A Treatise on Relics Part 9

I shall not say any thing about St Joseph, whose shoes at Aix-la-Chapelle I have already mentioned, and whose other similar relics are preserved in many places.(143)

ST MICHAEL.

It may be supposed that I am joking when I speak of the _relics of an angel_, considering how absurd and ridiculous it is to do so, yet, although the hypocrites certainly know this well, they have made use of the name of St Michael to delude the ignorant and foolish; for they show at Carca.s.sone his falchion, which looks like a child's dagger, and his s.h.i.+eld, which is no larger than the k.n.o.b of a bridle. Is it possible for man or woman to exist who can believe such mockery?(144) It is indeed a blasphemy, under a garb of devotion, against G.o.d and his angels. The exhibitors of the above-mentioned relics endeavour to support their imposture by the testimony of Scripture that the archangel Michael combated with Satan; but if he was conquered by the sword, it would at least have been one of a different size and calibre than the toy to which I have alluded. People must, however, be very silly to believe that the war waged by angels and the faithful against the devil is a carnal encounter, fought with material weapons. But as I said before, at the commencement of this treatise, the world has rightly deserved to be led astray into such absurdities, for having l.u.s.ted after idols, and wors.h.i.+pped them instead of the living G.o.d.

ST JOHN THE BAPTIST.

Proceeding in due order, we must now treat of St John the Baptist, who, according to the evangelical history-_i.e._, G.o.d's Word of Truth-was, after being beheaded, buried by his disciples. Theodoret, the eminent chronicler of the Church, relates that his grave was at Sebaste, a town in Syria, and that some time after his burial the grave was opened by the Pagans, who burnt his bones and scattered their ashes in the air. Eusebius adds, however, that some men from Jerusalem, who were present on the occasion, secretly took a little of these ashes and carried them to Antioch, where they were buried in a wall by Athanasius.

With regard to his head, Sosomen, another chronicler, relates that it was carried to Constantinople by the Emperor Theodosius; therefore, according to these ancient historians, the whole body of John the Baptist was burnt with the exception of his head, and the ashes were all lost excepting the small portion secretly taken away by the hermits of Jerusalem. Now, let us see what remains of the head are extant.

The face is shown at Amiens, and the mask which is there exhibited has a mark above the eye, caused, they say, by the thrust of a knife, made by Herodias. Amiens' claim to this relic is, however, disputed by the inhabitants of St John d'Angeli, who show another face of St John.

With regard to the rest of the head, its top, from the forehead to the back part, was at Rhodes, and I suppose must now be at Malta, at least the knights boast that the Turks had restored it to them. The back of the head is at St John's Church at Nemours, the brains at Nogent le Rotrou, a part of the head is at St Jean Maximin, a jaw is at Besancon, a portion of a jaw is at St John of the Lateran, and a part of the ear at St Flour in Auvergne. All this does not prevent Salvatierra from possessing the forehead and hair; at Noyon they have a lock of the hair, which is considered to be very authentic, as well as that at Lucca, and many other places.

Yet in order to complete this collection, we must go to the monastery of St Sylvester at Rome, where the whole and real head of St John the Baptist will be shown to us.

Poets tell us a legend about a king of Spain who had three heads; if our manufacturers of relics could say the same of St John the Baptist, it would greatly a.s.sist their lies; but as such a fable does not exist, how are they to get out of this dilemma?(145)

I shall not press them too hard by inquiring how could this head be so divided and distributed, or how have they procured it from Constantinople?

I shall merely observe, that either St John must have been a miracle, or that those who possess so many parts of his head are a set of the most audacious cheats.

What is more than this, they boast at Sienna of possessing an arm of that saint, which is contrary, as we have already said, to the statements of all the ancient historians; and yet this fraud is not only suffered, but even approved of, for in the kingdom of Antichrist nothing is too bad which can serve to keep people in a state of superst.i.tion.

