"
Noteworthy is the evolution of other miracles. Tursellinus,
writing in 1594, tells us that on the voyage from Goa to Malacca,
Xavier having left the ship and gone upon an island, was
afterward found by the persons sent in search of him so deeply
absorbed in prayer as to be unmindful of all things about him.
But in the next century Father Bouhours develops the story as
follows: "The servants found the man of God raised from the
ground into the air, his eyes fixed upon heaven, and rays of
light about his countenance."
Instructive, also, is a comparison between the successive
accounts of his noted miracle among the Badages at Travancore, in
1544 Xavier in his letters makes no reference to anything
extraordinary; and Emanuel Acosta, in 1571, declares simply
that "Xavier threw himself into the midst of the Christians, that
reverencing him they might spare the rest." The inevitable
evolution of the miraculous goes on; and twenty years later
Tursellinus tells us that, at the onslaught of the Badages, "they
could not endure the majesty of his countenance and the splendour
and rays which issued from his eyes, and out of reverence for him
they spared the others.
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