It might be tedious, and alien to our special intention, to follow out this in detail, but it would not be difficult to do so in the case of every eminent Order and Congregation. That certain Orders have arisen near each other in time, thus causing the appearance of wonder-working Saints in groups, is just what we might expect when we study the phenomena of miracles.
Those recorded in the Bible lay down, as it were, the rule, and we therein find whole tracts of years without surpernatural intervention; then on a sudden are large clusters of strange events wrought by the power of God, through the hands of men. When God's people were to be delivered from Egypt, and led into the Promised Land; when He would give His sanction to the Prophetic Order; when His Church was founded; then to Moses and Aaron; to Elias and Eliseus; to Peter and Paul were given the kind of powers that St. Antony and St. Peregrine Laziosi, St. Vincent Ferrer and St. Francis Xavier possessed in later ages.
In the spiritual world, as in this, there are peculiarities of gifts, characters, temperaments; sanctity does not reduce or elevate the blessed to one level. " Some Saints can help us in one trouble, others in another," wrote St. Teresa; we may go further and say that, as here below the dominant note of one character is authority, of another sympathy, of another a bright and affectionate playfulness; so the wonders wrought after death by St. Winifred, by St. Edmund Rich, by St. Philomena, show differences of character as clearly as if they were still alive. There are many-sided men in this life, and in the life beyond the veil: such an one was he of whom we now consider the saintliness and the marvels.
Ferdinand de Buglione, as was his name in the world by birth and baptism, was born at Lisbon in the year 1195. His parents were noble and wealthy, and the boy received an education such as became his rank, at the Cathedral School. It is sometimes said that the dedication of the Cathedral to Our Lady was the cause of his singular devotion towards her; but, without this special reason, it would indeed have been strange if he, who was to prove so holy, had not always been a faithful client of the Queen of Saints. There was, however, a Sodality or Confraternity of Our Lady connected with the Cathedral, and of this he was a member. In after years his fellow-sodalists vested his image year by year in red cassock and cotta, such as he had been wont to wear at her altar when a boy.
At the age of fifteen he became a novice with the Canons Regular of St. Augustine, that Congregation of which Thomas a Kempis was so great an ornament. Their house was just outside the gates of Lisbon, too near home to allow him to be wholly free from distraction; he therefore asked for and obtained his transfer to Coimbra, and here at the age of seventeen he was able to give himself entirely to a life of study, solitude and prayer. Not, however, with these Religious had he found his true vocation. In the " Imitation of Christ " is a well-known passage wherein Thomas recognizes that, blessed as was the life of the Canons Regular, there were Religious who led stricter lives than they. He does not mention the Franciscans indeed, only the Carthusians and Cistercians; but the Franciscans were no doubt in his mind among " the monks and nuns of divers Orders."
The Franciscan Order was founded in the beginning of the thirteenth century, which may becalled the heart of the Middle Ages, soon after that of St. Dominic, not long before that of the Servants of Mary. The times stood sorely in need of these three austere bodies; for the great light of faith which streamed on the world in the Ages of Faith was attended with corresponding dark shadows. The Cathari, the Waldenses, the Albigenses, and other sectaries less well-known by name, assailed both faith and morals, while Italy, and indeed the whole empire, was torn asunder by the bloody feuds of Guelf and Ghibelline. The Moors were still, and even up to the battle of Lepanto in 1571, an abiding danger to Europe; in the days of St. Francis much of Spain was actually under their sway. Among his daring plans was that of a Crusade by wholly spiritual arms, and he designed two expeditions, one starting from Ancona for Egypt, the other destined for Seville and Granada.
This band of brethen passed into Morocco, where, though the Sultan Miramolino was converted, five of them laid down their lives for the
