Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/563

Rh to consist only of skin and bone and nerves, he rarely tasted meat and allowed himself but four hours of sleep out of the twenty- four, the remainder being all too few for his restless and indefat- igable activity. His saintly and self-denying life had gained him enviable powers as a thaumaturge, and his reputation as a preacher drew crowds to listen to his eloquence. In 1451 he was busy in exterminating the Fraticelli, but he suspended his bloody work at the call of Nicholas to undertake the conversion of the Hussites. Nothing was omitted that could contribute to the dramatic effect of his mission. Before assuming it he sought the divine assent by consulting the Virgin at Assisi, when the heavenly light diffused around him was a sign that his apostolate was confirmed; he ac- cepted the enlarged powers which extended his inquisitorial com- mission to the Bohemian territories, and set forth. Everywhere on his road multitudes assembled to see and listen to the man of God, and everywhere his miraculous powers manifested the au- thenticity of his mission. At Brescia he addressed an assembly computed at one hundred and twenty thousand souls, and, though walls and trees were broken down by the masses of men gathered thickly upon them, not a human being was injured. At the cross- ing of the River Sile, near Treviso, the party, with true Observan- tine austerity, had no money to pay ferriage, and the surly ferry- man refused free transportation; but Capistrano quietly took the habit of San Bernardino, which he carried with him, laid it upon the waters, and they shrank away till all had passed dry-shod, when they resumed their former volume. Thus heralded, his way through Venice and Vienna was a triumphal progress; crowds of sixty thousand or one hundred thousand to hear him preach were common; men came from a distance of five hundred miles to listen to him; at Vienna three hundred thousand were reckoned pres- ent; the sick were brought before him in thousands, and the mi- raculous cures which he wrought were computed by hundreds. The ecclesiastical machinery was evidently well-devised and ef- fectively worked, and the desired impression was produced.

In vain the emperor asked permission for him to visit Prague. Podiebrad and Rokyzana refused it peremptorily, and Capistrano's zeal for martyrdom was not sufficient to prompt him to disregard


 * R1 Wadding. ann. 1451, No. 1-16; ann. 1452, No. 34.