from a neighboring Zwinglian city turned aside on business into a public inn, called At the Eagle, and mingled with the pilgrims, who, when they were discoursing much about the merits and miracles of St. Leontius, the Zwinglian threw in with blasphemous words that the bones of Leontius had no more power than the bones of an ass or of any other beast. The divine Nemesis avenged the blasphemy, not indeed on the spot, but a little while afterward, by the breaking of his leg, in a level meadow almost adjoining the church of Muri, through which he passed on his way home. For as he was walking as though secure, one foot failing him, he slipped and broke his leg in the middle. Thence he was taken up by passers-by and carried to a surgeon (Johann Ludwig Suter of that same monastery of Muri), who was thoroughly skilled in his art. He, according to the knowledge of his art, at once set the broken bone in order and joint. But because a gangrene coming on grew worse during the following night beyond what can be believed, the surgeon, after applying means elsewhere most efficacious, perceiving that he was accomplishing nothing — although he believed that by a higher power the force of his medicines was being taken away or restrained in punishment of the blasphemer — yet, that he might not suffer loss of his reputation, fell upon his knees and with intent mind implores the lord Leontius with a vow to be his patron. The help implored was at hand on the instant, and the drugs worked their effect, and the Zwinglian, through the surgeon's faithful prayer, recovered not long after.
[348] The Saint is patron to the Catholic Swiss Last of all is this, that St. Leontius showed himself the protector of the whole Catholic Swiss commonwealth in that most famous battle with the men of Bern at Villmaringa, commonly Villmergen (in the Free Provinces), in the year 1656. There during the fighting there was seen, as much by our own men as by the soldiers of the opposing party, as it were a soldier clad in a red garment hanging in the air above the Catholic line, whom that it was the lord Leontius no one would readily dare to doubt. For the columns of our Catholics, when they were advancing through Muri to drive back the enemy, with singular devotion invoked the protection of the holy Martyr, with much prayer and with their arms blessed by the touch of his sacred bones. For that cause also the victorious commanders of the war, the enemy having been cut down and put to flight, returning to Muri with their army, received with military pomp the body of the holy Martyr, brought back from Lucerne, the chief city of the Catholic commonwealths, to which it had been transferred for the sake of safety, and escorted it as far as its own church, and there gave thanks to God and to his grace, the Ambrosian Hymn being solemnly sung.
[349] in a battle against non-Catholics. This military pomp, as also the solemn procession in which the most illustrious abbot Bonaventure Honegger went out with his clergy and all his religious and an immense number of the people to meet the sacred relics, and, having received them, after the sacrifice of the Mass had been celebrated amid festive strains of the musical art and the often-repeated crashes of instruments of war, replaced them in their own place, Pfleger explains at length. But what is here most worthy of note, and contributes very much to the splendor of the victory won over the heretics, is that before the battle was joined their army consisted of fourteen thousand brave men; whereas the Catholics numbered only four thousand, who nevertheless, divine help having been invoked and the name of St. Leontius taken as their spoken watchword, rushed upon the enemy with so great and so happy an onset that of the heretics two thousand men fell in the line itself, many were taken, and more died afterward both of their wounds and of the intense cold, for it happened in the month of January. But of the Catholic host only thirteen soldiers were missing, Pfleger being witness, who also describes these things more fully, and at last sets an end to his little book with a sufficiently lengthy epilogue, from which I translate from the German into Latin a few things pertaining to the present undertaking.
[350] Pfleger's conclusion concerning the credit of what is related. In this, he says, Wonderful Lamp of Gideon (with that title he had distinguished his little book), there are set before your eyes not only three hundred, but out of many others more than three hundred most evident and most excellent miracles wrought by St. Leontius the martyr, which taken together could be proved not by three hundred only, but by more than three thousand undoubted, plainly religious and trustworthy witnesses, since in confirmation of the greatest part of them not only three or four … but whole families, nay whole neighborhoods and communities would present themselves. These things agree with what he had premised in his preface; namely that, to avert all error and fraud, careful provision had been made by the command of the most reverend prelate that no miracles, whether painted or written, should be permitted to be hung up in the church unless they had first been accurately examined and confirmed by sufficient witnesses. We now subjoin a second collection of miracles, wrought in this our own century, after the publication of the said little book, which the often-named Leodegar Mayer gathered.
