Venerable John Tauler

If the virtues and preachings of John Tauler made Jean Taulère 14th-century Dominican and Rhenish mystic. him famous in the 14th century, says Touron, the writings full of light and unction that he left behind have caused his name to pass with glory to posterity. Bossuet, Saint Teresa, and Louis de Blois rightly count him among the greatest masters of the spiritual life. He was born in Germany in the year 1294 and embraced the institute of the Friars Preachers in the convent of Strasbourg, toward couvent de Strasbourg City that Bennon leaves at the beginning of his narrative. the beginning of the pontificate of John XXII.

Tauler shone in the pulpit, especial ly in C Cologne Archiepiscopal see and burial place of the saint. ologne and Strasbourg. He fought against the Quietists and the Beghards or false spirituals, who were beginning to slip into the ranks of the Church. His preachings were followed everywhere by the most prodigious effects. His eminent piety, his profound erudition, the austerity of his life, and the most incisive and compelling eloquence forced the most hardened sinners to surrender to the voice that called them. But as masculine and pressing as his eloquence was, his spiritual direction was equally sweet, unctuous, and persuasive. Thus, he led the souls he guided along the difficult paths of life to the greatest perfection.

As for his doctrine, here is how Bossuet speaks of it. He says, "that in his opinion, Tauler was not only a zealous preacher, but one of the most solid and correct of the mystics." He also says, "that his book of Ins titutions is among the livre des Institutions The most famous work attributed to Johannes Tauler. most esteemed of mystical books." "If one notices," he adds, "in some of his writings certain exaggerations, they are due more to the manner of speaking of his time than to the imperfection of his doctrine." Moreover, as Suarez observes, this author did not speak, in these circumstances, with scholastic precision and subtlety, but with mystical phrases. And Bossuet also said that, "without wishing to diminish Tauler's reputation, one should not take literally everything that escaped from this holy man." It is impossible, moreover, as Feller remarks in his turn, "to recall to common rules everything that has been written on this subject; morality," he says, "has its mysteries like dogma, its depths like everything that pertains to divinity, its exceptions and its apparent contradictions like all sciences, even geometry. To want to reduce it to a perfectly general exactitude, to free it from the modifications of which all divine and human notions are essentially susceptible, is to make it a being of reason." Gerson himself said, "that one must not always demand in these kinds of works the rigorous precision of language, nor even common notions of morality. For," he adds, "those who do not have the experience of the mystical life can no more judge it than a blind man can judge colors."

Tauler wrote only in German. Surius collected his works and provided a Latin translation printed in Cologne in 1552. Those considered most authentic are: 1° Some sermons for the Time and the Saints; 2° A Life of Jesus Christ; 3° The Institutions, the most famous of all; 4° Epistles; 5° The Golden Alphabet; 6° A Dialogue between a theologian and a beggar. Touron attributes a few others to him, but about which doubts remain. We have a recent translation of his sermons by Mr. Charles de Sainte-Foi.

Let us finally conclude this notice with the edifying death of this holy religious. After an entire life spent in the exercise of contemplation, in the fulfillment of the most fruitful apostolate, in the practice of the most beautiful evangelical virtues, overwhelmed by fatigue, years, crosses, and paralysis, his body succumbed, and his blessed soul flew radiantly toward the eternal mountains, on the 16th of the Kalends of June in the year 1361. It is in the convent of Strasbourg that he rendered his soul to God, and it is there that his mortal remains still rest today.

