Prince Radzivil was so much affected by the Reformation being spread in Lithuania, that he went in person to pay the Pope all personal honours. On this occasion his holiness presented him with a precious box of relics. On his return home, some monks entreated the prince’s permission to try the effects of them on a demoniac, who hitherto had resisted every exorcism. They were brought into the church with solemn pomp, accompanied by an innumerable crowd, and deposited on the altar. After the usual conjurations, which were unsuccessful, the relics were applied. The demoniac instantly recovered. The people called out a miracle! and the Prince raising his hands and eyes to heaven, felt his faith confirmed. During this transport of pious joy, he observed that a young gentleman, who was keeper of his treasure of relics, smiled, and by his motions ridiculed the miracle. The Prince, indignantly, took the young keeper of the relics to task; who, on promise of pardon, gave the following secret intelligence concerning them. In travelling from Rome he had lost the box of relics; and not daring to mention it, he had procured a similar one, which he had filled with the small bones of dogs and cats, and other trifles similar to those that were lost. He hoped he might be forgiven for smiling, when he found that such a collection of rubbish was eulogized with such pomp, and had even the virtue of expelling demons. It was by the assistance of this box that the Prince discovered the gross impositions of the monks and demoniacs, and Radzivil afterwards became a zealous Lutheran.
Frederick the Elector, surnamed the Wise, was an indefatigable collector of relics. After his death, one of the monks employed by him, solicited payment for several parcels he had purchased for our wise Elector; but the times had changed! He was advised to resign this business; the relics for which he desired payment they were willing to return; that since the Reformation of Luther, the price of such ware had considerably fallen; and that they would be more esteemed, and find a better market in Italy than in Germany!
In his “Traité preparatif à l’Apologie pour Herodote,” c. 39, Stephens says, “A monk of St. Anthony, having been at Jerusalem, saw there several relics, among which was a bit of the finger of the Holy Ghost, as sound and entire as it had ever been; the snout of the seraphim that appeared to St. Francis; one of the nails of a cherubim; one of the ribs of the Verbum caro factum, (the Word was made flesh,) some rays of the star that appeared to the three kings of the east; a phial of St. Michael’s sweat, when he was fighting against the devil; a hem of Joseph’s garment, which he wore when he cleaved wood, &c. All which things,” observes our treasurer of relics, “I have brought with me home very devoutly.” Henry III. who was deeply tainted with the superstition of the age, summoned all the great in the kingdom to meet in London. This summons excited the most general curiosity, and multitudes appeared. The king then acquainted them that the great master of the knights templars had sent him a phial containing a small portion of the sacred blood of Christ, which he had shed upon the cross! and attested to be genuine by the seals of the patriarch of Jerusalem, and others. He commanded a procession on the following day, and, adds the historian, that though the road between St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey was very deep and miry, the king kept his eyes constantly fixed on the phial. Two monks received it, and deposited the phial in the abbey, “which made all England shine with glory, dedicating it to God and St. Edward.”
In his life of Henry VIII. Lord Herbert notices the great fall of the price of relics at the dissolution of the monasteries. “The respect given to relics, and some pretended miracles, fell, insomuch as I find by our records, that a piece of St. Andrew’s finger, (covered only with an ounce of silver,) being laid to pledge by a monastery for forty pounds, was left unredeemed at the dissolution of the house; the king’s commissioners, who, upon surrender of any foundation, undertook to pay the debts, refusing to pay the price again;” that is, they did not choose to repay the forty pounds, to receive a piece of the finger of St. Andrew. About this time the property of relics suddenly sunk to a South-Sea bubble; for shortly after the artifice of the Road of Grace, at Boxley, in Kent, was fully opened to the eye of the populace, and a far-famed relic at Hales in Gloucestershire, of the blood of Christ, was at the same time exhibited. It was showed in a phial, and it was believed that none could see it who were in mortal sin: and after many trials usually repeated to the same person, the deluded pilgrim at length went away fully satisfied. This relic was the blood of a duck, renewed every week, and put into a phial; one side of which was opaque, and the other transparent; either side of which was turned to the pilgrim which the monk thought proper. The success of the pilgrim depended on the oblations he had made. Those who were scanty in their offerings, were the longest in getting a sight of the blood. When a man was in despair he usually became generous.
THE END.
W. WILSON, PRINTER, 57, SKINNER-STREET, LONDON.
[1]. The discipline of the augurs is of very ancient date, having been prohibited by Moses, in Leviticus. The cup put in Joseph’s sack, was that used by Joseph to take auguries by. In its more general signification, augury comprises all the different kinds of divination, which Varrow distinguishes into four species of augury, according to the four elements; namely, pyromancy, or augury by fire; aeromancy, or augury by the air; hydromancy, or augury by the water; and geomancy, or augury by the earth.—See Divination. The Roman augurs took their presages concerning futurity from birds, beasts, and the appearances of the heavens, &c.
[2]. See Augurs.
[3]. A coal starting out of the fire prognosticates either a purse or a coffin, as the imagination may figure either one or the other represented upon it: the death-watch, a species of ticking spider, the inseparable companion of old houses and old furniture, is, when heard, a sure prognostic of a death in the family: the sediment of the sugar, in the form of froth, rising to the top of a cup of tea, is an infallible presage of the person going to receive money: the itching of the palm of the hand, which is to be immediately rubbed on wood, “that it may come to good,” or on brass, “that it may come to pass,” &c. is the certain foreboding of being about to have money paid or otherwise transferred.