A Treatise on Relics Part 17

117 A civil grade equal to that of a captain in the army.

118 The author observes in a note that, in former times, a petty ecclesiastical prince, the Archbishop of Cologne, could conceive and partly execute the gigantic plan of the Cologne minster, and that in the present time, though the whole of Germany had undertaken to build the remainder of it, her people would have abandoned this project long ago, if it were not supported by the kings. He ought, however, I think, to confine his remarks to Germany, because there are certainly more places of wors.h.i.+p built by voluntary contributions in England than in Russia.

119 Studien uber Russland, vol. i. p. 91.

120 Studien uber Russland, vol. i. p. 93.

121 Leveque, Histoire de Russie, vol. iv., p. 133.

122 London: Longman & Co. 1854.

123 The t.i.tle of this curious production is, "An Appeal on the Eastern Question to the Senatus Academicus of the Royal College of Edinburgh. By a Russian, Quondam Civis Bibliothecae Edinensis."

Edinburgh: Thomas C. Jack, 92 Princes Street. London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co. 1854.

124 Letter x.x.xvi., at the end.

_ 125 Vide supra_, p. 184.

126 "Custine's Russia," letter x.x.xvi. The same opinion is expressed by Baron Haxthausen, whom I have quoted above, and who says, "The sons of the papas and other young men acquire in the seminaries and ecclesiastical academies a certain degree of theological learning, after which they indue the monacal dress, and are inscribed on the rolls of some convent, without however remaining in it. They enter the offices of bishops and archbishops to perform their personal as well as clerical service. Their position becomes then exactly the same as that of the military aides-de-camp of the Generals, and of the civil ones of ministers, and it is from amongst them that bishops, archimandrites, abbots, &c., are chosen. It is a career like every other service in Russia. Several of these ecclesiastics may have chosen their calling from a real devotion; the most part of them are, however, driven into it by an immeasurable ambition, selfishness, speculation, and vanity, the curse of the upper cla.s.ses of Russia."-(_Studien uber Russland_, vol. i., p. 89.) It must be remarked that all the dignities of the Greek church are reserved for the monastic or _regular_ clergy, whilst the secular (who cannot take orders without being married) do not rise above the station of a parish priest. This last-named function, which gives no prospects of promotion, is generally left to such theological students as are not fit for any thing better, and, with some few honourable exceptions, they are generally an ignorant and drunken set, treated with very little respect by the upper cla.s.ses. The following anecdote, characteristic of the moral and intellectual condition of that cla.s.s of the Russian clergy, was related to the author by a friend who had resided for some time in Russia. A landowner of the government of Kazan, Mr Bakhmetieff, who was very fond of the pleasures of the table in the old style, was in the habit of inviting to his revels the priests of the neighbourhood. Once, when his clerical guests had got so drunk as to lose all consciousness, their host, who was less overpowered by the effect of drink, determined to play them a practical joke, by daubing their beards with melted wax. The distress of these poor fellows, on awaking from their sleep, at this strange unction of their beards, was very great, because it was impossible to get rid of the wax without greatly injuring that hirsute appendage, upon which so much of their personal respectability rests. They became the laughing-stock of their congregations, and the story made a great noise over all the country.

127 The Greek Church admits no carved images, as being prohibited by the second commandment.

128 They have considerably more, as will be shown presently.

129 Every altar in a Roman Catholic church must contain some relic.

130 It is said to have been made of pasteboard.

131 There are, besides the five water pots mentioned by Calvin, thirteen others, at St Nicolo of the Lido at Venice, at Moscow, at Bologne, at Tongres, at Cologne, at Beauvaia, at the abbey of Port Royal at Paris, and at Orleans, though the Gospel mentions but six. The materials of which they are made are very dissimilar to each other, and so are their respective measures, whilst those mentioned in the Gospel seem to have been all of the same size.

132 There are, besides these, thirteen more, unknown probably to Calvin; but it would be too tedious to enumerate where they may be seen.

133 If a diligent inquiry were inst.i.tuted after these relics in particular, four times as many as are here enumerated might be found in other parts.

134 I have employed the term Sudary, which has been adopted by Webster, from the Latin word _sudarium_, to designate the relic in question.

