cifix by the pious crab. But the legend was developed
still further: Father Bouhours tells us, "The holy man spoke very well
the language of those barbarians without having learned it, and had no
need of an interpreter when he instructed." And, finally, in our
own time, the Rev. Father Coleridge, speaking of the saint among the
natives, says, "He could speak the language excellently, though he had
never learned it."

In the early biography, Tursellinus writes. "Nothing was a greater
impediment to him than his ignorance of the Japanese tongues; for, ever
and anon, when some uncouth expression offended their fastidious and
delicate ears, the awkward speech of Francis was a cause of laughter."
But Father Bouhours, a century later, writing of Xavier at the same
period, says, "He preached in the afternoon to the Japanese in their
language, but so naturally and with so much ease that he could not be
taken for a foreigner."

And finally, in 1872, Father Coleridge, of the Society of Jesus,
speaking of Xavier at this time, says, "He spoke freely, flowingly,
elegantly, as if he had lived in Japan all his life."

Nor was even this sufficient: to make the legend complete, it was
finally declared that, when Xavier addressed the natives of various
tribes, each heard the sermon in his own language in which he was born.

All this, as we have seen, directly contradicts not only the plain
statements of Xavier himself, and various incidental testimonies in the
letters of his associates, but the explicit declaration of Father Joseph
Acosta. The latter historian dwells especially on the labour which
Xavier was obliged to bestow on the study of the Japanese and other
languages, and says, "Even if he had been endowed with the apostolic
gift of tongues, he could not have spread more widely the glory of
Christ."(295)

(295) For the evolution of the miracles of Xavier, see his Letters, with
Life, published by Leon Pages, Paris, 1855; also Maffei, Historiarum
Indicarum libri xvi, Venice, 1589; also the lives by Tursellinus,
various editions, beginning with that of 1594; Vitelleschi, 1622;
Bouhours, 1683; Massei, second edition, 1682 (Rome), and others;
Bartoli, Baltimore, 1868; Coleridge, 1872. In addition to these, I have
compared, for a more extended discussion of this subject hereafter,
a very great number of editions of these and other biographies of
the saint, with speeches at the canonization, the bull of Gregory XV,
various bo