asserts that there is no such Life of Xavier as that I have
above quoted. The reverend Jesuit father has evidently glanced over the
bibliographies of Carayon and De Backer, and, not finding it there
under the name of Vitelleschi, has spared himself further trouble. It
is sufficient to say that the book may be seen by him in the library of
Cornell University. Its full title is as follows: Compendio della Vita
del s. p. Francesco Xaviero dell Campagnia di Giesu, Canonizato con
s. Ignatio Fondatore dell' istessa Religione dalla Santita di N. S.
Gregorio XV. Composto, e dato in luce per ordine del Reverendiss. P
Mutio Vitelleschi Preposito Generale della Comp. di Giesu. In Venetia,
MDCXXII, Appresso Antonio Pinelli. Con Licenza de' Superiori. My critic
hazards a guess that the book may be a later edition of Torsellino
(Tursellinus), but here again he is wrong. It is entirely a different
book, giving in its preface a list of sources comprising eleven
authorities besides Torsellino.

In 1682, one hundred and thirty years after Xavier's death, appeared his
biography by Father Bouhours; and this became a classic. In it the old
miracles of all kinds were enormously multiplied, and many new ones
given. Miracles few and small in Tursellinus became many and great in
Bouhours. In Tursellinus, Xavier during his life saves one person from
drowning, in Bouhours he saves during his life three; in Tursellinus,
Xavier during his life raises four persons from the dead, in Bouhours
fourteen; in Tursellinus there is one miraculous supply of water, in
Bouhours three; in Tursellinus there is no miraculous draught of fishes,
in Bouhours there is one; in Tursellinus, Xavier is transfigured twice,
in Bouhours five times: and so through a long series of miracles which,
in the earlier lives appearing either not at all or in very moderate
form, are greatly increased and enlarged by Tursellinus, and finally
enormously amplified and multiplied by Father Bouhours.

And here it must be borne in mind that Bouhours, writing ninety years
after Tursellinus, could not have had access to any new sources. Xavier
had been dead one hundred and thirty years, and of course all the
natives upon whom he had wrought his miracles, and their children and
grandchildren, were gone. It can not then be claimed that Bouhours had
the advantage of any new witnesses, nor could he have had anything
new in the way of contemporary writings; for, as we have seen, the
missionari