This "Taumaturgo" Could Perform All The Ordinary Feats; I Will Not
Linger Over Them.
What has made him popular to this day are those
wonders which appealed to the taste of the poorer people, such as, for
example, that miracle of the eels.
A fisherman had brought fourteen
hundredweight of these for sale in the market. Judge of his
disappointment when he discovered that they had all died during the
journey (southerners will not pay for dead eels). Fortunately, he saw
the saint arriving in a little boat, who informed him that the eels were
"not dead, but only asleep," and who woke them up again by means of a
relic of Saint Pasquale which he always carried about with him, after a
quarter of an hour's devout praying, during which the perspiration oozed
from his forehead. The eels, says the writer, had been dead and slimy,
but now turned their bellies downwards once more and twisted about in
their usual spirals; there began a general weeping among the onlookers,
and the fame of the miracle immediately spread abroad. He could do the
same with lobsters, cows, and human beings.
Thus a cow belonging to Fra Egidio's monastery was once stolen by an
impious butcher, and cut up into the usual joints with a view to a
clandestine sale of the meat. The saint discovered the beast's remains,
ordered that they should be laid together on the floor in the shape of a
living cow, with the entrails, head and so forth in their natural
positions; then, having made the sign of the cross with his cord upon
the slaughtered beast, and rousing up all his faith, he said: "In the
name of God and of Saint Pasquale, arise, Catherine!" (Catherine was the
cow's name.) "At these words the animal lowed, shook itself, and stood
up on its feet alive, whole and strong, even as it had been before it
was killed."
In the case of one of the dead men whom he brought to life, the
undertakers were already about their sad task; but Fra Egidio, viewing
the corpse, remarked in his usual manner that the man was "not dead, but
only asleep," and after a few saintly manipulations, roused him from his
slumber. The most portentous of his wonders, however, are those which he
wrought after his own death by means of his relics and otherwise; they
have been sworn to by many persons. Nor did his hand lose its old
cunning, in these posthumous manifestations, with the finny tribe. A
certain woman, Maria Scuotto, was enabled to resuscitate a number of
dead eels by means of an image of the deceased saint which she cast
among them.
Every one of the statements in this biography is drawn from the
processi to which I will presently refer; there were 202 witnesses who
deposed "under the rigour and sanctity of oath" to the truth of these
miracles; and among those who were personally convinced of the
Venerable's rare gifts was the Royal Family of Naples, the archbishop of
that town, as well as innumerable dukes and princes.
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