MORE RECENT MIRACLES
By the reverend father Leodegar Mayer, dean of the monastery of Muri.
From Manuscripts.
Leontius, Roman martyr, honored in the monastery of Muri in Switzerland. By the reverend father Leodegar Mayer.
Hernia In the year 1742 Maria Barbara Kopp of Beromünster, commonly Beron Münster, or by the single name Münster, where there is a most ancient college of canons, three hours distant from the monastery, was suffering from a grievous hernia for seven years and a half, and although she used a truss, yet she could walk only with the greatest difficulty and step by step. At the persuasion of a certain friendly and pious woman, who lent Maria Barbara for her reading a little book about the miracles of St. Leontius, she made a vow of a Mass to be read at his altars, of a votive offering of wax, and of a votive tablet to be hung up in the chapel of the holy Martyr in thanksgiving, if she should be freed from so great a trouble. She at once sent her father to St. Leontius for the discharging of the vow: and on the very day on which her father performed the works of promised piety, she herself went to the collegiate church sacred to St. Michael, and from afar with much confidence commended her need to that same Wonder-worker. And when the Divine Offices were concluded, she not only returned home with a freer step, but on account of the rains and other inclemency of the air completed half the journey at a run. And from that time she could no longer use a truss, and yet walks to this day with a foot far easier and more extended, without any trouble.
[2] In the following year 1743 the same Maria Barbara Kopp suffered such intense pains in her eye and is relieved when afflicted with intense pains of the eye. that she could not only not turn her eyes up or down, but could not even incline her head to any side. There was added an abominable flow of foul matter from her nostrils, and the suffering eye began daily to shrink and to sink more deeply into the skull. She had therefore determined to seek a remedy from a surgeon, and to call him in when he should one day pass by her house: but in the meanwhile (was it not by God's inspiring?) she began to think: How will this man be able to cure my eye with uncertain remedies, and such as are perhaps to be applied only by way of trial or experiment? It is better to have recourse to spiritual remedies. And while she was thus reasoning with herself, the holy Leontius came to her memory, her mind is raised to the hope of his patronage, the will to implore his aid comes upon her, and scarcely two hours slip by when the intense pain began to diminish. Then first she called the wonder-working Martyr into her vows, and promised to venerate his sacred bones at Muri, and after the space of twenty-four hours all the pain vanished, and moreover on the third day thereafter that foul flow also ceased. So Maria Barbara Kopp testified upon her conscience and in her own handwriting. And the witnesses of these two miracles are the undersigned: Christopher Laurence Troxler, parish priest and curate of the upper, that is, of the collegiate church; Isaac Copp, father of Maria
Barbara; and Fridolin Lüthart, surgeon. Given the thirteenth of September 1743.
[3] A girl, from the peril of drowning, In the year 1744, on the nineteenth day of January, after the second hour of the afternoon, Johann Joseph Switer, a boy of fourteen years, together with a girl of seven, Maria Anna Catharina Switer, near what they call the Huoba of Lachen, were playing and running on a sledge upon the frozen lake. These were followed by Maria Johanna Regina, a girl likewise of fourteen, with a little boy of seven years, carried on another sledge in the same way. By repeated attempts and thrusts that first boy had gone rather far from the shore, and had driven his sledge almost to the outermost edge of the ice, yet each time returned unharmed. But when he presumed the same a third time, the ice suddenly breaking, the boy fell with the girl into the lake and was swallowed by the water. Johanna Regina, not far distant, watched them falling, and, though vehemently terrified, sent the little boy whom she had with her into the village of Lachen, to call some people to their aid; meanwhile she herself runs up to snatch her little sister from the waters and from immediate death, and, lying stretched out at full length upon the ice, seized her with her hands and with what strength she could, and, having drawn her out of the water, held her tightly clasped under her arm.
