Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others

Georgiana Fullerton

Description

pubOne.info present you this new edition. Her life by Mattiotti, her Confessor for ten years. Mattiotti enjoined her, as a matter of obedience, to relate to him from time to time her visions in the minutest detail. He was a timid and suspicious man, and for two or three years kept a daily record of all she told him; afterwards, as his confidence in her sanctity and sanity grew complete, he contented himself with a more general account of her ecstasies, and also put together a private history of her life. After her death, he wrote a regular biography, which is now to be found in the Bollandist collection (Venice, 1735, vol. ii. ).

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819949985
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE LIFE
OF
ST. FRANCES OF ROME,
BY
LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON;
OF
BLESSED LUCY OF NARNI,
OF
DOMINICA OF PARADISO
AND OF
ANNE DE MONTMORENCY:
WITH
An Introductory Essay
Her life by Mattiotti, her Confessor for ten years.Mattiotti enjoined her, as a matter of obedience, to relate to himfrom time to time her visions in the minutest detail. He was atimid and suspicious man, and for two or three years kept a dailyrecord of all she told him; afterwards, as his confidence in hersanctity and sanity grew complete, he contented himself with a moregeneral account of her ecstasies, and also put together a privatehistory of her life. After her death, he wrote a regular biography,which is now to be found in the Bollandist collection (Venice,1735, vol. ii. ).
Early in the seventeenth century, Ursinus, a Jesuit,wrote a life, which was highly esteemed, but which was neverprinted, and, except in certain fragments, is now lost.
In 1641, Fuligato, a Jesuit, wrote the second life,in the Bollandist collection, which contains particulars of eventsthat happened after Mattiotti's time.
Other well-written lives have since appeared:especially a recent one by the Vicomte de Bussière, in which willbe found various details too long to be included in the sketch herepresented to the English reader. INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
THE MIRACULOUS LIFE OF THE SAINTS.
In presenting to the general reader a newly-writtenLife of so extraordinary a person as St. Frances of Rome, togetherwith the biographical sketches contained in the present volume, itmay be useful to introduce them with a few brief remarks on thatpeculiar feature in the histories of many Saints, which is least inaccordance with the popular ideas of modern times. A meretranslation, or republication of a foreign or ancient book, doesnot necessarily imply any degree of assent to the principlesinvolved in the original writer's statements. The new version oredition may be nothing more than a work of antiquarian or literaryinterest, by no means professing any thing more than a belief thatpersons will be found who will, from some motive or other, be gladto read it.
Not so, however, in the case of a biography which,though not pretending to present the results of fresh researches,does profess to give an account new in shape, and adapted to thewants of the day in which it asks its share of public attention. Inthis case no person can honourably write, and no editor canhonourably sanction, any statements but such as are not onlypossible and probable, but, allowing for the degree of authenticityin each case claimed, on the whole historically true. No honestman, who absolutely disbelieves in all documents in which theoriginal chronicler has mingled accounts of supernatural eventswith the record of his own personal knowledge, could possiblyeither write or edit such Lives as those included in the followingpages; still less could they be made public by one who disbelievesin the reality of modern miracles altogether.
In presenting, then, the present and other similarvolumes to the ordinary reader, I anticipate some such questions asthese: “Do you really put these stories into our hands as history?Are these marvellous tales to be regarded as poetry, romance,superstitious dreaming, or as historical realities? If you professto believe in their truth, how do you reconcile their characterwith the universal aspect of human life, as it appears to us andto our friends? And finally, if you claim for them the assentto which proved facts have a right from every candid mind, to whatextent of detail do you profess to believe in their authenticity? ”To these and similar questions I reply by the followingobservations:
The last of these questions may be answered briefly.The lives of Saints and other remarkable personages, which are hereand elsewhere laid in a popular form before the English public, arenot all equally to be relied on as undoubtedly true in theirvarious minute particulars. They stand precisely on the samefooting as the ordinary events of purely secular history; andprecisely the same degree of assent is claimed for them that thecommon reason of humanity accords to the general chronicles of ourrace. No man, who writes or edits a history of distant events,professes to have precisely the same amount of certainty as to allthe many details which he records. Of some his certainty is all butabsolute; of others he can say that he considers them highlyprobable; of a third class he only alleges that they are vouchedfor by respectable though not numerous authorities. , Still, hegroups them together in one complete and continuous story, andgives them to the world as history; nor does the worldimpute to him either dishonesty, ignorance, credulity, orshallowness, because in every single event he does not specify theexact amount of evidence on which his statement rests.
