1875,.] Human Levitation. 55 
palace, and clergy, but “innumerable” lay citizens, went tosee 
the marvel. On recovery, with the missal he had been 
reading in his hand, he merely remarked he had lost the 
place.* In this and all cases the subjects were either praying 
at the time, or speaking or listening to a particular religious, 
topic that, in each case, is recorded to have generally 
affected that person either with trance or levitation. We 
have seen that Apollonius vanished on declaiming his 
favourite verse of Homer. So the topic of the Incarnation 
would cause Peter of Alcantara to utter a frightful cry, aad 
shoot through the air ‘‘ut sclopeto emissus videretur ;” 
that of Mary’s birth would have a like effect on Joseph of 
Cupertino; and Theresa, after obtaining by prayer the ces- 
sation of her early levitations, was yet obliged to avoid 
hearing John a Cruce on the Trinity, finding that this topic 
would cause both him and her to be raised with their chairs 
from the floor. A contemporary painting of them in this 
position, beside the grating where it occurred, has been en- 
graved in the volume above cited. Joseph of Cupertino, on 
entering any church having a Madonna or his patron, St. 
Francis, as an altarpiece, would be borne straight thereto, 
crying, ‘“‘ My dear mother!” or “ My father!” and remain 
with his arms and robe so among the candles as to alarm 
all with the danger of his catching fire; but always flying 
back to the spot whence he had risen. Others were raised 
up to images or pictures, as the Abbess Agnes in early girl- 
hood, often before a crucifix, ‘‘in tantum eam arripuit amor 
Sponsi sui, quod relicta terra tam alté fuit corpus suum puris- 
simum sublevatum in aére, quod ipsi imagini, supra altare in 
eminenti loco posite, se pari situ conjunxit; ubi osculans et 
amplexans, visa est super DileCtum suum innixa.” 
Of invisible transfers to a distance, the only subje¢ts seem 
to have been Columba of Rieti, said to have been carried 
from her mother’s house in that town tothenunnery that after- 
wards received her, at Spoleto, twenty miles distant; and 
the river transits of Peter of Alcantara. ‘The lives of Joseph 
of Cupertino, indeed, allege that the rare miracle of ‘‘ gemi- 
natio corporis,” or bodily presence in two distant places the 
Same day, was twice vouchsafed to him while dwelling at 
* This prelate, the annual income of whose see was 18,000 ducats, had no 
sooner settled in his palace than he got rid of all luxurious furniture, and made 
it a hospital or poor-house; himself often sleeping on straw, if beds ran short 
for the paupers. Charles V. had named another person for this see, but the 
secretary to whom he was dictating mistook the name, and, taking another 
paper, said, ‘“‘ I imagined your Majesty to have said Thomas of Villanova, but 
the error will soon be rectified.” The emperor said, ‘* By no means: the mis- 
take was providential ; let it stand.” 
