At that moment her son Baptista entered the room. His mother sat up in the bed, and gazing upon him with an expression of anxious scrutiny, she said: "And can it be that you quarrel with poor shepherds? And do you rob God of His glory by unlawful dealings with hell?" The persons who were standing around the bed looked at each other in surprise, and imagined that Francesca was delirious; but Baptista's countenance and actions soon undeceived them. Tears rushed into his eyes, and with great emotion he publicly acknowledged that he had been guilty of striking, in his anger, some peasants who had injured his fields, and had gone to consult in secret one of the persons who dealt in occult sciences, as to the possibility of his mother's recovery. No one but himself knew of his twofold sin; and the rebuke of the dying Saint came upon him as a direct reproof from God, and an awful warning for the rest of his life. As the day advanced, Francesca grew weaker and weaker; but the flame of love was burning more brightly, as that of life was waning. "What are you saying?" asked Don Giovanni at one moment, on seeing her lips move. "The Vespers of the Blessed Virgin," she answered in a scarcely audible voice. As an infant almost she had begun that practice; and on the eve of her death she had not yet omitted it. On the seventh day of her illness, as she had herself announced, her life came to a close. A sublime expression animated her face; a more ethereal beauty clothed her earthly form. Her confessor for the last time inquires what it is her enraptured eyes behold, and she whispers, "The heavens open! The angels descend! The archangel has finished his task. He stands before me. He beckons to me to follow him." These are the last words that Francesca utters; a smile of indescribable brightness beams from her face. The eyes that have so long been closed to the vanities of life are now closed in death, and her spirit has taken its final leave of earth.
CHAPTER XV.
FRANCESCA'S FUNERAL, AND HER SUBSEQUENT CANONIZATION.
THE body of the Saint remained during a night and a day at the Ponziano palace, the Oblates watching by turns over the beloved remains. Their grief was tempered with joy, for they felt she was in heaven; though the pang of separation was keen, and their home on earth desolate. Don Giovanni, Don Ippolito, and Don Francesco dello Schiano recited the prayers of the Church over the corpse; and though deeply affected themselves, strove to console the bereaved sisterhood, chiefly by extolling the rare merits and the heroic virtues of their departed mother. Almighty God vouchsafed, even during the first night of their loving watch, to give them a proof of that sanctity which was so soon to be triumphantly demonstrated. Sister Margaret, of the third order of St. Frances, had been present at Francesca's death, and remained by her side during the night that followed. Her arm had been paralysed for six months, and to all appearance withered. Inspired with a lively faith, she touched the body of the Saint, and was instantaneously cured. The Oblates all fell on their knees at the sight of this miracle, and blessed God for the earnest He thus gave of the wonders which Francesca's intercession was to accomplish. Each moment they were confirmed in the blessed assurance of her immediate admission into heaven; each moment brought with it a new occasion for joyful exultation. The sweet perfume, the "odour of sanctity," which expression is so often supposed to be simply metaphorical, whereas it often indicates an actual physical and miraculous fact, soon pervaded the room and filled it with fragrance. Francesca's face, which had recently borne the traces of age and of suffering, became as beautiful again as in the days of youth and prosperity; and the astonished bystanders gazed with wonder and awe at that unearthly loveliness. Many of them carried away particles from her clothes, and employed them for the cure of several persons who had been considered beyond the possibility of recovery. In the course of the day, the crowd augmented to a degree which alarmed the inhabitants of the palace, and Baptista took measures to have the body removed at once to the church and a procession of the regular and secular clergy escorted the venerated remains to Santa Maria Nuova, where they were to be interred.
The popular feeling burst forth on the occasion; it was no longer to be restrained: a sort of pious insurrection, which the Church smiles upon, even though it refuses to sanction it; as a mother can scarcely rebuke a somewhat irregular action in one of her children when it springs from a generous feeling, even though she feels herself bound to check it. "Francesca was a saint—Francesca was in heaven." Francesca was invoked by the crowd, and her beloved name was heard in every street, in every piazza, in every corner of the Eternal City. It flew from mouth to mouth; it seemed to float in the air, to be borne aloft by the grateful enthusiasm of a whole people, who had seen her walk to that church by her mother's side in her holy childhood; who had seen her kneel at that altar in the grave beauty of womanhood, in the hour of bereavement, and now in death; carried thither in state, she the gentle, the humble Saint of Rome, the poor woman of the Trastevere, as she was sometimes called at her own desire.
