Quote:“The Brother to the Lady, his Sister, dearer to him than are his eyes and his life. It is my wont to leave thy holiness ignorant of nothing that passeth here in thine absence: know also then, that we have found Martyrs. For of a truth, when I was engaged about the dedicating of the Basilica which thou knowest, many began to call upon me with one voice, saying: Dedicate it after the manner of the Roman Basilica. I replied: I will do so, if I find relics of Martyrs. Thereupon there came upon me, as it were, the glowing heat of a presage. What shall I say? The Lord hath bestowed his grace. Despite the fears of the very clerics themselves, I ordered the earth to be dug up about the spot facing the balustrade of Saints Felix and Nabor. I found the wished-for signs. Men even came forward bringing possessed persons on whom we might impose hands; and it so fell out, that at the very first sight of the holy Martyrs, while we as yet had not broken silence, a [Urna in the Latin text, is taken for una by the best interpreters.] woman from among them was instantly seized and thrown to the ground before the holy tomb. We found therein two men of wondrous stature, as in the times of the ancients; all the bones entire, and a quantity of blood. There was a vast concourse of people during these two days. Wherefore these details? Towards evening we transported the holy bodies (in their entirety and laid out in a fitting manner) to the Basilica of Fausta; there vigil was kept all night, and imposition of hands. On the morrow, the translation to the Basilica that they call the ‘Ambrosian.’ During the transit, a blind man was cured.”

Quote:Gervase and Protase were the sons of Vitalis and Valeria, who both testified even unto death, for the Lord Christ’s sake, by martyrdom,—the father at Ravenna, and the mother at Milan. After the victory of their parents, Gervase and Protase gave all their inheritance to the poor, and set free their slaves. This act of theirs stirred up against them savage hatred, on the part of the heathen priests, and when the Count Astasius was about setting forth to war, they believed they had got a good occasion for the destruction fo the two holy brethren. They persuaded Astasius that their gods had revealed to them that they had no chance of conquering in the war, unless he had first made Gervase and Protase to deny Christ, and to offer sacrifice to the gods. Being commanded so to do, they refused with horror, and Astasius then ordered Gervase to be beaten with rods until he died under the stripes, and Protase to be beaten with clubs, and his head to be struck off. A servant of Christ named Philip took away their dead bodies by stealth and buried them in his own house; and in after times, St. Ambrose, being warned of God, found them, and bestowed them in a hallowed and honorable place. They suffered at Milan, on the thirteenth of the kalends of July.

Quote:Juliana, of the noble family of Falconieri, was daughter of that illustrious nobleman who founded and built the church of Our Lady of the Annunciation, still to be seen in Florence. When she was born, in the year 1270, both he and Reguarda his wife were already advanced in years, and up to this, quite childless. From her very cradle, she gave tokens of the holiness of life to which she afterwards attained. And from the lisping of her baby lips was caught that sweet sound of the names of Jesus and Mary. As she entered on her girlhood, she delivered herself up entirely to the pursuit of Christian virtues, and so excellently shone therein, that her uncle, the blessed Alexius, scrupled not to tell her mother that she had given birth to an angel rather than to a woman. So modest, indeed, was her countenance, and so pure her soul from the slightest speck of indiscretion, that she never in her whole life raised her eyes to a man’s face, and that the very mention of sin made her shiver; and when the story of a grievous crime was told her, she dropped down fainting and almost lifeless. Before she had completed her fifteenth year, she renounced her inheritance, although a rich one, and all prospect of earthly marriage, solemnly making to God a vow of virginity, in the hands of St. Philip Benizi, from whom she was the first to receive the religious habit of what are called the “Mantellatæ.”

Thus in a little while, their number increased, and she became foundress of the Order of the Mantellatæ, to whom she gave a rule of life, full of wisdom and holiness. St. Philip Benizi having thorough knowledge of her virtues, being at the point of death, thought that to none better than her could he leave the care not only of the women but of the whole Order of Servites, of which he was the propagator and head: yet of herself she ever deemed most lowly; even when she was the mistress of others, ministering to her sisters in the meanest offices of the household work. She passed whole days in incessant prayer, and was often rapt in spirit; and the remainder of her time, she toiled to make peace among the citizens, who were at variance amongst themselves; to recall sinners from evil courses; and to nurse the sick, to cure whom she would sometimes use even her tongue to remove the matter that ran from their sores, and so healed them. It was her custom to afflict her body with whips, knotted cords, iron girdles, watching, and sleeping upon the bare ground. Upon four days in the week, she ate very sparingly, and that only of the coarsest food; on the other two she contented herself with the Bread of Angels alone, except Saturday whereon she took only bread and water.

This hardship of life caused her to fall ill of a stomach complaint, which increasing, brought her to the point of death, when she was seventy years of age. She bore the daily sufferings of this long illness with a smiling face and a brave heart; the only thing of which she was heard to complain being, that her stomach was so weak, that unable to retain food, she was withheld, by reverence for the holy Sacrament, from the Eucharistic Table. Finding herself in these straits she begged the Priest to bring her the Divine Bread, and as she dared not take It into her mouth, to put It as near as possible to her heart exteriorly. The Priest did as she wished, and to the amazement of all present, the Divine Bread at once disappeared from sight, and at the same instant, a smile of joyous peace crossed the face of Juliana, and she gave up the ghost. This matter seemed beyond all belief, until the virgin body was being laid out in the accustomed manner; for then there was found, upon the left side of the bosom, a mark like the stamp of a seal, reproducing the form of the Sacred Host, the mould of which was one of those that bear a figure of Christ crucified. The report of this and of other wonders procured for Juliana a reverence not only from Florence, but from all parts of the Christian world, which reverence so increased through the course of four hundred years, that Pope Benedict XIII commanded a proper Office in her honor to be celebrated by the whole Order of Servites of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Clement XII, the munificent Protector of the same Order, finding new signs and wonders abedding luster upon her glory every day, inscribed the name of Juliana upon the catalogue of holy Virgins.