135 It appears that a kerchief with the likeness of the face of Jesus Christ imprinted on it, and covered with blood and sweat, was kept in a church at Rome in the eleventh century, for it is mentioned in the brief of Pope Sergius IV., dated 1011. We do not know what tales respecting this relic were related at that time, but it appears that copies of it called _Veronies_, _i.e._, a corruption of _verum icon_, "the true image," were sold; and no doubt this appellation gave rise to the legend of _Sancta Veronica_ who wiped the face of Christ with her kerchief as he was going to Calvary. There are many versions of this legend, as for instance that it was this woman whom Christ had cured of the b.l.o.o.d.y issue, whilst again it is maintained that she was no less a person than Berenice, niece to King Herod. It is also related that after the dispersion of the apostles, St Veronica went in company with Mary Magdalene, Martha, and Lazarus, to Ma.r.s.eilles, where she wrought many miracles with her kerchief.

The Emperor Tiberius heard of these miracles, and having fallen ill, he summoned Veronica to Rome. She cured him in a moment, and was rewarded with great honours and rich presents. The remainder of her life was spent at Rome in company with St Peter and St Paul, and she bequeathed the miraculous kerchief to Pope St Clement. It must, however, be observed, that this legend has not obtained the official approbation of the Roman Catholic Church, though St Veronica is acknowledged and has a place in the calendar for the 21st of February; and it is said she suffered martyrdom in France. With regard to the large sudaries or sheets upon which the whole body of Jesus Christ is impressed, and the absurdity of which Calvin has so clearly exposed, the most celebrated of these is that at Turin. Its history is curious, inasmuch as it shows that the efforts of enlightened and pious prelates to prevent idolatrous practices invading their churches proved unavailing against that general tendency to wors.h.i.+p visible objects, so strongly implanted in corrupt human nature, that even in this enlightened age we are continually witnessing such manifestation of its revival as may be compared only to that of the dark period of the middle ages. The most striking instances undoubtedly are those of the holy coat of Treves, and the relics of St Theodosia, which have been recently installed at Amiens, with great pomp, and in the presence of the most eminent prelates of the Roman Catholic Church, who seem now to be as anxious to promote this kind of fetis.h.i.+sm, as some of their predecessors were formerly to repress the same abuse. But let us return to our immediate subject-the _holy sudarium_ of Turin. It is a long linen sheet, upon which is painted in a reddish colour a double likeness of a human body, _i.e._, as seen from before and from behind, quite naked with the exception of a broad scarf encircling the loins. It is pretended that this relic was saved by a Christian at the taking of Jerusalem by t.i.tus, and it was preserved for many centuries by the faithful.

In 640 it was brought back to Palestine, from whence it was transferred to Europe by the Crusaders. It was taken by a French knight named Geoffroi de Charny, who presented it to the collegiate church of a place called _Lire_, which belonged to him, and which is situated about three leagues from the town of Troyes, in Champagne; the donor declaring, on that occasion, that this holy sheet was taken by him from the infidels, and that it had delivered him in a miraculous manner from a prison dungeon into which he had been cast by the English.

The canons of that church, seeing at once the great profits to be derived from such a relic, lost no time in exhibiting it, and their church was soon crowded with devotees. The bishop of Troyes, Henri de Poitiers, finding however no proofs of the authenticity of this relic, prohibited it to be shown as an object of wors.h.i.+p, and it remained unheeded for twenty-four years.

The sons of Geoffroi de Charny, about the year 1388, obtained permission from the Papal legate to restore this relic of their father's to the church of Lire, and the canon exposed it in front of the pulpit, surrounding it with lighted tapers, but the bishop of Troyes, Peter d'Arcy, prohibited this exhibition under pain of excommunication. They afterwards obtained from the king, Charles VI., an authorization to wors.h.i.+p the _holy sudarium_ in the church of Lire. The bishop upon this repaired to court, and represented to the king that the wors.h.i.+p of the pretended sheet of Jesus Christ was nothing less than downright idolatry, and he argued so effectually that Charles revoked the permission by an edict of the 21st August 1389.

Geoffroi de Charny's sons then appealed to Pope Clemens VII., who was residing at Avignon, and he granted permission for the holy sudarium to be exhibited. The bishop of Troyes sent a memorial to the Pope, explaining the importance attached to this so-called holy relic. Clemens did not, however, prohibit the sudarium to be shown, but he forbade its being exhibited as the _real_ sudary of Jesus Christ. The canons of Lire, therefore, put aside their sudary, but it reappeared in other places, and after being shown about in various churches and convents it remained at Chambery in 1432, where n.o.body dared to impugn its reality. From that time its fame increased, and Francis I., king of France, went a pilgrimage on foot, the whole way from Lyons to Chambery, in order to wors.h.i.+p this linen cloth. In 1578 St Charles Borromeo having announced his intention of going on foot to Chambery to adore the holy sudary, the Duke of Savoy, wis.h.i.+ng to spare this high-born saint the trouble of so long a pilgrimage, commanded the relic to be brought to Turin, where it has since remained, and where the miracles performed by it and the solemn wors.h.i.+p paid to it, may be considered as a proof that its authenticity is no longer doubted.

