Mediaeval and Modern Saints and Miracles Author:George Perkins Marsh Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. EOMISH HAGIOLOGY UNDER POPE PIUS IX. After the census of Great Britain in 1871, Car- lyle said, "England has twenty-three million souls, mostly fools.... more »" The average standard of intelligence is not higher in France, we suppose, than among ces estimables insulaires on the other side of the Channel. Religious gobe-inouohes certainly seem to be more common among the Gauls than among the Sas- senachs; but such monstrous follies as those of Paray- le-Monial were long found too nauseating a dose for the receptivity of even the most superstitious classes in France. The genuineness of Mary Alacoqne's inspirations were strenuously denied by the most judicious portion of the French clergy, and the question was acrimoniously debated at Rome, with varying success, for two centuries. Pius IX., ever " good at need," on the 23d of August, 1846, declared by solemn decree that the nun had practiced the " heroic " virtues ascribed to her; on the 24th of May, 1864, by another decree, affirmed the truth and reality ofthe miracles attributed to her intercession; and on the 19th of August, 1864, pronounced her beatification. The devotees of the Sacre Coeur were not satisfied with this simple recognition by the papacy, and they have long been agitating for a more solemn and formal act which should completely identify this devotion with the highest worship authorized by the Kom- ish Church. The signatures (entered in thirty magnificent volumes) of twelve million petitioners for such an act, including seven hundred bishops, heads of religious houses, and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, were presented to the pope, who, on the 22d of April, 1875, pronounced a decree consecrating the Universal Catholic Church to the Sacred Heart, thus making the acceptance of this devotion a cardinal When we r...« less