[4] is snatched; But behold: while she believed she had saved her sister, and was trying to rise, the ice on which she was lying also breaks; and Regina herself with her dearest burden slips into the water, and, as she slips, destitute of all human help, cries out to the lord Leontius: Holy Leontius, help me in this peril of drowning, that I be not choked in the waters with my sister, thou who art strong in so great a patronage over the wretched! Now the reason for her calling the lord Leontius into her vows was that a little before this time she had been going through the miracles of the holy Martyr in her reading, and often recounted them to others, and so had placed an immense and filial confidence in him. And thus with heart and mouth she called again and again upon the holy Helper, that he would at least raise her head out of the water, so that she might be able to call men to her aid. And in very fact she remained for half an hour up to the neck in the water, whose depth when measured was fourteen ells, as it seemed to her supported on her feet as by some footstool or base, together with her sister plunged beneath her arm; until at length men coming up, having applied ladders, snatched her from death, from the waters and from the perils. The boy perished, and the seven-year-old girl, Regina's sister, killed not so much by the waters as by the harshness of the cold; but Johanna Regina herself returned home safe and unharmed, and afterward rendered to Leontius her deliverer, at his sacred relics at Muri, the vow which she had made.
[5] a bitter pain of the ears is healed; The same patronage of the wonder-working Martyr was felt by Anna Catharina Schattin, godmother of the aforesaid Johanna from the sacrament of Confirmation, who in this same year suffered from so bitter a pain in her ears that for four days and nights, from the violence of that same pain, she could neither take food or drink, nor sleep nor take rest; and she used various remedies in vain. The physician's art therefore failing, Leontius was at hand with his intercession and timely aid. Johanna Regina, visiting her godmother oppressed with pains, exhorts her to place her hope in the patronage of the lord Leontius; If he saved me, she said, from destruction in the waters, he will also be able to soothe and remove thy pains. The godmother acquiesces in the innocent counsel, vows a vow of a pilgrimage to the remains of St. Leontius; her pains begin to fail; after an hour she gently falls asleep; waking from sleep, she finds herself free of all pain; nor does she afterward feel anything of that malady. That these last two miracles happened thus, Rudolph Anton Gugellberg, parish priest of Lachen, affirms by his testimony, together with his parishioners, as he wrote back, almost all of them, on the first day of September in the year 1745.
[6] At Inwil in the county of Rottenburg, in the territory of Lucerne, infants thought dead a place distant only one hour from the monastery of virgins of the Cistercian Order at Eschenbach, Margaret Villiger, on the first day of the month of August of this same year 1744, brought forth a lifeless child. For a whole hour the midwives who were present expended their labor in vain in applying remedies and baths and the like, to elicit a sign of life. There was no breath in him. The desolate father Joseph Köpflin implores the lord Leontius, and binds himself by a vow of undertaking a pilgrimage to his sacred remains, taking with him two others as witnesses and companions of his devotion, with an offering for a Mass to be read. After the vow was made the infant breathes and comes to life again, is publicly baptized in the parish church, and two days later dies again. So the father testified, when he discharged the vow at Muri, under the faith of an oath, and so forth.
[7] Something not unlike this the most noble master Benedict a Liliis, are granted life until Baptism; of a patrician family of Lucerne, related to me about ten years ago, and attested, when he visited us with his most noble wife also for the sake of discharging a vow. For his own beloved wife bore a boy unhappily, because lifeless. And when for the whole space of an hour every kind of fomentation had been applied to elicit breath with frustrated effect, a most illustrious matron, who was present and experienced in such matters beyond the rest, a kinswoman of the said master a Liliis, asked for an image of St. Leontius, if one were at hand, and received it from the master's father: and when she had laid it on the infant's head with a vow, the boy received breath and life; so that in the parish church on the same day, which was a Friday, he received with jubilation and solemnly the grace of Baptism, but on the evening of the following day, a Saturday, again put off his life.
