Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
The Flight of the Earls (Author: Tadhg Ó Cianáin)

section 94

Ó Néill went on to Montefalco. There is a certain church in that town where the body of Saint Clare, who was a daughter of the Duke of Lombardy, and who had died two hundred years before, having lived a good, holy life in the world, is exhibited plainly to all. Her body has not undergone much change or transformation, no more than if she were only asleep. There is a crucifix between her blessed hands. On either side of her there is a splendid order of nuns who were consecrated in her own name. When her heart was opened after her death, the inscription and the instruments of the Passion of Christ were found marked and figured in it, an image of the cross and the crown, of a hammer and a pincers, of a spear and a scourge, and three nails. After that three precious, splendid gems were discovered in her heart. The three were of exactly equal size. When one of them is put into a scales it balances the other two. On one occasion a small portion was broken off one of them, and the fragment, when placed in a scales, was exactly equal in weight to the three stones. Theologians of the Church and commentators on the Holy Scripture consider and are of opinion that it is as a figure and resemblance of the heavenly Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who are co-eternal, alike, and equal, that these three splendid


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gems were formed in the heart or the virgin with the qualities we have described. One of the fingers of Saint Anne, the holy mother of the Virgin Mary, namely, the forefinger of her left hand, and all the relics we have spoken of, are to be seen by all, every day, beside the body of the holy saint in that church.