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. An embittered
rationalist would note that the reading of Voltaire, at this period, was
punished with three years' galley-slavery and that several thousand
citizens were hanged for expressing liberal opinions; he will suggest
that belief in the supernatural, rejected by the thinking classes, finds
an abiding shelter among royalty and the proletariat.
It occurs to me, a propos of Fra Egidio, to make the obvious statement
that an account of an occurrence is not necessarily true, because it
happened long ago. Credibility does not improve, like violins and port
wine, with lapse of years. This being the case, it will not be
considered objectionable to say that there are certain deeds attributed
to holy men of olden days which, to speak frankly, are open to doubt; or
at least not susceptible of proof. Who were these men, if they ever
existed?
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