Lehal Library

It is related that St. Anthony of Padua, when preaching in the Church of St. Pierre de Quayroix at Limoges on Holy Thursday in 1226, suddenly remembered that he was due at that hour for a service in a monastery at the other end of the town. Drawing his hood over his head, he knelt down for some minutes while the congregation reverently waited. At that moment the Saint was seen by the assembled monks to step forth from his stall in the monastery chapel, read the appointed passage in the Office, and immediately disappear. A similar experience is recorded of St. Severus of Ravenna, St. Ambrose and St. Clement of Rome. At a later date, September 17th, 1774, Alphonse de Lignori, when imprisoned at Arezzo, remained for five days in his cell without taking nourishment. Awaking one morning at the end of his fast, he declared that he had been present at the death-bed of Pope Clement XIV. His statement was subsequently confirmed, for he had been seen in attendance at the bedside of the dying Pope. Such stories do at least attest an age-old belief in the Somatic Double, even if they only carry complete conviction to devout Catholics. CHAPTER III THE ETHERIC DOUBLE FROM the quiet roadstead of the Somatic Double, one passes at once into the contingencies of indifferently charted waters.