body not only opened wide its eyes, but made a sign with the hand, saying: “Leonora, come hither.” The girl advanced trembling, but S. Catherine added: “Do not be afraid; you will be a professed nun of this community, and all in the convent will love you. Nay, more, you shall be the guardian of this, my body.” Eight years afterwards Leonora refused the hand of a wealthy suitor of high rank, and took the veil in the house of Corpus Domini. Here she lived for no less than five and fifty years, reaching an extreme old age with the love and respect of the whole sisterhood. She was indeed for half a century the guardian of the most holy relic of the body of S. Catherine.[104]
Immediately after the death of that great ecstatica, S. Maria Maddelena de Pazzi, who expired 25th May, 1607, the body of the holy Carmelite was honourably laid upon a catafalque in the nuns’ church of S. Maria degli Angeli, whilst all Florence thronged thither to kiss her feet and touch were it but her raiment with medals and rosaries. Among the first who visited the convent and who were favoured by being allowed to venerate the body before the multitude won admittance was a certain pious Jesuit, Father Seripandi, and in his company chanced to be a young man of noble family whom he was striving to turn from the most dissolute courses. Whilst the good priest knelt in prayer the youth scanned intently the countenance of the Saint, but she frowning slightly gently turned away her face as if offended at his gaze. He stood abashed and dumbfounded, when Father Seripandi said: “Verily, my son, this Saint would not suffer your eyes to behold her, inasmuch as your life is so licentious and lewd.” “It is true,” cried the young man, “but God helping me I will amend my ways in every particular.” He did so, and before long was distinguished by no ordinary piety and observance of religion.[105]
Similar cases of the resuscitation of the dead, corpses that arose from their graves, the movement of dead bodies, might indeed be almost indefinitely multiplied. And it is not at all impossible that as these extraordinary circumstances happened in the lives of the Saints, so they would be imitated and parodied by the demon, for, as Tertullian has said, “diabolus simia Dei.”
It has been well remarked that man has always held the
