timony of the pious author of
Sir John Mandeville's Travels, that iron floats upon the Dead Sea while
feathers sink in it, and that he would not have believed this had he not
seen it. So, too, testimony to the "sweet odour" diffused by the exhumed
remains of the saint seem to indicate feeling rather than fact--those
highly wrought feelings of disciples standing by--the same feeling which
led those who visited St. Simon Stylites on his heap of ordure, and
other hermits unwashed and living in filth, to dwell upon the delicious
"odour of sanctity" pervading the air. In point, perhaps, is Louis
Veuillot's idealization of the "parfum de Rome," in face of the fact, to
which the present writer and thousands of others can testify, that
under Papal rule Rome was materially one of the most filthy cities in
Christendom. For the case of Julia, see the contemporary letter printed
by Janitschek, Gesellschaft der Renaissance in Italien, p. 120, note
167; also Infessura, Diarium Rom. Urbis, in Muratori, tom. iii, pt. 2,
col. 1192, 1193, and elsewhere; also Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: Age
of Despots, p. 22. For the case at Stade, see press dispatch from Berlin
in newspapers of June 24, 25, 1895. The copy of Emanuel Acosta I have
mainly used is that in the Royal Library at Munich, De Japonicus rebus
epistolarum libri iii, item recogniti; et in Latinum ex Hispanico
sermone conversi, Dilingae, MDLXXI. I have since obtained and used the
work now in the library of Cornell University, being the letters and
commentary published by Emanuel Acosta and attached to Maffei's book on
the History of the Indies, published at Antwerp in 1685. For the first
beginnings of miracles wrought by Xavier, as given in the letters of
the missionaries, see that of Almeida, lib. ii, p. 183. Of other
collections, or selections from collections, of letters which fail to
give any indication of miracles wrought by Xavier during his life,
see Wytfliet and Magin, Histoire Universelle des Indes Occidentales et
Orientales, et de la Conversion des Indiens, Douay, 1611. Though several
letters of Xavier and his fellow-missionaries are given, dated at the
very period of his alleged miracles, not a trace of miracles appears in
these. Also Epistolae Japonicae de multorum in variis Insulis Gentilium
ad Christi fidem Conversione, Lovanii, 1570. These letters were written
by Xavier and his companions from the East Indies and Japan, and cover
the years from 1549 to 1564. Though th