ertain muleteers that
were going into Romagna arose, believing that the day had dawned, and
saddled and laded their beasts; and going on their way, they saw the
said light die out and the material sun arise. In the seraphic vision,
Christ, the which appeared to him, spake to St. Francis certain high
and secret things, the which St. Francis in his lifetime desired not to
reveal to any man; but after his life was done he did reveal them, as it
set forth below; and the words were these: 'Knowest thou,' said Christ,
'what it is that I have done unto thee? I have given thee the Stigmata
that are the signs of My Passion, to the end that thou mayest be My
standard-bearer. And even as in the day of My death I descended into
hell and brought out thence all souls that I found there by reason of
these My Stigmata: even so do I grant to thee that every year on the day
of thy death thou shalt go to Purgatory, and in virtue of thy Stigmata
shalt bring out thence all the souls of thy three Orders,--to wit,
Minors, Sisters, Continents,--and likewise others that shall have had a
great devotion for thee, and shalt lead them unto the glory of Paradise,
to the end that thou mayest be confirmed to Me in death as thou art in
life.' Then this marvellous image vanished away, and left in the heart
of St. Francis a burning ardour and flame of love divine, and in his
flesh a marvellous image and copy of the Passion of Christ. For
straightway in the hands and feet of St. Francis began to appear the
marks of the nails in such wise as he had seen them in the body of Jesus
Christ the crucified, the which had shown Himself to him in the likeness
of a Seraph; and thus his hands and feet appeared to be pierced through
the middle with nails, and the heads of them were in the palms of his
hands and the soles of his feet outside the flesh, and their points came
out in the back of his hands and of his feet, so that they seemed bent
back and rivetted in such a fashion that under the bend and rivetting
which all stood out above the flesh might easily be put a finger of the
hand as a ring; and the heads of the nails were round and black.
Likewise in the right side appeared the image of a wound made by a
lance, unhealed, and red and bleeding, the which afterwards oftentimes
dropped blood from the sacred breast of St. Francis, and stained with
blood his tunic and his hose. Wherefore his companions, before they knew
it of his own lips, perceiving nevertheless that