The Two Preachers of Cologne

Attribution: reported by the Franciscan scholar Carthagena; it happened in 1482.

When Father James Sprenger and his brethren were working to revive the Rosary and its Confraternity in Cologne, two priests famous for their preaching grew jealous of the good they were doing and began to speak against the devotion at every chance. Being eloquent and well respected, they turned many people away from it.

One of them wrote a special sermon against the Rosary and meant to preach it the following Sunday. But when the time came he did not appear. Someone was sent to find him, and he was discovered dead, with no one having been near to help him. Telling himself this death was merely natural, the other priest resolved to carry out his friend's plan on another day. Yet when that day came and he rose to preach, he was suddenly struck with paralysis that took away the use of his limbs and his speech.

At last he admitted his fault and his friend's, and silently begged Our Lady to help him, promising that if she healed him he would preach the Rosary as zealously as he had once fought it. His health and speech were restored on the spot, and like another Saul turned defender, he confessed his error publicly and preached the wonders of the Rosary for the rest of his life.

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Source:

Simplified retellings of the miracle and conversion stories that St. Louis de Montfort gathered in The Secret of the Rosary, written in the early eighteenth century. These are paraphrased in plain modern prose, faithful to the substance of the traditional English translation but not word for word. Montfort himself called them "ancient but authentic stories about the holy Rosary," collected from earlier authors such as Blessed Alan de la Roche, and offered on human authority, not as articles of faith.