nctity,
and begging the treasure of his holy body. Naples, Rome, and many other
universities, princes, and Orders, contended no less for it. One of his
hands, uncorrupt, was cut off in 1288, and given to his sister, the
countess Theodora, who kept it in her domestic chapel of San Severino.
After her death it was given to the Dominicans' convent of Salerno.
After several contestations, pope Urban V., many years after his death,
granted his body to the Dominicans to carry to Paris or Toulouse, as
Italy already possessed the body of St. Dominick at Bologna. The sacred
treasure was carried privately into France, and received at Thoulouse in
the most honorable mariner: one hundred and fifty thousand people came
to meet and conduct it into the city, having at their head Louis duke of
Anjou, brother to king Charles V., the archbishops of Thoulouse and
Narbonne, and many bishops, abbots, and noblemen. It rests now in the
Dominican's church at Thoulouse, in a rich shrine, with a stately
mausoleum over it, which reaches almost up to the roof of the church,
and hath four faces. An arm of the saint was at the same time sent to
the great convent of the Dominicans at Paris, and placed in St. Thomas's
chapel in their church, which the king declared a royal chapel. The
faculty of theology meets to assist at a high mass there on the
anniversary festival of the saint. The kingdom of Naples, after many
pressing solicitations, obtained, in 1372, from the general chapter held
at Thoulouse, a bone of the other arm of St. Thomas. It was kept in the
church of the Dominicans at Naples till 1603, when the city being
delivered from a public calamity by his intercession, it was placed in
the metropolitan church among the relics of the other patrons of the
country. That kingdom, by the briefs of Pius V. in 1567, and of Clement
VIII. in 1603, confirmed by Paul V., honors him as a principal patron.
He was solemnly canonized by pope John XXII. in 1323. Pope Pius V., in
1567, commanded his festival and office to be kept equal with those of
the four doctors of the western church.

* * * * *

Many in their studies, as in other occupations, take great pains to
little purpose, often to draw from them the poison of vanity or error;
or at least to drain their affections, and rather to nourish pride and
other vices in the heart than to promote true virtue. Sincere humility
and simplicity of heart {533} are essential conditions