_Sts. Agape_, _Chionia_, and _Irene_, Sisters, and their Companions,
A. D. 304; _St. Richard_. _St. Ulpian._ _St. Nicetas_, Abbot, A. D.
824.
_St. Richard de Wiche_
Was born at Wiche, near Worcester; studied at Oxford, Paris, and
Bologna; became chancellor to the diocese of Canterbury; and was
consecrated bishop of Chichester in 1245, against the desire of Henry
III who seized his temporalities. These he regained by replevin, and
pleading his cause against the king’s deputies before Innocent IV at
Rome, a papal decree confirmed his election. Among his clergy he was a
strict disciplinarian, and a friend and comforter to the poor. Preaching
a crusade, according to the fashion of those times, against the
Saracens, he fell sick, and died in the hospital at Dover, called
God’s-house, in 1253, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and in the
ninth of his episcopal functions. This is a brief character of an
exemplary prelate, but the credulous Butler chooses to affirm, that
three dead persons were restored to life, and other miraculous cures
were worked at his tomb. Father Porter gossips a story of a miraculous
flow of unction at his consecration; of a dead-born child having been
brought to life by his dead merits; and of the touch of his old clothes
having cured the diseased, with other performances, “which moved pope
Boniface IV. to enrol him into the number of the canonized saincts.”
Such wonders have never been performed in our days, and hence late popes
have not been able to make saints. If bibles could be suppressed, and
the printing-press destroyed, miracles and canonizations would “come in”
again.
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For particulars respecting _Easter-day_ and _Easter Monday_, see _Easter
Tuesday_, 5th of APRIL.
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