But while France was being stirred by the news of perpetual miracles and prodigies wrought through the intercession of the saint, and Assisi in consequence was fast growing into a place of great importance in the world, Pope Gregory IX, who had been lately elected upon the death of Honorius III, spent many hours in the Cannonica at Perugia wrestling with his doubts concerning the truth of the greatest miracle of all, the miracle of the Stigmata. While in this state of uncertainty and perplexity St. Francis, the _Fioretti_ relates, appeared to him one night, and showed him the five wounds inflicted by the Seraph upon his hands, feet and side. The vision, it seems, dispelled all doubt from the mind of Pope Gregory, for in conclave with the cardinals he proclaimed the sanctity of his friend, the Poverello d'Assisi, and determined to set the final seal of the church upon his miracles and fame. This vision was the prelude of a great ceremony held a few days later in San Giorgio for the canonisation of Francis, at which all Umbria seems to have been present. Pope Gregory, clothed in vestments of cloth of gold embroidered with precious stones, his tiara "almost as an aureole of sanctity about his head," sat stiffly on his pontifical throne like some carved image, surrounded by cardinals in crimson garments and bishops in white stoles. All eyes were fixed upon this splendid group, and it is not improbable that among the spectators stood Pietro Bernardone and Madonna Pica, and many who had reviled Francis in his early days of sanctity, and now, within two years of his death, witnessed him placed among the greatest of the saints. Gregory had prepared an eloquent address, which he delivered in a sonorous voice occasionally broken by sobs of emotion. Becoming more and more enthusiastic as he proceeded, he compared Francis to a full moon, a refulgent sun, a star rising above the morning mists, and when he had finished the pious homily, a sub-deacon read out a list of the saint's miracles, and a learned cardinal, "not without copious weeping," discoursed thereon, while the Pope listened, shedding "rivers of tears," and breaking forth every now and then into deep-drawn sighs. The prelates wept so devoutly that their vestments were in great part wet, and the ground was drenched with their tears. The ceremony ended when the Pope rose to bless the people, and intoned the _Te Deum_, in which all joined with such good will that the "earth resounded in great jubilee."