Another fable has been invented respecting St John the Baptist. When his body was burnt, they say that the finger with which he had pointed out our Lord Jesus Christ had remained whole and uninjured by the fire. Now this story may easily be refuted by the ancient historians, because Eusebius and Theodoret distinctly state that the body had already become a skeleton when the Pagans burnt it; and they certainly would not have omitted the relation of such a miracle in their histories if there had been any foundation for it, having been but too eager to narrate such events even as are quite frivolous. But supposing that this miracle had really taken place, let us seek where this finger is now to be found. There is one at Besancon in the Church of St John the Great, a second at Toulouse, a third at Lyons, a fourth at Florence, and a fifth at St Jean des Aventures, near Macon. Now I request my readers to examine this subject, and to judge for themselves whether they can believe, that whilst St John's finger, which, according to their own tradition, is the only remainder of his body, is at Florence, five other fingers can be found in sundry other places, or, in short, that six are one, and one is six. I speak, however, only of those that have come to my knowledge; but I make no doubt, if a careful inquiry were made, that one might discover half a dozen more of St John's fingers, and many pieces of his head, besides those I have enumerated.(146)

There are many relics of another kind shown as having belonged to St John the Baptist; as, for instance, one of his shoes is preserved in the Church of the Carthusians at Paris. It was stolen about twelve years ago; but it was very soon replaced by that sort of miracle never likely to cease so long as there are shoemakers in the world.

At St John of the Lateran, at Rome, they boast of having his haircloth mentioned in the Gospels. The Gospel speaks of his raiment of camel's hair, but they endeavour to convert it into a horse-hair garment.(147)

They have also at the same church the altar before which he prayed in the desert, as if altars were in those days erected on every occasion and in every place. I wonder, indeed, that they have not ascribed to him the saying of the ma.s.s.

At Avignon they show the sword with which he was beheaded, and at Aix-la-Chapelle the sheet which was spread under him at that time. Is it not absurd to suppose that the executioner would spread a sheet under one whom he was about to kill?

But admitting that this should be the case, how have they obtained these two objects? Is it likely that the man who put him to death, whether a soldier or executioner, should have given away his sword and the sheet we have mentioned, in order to be converted into relics?

ST PETER AND ST PAUL.

It is now time to speak of the apostles, and I shall begin with St Peter and St Paul. Their bodies are at Rome; one part of them in the church of St Peter, and the other in that of St Paul. We are told that St Sylvester weighed their bodies in order to divide them into equal parts. Both their heads are preserved also at Rome in St John of the Lateran. Besides the two bodies we have just mentioned, many of their bones are to be found elsewhere, as at Poitiers they have St Peter's jaw and beard. At Treves there are several bones of the two apostles. At Argenton in Berri they have St Paul's shoulder, and in almost every church dedicated to these apostles there will be found some of their relics. At the commencement of this treatise I mentioned that St Peter's brains, which were shown in this town (Geneva), were found on examination to be a piece of pumice stone, and I have no doubt that many of the bones considered to belong to these two apostles would turn out to be the bones of some animal.

At Salvatierra they have St Peter's slipper. I do not know what shape it is, or of what material it is made; but I conclude it to be similar to the slippers of the same apostle shown at Poitiers, and which are made of satin embroidered with gold. It would seem as if they had made him thus smart after his death as a compensation for the poverty which he suffered during his lifetime. Their bishops look now so showy in their pontificals, that no doubt it would be thought derogatory to the apostles' dignity if they were not dressed out in the same style. They take, therefore, figures which they gild and ornament all over, and name them as St Peter or St Paul, forgetting that it is well known what was the condition of these apostles whilst in this life, and that they wore the raiments of the poor.

They show also at Rome St Peter's episcopal chair and his chasuble, as if the bishops of that age had thrones to sit upon. The bishops then were engaged in teaching, consoling, and exhorting their flocks both in public and private, setting them an example of true humility, but not teaching them to set up idols, as is done by those of our day. With regard to his chasuble, I must say that it was not then the custom to put on disguises, for farces were not at that time performed in the churches as they are now. Thus, to prove that St Peter had a chasuble, it is necessary to show in the first place that he had played the mountebank, as the priests do now whenever they intend to serve G.o.d.

