s it were, taken by storm_; and there
seems to have been a competition as to who should produce the greatest
number of them, and the most extraordinary, to have them believed. I
could not persuade myself that he related seriously the pretended
apparition of St. Francis to Erasmus. It is easy to comprehend that it
was a joke of Erasmus, who wished to divert himself at the expense of
the Cordeliers. But one cannot help being pained at the way in which
he treats several fathers of the church, as St. Gregory the Great, St.
Gregory of Tours, St. Sulpicius Severus, Peter the Venerable, Abbot of
Clugny, St. Anselm, Cardinal Pierre Damien, St. Athanasius even, and
St. Ambrose,[704] in regard to their credulity, and the account they
have given us of several apparitions and visions, which are little
thought of at this day. I say the same of what he relates of the
visions of St. Elizabeth of Schonau, of St. Hildegrade, of St.
Gertrude, of St. Mecthelda, of St. Bridget, of St. Catherine of
Sienna, and hardly does he show any favor to those of St. Theresa.

Would it not have been better to leave the world in this respect as it
is,[705] rather than disturb the ashes of so many holy personages and
saintly nuns, whose lives are held blessed by the church, and whose
writings and revelations have so little influence over the salvation
and the morals of the faithful in general. What service does it render
the church to speak disparagingly of the works of the contemplatives,
of the Thaulers, the Rushbrooks, the Bartholomews of Pisa, of St.
Vincent Ferrier, of St. Bernardine of Sienna, of Henry Harphius, of
Pierre de Natalibus, of Bernardine de Bustis, of Ludolf the Chartreux,
and other authors of that kind, whose writings are so little read and
so little known, whose sectaries are so few in number, and have so
little weight in the world, and even in the church?

The Abbe du Frenoy acknowledges the visions and revelations which are
clearly marked in Scripture; but is there not reason to fear that
certain persons may apply the rules of criticism which he employs
against the visions of the male and female saints of whom he speaks in
his work, and that they may say, for instance, that Jeremiah yielded
to his melancholy humor, and Ezekiel to his caustic disposition, to
predict sad and disagreeable things to the Jewish people?[706]

We know how many vexations the prophets endured from the Jews, and
that in particular[707] those of Anathoth had