This perfect congruity between the circumstances and the prodigy itself forms a moral proof whose value cannot be exaggerated.
It is time to pass the principal witnesses in review.
1. Brother Elias, 1226. On the very day after the death of Francis, Brother Elias, in his capacity of vicar, sent letters to the entire Order announcing the event and prescribing prayers.[1]
After having expressed his sorrow and imparted to the Brothers the blessing with which the dying Francis had charged him for them, he adds: "I announce to you a great joy and a new miracle. Never has the world seen such a sign, except on the Son of God who is the Christ God. For a long time before his death our Brother and Father appeared as crucified, having in his body five wounds which are truly the stigmata of Christ, for his hands and his feet bore marks as of nails without and within, forming a sort of scars; while at the side he was as if pierced with a lance, and often a little blood oozed from it."
2. Brother Leo. We find that it is the very adversary of Elias who is the natural witness, not only of the stigmata, but of the circumstances of their imprinting. This fact adds a peculiar value to his account.
We learned above (Critical Study, [p. 377]) the untoward fate of a part of the Legend of Brothers Leo, Angelo, and Rufino. The chapters with which it now closes (68-73) and in which the narrative of the miracle occurs, were not originally a part of it. They are a summary added at a later time to complete this document. This appendix, therefore, has no historic value, and we neither depend on it with the ecclesiastical authors to affirm the miracle, nor with M. Hase to call it in question.
Happily the testimony of Brother Leo has come down to us in spite of that. We are not left even to seek for it in the Speculum, the Fioretti, the Conformities, where fragments of his work are to be found; we find it in several other documents of incontestable authority.
The authenticity of the autograph of St. Francis preserved at Assisi appears to be thoroughly established (see Critical Study, p. 357); it contains the following note by Brother Leo's hand: "The Blessed Francis two years before his death kept on the Verna in honor of the B. V. Mary mother of God, and St. Michael Archangel, a Lent from the festival of the Assumption of the B. V. M. to the festival of St. Michael in September, and the hand of God was upon him by the vision and the address of the seraph and the impression of the stigmata upon his body. He made the laudes that are on the other side, ... etc."
Again, Eccleston (13) shows us Brother Leo complaining to Brother Peter of Tewkesbury, minister in England, that the legend is too brief concerning the events on the Verna, and relating to him the greater number of the incidents which form the nucleus of the Fioretti on the stigmata. These memorials are all the more certain that they were immediately committed to writing by Peter of Tewkesbury's companion, Brother Garin von Sedenfeld.
Finally Salembeni, in his chronicle (ad ann. 1224) in speaking of Ezzelino da Romano is led to oppose him to Francis. He suddenly remembers the stigmata and says, "Never man on earth, but he, has had the five wounds of Christ. His companion, Brother Leo, who was present when they washed the body before the burial, told me that he looked precisely like a crucified man taken down from the cross."