It is, however, no wonder that they have given him a chasuble since they have a.s.signed an altar to him, there being no more truthful foundation for the one than for the other. It is well known what kind of ma.s.s was said at that time. The apostles simply celebrated the Lord's Supper, and this requires no altar; but as to the celebration of the ma.s.s, it was then not heard of, nor was it practised for a long time afterwards.(148) It is, therefore, evident that those who invented all these relics never expected contradiction, or they would not have devised such audacious falsehoods.

The authenticity of St Peter's altar at Rome (which I have just mentioned) is denied by Pisa, that town pretending to possess the real one. The least objectionable of St Peter's relics is undoubtedly his staff, it being most probable that he had made use of one during his travels, but unfortunately there are two of them at Cologne and Treves, each town claiming exclusive possession of the identical one.(149)

THE OTHER APOSTLES.

We shall speak of the rest of the apostles together, in order to get quicker over the matter, and we will relate, in the first place, where their whole bodies are to be found, that our readers, by comparison, may be able to form their own opinions on the subject. All know that the town of Toulouse boasts of possessing the bodies of six, namely, St James the Major (brother of St John), St Andrew, St James the Minor, St Philip, St Simeon, and St Jude. At Padua they have the body of St Matthias, at Salerno that of St Matthew, at Orconna that of St Thomas, in the kingdom of Naples that of St Bartholomew.

Now, let us reckon up those apostles who possess two or three bodies. St Andrew has a duplicate at Amalfi, St Philip and St James the Minor both have duplicates at Rome, _ad sanctos Apostolos_, St Simeon and St Jude the same in St Peter's Church. St Bartholomew enjoys an equal privilege at Rome, in the church bearing his name. Here we have enumerated six of them, each provided with two bodies, and St Bartholomew has an additional skin into the bargain, which is shown at Pisa.(150) St Matthew, however, outrivals them all, for besides the body at Padua, which we have before mentioned, he has another at Rome in the church of St Maria Maggiore, a third at Treves, and an additional arm at Rome.(151)

It is true that the bits and sc.r.a.ps of St Andrew's body, scattered in various places, counterbalance, in some measure, the superiority of St Matthias; for he has at Rome, in St Peter's Church, a head, and a shoulder in that of St Chrysostom, an arm at St Esprit, a rib at St Eustache, I do not know how many bones at St Blaise, and a foot at Aix in Provence.

Now, as St Bartholomew has left his skin at Pisa, so he has left there a hand; at Treves he has also some bones, of which I forget the number; at Frejus a finger, and at Rome there are other of his bones; so that, after all, he is not the poorest of the apostles, others not having such a number of relics. St Matthew and St Thomas are the poorest of all. The first has only, besides his body at Salerno, which we have mentioned, some bones at Treves, an arm in the church of St Maria at Rome, and in that of St Nicolas his head; though it may be that other of his relics may have escaped my knowledge, which would be no wonder, for who is not confused with this ocean of impostures?(152)

As they pretend, in their tales, that the body of St John the Evangelist disappeared immediately after it was deposited in the grave, so they cannot produce any of his bones, and they therefore sought for a compensation amongst his clothing, &c. Thus they show at Bologna the cup from which he was forced to drink poison by order of the Emperor Domitian.

Probably owing to some wonderful process of alchemy, the same cup exists also in the church of St John of the Lateran at Rome.

They have also his coat, and the chain with which he was bound when brought from Ephesus to Rome, as well as the oratory at which he used to pray when in prison.(153)

ST ANNA.

We must now hurry on, or we shall never quit this labyrinth. We will, therefore, only briefly mention the relics of those saints who were our Lord's contemporaries, and then proceed to those of the martyrs, &c., leaving our readers to form their own conclusions from these brief sketches.

St Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin, has a whole body at Apt in Provence, and another at Notre Dame de l'Isle at Lyons. She has a head at Treves also, a second at Duren near Cologne, and a third at a town called after her name in Thuringhia. I shall not speak of her other relics shown in more than a hundred different places. I remember that I myself kissed one of her relics, kept at the abbey of Orcamps near Noyon, on the occasion of a grand festival held in its honour.