SAINT PASCAL BAYLON SAINT PASCAL BAYLON Franciscan saint to whom Egidio had a devotion. , 1540-1592. — Popes: Paul III; Clement VIII. — Kings of France: Francis I; Henry IV. One must have the heart of a child for God, the heart of a mother for one's neighbor, and the heart of a judge for oneself. Maxim of Saint Pascal. Pascal Baylon was born in 1540, i n Torre-Hermo Torre-Hermosa Birthplace of Pascal Baylon. sa (Beautiful Tower), a small town in the kingdom of Aragon, in Spain; his father was named Martin Baylon, and his mother Isabelle Joubert, or Jubera. Our Saint came into the world on Easter day, and this is what caused him to be given the name Pascal; his parents, who earned their living by tilling the land, occupied him from his childhood with tending flocks and could teach him nothing other than virtue and the elements of religion. But the desire to know how to read led him to carry a book to the fields, and he begged all those he met to teach him to read and write; it is said that angels were among their number. He used this advantage only for the salvation of his soul; shunning futile books, he read only those that reminded him of the maxims of Christianity, the examples of Jesus Christ and His Saints. One of his most ordinary prayers was the Lord's Prayer. He took a singular pleasure in prostrating himself frequently before the majesty of God. He did what he could to go often to the churches, and he would remain there so long that his parents were obliged to go and fetch him to make him take nourishment. While still very young, he was obliged to hire himself out as a shepherd. He did not lose any of the means that this profession offered him to sanctify himself. He had, toward his master Martin Garcia, a docility, a perfect submission, executing with joy and to the letter everything that was ordered of him. When he was in the fields, he meditated on the wonders of creation, or did pious reading. One often saw him praying on his knees, under some tree apart, without neglecting his flock. He had more than once raptures, and he could not always hide from the eyes of men the love of God that inflamed his heart. Although poor, he found the means to give alms, sharing his food with those who lacked it. Several shepherds, called as witnesses after his death, when his canonization was being considered, testified that he often spoke to them of God, of the means to serve and love Him, with superhuman eloquence; that he was insensible to pleasures, an enemy of games and amusements, discreet in his words and in his actions, charitable toward his neighbor, always ready to render service to everyone to win everyone to Jesus Christ. His master, delighted with this conduct so wise and so holy, often expressed his satisfaction to him; as he had no children, he proposed to adopt him as his son and heir. But Pascal feared that the goods of the earth might be an obstacle to the acquisition of those of heaven; he refused the offers of his master, thereby rendering himself more conformed to the Savior who came to earth not to be served, but to serve. At the age of twenty, God inspired him with the resolution to leave his master, his country, his profession, to embrace the religious state. One of the shepherds, his companions, who loved him tenderly, tried to make him abandon this project; the young Pascal made him understand, through a rather long discourse, that it was only to obey the orders of God that he wished to withdraw; but his friend persisting in fighting his resolution, Pascal, animated by a holy zeal, and inspired by God, said to him: "Since you doubt the truth of my words, you will be persuaded by the surprising effect that you are about to see"; he struck at the same time three times, with his crook, the dry and arid earth where they were, and there immediately issued from it three beautiful fountains which still flow at present.

Pascal went to the kingdom of Valencia, where there was a convent of Disc alced Franciscans, who Franciscains déchaussés Religious order of Paschal Baylon. were called Soccolans. This convent was situated in a desert, at some distance from the town of Montfort. Our Saint came there to consult these holy religious. Doubtless following their advice, or out of distrust of himself, before shutting himself up in this cloister, he entered the service of the neighboring farmers and tended their flocks. He would come on Sundays and feast days to hear Mass, receive the sacraments, and gradually take on the spirit of Saint Francis among the Soccolans. His virtues soon made him known throughout the region: he was called the holy shepherd.

In this humble employment, he carried his scruples so far as to keep a record of the slightest damage that the animals entrusted to his care did to the fields, or along the paths, in order to then compensate the interested parties with his own money. When he was mocked for this, he would reply: "Many small venial sins lead to hell just as surely as a single mortal sin." Once, when they would not accept his money, he helped to harvest the wheat of the person concerned, up to the amount of the damage caused by his animals.

Finally, he entered the Franciscan convent in the year 1564. He was offered in vain to be part of the religious engaged in the Holy Orders: he only wanted to be a lay brother, in order to perform the lowest and most arduous offices, and to sanctify himself in humiliations.

He practiced the rule of Saint Francis in all the rigor of the letter and the spirit, and he advanced in religious perfection in a way that astonished the oldest and holiest of the community. He suffered no void between prayer and work, in which one can even say that he continued his prayer. Never was he heard to speak of anyone, either to complain about them, or to blame their conduct, or to damage their reputation. All his movements, all his speeches, and all his actions breathed, from the beginning, that air of holiness to which one saw him arrive later. As for his austerities and his penances, he did not always confine himself within the limits of the rule, nor even within those of human prudence. But if he fell into excess in that regard, it was without affectation: and what one might have found to criticize was sufficiently rectified by his humility and the little attachment he had to his own sense. He had reduced himself for his whole life to bread and water, or a few herbs; he always wore a hair shirt made of pig bristles, with a very heavy triple iron chain with which he tightened his bare skin, in addition to two horseshoes that he had under the hair shirt, one on his stomach and the other on his back. He had for a bed only the ground, or sometimes boards, and for a bolster a log. Often even, to deprive himself of the pleasure he might find in lying down, he slept sitting or bent in a very uncomfortable posture; often he spent the nights in a cell without a roof and without a door. He never used the freedom, necessary under the sky of Spain, to take a siesta during the summer; he worked bareheaded in the garden in the greatest heat. He took only two or three hours of rest at night, the rest was for prayer in his cell; he was always the first at Matins. Those who saw him composed of a body like their own, and who were witnesses of his austerities, no longer found anything incredible in all that is reported as most unheard-of concerning the ancient solitaries of Egypt and the Orient. But as they felt at the same time incapable of reaching the same point, they recognized in Pascal, as in those ancients, an extraordinary grace of God, which raised him above the weaknesses attached to the human condition.

