virtues.” However, the value of miracles must not be underestimated, and unfortunately in many directions there seems a tendency to fall into this grave error. Benedict XIV has a very important and weighty chapter, De Miraculorum necessitate in causis Beatificationis et Canonizationis, which might be studied with profit and instruction. It is not possible to give in detail here the various classes of Causes whose circumstances require a various number of miracles, but it may suffice to say that if the virtues or the martyrdom of the subject are proved by eye-witnesses two miracles are required for beatification and two for canonization. If, however, the virtues or the miracles have been established by evidence which is not that of eye-witnesses (testes de auditu), four miracles are required for beatification and two for canonization. It should be remarked that in all cases the miracles required for canonization must be wrought after beatification, and must be proved by eye-witnesses. Among these miracles which have to be established by evidence before a decree of Beatification is pronounced, the supernatural preservation of the body of a saint is sometimes admitted, and although such a miracle is investigated with the most scrupulous care none the less it is regarded as a high and exceptional distinction. It is generally hoped that at the exhumation of a person whose cause has been begun the body may be found to be preserved incorrupt, but this is by no means invariably the case. Thus Monsignor Benson in a letter dated 4 March, 1904, written from Rome, says: “Mr. and I went yesterday to the exhuming of the body of Elizabeth Sanna,[60] who died thirty-five years ago in the odour of sanctity. They hoped to find the body incorrupt; but it was not so … it was very interesting to see the actual bones of the Saint, and the Franciscan habit in which she was buried as a Tertiary of S. Francis; and to think that very possibly every one of the fragments would be a venerated relic some day.”[61]
It must then be carefully borne in mind that the preservation of the bodies of saints is a very remarkable miracle, and is in no wise to be compared with that preservation of bodies winch may occur from time to time under conditions with which we are imperfectly acquainted. It may be well to give a few examples of this supernatural phenomenon.
