58 Human Levitation. (January, 
Another modern phenomenon often remarked is the rising 
of a group of bodies, animate or not, preserving their mutual 
contact and relations though loose. This was equally noted 
centuries ago, not only of Juan de la Cruz and Theresa with > 
their chairs, but of all who were levitated in a kneeling 
posture, the loose robes adhering as if still pressed by the floor. 
It was especially so described in the case of Philip Neri, 
whose levitations, sometimes to three or four ells, were 
chiefly witnessed as he knelt at the rails of the great altar 
in St. Peter’s (the present building, though then unfinished). 
Paintings constantly represent this phenomenon then with 
good reason. 
Though in all the cases since 1500 the acts of canonisation 
record plenty of named witnesses who swore to these occur- 
rences, none are so superabundantly attested as the innu- 
merable flights of Joseph Desa, known, like most Italian 
ecclesiastics, only by the name of his native place, Copertino. 
Nor have the miracles of any other, that we know, effected 
anything so important as the Romanising of a Protestant 
sovereign. ‘This friar was of very low birth, a tailor’s son, 
and driven, apparently by harsh treatment from his mother, 
to seek the most menial positions in various convents from 
the age of seventeen. He was all his life liable to periods 
of extreme religious melancholy, and, when not in these, to 
trances and fits of various kinds. After monastic vows, he 
became a priest and preacher, and more and more gifted 
with miracles of healing, till, at the age of thirty-three, these 
brought him into trouble with the Inquisition, and he was 
cited first to Naples and thence to Rome, to clear himself 
from the imputation of starting some new heresy.* His. 
orthodoxy, however, was established, and the general of his 
order introduced him to several cardinals, and to the Pope, 
Urban VIII., on approaching whom, to kiss his toe, Joseph’s 
reverence to Christ, whose majesty he held the pontiff to 
represent, caused him not only to fall into a trance, but to 
be raised from the floor, and suspended, to the astonishment 
of all, until his superior ordered him otherwise. The Pope, 
highly astonished, observed that if Joseph died in his ponti- 
ficate, he would himself be able to give testimony of this 
marvel. He was sent to the monastery of his order’s 
founder, Francis of Assisi; and from thence the fame of 
similar wonders spread, till, in 1650, occurred their most 
important result. Prince John-Frederick of Brunswick, aged 
* “ Accusationis hec summa fuit; Discurrere per eas provincias hominem 
triginta trium annorum, et hunc alterum Messiam totos vicos post se trahere 
cum prodigiis ad singulos passus, celebratis a plebe, que omnia credit.” 