After the ordinary time of the novitiate, he made his solemn vows on the day of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin in the year 1565, not yet having completed twenty-five years. From that time on, he was made to pass from convent to convent, and he was made to take various journeys: he found there an excellent opportunity to regard himself as a stranger on earth, and his life as a continual pilgrimage. Everywhere he went, he carried his virtues and his regularity.

He was usually charged, in the different convents where he was made to stay, with the door and the refectory, because he was known to be affable, discreet, vigilant, active, and faithful.

Once, some women came and asked to confess to the superior of the house. The latter ordered Pascal to tell them he was not at home. 'I will tell them,' the porter replied, 'that you cannot come, as you are busy.' 'No,' the superior retorted, 'you will say that I am not at home.' 'Pardon me,' replied Pascal, who was otherwise extremely timid and submissive; 'I cannot say that, for it would be a lie, and consequently a sin.'

In his capacity as porter, he was accustomed to distributing the leftovers from the religious community's table to the poor; and so that this alms might be profitable to their souls as well as to their bodies, he adopted the practice of praying with them on his knees before and after each meal. For several years, he daily set aside his own portion of food to give to a poor old man. When it happened that he had nothing to give to the unfortunate, so as not to send them away empty-handed, he would go to the garden, pick flowers, and then distribute them, gently begging them to forgive him for having only that to offer. One may believe that this kind of alms, given with such a good heart, was more precious in their eyes than if an arrogant rich man had thrown a coin to each of them. One day, the superior of the convent told him to manage the community's interests better and not to give alms to everyone who presented themselves. 'But,' Pascal replied naively, 'if twelve poor people appear, and I only give to ten, it is to be feared that precisely among the two I send away is Jesus Christ.'

For the love of the poor, he pushed economy to excess: he told his brothers not to waste even a drop of oil unnecessarily, so as not to diminish the holy alms by that much.

Simplicity is the daughter of humility and the mother of patience. The superior of the convent was a morose old man who always had something to criticize in his porter's actions, and who one day, at the *coulpe*, even publicly reproached Pascal for being proud of his virtues. Pascal, without answering a single word and without changing his expression, returned to his post. Then, one of the religious went to find him to console him, telling him, among other things, to bear this humiliation with patience. But Pascal answered him: 'Know, my brother, that it is the Holy Spirit who spoke through the mouth of our Father superior.' This was the answer he usually gave when people wanted to console him for the kind of persecution the rigid superior exercised toward him.

The soul of Saint Pascal was a paradise, or, if one wishes, a temple of the Holy Spirit, where hymns and thanksgivings resounded day and night. The joy that ceaselessly filled his heart was such that it overflowed through his eyes, his features, and even his lips: all day long he hummed canticles and psalms. Like a child who has just received a toy and cannot hide his joy, Pascal could not help but speak of God to everyone he met. Many times he was seen running to one person or another and whispering in their ear: Everything that comes from God is good; or again: Praised be Jesus Christ; or again: My love is crucified, etc. Above the entrance door of the refectory was an image of the Blessed Virgin. Now, one day, good Pascal, believing himself alone in the room, began to dance before this image, singing a canticle in honor of the Virgin, moved by that holy joy which made David dance before the Ark of the Lord.

