12 The Zacharias here referred to was the father of John the
Baptist, who was tortured and afterwards put to death by Herod, because
he would not betray John into the hands of the tyrant. He was buried by
his friends within the precincts of the Temple.

13 Sister Emmerich added: 'Cassius was baptised by the name of
Longinus; and was ordained deacon, and preached the faith. He always
kept some of the blood of Christ,--it dried up, but was found in his
coffin in Italy. He was buried in a town at no great distance from the
locality where St. Clare passed her life. There is a lake with an
island upon it near this town, and the body of Longinus must have been
taken there.' Sister Emmerich appears to designate Mantua by this
description, and there is a tradition preserved in that town to the
effect. I do not know which St. Clare lived in the neighbourhood.

14 We must here remark that, in the four years during which Sister
Emmerich had her visions, she described everything that had happened to
the holy places from the earliest times down to our own. More than once
she beheld them profaned and laid waste, but always venerated, either
publicly or privately. She saw many stones and pieces of rock, which
had been silent witnesses of the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord,
placed by St. Helena in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre upon occasion
of the foundation of that sacred building. When Sister Emmerich visited
it in spirit she was accustomed to venerate the spots where the Cross
had stood and the Holy Sepulchre been situated. It must be observed,
however, that she used sometimes to see a greater distance between the
actual position of the Tomb and the spot where the Cross stood than
there is between the chapels which bear their names in the church at
Jerusalem.

15 On Good Friday, March 30th, 1820, as Sister Emmerich was
contemplating the descent from the Cross she suddenly fainted, in the
presence of the writer of these lines, and appeared to be really dead.
But after a time she recovered her senses and gave the following
explanation, although still in a state of great suffering: 'As I was
contemplating the body of Jesus lying on the knees of the Blessed
Virgin I said to myself: "How great is her strength! She has not fainted
even once!" My guide reproached me for this thought--in which there was
more astonishment than compassion--and said to me, "Suffer then what she
has suffered!" And at the same moment