It Is Usually To Be Observed, After A Saint Has
Been Canonized, That Heaven, By Some Further Sign Or Signs,
Signifies
approval of this solemn act of the Vicar of God; indeed, to judge by
these biographies, such a course
Is not only customary but, to use a
worldly expression, de rigueur. And so it happened after the decree
relative to Saint Giangiuseppe had been pronounced in the Vatican
basilica by His Holiness Pius VI, in the presence of the assembled
cardinals. Innumerable celestial portents (their enumeration fills
eleven pages of the "Life") confirmed and ratified the great event, and
among them this: the notary, who had drawn up both the ordinary and the
apostolic processi, was cured of a grievous apoplexy, survived for
four years, and finally died on the very anniversary of the death of the
saint. Involuntarily one contrasts this heavenly largesse with the
sordid guineas which would have contented an English lawyer. . . .
Or glance into the biography of the Venerable Sister Orsola Benincasa.
She, too, could fly a little and raise men from the dead. She cured
diseases, foretold her own death and that of others, lived for a month
on the sole nourishment of a consecrated wafer; she could speak Latin
and Polish, although she had been taught nothing at all; wrought
miracles after death, and possessed to a heroic degree the virtues of
patience, humility, temperance, justice, etc. etc. So inflamed was she
with divine love, that almost every day thick steam issued out of her
mouth, which was observed to be destructive to articles of clothing; her
heated body, when ice was applied, used to hiss like a red-hot iron
under similar conditions.
As a child, she already cried for other people's sins; she was always
hunting for her own and would gladly, at the end of her long and
blameless career, have exchanged her sins for those of the youthful
Duchess of Aquaro. An interesting phenomenon, by the way, the theory of
sinfulness which crops up at this particular period of history. For our
conception of sin is alien to the Latin mind. There is no "sin" in Italy
(and this is not the least of her many attractions); it is an article
manufactured exclusively for export. [Footnote: "Vita della Venerabile
Serva di Dio Suor Orsola Benincasa, Scritta da un cherico regolare,"
Rome, 1796. There are, of course, much earlier biographies of all these
saints; concerning Sister Orsola we possess, for instance, the
remarkable pamphlet by Cesare d'Eboli ("Caesaris Aevoli Neapolitan!
Apologia pro Ursula Neapolitana quas ad urbem accessit MDLXXXIII,"
Venice, 1589), which achieves the distinction of never mentioning Orsola
by name: she is only once referred to as "mulier de qua agitur." But I
prefer to quote from the more recent ones because they are
authoritative, in so far as they have been written on the basis of
miracles attested by eye-witnesses and accepted as veracious by the
Vatican tribunal. Sister Orsola, though born in 154.7, was only declared
Venerable by Pontifical decree of 1793.
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