Pascal's naivety was a *holy simplicity*, the fruit of the innocence of his soul and his deep piety, and not of a lack of intelligence. Two facts prove this: the first is that he had an extraordinary knowledge of divine things; the second is that he often obtained what he wanted more surely than others who might have been more worldly-wise. One day, the superior charged the house orator to go find a local bourgeois who had been offended by another, to try to reconcile him with his enemy. Pascal was to accompany him. But this pious and charitable mission had so little effect that the bourgeois even wanted to use violence against the religious. Then Pascal simply said these words: 'My brother, forgive him for the love of God!' Immediately the other, turning toward the religious, said to him: 'My father, I consent to everything you wish; I forgive him for the love of God.' Another time, a murder having been committed, influential and learned men tried in vain to convince the victim's son to forgive the murderer. Pascal, gifted with an eloquence that one could not call natural, but *supernatural*, managed without much difficulty to convince the young man that he should desist from all legal action and even forgive his father's murderer with a good heart.

He did not undertake any business, however small, without first consulting God through prayer. One day, the superior handed him a sheet of paper, with orders to write a letter to the governor of the province, a friend of Pascal, to recommend an important matter concerning the convent. After a few moments, the superior, wanting to know if the letter was finished, went to find Pascal in his cell: he found him on his knees on the floor, holding the sheet of paper between his joined hands, and praying to God to dictate to him what he should write.

Saint Pascal, when speaking of prayer, had expressions that were both simple and profound. He said, for example: 'God being ready to give us everything we need, we must always pray to him with complete confidence. God waits for us to ask him and even excites us to implore his help. Knowing therefore that God takes pleasure in giving, we must not tire of asking him. When you pray, imagine yourself to be alone in the world with God and think that he has only you to listen to and to answer; ask him for his graces with love, with insistence, with importunity.'

Saint Pascal, when speaking of scruples, makes us clearly understand the difference that exists between true and false piety. He naively called scruples the fleas of the conscience. What is missing in many devout souls is a boundless confidence in God and a true love. In Pascal, these two sentiments had become, in a way, a second nature. This was seen especially when he approached the holy table: upon receiving holy communion, he did not express his fervor through gestures, sighs, and contortions, as some people do; but he went simply, peacefully, like a friend who goes to see and embrace his friend.

His duties as porter and refectorian did not prevent him from also working in the garden, the infirmary, the guest hall, and even the kitchen when he found the opportunity. He applied himself to each of these functions as if it were the only one he had. He was also often employed to saw wood, and it was surprising that a body as macerated as his could withstand fatigues under which those who were better nourished were seen to succumb every day.

The Order of Saint Francis then had as General Christophe de Cheffon, a Breton by birth, who was in Paris. It was difficult for foreign convents to have communications with him; at that time, for a Spanish religious, going to France was almost like going to one's death, because the kingdom of France was almost everywhere under the vexation of the Huguenots, who gave no quarter anywhere to the m onks or m Huguenots Event during which the Cathedral of Meaux was devastated. endicants who fell into their hands. No one wanted to undertake such a dangerous journey: however, the provincial of Valencia, finding himself indispensably obliged to write to the General, saw only Brother Pascal to whom one could propose carrying this letter to Paris. Indeed, our Saint accepted the commission with great joy, without reasoning, without objection, without worrying about the means of making such a long journey. He left barefoot, without sandals, according to his custom. When he had crossed the Pyrenees, he entered a convent in France where there were a large number of learned religious, which leads us to judge that it was in Toulouse. The perils of his mission inspired such pity that, before letting him go further, it was examined in full chapter whether it is permissible to expose oneself to an evident peril of death by virtue of the obedience one has vowed to one's superior. It was finally concluded that the thing was permissible, and Brother Pascal was allowed to go. Joyful at this decision, and desiring nothing so much as to be a martyr of obedience, he no longer made any scruple of walking in broad daylight through the towns, even where the Huguenots seemed to be the masters. They often shouted "Papist" at him; he was often pursued from one village to another by the populace with stones and sticks. He even received a wound on his left shoulder