There are about six holy sudaries preserved in other churches, besides the pieces shown elsewhere.

136 Calvin, speaking of the silver pieces for which Judas betrayed our Lord, does not say where they are shown. Two of them are preserved in the Church of the Annunciation at Florence, one in the Church of St John of the Lateran, and another in that of the Holy Cross at Rome. There is one piece at the Church of the Visitandine Convent at Aix in Provence besides many other places where they are displayed.-_Collin de Plancy, Dictionaire des Reliques._

137 The whole skeleton of the animal is preserved at Vicenza, enclosed in an artificial figure of an a.s.s.

138 Eusebius relates, that Abgarus, king of Edessa, having heard of Christ's teaching and miracles, sent an emba.s.sy to acknowledge our Lord's divinity, and to invite him to his kingdom, in order to cure Abgarus of a complaint of long standing; upon which Christ sent him the likeness mentioned in the text. Now, it is impossible for one moment to admit, that, if such an important fact had any truthful foundation, it would have been left unrecorded by the apostles.

139 The Roman Catholic Church maintains that the Blessed Virgin was carried to heaven by angels, and it commemorates this event by the festival of the a.s.sumption on the 15th August. This belief was unknown to the primitive church; for, according to a Roman Catholic writer of undoubted orthodoxy, the Empress Pulcheria, in the fifth century, requested the Bishop of Jerusalem, Juvenal, to allow her to have the body of the Virgin, in order to display it for the public adoration of the faithful at Constantinople.-(Tillerant's "Memoires Ecclesiastiques.")-There are many other proofs that, even at that time, when many idolatrous practices had begun to corrupt the church, the Virgin's body was generally believed to be in earth, and not in heaven.

140 Vials filled with such milk were shown in several churches at Rome, at Venice in the church of St Mark, at Aix in Provence, in the church of the Celestins at Avignon, in that of St Anthony at Padua, &c. &c., and many absurd stories are related about the miracles performed with these relics.

141 There are about twenty gowns of the Blessed Virgin exhibited in various places. Many of them are of costly textures, which, if true, would prove that she had an expensive wardrobe.

142 The number of miraculous images of the Virgin in countries following the tenets of the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches is _legion_, and a separate volume would be required if we were to give even an abridged account of them.

143 "The most celebrated relic of St Joseph is his '_han_,' _i.e._, the sound or groan which issues from the chest of a man when he makes an effort, and which St Joseph emitted when he was splitting a log of wood. It was preserved in a bottle at a place called Concaiverny, near Blois, in France."-_D'Aubigne's Confessions de Sancy_, chap.

ii. _apud_ Colin de Plancy.

144 It is said that as late as 1784, at Mount St Michael in Bretagne, a Swiss was vending feathers from the archangel Michael's wings, and that he found purchasers for his wares.

145 This multiplication of St John's head reminds one of an anecdote related by Miss Pardoe in her "City of the Magyar." A museum of curiosities was kept in the chateau of Prince Gra.s.salkovich in Hungary, and it was usually shown to strangers by the parish priest of that place. This worthy man was once conducting a traveller over the collection, and showed him amongst other curiosities two skulls, of large and small size, saying of the first, "This is the skull of the celebrated rebel Ragotzi;" and of the second, "That is the skull of the same Ragotzi when he was a boy!"

146 Calvin has not rendered full justice to the relics of John the Baptist exhibited in various places. He only mentions the different parts of his head and the fingers; and the quant.i.ty altogether shown implies no doubt that the head was one of no ordinary dimensions. He evidently was not aware that there are about a dozen whole heads of St John the Baptist, which are or were exhibited in different towns.

