28. Of the wonderful beauty and aspect of her countenance

Now the virgin of exceeding humility had said that she would die like other men with very great sufferings, and that no miracles would happen at her death, which also befell as has already appeared. But nevertheless, lest God should seem altogether unmindful of the pain and toil of His poor and humble handmaid, and her praiseworthy patience be taken from the mouth of men, He also showed by undoubted signs before the sight of men with how great merits shone in Heaven the noble jewel long lying in the prison of the flesh. For her maiden face, which shunned the sight of men to behold more clearly the heavenly Spouse, presented no pallor or horror of death ; but as if it had been anointed with oil or some aromatic liquor, shone with so great a brightness and becoming whiteness that it seemed to the beholders not as the common face of a mortal man or of a dead corpse, but as the likeness of a man glorified.

ST. LYDWINE of SCHIEDAM For those who were present said that they had never seen so beautiful a picture. Whence also, although many often approached to see her several times they could never see her enough. Likewise also the whole body shone with the same whiteness and a similar brilliancy, and all her members were resplendent with such a flush of health and beseeming fleshiness, as if she had never suffered any infirmity. The cleft also of her forehead seen formerly during life utterly vanished; the feet likewise and the legs, the hands and arms, and the neck appeared corpulent, and the whole body as entire as if there had never been any injury or wound therein before, except only that in the wound of her right arm, and in one wound in flicted upon her by the men of Picardy, small scars like a thread appeared in sign of the striking. Now the aforesaid Master John had three sisters german, who, when with other respectable matrons they watched by this venerable body, were filled with such grace by the sight and presence thereof that the whole time, to wit, from her passing to her burial, they were troubled by neither hunger, nor thirst, nor sleepiness.