claims of the Church, quite as common of pagans or
Protestants as of good Catholics. One of the most famous cases is
that of the fair Roman maiden, Julia, daughter of Claudius, over whose
exhumation at Rome, in 1485, such ado was made by the sceptical scholars
of the Renaissance. Contemporary observers tell us enthusiastically that
she was very beautiful, perfectly preserved, "the bloom of youth still
upom her cheeks," and exhaling a "sweet odour"; but this enthusiasm was
so little to the taste of Pope Innocent VIII that he had her reburied
secretly by night. Only the other day, in June of the year 1895, there
was unearthed at Stade, in Hanover, the "perfectly preserved" body of
a soldier of the eighth century. So, too, I might mention the bodies
preserved at the church of St. Thomas at Strasburg, beneath the
Cathedral of Bremen, and elsewhere during hundreds of years past; also
the cases of "adiposeration" in various American cemeteries, which never
grow less wonderful by repetition from mouth to mouth and in the public
prints. But, while such preservation is not incredible or even strange,
there is much reason why precisely in the case of a saint like St.
Francis Xavier the evidence for it should be received with especial
caution. What the touching fidelity of disciples may lead them to
believe and proclaim regarding an adored leader in a time when faith
is thought more meritorious than careful statement, and miracle more
probable than the natural course of things, is seen, for example,
in similar pious accounts regarding the bodies of many other saints,
especially that of St. Carlo Borromeo, so justly venerated by the Church
for his beautiful and charitable life. And yet any one looking at the
relics of various saints, especially those of St. Carlo, preserved with
such tender care in the crypt of Milan Cathedral, will see that they
have shared the common fate, being either mummified or reduced to
skeletons; and this is true in all cases, as far as my observation has
extended. What even a great theologian can be induced to believe
and testify in a somewhat similar matter, is seen in St. Augustine's
declaration that the flesh of the peacock, which in antiquity and in the
early Church was considered a bird somewhat supernaturally endowed, is
incorruptible. The saint declares that he tested it and found it so (see
the De Civitate dei, xxi, c. 4, under the passage beginning Quis enim
Deus). With this we may compare the tes