The most remarkable of them was undoubtedly that one which the notorious Pope John XXIII., who was deposed for his vices by the Council of Constance, had sold to the Venetians for the sum of fifty thousand ducats; but as the people of Rome would not allow such a precious relic to quit their city, the bargain was rescinded. The head was afterwards destroyed at the capture and pillage of Rome by the troops of Charles V. in 1527. There are, besides, many other parts of St John's body preserved as relics. A part of his shoulder was pretended to have been sent by the Emperor Heraclius to King Dagobert I.; and an entire shoulder was given to Philip Augustus by the Emperor of Greece. Another shoulder was at Longpont, in the diocese of Soissons; and there was one at Lieissies in the Hainault.

A leg of the saint was shown at St Jean d'Abbeville, another at Venice, and a third at Toledo; whilst the Abbey of Joienval, in the diocese of Chartres, boasted of possessing twenty-two of his bones.

Several of his arms and hands were shown elsewhere, besides fingers and other parts of his body; but their enumeration would be too tedious here.

147 Calvin here alludes to the haircloth worn by the monks of some orders, and other Roman Catholic devotees, instead of the ordinary s.h.i.+rt.

148 There is a French edition of the New Testament, published, I think, at Louvaine, in which the 13th chapter of Acts, 2d verse, is thus translated: "_Etquand ils disotent la messe_,"-"And when they were saying ma.s.s."

149 The relics of Peter and Paul became at an early period the objects of veneration to the Christians of Rome. Gregory the Great relates that such terrible miracles took place at the sepulchres that people approached them in fear and trembling, and he adds that those who ventured to touch them were visibly punished. The Emperor Justinian, desiring some relics of these two apostles, some filings from their prison chains, and sheets that had been consecrated by having been laid over their bodies, were sent to him; but some time afterwards these relics were touched and handled without persons suffering any visible punishment for so doing. Their heads were transferred to the church of St John of Lateran, and their bodies were divided and placed in the churches of St Peter and St Paul in the Ostian Road.

We have seen in the text that different parts of their bodies are shown in many places, and the celebrated D'Aubigne relates that France had possessed formerly the entire bodies of Peter and Paul before the Huguenots burnt and destroyed a great number of the relics in that country.

150 This relic is considered a very efficient remedy for cutaneous disorders.

151 Calvin was evidently in haste to get over his task, as he intimated to us at the commencement of this chapter. He has made very great omissions. In the first place, he appears to have forgotten the body of St James the Major at Compostella in Spain, one of the most celebrated places of pilgrimage of the Western Church. According to the legend, this apostle went to Spain to preach Christianity and then returned to Jerusalem, where he was beheaded by Herod.-(Acts xii.) His body was afterwards removed by his disciples to Spain.

This is, therefore, his second body. He has a third at Verona, and a fourth at Toulouse, besides several heads elsewhere. The other apostles have also more bodies than are mentioned in the text, but the limits of this work forbid enumeration.

152 St Matthew is not so poor in relics as Calvin supposed, for we could quote several whole bodies, as well as members, with which he was not acquainted.

153 An oratory is a small chapel or cabinet, adorned with images of saints, &c., and used by the Roman Catholics for private devotions.

The absurdity of ascribing to John the Evangelist the possession of such an oratory is too palpable a falsehood to require any comment.

154 According to the well-known Jesuit writer Ribadeneira, the Jews seized Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, Martha, Marcella, Maximin, Celidonius (supposed to have been the man born blind, who was restored to sight by Jesus Christ), and Joseph of Arimathea, and placing them on board a vessel without helm, oars, or sails, launched it forth into the sea. By a miracle the vessel reached Ma.r.s.eilles, where Lazarus was appointed the first bishop of that town. Maximin became bishop of Aix, Joseph of Arimathea went to England, Martha entered a convent, and Mary, after preaching in various parts of Provence for some time, retired into the desert of St Beaume, to weep and lament over her sins.-_Flower of Saints, July 22._

155 The legends say that the soldier, whom they name Longinus, was struck with blindness immediately after piercing Jesus Christ's side. He perceived the enormity of his crime, recognised the divinity of our Lord, and having rubbed his eyes with the blood which was on his lance, he recovered his sight, and finally became a monk in Cappadocia. It is true that neither the Gospels nor the early ecclesiastical writers mention anything respecting St Longinus, but Ribadeneira and other narrators of legends speak much of him. The reader may possibly object to the tale of his becoming a monk, since in those days there were none; but that difficulty merely requires the addition of another miracle.

156 Calvin is wrong here. Milan only a.s.sumes to have possession of the graves of the wise men, not their bodies, which were removed to Cologne at the capture of Milan in 1162, by Frederick Barbarossa.

_ 157 Vid. supra_, p. 120.