Note: Translator Pauline Bancroft Flach died in 1966, less than 70 years ago. Therefore, this work is protected by copyright, restricting your legal rights to reproduce it. However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now. Read more about copyright.
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diminished, for it was held a great honor before God to
wage the war on Aracoeli.
So it happened that sixty years ago this struggle
still went on, and in the degenerate times the monks
fought with greater eagerness than ever before, and
awaited the certain coming of Antichrist.
At that time a rich Englishwoman came to Rome.
She went up to the Aracoeli and saw the image,
and he charmed her so that she thought she could
not live if she did not possess him. She went again
and again up to Aracoeli to see the image, and at
last she asked the monks if she might buy him.
But even if she had covered the whole mosaic
floor in the great basilica with gold coins, the monks
would not have been willing to sell her that image,
which was their only consolation.
Still the Englishwoman was attracted beyond
measure by the image, and found no joy nor peace
without it. Unable to accomplish her object by any
other means, she determined to steal the image.
She did not think of the sin she was committing;
she felt only a strong compulsion and a burning
thirst, and preferred to risk her soul rather than to
deny her heart the joy of possessing the object
of her longing. And to accomplish her end, she
first had an image made exactly like the one on
Aracoeli.
The image on Aracoeli was carved from olive wood
from the gardens of Gethsemane; but the
Englishwoman dared to have an image carved from elm
wood, which was exactly like him. The image on
Aracoeli was not painted by mortal hand. When the
monk who had carved him had taken up his brushes
and colors, he fell asleep over his work. And when
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