man spoke very well the language of those barbarians without having learned it, and had no need of an interpreter when he instructed." And, finally, in our own time, the Rev. Father Coleridge, speaking of the saint among the natives, says, "He could speak the language excellently, though he had never learned it."
In the early biography, Tursellinus writes: "Nothing was a greater impediment to him than his ignorance of the Japanese tongues; for, ever and anon, when some uncouth expression offended their fastidious and delicate ears, the awkward speech of Francis was a cause of laughter." But Father Bouhours, a century later, writing of Xavier at the same period, says, "He preached in the afternoon to the Japanese in their language, but so naturally and with so much ease that he could not be taken for a foreigner."
And finally, in 1872, Father Coleridge, of the Society of Jesus, speaking of Xavier at this time, says, "He spoke freely, flowingly, elegantly, as if he had lived in Japan all his life."
Nor was even this sufficient: to make the legend complete, it was declared that, when Xavier addressed the natives of various tribes, each heard the sermon in his own language in which he was born.[1]
It is hardly necessary to attribute to the orators and biographers generally a conscious attempt to deceive. The simple fact is, that as a rule they thought, spoke, and wrote in obedience to the natural laws which govern the luxuriant growth of myth and legend in the warm atmosphere of love and devotion which constantly arises about great religious leaders in times when men have little or no knowledge of natural law, when there is little care for scientific evidence, and when he who believes most is thought most meritorious.
- ↑ For the evolution of the miracles of Xavier, see his Letters with Life, published by Léon Pagès, Paris, 1855. Also, Maffei, Historiarum Indicarum, Libri xvi, Venice, 1589. Also the Lives by Tursellinus, various editions, beginning with that of 1596; Vitelleschi, 1622; Bouhours, 1682; Massei, second edition, 1682 (Rome), and others; Fabers Bartoli, Baltimore, 1868; Coleridge, 1872. In addition to these, I have compared, for a more extended discussion of this subject hereafter, a very great number of editions of these and other biographies of the saint with speeches at the canonization, the Bull of Gregory XIII, various books of devotion, and a multitude of special writings, some of them in manuscript, upon the glories of the saint. The illustration of the miracle of the crucifix and crab in its final form is given in La Dévotion de Dix Vendredis à l'Honneur de St. Francois Xavier, Bruxelles, 1699, Fig. 24. For the letter of King John to Barreto see Léon Pagès's Lettres de St. Francois Xavier, Paris, 1855, vol. ii, p. 465. For the miracle among the Badages, compare Tursellin. lib. ii, c. x, p. 16, with Bouhours, Dryden's translation, pp. 146, 147. For miracle of the gift of tongues, in its higher development, see Bouhours, p. 143, and Coleridge, vol. i, pp 172 and 208; and as to Xavier's own account see Coleridge, vol. i, pp. 151, 154, and vol. ii, 551.