LAZARUS, MARY MAGDALENE, ETC.

Lazarus has, to my knowledge, three bodies, at Ma.r.s.eilles, Autun, and Avalon. A protracted lawsuit took place between the two last-named towns concerning the validity of their respective claims to the possession of the real body of this saint. Yet after an immense expense, both parties may be said to have gained their suit, for neither forfeited its t.i.tle to owners.h.i.+p. With regard to Mary Magdalene, she owns but two bodies, one at Auxerre, and another of very great celebrity, with its head detached, at St Maximin, in Provence.

Of their numerous relics scattered over the world I shall not speak. I would merely inquire whether Lazarus and his sisters ever went to preach in France; for those who have read the accounts given by ancient historians of those times cannot fail to be convinced of the folly of this fable.(154)

ST LONGINUS, AND THE THREE WISE MEN, OR KINGS.

The individual who pierced the side of our Lord on the cross has been canonised under the name of St Longinus, and after having thus baptized him, they have bestowed upon him two bodies, one of which is at Mantua, and the other at Notre Dame de l'Isle at Lyons.(155)

The same has been done with the wise men who came to wors.h.i.+p our Lord at the nativity. In the first place they settled their number, telling us that there were three. Now the Gospel does not mention how many were present, and some eminent ecclesiastical writers have maintained their number to have been fourteen, as mentioned for instance in that imperfect commentary on St Matthew which is ascribed to Chrysostom.

Moreover, the _Gospel_ calls them _wise men_, but they have elevated them to the dignity of kings, without bestowing on them, however, either kingdoms or subjects. Finally, they have been baptized under the names of Balthazar, Melchior, and Gaspar. Now, supposing we concede to them these fables, frivolous as they are, it is certain that the wise men returned to the east, for the Gospel informs us of this, and we may conclude that they died in their native land, there being no reason for thinking otherwise.

Now, who transferred their bodies to the west, for the purpose of preserving them as relics? It would be quite ridiculous, however, for me to attempt seriously to refute such a palpable imposture. Let Cologne and Milan, both of which towns pretend to possess relics of these _wise men_, or _kings_, decide this question between themselves.(156)

ST DIONYSIUS.

St Dionysius is considered to be one of the most celebrated of ancient martyrs, as a disciple of the apostles, and as the Evangelist of France.

Occupying such high rank, it is therefore very natural that his relics should be so liberally dispersed; his whole bodies are, however, only preserved at the Abbey of St Denis in France, and at Ratisbon in Germany.

About a century ago Ratisbon inst.i.tuted a lawsuit at Rome to prove that the body in its possession was truly that of the saint, and the justice of the claim was established by a decision of the Papal Court, delivered in the presence of the French Amba.s.sador. And yet, any one so bold as to dare to a.s.sert at St Denis that theirs was not the real body would run the risk of being stoned for blasphemy; whilst those who oppose the claim of Ratisbon are considered as heretics, rebellious to the decision of the Holy See.(157)

ST STEPHEN.

The whole body of St Stephen is at Rome, his head is at Arles, and his bones are in more than three hundred places; and the Papists, as if to show themselves to be the partisans of those who murdered him, have canonized the stones with which he was killed.

It may be asked how these stones were obtained, but to my mind this would be a foolish question, as stones may be picked up anywhere, without incurring any trouble or expense in their transport. These stones are shown at Florence, at the convent of the Augustine monks at Arles, and at Vigan in Languedoc, &c.

Whoever will close his eyes and allow his understanding to be set aside, may believe that these are the identical stones with which St Stephen suffered martyrdom, but whoever will exert his reason a little cannot but laugh at this imposition. The Carmelite monks of Poitiers discovered some of these stones only fourteen years ago, to which they ascribed the virtue of a.s.sisting women in the pains of travail; but the Dominican monks, from whom a rib of St Margarita which possessed the same virtue had been stolen, were very indignant, and raised a great outcry at the deception practised by the Carmelites, but the latter gained the body by firmly maintaining their rights.

THE HOLY INNOCENTS.