Other cures, still more marvellous, are said to have followed in rapid succession. Requests for assistance now poured in so rapidly from all quarters, that he was nearly overwhelmed. On an average he received daily fifty letters. As it was physically impossible for him to attend to every individual application, a vast majority of his suitors must have gone without the benefit of his curative powers, had he not fortunately hit upon a plan to accommodate all comers. His new arrangement consisted in “adopting a system of offering his prayers for the relief of particular districts, on particular days.” For instance, seven o’clock in the morning, on the first of August, was appointed for curing all the diseased in Ireland, and notice was given to all the religious communities in that island, that it would be proper for each of them, at the same hour, to perform a mass. This delusion flourished for a considerable time; but it gradually died away, and, for some years past, nothing more has been heard of Prince Alexander Hohenlohe’s miracle-working intercession. CHAPTER IV. ROMAN CATHOLIC SUPERSTITIONS, ETC. Account of Pope Joan--Artifice of Pope Sextus V.--Some Christian Ceremonies borrowed from the Jews and Pagans--Melting of the Blood of St. Januarius--Addison’s opinion of it--Description of the Performance of the Miracle--Miraculous Image of our Saviour at Rome--Ludicrous Metamorphosis of a Statue--Relics--Head of St. John the Baptist--Sword of Balaam--St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins--Self-Tormenting--Penances of St. Dominic the Cuirassier--The Crusades--Their Cause and Progress, and the immense numbers engaged in them. There appears to have been, on the one hand, an extensive belief in the existence of a female Pope Joan, while, on the other, many eminent writers have been anxious to relieve the papal chair of such a scandal. By the believers in her existence, Joan is affirmed to have worn the tiara between Leo IV. who died 855, and Benedict III. who died 858. Anastatius the library keeper, in that age, does not appear to have made mention of this she-pope; but Marianus Scotus observes, under the year 855, that, Joan a woman, succeeded Leo IV. during two years five months and four days. Joan, whose original name, we are told, was Gilberta, is said to have been a native of Mentz, in Germany, and to have received an excellent education. Falling in love with a young Englishman, a monk at Fulda, she assumed male attire to obtain admittance into the monastery where he resided. They subsequently eloped, and travelled through many countries.