[8] Another thing concerning the merits and the powerful might of the same Martyr the parish priest of Villmergen, Heinrich Ludwig Sidler, wrote to us in these words: others, in the waters, In the year 1744, on the ninth day of the month of October, Maria Koch, the year-and-a-half-old little daughter of Joachim Koch and Maria Verena Meyer, in the village of Villmergen in the diocese of Constance, playing as usual with girls of her own age, and running about near the bank of the stream that flows past her father's mill, as an incautious age is wont to do, either by a slip of the foot or by the pushing of a companion fell into the water, and, as she floated on the water face down, according to the account of her elder sister Maria Anna, the gentler course of the stream drove her about twenty-four paces as far as the nearest willow, and there she sank beneath the root of the said tree, as she was afterward found with her face downward and fixed in the sand. There was present above all the girl's aunt Maria Meyer, who took her niece, lifted from the shallows, into her arms, and, believing her dead and lifeless, waited for the arrival of her father or mother. Others too came running, both kinsfolk and neighbors, all and each of whom, one woman only excepted, perceiving no sign of surviving life, themselves too believed this little daughter dead. Meanwhile the girl's father, an upright man and trusting in God, before any mention had been made of a sacred remedy, made a vow to the holy wonder-worker Leontius at Muri, if the girl should survive; and she a little after the vows were pronounced began to breathe, or, according to her father's opinion, to come wholly back to life: and to this hour she lives unharmed. And the father long since discharged himself of his faith and his pledge.
[9] as was believed, Something very like this master Jakob Anton Schweingrueber, parish priest at Reiden in the territory of Lucerne, reported to us, and on the feast of St. Leontius, after a diligent examination, himself announced from the pulpit. On the nineteenth day of June in the year 1744, about the eighth hour of the morning, Magdalena Stirnimann, wife of Melchior Hessliger the miller, went to the lower waters at Reiden, a woman of forty-two years, with her ten-year-old daughter Agatha, into the kitchen garden, which is about thirty paces distant from the mill, and adjoins the pond or stream which rolls with a gentle course to the mill and by its impulse moves five or six wheels. Two little sons were close by these, the one Nicholas, five years old, the other Franz Xavier, two years old. And when the mother was pulling up vegetables, and her daughter lacked a knife for separating and cutting the stalks, Nicholas was ordered to go and fetch one. The mother, intent upon her work, believed that Xavier had returned home from the garden with Nicholas; but he directed his incautious steps elsewhere.
[10] suffocated Meanwhile the knife is brought, the vegetables are gathered and made ready; and at last the mother, having gone out of the garden, when she did not see her little son, asks those who were with her in the garden where her Franz Xavier might be. And when they declared they did not know, astounded she runs to the pond, and near the bank sees the boy's little cap floating on the water, from which she rightly inferred that her little son had fallen into the water. Anxious therefore she goes down along the bank at a run as far as the barrier, as they call it, that is raked; but her little son being nowhere found or seen, she runs about the house, calling again and again upon her Xavier. Joseph, her eldest son, a youth of twenty years, hears his mother's wild and complaining voice, and, having heard that his little brother was lost, rushes out of the house with all speed, runs to the aforesaid barrier, and, seizing an iron rake, draws out the bushes, branches and twigs heaped up there, and at last catches sight of a little shoe, but nothing of the rest of the body, which, when he grasped it with his hand, he at the same time drew the boy also to the bank and the land, and carried him lifeless under the roof of the house.
[11] are restored to life. The anxious mother had done what she could, warming the little body with hot water, but in vain: all judged that the boy was dead, save that his brother Joseph thought he had noticed a certain movement in the tongue, which yet he was unwilling to assert for certain. He therefore binds himself by a vow to the most blessed Virgin of Einsiedeln, and to Königsberg, where too an image of the most blessed Virgin Mary of the Snows is honored with a frequent concourse. But the mother, because no sign of life appeared afterward either, pronounces her vow to the lord Leontius: and suddenly the boy's breast began to tremble, then to palpitate, then his breath to come, and at last he began to be so shaken with convulsions that those present again despaired of his life. Wherefore the son often named together with his mother confirmed their vows anew; and a little after, the convulsions being calmed, the boy, refreshed with a little food, took sleep, and slept until the third hour of the morning, at which, rushing out of his bed, he ran to his parents' bed, a glad and sound messenger of his own life. Given the first of August 1744.
