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Page:The Story of Mexico.djvu/243

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FRAY MARTIN DE VALENCIA.
211

humed, and finding him in as good condition as when alive, putting the corpse in a box and separate sepulchre, had a great stone put over it with a corresponding epitaph.

"The body was afterwards secretly moved to the Cave of Amecameca, where it awaits the glorious day of triumph for saints and confusion to reprobates. Many miracles are related of the saint, but more than for these his name will be forever glorious in our country for his great virtues, and above all for the grand services which the order he founded for the glory of God had given to the Mexicans during more than three hundred years."

A further account confirms the devotion with which the Indians, encouraged by the padres, preserved the relics of the holy father.

"In this cave are guarded, night and day, by the Dominican monks, certain relics of this friar: a leather celicio, a coarse and rough tunic, and two chasubles of native linen cloth, in which the servant of God said mass; and on the other side is a great box, locked, which serves as the sepulchre of a wooden Christ. . . . This sainted man died in the year 1534 and was buried in the convent of Tlalmanalco, where his body remained untouched for the space of more than thirty years, since when it has not appeared, nor does any one know where it is nor who disturbed it." In fact, for fifty years the Indians of Amecameca guarded the relics with great devotion, but in secret, passing them from hand to hand, but without giving them up either to Franciscans or Dominicans, until in 1884 they were discovered by