Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing, George Barton Cutten [crime books to read TXT] 📗

of the Father Francis, and assisted him when saying Mass. He told me that when going one night on business to Combature, he was bitten by a venomous serpent. He immediately fell down as though paralyzed and became speechless. He was found thus lying unconscious. Informed of the fact, Father Francis ordered Antonio to be carried to him: and when he was laid down speechless and senseless, the Father prayed with all those present. The prayer finished, he put a little saliva with his finger on the bitten place on Antonio's foot, and at the same moment, Antonio recovered his senses, his memory and his speech, and felt himself healed. I have since heard details of this occurrence from the mouths of several eye-witnesses."70

If we accept Görres's account,71 the most remarkable instance of curative power possessed by a saint is that afforded by St. Sauveur of Horta (1520-1567). Outside of this one work I have been unable to find any reference to this saint, so I will give a sketch of his apparently remarkable life. He was born in Catalonia, and received the first part of his name from a presentiment of his sponsors that he was to be a savior of men, and the second part because he entered the monastery at Horta. A short time after he finished his novitiate, people in some way got the idea that he had a wonderful gift of healing, and soon patients came to him in crowds from all parts of the country. He continued healing for several years. At one time during the feast of the Annunciation he cured six thousand persons, and at another time he found ten thousand patients, from viceroy to laborer, waiting for him at Valencia before the convent of St. Marie de Jesus. Notwithstanding his apparently great success, his brother monks complained to the bishop concerning the dirt and disorder caused by the crowds, and after a reprimand he was sent at midnight to the monastery at Reus, where he was known as Alphonse and assigned to the kitchen. In spite of this, crowds continued to come and he was transferred from monastery to monastery, but always with the same result—the crowd sought him to be healed. He was known as simple, open, and obedient in his relations with men, and austere toward himself. He was patient and resigned, compassionate toward the poor and sick, and full of zeal for their conversion. The number of patients he is said to have cured is incredible, and it is even said that he resuscitated three dead persons. After his death miracles were performed at his tomb. Why he was not in favor with his superiors and his brother monks is unknown; his friends say they were jealous; his enemies, that his cures were not genuine.

St. Philip Neri (1551-1595), the founder of the Oratorians, was renowned as a healer. He cured Clement VIII of gout by touching and prayer, a woman of cancer of the breast by the mere touch and assurance, a man of grievous symptoms such as loss of speech and internal pain by simply laying on of hands, and many similar and equally serious cases. The following case was counted nearly equal to a resurrection: "In 1560 Pietro Vittrici of Parma, being in the service of Cardinal Boncompagni, afterward Pope Gregory XIII, fell dangerously ill. He was given up by the physicians, and was supposed to be as good as dead. In this extremity he was visited by Philip who, as soon as he entered the sick man's room, began, as was his wont, to pray for him. He then put his hand on Pietro's forehead, and at the touch he instantly revived. In two days' time he was out of the house perfectly well and strong and went about telling people how he had been cured by Father Philip."72

George Fox (1624-1691), the founder of the Quakers, performed some simple cures of which he himself tells us. The most famous case was that of the cure of a lame arm by command, the account of which we take from his pen. He thus records it: "After some time I went to the meeting at Arnside where Richard Meyer was. Now he had been long lame of one of his arms; and I was moved by the Lord to say unto him, among all the people, 'Prophet Meyer stand up upon thy legs' (for he was sitting down) and he stood up and stretched out his arm that had been lame a long time, and said: 'Be it known unto all you people that this day I am healed.' But his parents could hardly believe it, but after the meeting was done, had him aside and took off his doublet; and then they saw it was true. He soon after came to Swarthmore meeting, and there declared how the Lord had healed him. But after this the Lord commanded him to go to York with a message from him; and he disobeyed the Lord; and the Lord struck him again, so that he died about three-quarters of a year after."73 The cure evidently was not permanent.

Valentine Greatrakes (1628-1683) was born in Affane, Ireland. He was the son of an Irish gentleman, had a good education, and was a Protestant. In 1641, at the outbreak of the Irish rebellion, he fled to England, and from 1649-1656 he served under Cromwell. In 1661, after a period of melancholy derangement, he believed that God had given him power of curing "king's evil" by touching or stroking and prayer. After some success with this disease, he added to his list ague, epilepsy, convulsions, paralysis, deafness, ulcers, aches, and lameness, and for a number of years he devoted three days in every week, from 6 A. M. to 6 P. M., to the exercise of his healing gifts. The crowds which thronged around him were so great that the neighboring towns were not able to accommodate them. He thereupon left his house in the country and went to Youghal, where sick people, not only from all parts of Ireland but from England, continued to congregate in such great numbers that the magistrates were afraid they would infect the place with their diseases.