[12] At Homburg, in the lordship of Klingenberg in Thurgau, A woman in labor is relieved and gives birth happily; father Joseph Dangel of our convent, who at that time acted as parish priest there, attested that it happened in the year 1729 that Barbara Schweizerin, wife of Johann Herzog the butcher in the aforesaid village of Homburg, when the time of her delivery came, was in the utmost peril of her own life and of her child's; but when Leontius was called into their vows, she gave birth happily. This woman had brought forth into the light ten infants in all, always with a happy delivery; but as she was about to bring forth the eleventh, for three whole days and two nights she was so afflicted and shaken with immense pains that, being now destitute of all her strength, and having also suffered a swoon of the mind for an hour, she was believed to be about to succumb to death together with her child. Her husband being all but carried out of himself by the sad occurrence, the midwife, exceedingly devoted to St. Leontius, had a little book brought
of miracles; and when he, wholly dismayed, had read three or four miracles which the wonder-working Martyr had wrought in like necessities and straits, dissolved into tender tears, and having conceived hope and confidence toward St. Leontius, he comes to the bed of his wife, who was scarcely beginning to breathe again, and, If thy will, he says to her, agree with mine, we will see to it that the holy Leontius be honored at Muri by the sacrifice of a Mass, that by his merits we may receive consolation and timely aid. The wife consented, and presently recovered her strength entire, and after the space of two hours happily bore a vigorous boy, and for joy no longer remembered her anguish; but ordered that the name of Leontius be given to her son, as she had at the same time vowed; whom the parish priest on the next day washed in the church with the sacred water, and noted thus in the book of the baptized: On the twenty-seventh of November was baptized Leontius, happily born in fulfillment of a vow made to the holy martyr Leontius at Muri by his mother when in the last extremity of peril, F. L. etc.
[13] In the same parish of Homburg in the year 1731 Catharina Hertzogin, another, with her child dead, wife of Joseph Traber, on the sixth day of December, feeling herself rather violently assailed by the pains of childbirth, vowed to make an offering, that a Mass might be read at the sacred relics of the lord Leontius for a happy outcome of her first delivery. But the pains and the dangers so increased that the women who were performing the offices of midwives judged that it could scarcely come about that the infant should be born alive. Yet they found a way of baptizing the child itself while still living in the womb. But although nothing was left undone to further the birth, all the labor was nevertheless in vain, so that on the following day, the eighth, the child was recognized to have been suffocated in the womb. Thereupon a greater peril of life pressed upon the despairing mother, since it was held ascertained that she could not be freed of her child except by an incision. A messenger is therefore sent to summon a surgeon, whom nevertheless he did not find at his house, being engaged elsewhere. Meanwhile the woman in labor is disposed and prepared for death by the reception of the holy Sacraments.
[14] The day passes, the peril of life increases, and so do the fear and anxiety of her father and of those standing by. is delivered beyond hope. And it is concluded that another surgeon, likewise experienced, must be summoned from Gottlieben, to perform the incision. The midwife Magdalena Baurin alone resisted, and urged that they should wait for the next day, since, as she herself firmly hoped, St. Leontius would bestow his aid upon the woman in labor; and she exhorted the husband and wife, who were almost swallowed up with sorrow, to vow a pilgrimage to Muri to that same holy Martyr; which indeed they promptly did. Afterward the woman rested a little while, and very early in the morning a messenger goes hastily from the house to summon the surgeon. But scarcely had he set out on the journey, when about the fifth hour of the morning on the ninth day of December the woman in labor, alone and without anyone's help, brought forth the dead infant without difficulty. To God and to the lord Leontius be glory and thanksgiving. And the husband and wife afterward discharged their vows at Muri to their Helper.
[15] Besides many other benefits, fair weather is obtained, Plainly innumerable are the benefits which this Wonder-worker of ours by his merits and intercession continually confers and has conferred upon men, very many of which, through the carelessness of the sacristans, were not recorded, or, being recorded, have perished through the negligence of others. Every year several votive tablets are hung up at his chapel; but because they either lack testimony or have not been duly examined, they may indeed be reckoned benefits, yet cannot be numbered among miracles. Nevertheless those helps ought not to be omitted which our community in these last years has felt and received from his patronage. In the year of the Lord 1745 the air at the time of haymaking was for fifteen continuous days so troubled, and so heavy with an abundance of rains, that the hay was on the point not only of being robbed of its virtue but of rotting in the meadows. A supplication therefore having been appointed to St. Leontius, at whose altar at the sixth hour in the morning a votive Mass of that same Saint was to be sung, the parishioners hastened thither with great zeal, well soaked through the falling showers. Scarcely had the Mass begun, when as if at a single stroke the floodgates of heaven were shut, the clouds began to part and to thin; at the elevation of the holy Mysteries the rays of the sun appeared; the Mass being ended, the clouds having been scattered, the whole air shone forth serene.