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from which he remained crippled for the rest of his life. Being near Orléans, he saw himself surrounded by a troop of people who brought up the subject of religion, and asked him if he believed that the body of Jesus Christ was in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Upon the answer he gave them, they wanted to enter into controversy with him, to give themselves the pleasure of embarrassing him with their subtleties. But although he had no more theological science than it had pleased God to communicate to him by infusion, and he knew no other language than that of his country, he confounded them in such a way that they could only reply to him with stones. He got off with a few wounds; having happily escaped their hands, he passed before the gate of a castle, where he asked for a piece of bread as alms, as he was accustomed to do when he was pressed by hunger. The master of the place was a Huguenot gentleman, a great enemy of the Catholics, and he was at the table when he was told that there was at the door a kind of monk in very bad condition who was asking for alms. He had him brought in; and after having long considered his torn habit and his tanned face, he swore that it was a Spanish spy, and he was preparing to have him put to death, had his wife, who felt compassion for him, not secretly had him put out the door, but without thinking of giving him a piece of bread. A poor Catholic woman from the neighboring village did him this charity; and, when after having regained his strength he thought himself in some safety, he thought he would be sacrificed again to the fury of the populace that his habit had attracted. One of the band seized him, without explaining what he wanted to do, and threw him into a stable which he locked with a key. Pascal prepared himself all night to die the next day; but instead of the death he expected, the one who had locked him up came to bring him alms, and let him out two hours after sunrise. He finally arrived in Paris after having endured a thousand dangers, and left it to return to Spain as soon as he had fulfilled the commission that had brought him to France. On the way, he saw a horseman coming toward him who, without greeting him, put the point of his lance against his chest, and asked him: Where is God? Pascal, without being frightened, but also without having time to reflect, answered him: He is in heaven. The horseman immediately withdrew his lance, and turned back without saying anything more. Our Saint, at first astonished by this conduct, understood it by reflecting on it more; the soldier had spared him because he had been content to say that God is in heaven; if he had added that He is also in the Holy Eucharist, he would have pierced him with his lance. Pascal was saddened to have thus lost the crown of martyrdom, and he believed that God judged him unworthy of it, since He had not put that answer into his thoughts. But he carried off the crown of obedience, for which he had at every hour exposed his life in the course of such a long journey.

Upon his return to Spain, he continued to provide his brothers with examples of all monastic virtues. The more despicable he became in his own eyes, the more he attracted the esteem and respect of others. They had such a high opinion of his wisdom and his penetration into the things of God that they consulted him more willingly than their most skillful doctors. The guardians of the convents entrusted him with the inspection of the house in their absence, to the prejudice of the priests and the elders of the community. The masters of novices did the same; they sometimes unburdened themselves of their duties onto him, knowing how capable his instructions were of making an impression on the minds of their students. Father Ximenes, a famous professor of theology and the first biographer of our Saint, assures us that he found in his conversations, on the most difficult points of sacred science, lights that he had not seen in the books of the most famous doctors.

Father Emmanuel Rodriguez, a renowned scholar, said he experienced the same thing. Two theologians of the Society of Jesus, having spoken with him without knowing him, took him for a scholar. They were very astonished when they learned that he was only a simple Brother, who had never learned theology anywhere other than in prayer and before the crucifix; they understood that Our Lord sometimes communicates to his faithful disciples more knowledge than the longest studies.

Pascal Baylon composed small but admirable treatises on the nature and perfections of God, on the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and on that of the Incarnation of the Word; he also wrote others on the manner of praying, on the three degrees of Christian perfection, on grace, on the angels, and on several other similar matters of piety; it was the reading of these works that made the illustrious Dom Jean de Ribera, Archbishop of Valencia and Patriarch of Antioch, say, while speaking to the Provincial of the Friars Minor: "Ah! my father, what use are our painful studies to us, since the simple become much more learned through the exercise of humility and prayer than we do by consuming our eyes and our lives on books; they rise to heaven while we crawl on the earth, and they ravish its possession by their simplicity, while our science, swollen with pride, gives us just cause to fear being banished from it eternally."

The gift of miracles accompanied, in our Saint, that of science. Having learned, during a journey, that the plague was devastating a city located on his path, far from turning away, he hastened to go there, exhorted the inhabitants to repent of their sins, prayed for them, and the scourge disappeared immediately. Through a prayer, he obtained from God the healing of an asthmatic who could no longer breathe.

His superior ordered him to make the sign of the cross on a religious who had a hemorrhage so dangerous that the doctors despaired of his life: the Saint had no sooner obeyed than the blood ceased to flow and the sick man recovered all his strength. The official report that was made shortly after his death, by authority of the Church, makes mention of an infinity of people who declared under oath that they had been cured of various diseases by the virtue of the sign of the cross that this religious had made over them.