Francesca del Veruli, the Oblate whom illness had detained from the death-bed of her beloved mother, hears from her sick-room the confused hum of voices, the sound of hurrying feet, which indicate the approach of the procession. Full of faith, she starts up, and with clasped hands exclaims, "Oh, my mother! oh, Francesca! I have not seen you die; I have not received your last blessing; obtain for me now that I may visit your remains." With a violent effort, and leaning on one of her sisters, she contrives to rise and to make her way to the bier. The very instant she has touched it, her health and strength return. Meanwhile the crowd augments, and hurries into the church. They press round the precious body; they refuse to let it be buried. As a favour, as a boon of the greatest price, they obtain that the obsequies be put oft to the Saturday; and in the meantime, day and night, there is no limit to the concourse of people that assemble in the chapel. Still the saintly body exhales its perfume; still the sweet features retain their beauty; and to that spot, in an apparently never-ending succession, come the blind, and the lame, and the halt, and the sick, and the suffering; and each of those who touch the bier, or to whom is carried something that has belonged to Francesca, is instantaneously cured. Truly God was wonderful in this His Saint, and wonderful are the details of the miracles wrought during those days; and not only were the ills of the body relieved by contact with the holy corpse, but grace reaches the souls of many who have been hitherto steeled against its entrance.
Amongst others, two young men of dissolute lives and irreligious spirits, on hearing of the miracles at Santa Maria Nuova, begin to jeer and laugh on the subject, and, moved only by curiosity, go to the church, approach the bier with mock demonstrations of respect. But no sooner have they knelt before it, than their hearts are simultaneously touched; a sudden change comes over them. Having come to scoff, they remain to pray,—they rise from their knees only to seek a confessor; and return home that night converted to God, and ever after lead the lives of pious Christians. The miracles wrought before and after Francesca's burial are so multifarious, that it might be tedious (a strange word to use on such an occasion, but nevertheless correct) to attempt to relate them all. Great was the moral effect of this singular outpouring of God's powers through His servant. Faith grew more timid, and hope more strong; charity burned in the hearts of many with an ever-increasing fervour; and the examples which the Saint had given, and which were now dwelt upon with affectionate veneration, induced many to walk in the same path, and look to the same end. It was in Lent that she had died; and from every pulpit in Rome her praises were heard. The most eminent ecclesiastics of the time all foretold her canonisation; and the public voice and the public devotion ratified the burst of popular enthusiasm that had hailed her as a Saint on the very day of her death, and long preceded the formal recognition of her sanctity by the authority of the Church.
A few months after her death, her tomb was opened in order to remove the corpse into a monument which Baptista, Mobilia, and several Roman noblemen had erected in her honour. It was found in a state of perfect preservation, and still exhaling the same fragrance as before. The most exact and detailed examinations were taken in the year of her death, both as to all the particulars of her life, and as to the supernatural and miraculous events which had marked its course, as well as those which had succeeded her death.
From time to time earnest endeavours were made to hasten her formal canonisation. The materials were ample, and the evidence complete; but a variety of circumstances interfered with the conclusion of the process; and though several Popes, namely, Eugenius IV., Nicholas V., Pius II., Innocent VIII., and Julius II., promoted the question, it was not much advanced till the accession of Clement VIII., who had a great devotion to the Saint, and brought the matter nearly to a close; but his death occurring in the meantime, and his successor, Leo XI, only outliving him twenty-seven days, it was Paul V. (Borghese) who decreed the canonisation of Francesca, to the joy of the Oblates of Tor di Specchi, of the monks of Santa Maria Nuova, and of the whole people of Rome. Her festival was appointed to be kept on the 9th of March; and those who have been in Rome on that day can tell how vivid is the devotion that still exists,—the worship that is yet paid to the holy Francesca, the beloved Saint of the Trastevere, the model of Christian matrons; and in the church of Santa Francesca Romana, as the old Santa Maria Nuova is now called, and in the Casa dei Esercizii Pii (the old Ponziano Palace), and in the time-honoured walls of Tor di Specchi, a tribute of love and of devotion is yielded, which touches the heart, and carries the mind back to the days when, amidst the strife of war and the miseries or anarchy, faith, fresh, strong, and pure, asserted its power, and wrought wonders through such feeble instruments as a woman's heart and a woman's works.
On the 29th of May, 1608, in the church of St. Peter, then lately erected, and adorned for the occasion with the utmost magnificence, after a pontifical High Mass, in the presence of the Sacred College, and of an immense affluence of strangers as well as of Romans, the decree was proclaimed which placed Francesca amongst the canonised saints, and sanctioned the worship which a devout people had paid her, with but few interruptions, since the day of her death. Rome was illuminated that night; the fiery cupola of St. Peter, and the sound of innumerable bells, told the neighbouring plains and hills that "God had regarded the lowliness of His handmaiden," and that, in her measure, all generations were to call her Blessed.