of the people, who through devotion petitioned to kiss them.
A woman, who passionately desired to have a relick of Xavier, drawing
near, as if it were to have kissed his foot, fastened her teeth in it,
and bit off a little piece of flesh. The blood immediately ran in great
abundance out of it; and of so pure a crimson, that the most healthful
bodies could not send out a more living colour. The physicians, who
visited the corpse from time to time, and who always deposed, that there
could be nothing of natural in what they saw, judged, that the blood
which came from a body deprived of heat, and issued from a part so
distant from the heart as is the foot, could be no other than the effect
of a celestial virtue; which not only preserved all parts of it from
putrefaction, but also caused the humours to flow, and maintained them in
the motion which only life infuses in them.

So many wonders, which spread through all the East, and were transmitted
into every part of Europe, so moved the heart of Paul V. that he finally
performed what his predecessor had designed. After a juridical examen of
the virtues and miracles above-mentioned, he declared beatified Francis
Xavier, priest of the Society of Jesus, by an express bull, dated the
25th of October, in the year 1619.

Gregory XV., who immediately succeeded Pope Paul V., canonized him
afterwards in all the forms, and with all the procedures, which the
church observes on the like occasions. The ceremony was performed at Rome
on the 12th of March, in the year 1622. But as death prevented him from
making the bull of the canonization, it was his successor Urban VIII. who
finally accomplished it.

This bull bearing date the 6th of August, in the year 1623, is an epitome
and panegyric of the miraculous life of the saint. It is there said,
"That the new apostle of the Indies has spiritually received the blessing
which God vouchsafed to the patriarch Abraham, that he was the father of
many nations; and that he saw his children in Jesus Christ multiplied
beyond the stars of heaven, and the sands of the sea: That, for the rest,
his apostleship has had the signs of a divine vocation, such as are the
gift of tongues, the gift of prophecy, the gift of miracles, with the
evangelical virtues in all perfection."

The bull reports almost all the miracles which we have seen in his life,
particularly the resurrections of the dead; and, amongst other miraculous
cures, which were wrought after hi