God also granted our Saint the gift of foreseeing things to come. Being one day with a preacher whom he was accompanying in the house of a rich man who was of the Third Order of Saint Francis, he begged this man, before supper, to put his conscience and his domestic affairs in order as soon as possible, telling him that he had very little time left to live. The event verified the Saint's prediction, for the host, after having confessed and put his house in order, was struck by apoplexy and died shortly after. He gave a similar warning to a canon of his friends, whom he had confess and to whom he had receive the Extreme Unction and the Holy Viaticum; this ecclesiastic died an hour later. He did the same with all the sick he visited, infallibly predicting the outcome of the illness, whether for health or for death, always exhorting them to confess and to make peace with God.

These heavenly favors, these virtues, the good that Pascal did, made the demons furious. They delivered the harshest battles against him; sometimes they rushed at him in the form of lions and tigers, as if to devour him; sometimes they tried to terrify him with horrible figures; they struck him with such rage that his body became all livid; these battles and the blows he received in them were so real that the religious, who heard the noise, were often obliged to run to his aid; but the Saint, perfectly seasoned against these enemies of salvation and human perfection, was no longer frightened by their attacks. Changing tactics then, the demons contented themselves with suggesting to him internally feelings of vanity; or else they appeared to him under heavenly figures, sometimes of his guardian angel, sometimes of Saint Francis of Assisi, and even of the Blessed Virgin, with the design of awakening his self-love, by making him believe that he was a great saint, being honored by the visit of the blessed spirits. When Pascal had discovered this artifice, the enemy of our souls had recourse to another: he offered himself to him with arms outstretched in the form of a cross, shedding much blood from all parts of his body, telling the Saint that he had come to give him marks of his love and his esteem, for being the only one in the world who took part in his sufferings and the opprobrium he had endured in his passion; but the Saint, divinely enlightened, discovering this new ruse, said to this angel of darkness, whose false lights he despised: "What! Ravening wolf, do you dare to appear under the skin of this divine lamb who conquered you by his death, and who banished you from the world by the triumph of his cross? Withdraw from here, miserable proud one, and know that those who strive to become the true disciples of his cross do not fear your ruses and artifices any more than the vain external efforts of your malice." At these powerful words, pronounced in the spirit of a living faith and a perfect trust in God, the demon withdrew in confusion, making a noise so terrible that all the religious of the convent of Villa-Real, where the blessed Pascal was then, were terrified. This was not, however, the last attack that Satan launched against the holy Religious.

There was in the city of Valencia, where our Saint was then living, a young lady, very well-made, in whom everyone admired a high virtue joined to great beauty; as she knew that the blessed Pascal lived in the odor of sanctity, she saw him sometimes to ask him for spiritual advice, and he gave it to her out of charity, as to all the others who consulted him on the matter of their salvation; this young girl was charmed by the excellent instructions she received from this holy religious, and, as he was the porter, she formed the design of coming to see him more often, having great ease in finding him whenever she wanted. The interviews were at first entirely spiritual, as Saint Paul says: but the demon took advantage of it to set a very dangerous trap for the Saint. He excited little by little in the heart of the young girl a passion for Pascal. She paid him more assiduous visits, and, one day when she knew that all the religious were retired, she came to ring at the door to speak to Brother Pascal, who was then before the Blessed Sacrament; he came, and his ordinary modesty joined to a discourse filled with piety, at first rendered the young girl quite disconcerted; but supported as she was by the evil spirit, who was governing her at that moment, she began to speak to him in a more human and obliging manner than usual; it was enough to make this very enlightened religious know that she was serving as an organ for the demon at that moment to tempt him; he immediately gave her a very severe reprimand, and, chasing her away on the spot with indignation, he returned in haste to the feet of the altars, from where he had come, and there gave thanks to God for having preserved him from this danger, and prayed him to enlighten the mind of this young girl, who had let herself be surprised by the demon: it is thus that the true friends of poverty triumph over the finest addresses of all hell.

One of his most ordinary occupations was to give salutary advice to those he knew to be deceived by the illusions of the demon, under false pretexts of piety. A young religious of Valencia took upon himself very harsh mortifications, and did not fail to discipline himself every day with extreme severity, although he did not cease to be very imperfect and very negligent in all his duties; the Saint, who surprised him one day while he was mistreating himself thus in the church, having compassion on him, charitably revealed to him the illusion in which the demon was keeping him; hardly had he enlightened this blind man, than the prince of darkness, who had previously made him his toy, withdrew.