Just such is the measure of belief to be conceded tothe Life of St. Frances, and other biographies or sketches of asimilar kind. Some portions, and those the most really importantand prominent, are well ascertained, incontrovertible, andsubstantially true. Others again, in all likelihood, took placevery much, though not literally, in the way in which they arerecorded. Of others, they were possibly, or even probably, the merecolouring of the writer, or were originally adopted onuninvestigated rumour. They are all, however, consistent with knownfacts, and the laws on which humanity is governed by DivineProvidence; and therefore, as they may be true, they take theirplace in that vast multitude of histories which all candid andwell-informed persons agree in accepting as worthy of credit,though in various degrees.
Supposing, then, that miraculous events may and dooccur in the present state of the world's history, it is obviousthat these various degrees of assent are commanded alike by thesupernatural and the natural events which are here so freelymingled together. Some are undoubtedly true, others are probablyeither fictitious or incorrectly recorded. The substance rests onthe genuine documents, originally written by eye-witnesses andperfectly competent judges; and as such, the whole stands simply asa result of the gathering together of historical testimony.
Here, however, the ordinary English reader meets uswith the assertion, that the supernatural portions of such livesare simply impossible . He assumes— for I am not exaggeratingwhen I say that he never tries to prove — that thesemarvellous interruptions of the laws of nature never take place.Consequently, in his judgment, it is purely ridiculous to put forthsuch stories as history; and writers who issue them are guiltyeither of folly, ignorance, superstition, or an unprincipledtampering with the credulity of unenlightened minds. Of those whothus meet the question of historical evidence by an assumption of auniversal abstract impossibility, I earnestly beg an unprejudicedattention to the following considerations:
If it be once admitted that there is a God, and thatthe soul is not a mere portion of the body, the existence ofmiracles becomes at once probable. Apart from the records ofexperience, we should in fact have expected that events which arenow termed miraculous would have been perhaps as common as thosewhich are regulated by what we call the laws of nature. Let it beonly granted that the visible universe is not the whole universe, and that in reality we are ever in a state of mostintimate real communion with Him who is its Creator; then, Isay, we should have expected to have been as habitually consciousof our intercourse with that great Being, as of our intercoursewith one another. The true marvel is, that we are not thushabitually conscious of the Divine Presence, and that God is reallyout of our sight. If there is a God, who is ever around us andwithin us, why does He not communicate with us through themedium of our senses, as He enables us to communicate with oneanother? Our souls hold mutual communion through the interventionof this corporal frame, with such a distinct and undeniablereality, that we are as conscious of our intercourse as ofthe contact of a material substance with our material bodies. Why,then, — since it is so infinitely more important to us to holdceaseless communication with our Maker, — why is it that ourintercourse with Him is of a totally different nature? Why is itthat the material creation is not the ordinary instrument by whichour souls converse with Him? Let any man seriously ponder upon thisawful question, and he must hasten to the conclusion, that thoughexperience has shown us that the world of matter is not the ordinary channel of converse between God and man, there yetremains an overwhelming probability that some such intercoursetakes place occasionally between, the soul and that Godthrough whose power alone she continues to exist.
In other words, the existence of miracles isprobable rather than otherwise. A miracle is an event in which thelaws of nature are interrupted by the intervention of Divineagency, usually for the purpose of bringing the soul of man into aconscious contact with the inhabitants of the invisible world. Withmore or less exactness of similitude, a miracle establishes betweenGod and man, or between other spiritual beings and man, that samekind of intercourse which exists between different livingindividuals of the human race. Such a conscious intercourse isindeed asserted by infidels as well as by atheists, to be, if notimpossible, at least so utterly improbable, that it is scarcelywithin the power of proof to make it credible to the unbiasedreason. Yet surely the balance of probability inclines to the veryopposite side. If there is a God, and our souls are in communication (of some kind) with Him, surely, prior toexperience, we should have expected to be habitually conscious ofthis communion. And now that we see that we are not at any ratehabitually so, still the burden of proof rests with those whoallege that such con