[25] See Dr. Lanigan's Irish Eccl. Hist. ii. p. 483-6.
[26] Jacques II. of Bourbon, Count of la Marche and de Castres, married to Jeanne Q. of Naples and Sicily, was imprisoned by his wife, but escaped, and becoming a third Order brother of S. Francis, at Besancon, died there, Sept. 24, 1428.
[27] These stocks, called Nervus, were a wooden machine with many holes, in which the prisoners' feet were fastened and stretched to great distances, as to the fourth or fifth holes, for the increase of their torments. S. Perpetua remarks, they were chained, and also set in this engine during their stay in the camp-prison, which seems to have been several days, in expectation of the day of the public shows.
[28] It is evident from the visions S. Perpetua had of her little brother, that the Church, at that early age, believed the doctrine of Purgatory, and prayed for the faithful departed.
[29] Pro ordine venatorum. Venatores is the name given to those that were armed to encounter the beasts, who put themselves in ranks, with whips in their hands, and each of them gave a lash to the Bestiarii, or those condemned to the beasts, whom they obliged to pass naked before them in the middle of the pit or arena.
[30] Does not this remind the classic scholar of the description of the death of Polyxena, by Talthybius, in the Hecuba, "She even in death showed much care to fall decently."
[31] Such is the legend, but possibly it may have been coined after the death of S. Thomas.
[32] For this part of the history of S. Thomas, treated at greater length, see "The Life and Labours of S. Thomas of Aquin," by the Very Rev. R. B. Vaughan.
[33] It is necessary to point out here that S. Thomas was misled by forgeries in this treatise. A Latin theologian, who had resided among the Greeks, composed a catena of spurious passages of Greek Councils and Fathers, and in 1261 it was laid before Urban IV., who, entirely deceived thereby, sent it to S. Thomas, who also accepted it without the least suspicion of its not being genuine.
[34] There are several versions of this event. According to one, the judge and assistants were blinded whilst Philemon was carried to the river and baptized by a priest. But his prayer afterwards, "Thou hast baptized me in the cloud," proves this to have been an interpolation.