A preacher, who had a way of preaching that was entirely worldly, and who studied only the politeness of discourse, changed this manner, following the advice of Brother Pascal, subsequently made very admirable conversions, and was infinitely more esteemed than before. He usually exhorted all preachers to study the Gospel at the foot of the crucifix, rather than seeking thoughts in books, and he advised them to meditate, in the presence of God, on what they wished to announce to the people, in order to be themselves persuaded of the truths they wanted to teach others; for, he said, it is certain that the tongue never speaks except to the ears, and that it is only the heart of the preacher that speaks to the heart of the listeners.

Pascal had a tender devotion to the divine Eucharist. He spent entire hours prostrate before the tabernacle where Our Lord resided, and more than once his spirit was then rapt in God; his body even followed it, so that he was seen suspended in the air by the effect of divine love.

When he could not go to the church to satisfy his devotion toward Jesus Christ, he transported himself there in spirit, prostrating himself several times a day against the ground to adore his Savior, with the same fervor as if he had been at the foot of His altars. He was wonderfully sustained in this devotion by the memory of a singular grace he had received formerly, while still only a shepherd: guarding his flock one day, he had heard a bell that let him know that the holy host was being elevated during Mass in a nearby church; having prostrated himself in the middle of the fields to adore it, it happened that this host appeared to him in the place where he was, supported by the hand of angels, who offered it to his adorations. This extraordinary favor filled him all his life with such sweet consolation that he never thought of it without great transports of joy and very humble acts of thanksgiving.

He also honored and loved the Mother of God singularly, asking her ceaselessly, through her intercession, to avoid sin and to have a holy death. One day, as he was at the church of the convent of Villa-Real, in the kingdom of Valencia, attending Holy Mass, God revealed to him that he would soon die; he then began to cry out with gladness. Having left the church to return home, he embraced the people of his acquaintance whom he met in the street, bidding them farewell and announcing this happy news to them. Shortly after, he fell seriously ill. Until then he had never permitted his feet to be washed, although this practice was among the monastic customs; but the eve of his death he himself asked a brother by the name of Alphonse to wash his feet with hot water.

The brother having asked him the reason for this unusual request, Pascal replied: "I shall receive Extreme Unction today; it is therefore necessary that my feet be clean." Indeed, the superior having seen that the saint was very dangerously ill, had him transported to the infirmary, where, the next day, he was administered. He received the sacraments with tender piety, then fell asleep gently in the Lord, after having thanked God for all the benefits he had received from Him during his life, and after having invoked the holy name of Jesus three times, in the year 1592, on Pentecost Sunday, at the moment of the elevation of the holy host. He was fifty-two years old.

The great concourse of people who came to implore the help of the Saint compelled them to hold his funeral only three days after his death; an infinity of miracles, verified legally, occurred then at his tomb. One still sees, said Father Giry in the 17th century, his body without any mark of corruption, a striking testimony to the holiness of his life. What is most admirable and most surprising is to see that the body of this great servant of God always has its eyes open, as lively and as bright as if he were alive. Persons of great merit have assured with oath, in the official report drawn up by the diocesan bishop and by the other commissioners, deputies of the sovereign Pontiff, that they have seen him several times close his eyes during the time of the elevation of the holy host, at the conventual Mass, as if his heart were still alive and animated by the same love, and touched by the same respect that he had for the adorable sacrament of the altar during his life.

A miracle particular to Saint Pascal Baylon, and which has especially made him famous after his death, is the small knocks struck on his shrine, his relics, his images: these knocks announce to his devotees the success of the prayer they have addressed to him.

In the arts, the following are given as attributes to Saint Pascal Baylon: 1st a chalice surmounted by a host: his life and his tender devotion to the Eucharist provide the understanding of this symbol; 2nd a flock, near which he is kneeling reciting his rosary.

Pope Paul V, having had all the required inquiries made, first permitted the seculars and regulars of the kingdom of Valencia to perform the office of this great servant of God as a Blessed, by a brief given at Rome in the year 1618, on October 29; he extended, two years later, this permission to those of the kingdom of Castile and Aragon, and Gregory XV granted the same grace to all the religious of Saint Francis of Assisi, in the year 1621. Finally, Alexander VIII, of happy memory, proceeded in all forms to the solemnity of his canoni zation, by a b Alexandre VIII Pope cited in the text as having canonized the saint in 1658. ull of November 1st of the year 1650, inscribing him in the Catalogue of Saints, with Saint John of Capistrano, also of the same Order, and Saint John of Sahagún, Saint John of God, and Saint Lawrence Justinian. See the Bollandists, May, vol. IV, and A. Stols.