learning, and
discretion: they have been ever since esteemed, not only in the new
world, but also in Europe, and at Rome itself, as oracles. The
flourishing state of the church of Peru, the great number of saints and
eminent pastors with which it abounded, and the establishment of
innumerable seminaries of piety and learning, and hospitals for the
poor, were the fruit of his zeal. If he did not originally plant the
faith, he was at least the great propagator of it, and the chief
instrument of God in removing scandals and advancing true piety in that
vast country, which till then had been a land of abominations; while
Francis of Toledo, the great viceroy, first settled the civil government
in peace and tranquillity by salutary laws, which have procured him the
title of the Legislator of Peru. St. Turibius, in the sixty-eighth year
of his age, in 1606, during the visitation of his diocese, fell sick at
Santa, a town one hundred and ten leagues distant from Lima. He foretold
his death, and ordered him to be rewarded who should bring him the first
account from his physician, that his recovery was despaired of. The
ardor of his faith, his hope, his love of his Creator and Redeemer, his
resignation and perfect sacrifice of himself, gathered strength in the
fervent exercises and aspirations which he repeated almost without
ceasing in his illness. By his last will he ordered what he had about
him to be distributed among his servants, and whatever else he otherwise
possessed to be given to the poor. He would be carried to the church,
there to receive the holy viaticum: but received extreme unction in his
sick bed. He often repeated those words of St. Paul: _I desire to be
dissolved, and to be with Christ._ And in his last moments he ordered to
be sung, by his bedside, those of the Psalmist: _I rejoiced in the ibwgs
that were said to me: We shall go into the house of the Lord._ He died
on the 23d of March, repeating those other words of the same prophet:
_Into thy hands I commend my spirit._ His body being translated the year
after to Lima, was found incorrupt, the joints flexible, and the skin
soft. His historian, and the acts of the canonization, mention many sick
restored to their health, and a girl raised to life by him while he was
living: also many miracles wrought through his intercession after his
death. He was beatified by Innocent XI. in 1679,[2] and solemnly
canonized by pope Benedict XIII. in 1726. On the miracles wrou