[16] dysentery In the year 1746 the malady of dysentery so raged in our parish of Muri that, wherever it seized a house, well nigh all the household sickened, and the number of the dead rose in that year to a hundred and seventy funerals. At length, a supplication and a solemn procession having been made to the relics of the most holy Martyr, the pestilential plague so ceased that from that day no one was seized by it any more.
[17] and a fire cease. In the year 1747, on the ninth day of June, a devouring fire burned six houses and six barns in the village of Birche, and in the very shortest space of time consumed them with all their furniture. Next to those that were burning were three other and larger houses, which the raging flame was licking, but, a whirlwind of winds pressing toward the South, it left them untouched, not without a present miracle. For the parish priest, being asked by the farmers, vowed in the name of all a vow to the lord Leontius of instituting a solemn procession to his relics; and thereupon all the danger fled away, and the flame subsided.
APPENDIX.
Leontius, Roman martyr, honored in the monastery of Muri in Switzerland. By J. P.
[ ] The famous patronage of the Saint The collector of the benefits already narrated, the very reverend father Leodegar Mayer, dean of the most celebrated monastery of Muri and Apostolic notary, often praised, when he transmitted to the reverend father Maurice Chardon, then rector of our college at Constance, the documents for the illustration of the glory of St. Leontius, added a letter altogether obliging, the greater part of which we trust it will not be taken amiss to recite here: I send at last everything which I have found concerning our wonder-working martyr Leontius in our archives at Muri. But this I believe to be sufficient for celebrating the merits of the holy Athlete of Christ. Unless perhaps it should be mentioned that none, or at least exceedingly few, of the infants in our parish, from the time of the first translation of his sacred relics, have been born unhappily and have failed to attain the grace of Baptism (whereas nevertheless in the surrounding places such miscarriages very often occur). And behold, while I am writing this, the reverend father Lanfranc Dreretel reports to me a wonderful thing.
[2] He was summoned, as curate of the parish, at the very beginning of a dark night to a sick woman, dropsical namely and swollen beyond measure, against miscarriage to dispose and prepare her, as one destined for death, by the most holy Sacraments for a happy departure. He went, and promptly fulfilled what belonged to his office, ignorant of all that was to come; for the woman was pregnant with child. On the next night, which was the Saturday before the fourth Sunday of Advent, about the tenth hour, she is overwhelmed with the pains of birth, wholly anxious lest she should bring forth a miscarriage. Her husband, who was present, exhorts his wife to place her confidence in God and in his Saints. To whom she said: In whom should I place my hope, if not in St. Leontius and in the patroness of my name, St. Barbara? And so she made a vow of two Masses in honor of them both; and at once she began to bring forth, and with little labor bore a living daughter, fourteen weeks before the time of her delivery was fulfilled. And the child on the Sunday before the Divine Offices was publicly and solemnly baptized in the church by the aforesaid parish priest; and she lived afterward until past the ninth hour, and rendered her innocent soul to her Creator.
[3] and the convulsions of infants. This thing, just as it is set forth, was narrated by the husband, the midwives and the rest of the household of the house, who were astounded how it could have come about that the child was not suffocated in the birth. Our physician Nicholas Rudolph Buecher, a doctor laureate of the most celebrated academy of Freiburg, to whom the state and condition of the woman in labor were thoroughly known, testified to me upon his faith, in the presence of the most noble master Franz Jakob Schnider of Wartensee, whom I employed as a witness, that a birth of this kind was not the work of nature but of a power from above, and that it was to be attributed to the divine mercy that a helpless mother with an immature child was preserved in life, chiefly for this reason, that the woman was besides laboring under an extreme consumption. In addition to this father Lanfranc reported that the mothers in our parish use no other remedy for the convulsions with which infants and sucklings are often troubled than a rosary blessed at the relics of St. Leontius; for as soon as such a rosary is laid upon the heads of the infants, the convulsions grow quiet and depart. Thus Mayer to Chardon on the second day of January 1749.