It; he admitted being driven to this act of pious
depredation by the pleading request of the Spanish Ambassador and a
Neapolitan princess, who held Fra Egidio in great veneration.
This is not an isolated instance. Southerners love their saints, and do
not content themselves with chill verbal expressions of esteem. So the
biographer of Saint Giangiuseppe records that "one of the deceased
saint's toes was bitten off with most regret-able devotion by the teeth
of a man in the crowd, who wished to preserve it as a relic. And the
blood from the wound flowed so copiously and so freely that many pieces
of cloth were saturated with it; nor did it cease to flow till the
precious corpse was interred." It is hard to picture such proofs of
fervid popularity falling to the lot of English deans and bishops.
He was modern, too, in this sense, that he did not torment himself with
penitences (decay of Spanish austerity); on the contrary, he even kept
chocolate, honey and suchlike delicacies in his cell. In short, he was
an up-to-date saint, who despised mediaeval practices and lived in a
manner befitting the age which gave him birth. In this respect he
resembles our English men of holiness, who exercise a laudable
self-denial in resisting the seductions of the ascetic life.
