Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/15

Rh Xavier tells us that the ambassador prayed for the safety of the young man, but the biographers tell us that it was Xavier who prayed; and finally, by the later writers Xavier is represented as lifting horse and rider out of the stream by a clearly supernatural act.

Still another claim to miracle is based upon his arrival at Lisbon and finding his great colleague, Simon Rodriguez, ill of fever. Xavier informs us in a very simple way that Rodriguez was so overjoyed to see him that the fever did not return. This is entirely similar to the cure which Martin Luther wrought upon Melanchthon. Melanchthon had broken down and was supposed to be dying, when his joy at the long-delayed visit of Luther brought him to his feet again, after which he lived for many years. Finally, Xavier, finding a poor native woman very ill, baptized her, saying over her the prayers of the Church, and she recovered.

Two or three occurrences like these form the whole basis for the miraculous accounts, so far as Xavier's own writings are concerned.

But shortly after Xavier's death in 1552 miracles of a different sort began to appear. At first they were few and feeble; and two years later Melchior Nunhez, Provincial of the Jesuits in the Portuguese dominions, with all the means at his command, and a correspondence extending throughout all those regions, had been able to hear of but three. These were entirely from hearsay. First, John Deyro said he knew Xavier had the gift of prophecy; but, unfortunately, Xavier himself had reprimanded and cast off Deyro for untruthfulness and cheatery. Secondly, at Cape Comorin many persons affirmed that Xavier had raised a dead person. Thirdly, Father Pablo de Santa F6 said that in Japan Xavier had restored sight to a blind man. This seems a feeble beginning, but little by little the stories grew; and in 1555 De Quadros, Provincial of the Jesuits in Ethiopia, had heard of nine miracles, and laid stress upon the fact that Xavier had healed the sick and cast out devils. The next year, being four years after Xavier's death, King John III of Portugal, a very devout man, in a letter, taking these wonderful works in all parts of the East for granted, directed his viceroy, Barreto, to draw up and transmit to him an authentic account of Xavier's miracles; urging him especially to do the work "with zeal and speedily." We can well imagine what treasures of grace an obsequious viceroy, only too anxious to please a devout king, could bring together by means of the hearsay of ignorant, compliant natives through all the little towns of Portuguese India.

A vast mass of testimony was thus brought together and taken to Rome; but it appears to have been thought of but little value by those best able to judge, for when, in 1588, thirty-six years