Elizabeth of Hungary. [_Quaedam aures illius truncabant,
etiam summitatem mamillarum ejus quidam praecidebant et pro reliquiis
sibi servabant._--_Liber de dictis iv. ancillarum_, Mencken, vol. ii.,
p. 2032.]

_c._ The ceremony of translation brought an innumerable multitude to
Assisi. If Brother Elias concealed the body,[6] he may have been led
to do so by the fear of some organized surprise of the Perugians to gain
possession of the precious relic. With the customs of those days, such a
theft would have been in nowise extraordinary. These very Perugians a
few years later stole away from Bastia, a village dependent on Assisi,
the body of Conrad of Offida, which was performing innumerable miracles
there. (_Conform._, 60b, 1; cf. Giord., 50.) Similar affrays took place
at Padua over the relics of St. Anthony. (Hilaire, _Saint Antoine de
Padoue, sa legende primitive_, Montreuil-sur-Mer, 1 vol., 8vo, 1890, pp.
30-40.)

_d._ The bull of canonization, with the greater number of such
documents, for that matter, makes no historic claim. In its wordy
rhetoric we shall sooner learn the history of the Philistines, of
Samson, or even of Jacob, than of St. Francis. Canonization here is only
a pretext which the old pontiff seizes for recurring to his favorite
figures.

This silence signifies nothing after the very explicit testimony of
other bulls by the same pontiff in 1227, and after the part given to the
stigmata in the liturgical songs which in 1228 he composed for the
office of St. Francis.

_e._ These attacks by certain bishops are in nowise surprising; they are
episodes in the struggle of the secular clergy against the mendicant
orders.

At the time when these negations were brought forward (1237) the
narrative of Thomas of Celano was official and everywhere known; nothing
therefore would have been easier, half a score of years after the
events, than to bring witnesses to expose the fraud if there had been
any; but the Bishop of Olmuetz and the others base their objections
always and only upon dogmatic grounds.

As to the attacks of the Dominicans, it is needless to recall the
rivalry between the two Orders;[7] is it not then singular to find
these protestations coming from Silesia (!) and never from Central
Italy, where, among other eye-witnesses, Brother Leo was yet living
([Cross] 1271)?

Thus the witnesses appear to me to maintain their integrity. We might
have preferred them more simple and shorter, we could wi