Gregory XV having been prevented by death from issuing the Bull of Canonization, it was finally issued by Urban VIII; and there is much food for reflection in the fact that the same Pope who punished Galileo, and was determined that the Inquisition should not allow the world to believe that the earth revolves about the sun, thus solemnly ordered the world, under pain of damnation, to believe in Xavier's miracles, including his "gift of tongues," and the return of the crucifix by the pious crab.

But the legend was developed still further: Father Bouhours tells us, "The holy man spoke very well the language of those barbarians without having learned it, and had no need of an interpreter when he instructed." And, finally, in our own time, the Rev.Father Coleridge, speaking of the saint among the natives, says, "He could speak the language excellently, though he had never learned it." In the early biography, Tursellinus writes.

"Nothing was a greater impediment to him than his ignorance of the Japanese tongues; for, ever and anon, when some uncouth expression offended their fastidious and delicate ears, the awkward speech of Francis was a cause of laughter." But Father Bouhours, a century later, writing of Xavier at the same period, says, "He preached in the afternoon to the Japanese in their language, but so naturally and with so much ease that he could not be taken for a foreigner." And finally, in 1872, Father Coleridge, of the Society of Jesus, speaking of Xavier at this time, says, "He spoke freely, flowingly, elegantly, as if he had lived in Japan all his life." Nor was even this sufficient: to make the legend complete, it was finally declared that, when Xavier addressed the natives of various tribes, each heard the sermon in his own language in which he was born.
All this, as we have seen, directly contradicts not only the plain statements of Xavier himself, and various incidental testimonies in the letters of his associates, but the explicit declaration of Father Joseph Acosta.

The latter historian dwells especially on the labour which Xavier was obliged to bestow on the study of the Japanese and other languages, and says, "Even if he had been endowed with the apostolic gift of tongues, he could not have spread more widely the glory of Christ."(295) (295) For the evolution of the miracles of Xavier, see his Letters, with Life, published by Leon Pages, Paris, 1855; also Maffei, Historiarum Indicarum libri xvi, Venice, 1589; also the lives by Tursellinus, various editions, beginning with that of 1594; Vitelleschi, 1622; Bouhours, 1683; Massei, second edition, 1682 (Rome), and others; Bartoli, Baltimore, 1868; Coleridge, 1872.

In addition to these, I have compared, for a more extended discussion of this subject hereafter, a very great number of editions of these and other biographies of the saint, with speeches at the canonization, the bull of Gregory XV, various books of devotion, and a multitude of special writings, some of them in manuscript, upon the glories of the saint, including a large mass of material at the Royal Library in Munich and in the British Museum.