The Patriot Saint of Switzerland [pp. 161-172]

I887.] THE PATRIOT SAINT OF SWITZERLAND.
his life the authorities had the whole valley and all its accesses
watched by a military force, and the most severe scrutiny could
not detect the least thing that pointed against the veracity of
the fact. The public records of the canton mention this fact
repeatedly and solemnly. In the process of beatification one of
the witnesses declares this abstinence of Nicholas as true as an
article of faith. A Protestant, Mr. Oberster, of Bern, is related
by Marcus Anderhalden to have confessed in 1648 "that the fact
of De Fliie's abstinence was to him more certain than the daylight." Such Protestants as the famous historians Johann Miiller and Bullinger acknowledge the fact without entering upon its
explanation. A contemporary, the famous John Trithemius,
Abbot of Spannheim, writes in his records or chronicles: "At
this time lived in Switzerland Nicholas, a hermit who, as stated
on best authority, has for years eaten nothing but a small piece
of bread which he was once commanded to swallow by obedience to ecclesiastical authority, that wanted to try him." In
1487 he writes that he could prove the great fact by hundreds
of thousands of witnesses who had come to see the man and assure
themselves on the spot. Such authorities as Pope Sixtus IV.,
Innocent VIII., Emperor Frederick III., Duke Sigismund, and
the latter's own private physician, Doctor Burcard, of Horneck, had admitted the proof of the fact. Nor is any explanation of this fact by natural causes possible. This miracle is
above comparison with the suspicious and ostentatious abstinence of some of our modern fasting cranks. The fact of a
total abstinence from every particle of food for fully twenty
years, examined and admired during twenty years, stands alone.
Nor was it undertaken by successive or gradual preparation.
As an instantaneous eftectethis abstinence dates from the vision
our Blessed Nicholas had when, immediately after his separa tion, he had come near the frontier of his country. Directed
by a celestial vision to return, he perceived such a sharp
pain in his bowels that he felt, according to his own confes sion, as if "pierced with a knife." It was after eleven days' absti nence that he made his mode of life known to the above-named
priest, and then, with his approbation, continued it to the end of
life. If he himself was asked how he could live such an excep tion to the general law of nature, he smilingly said, "God
knows," or "I do not say that I eat nothing," pointing thus to
the only nutritive power that sustained him-the communion of
the most holy Flesh and Blood of our Saviour, who in this man
literally proved the veracity of his words: "My flesh is meat
indeed, and my blood is drink indeed" (John vi. 56). To the
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