After these come the relics belonging to the period from the childhood to the death of Jesus Christ, such as the water pots in which Christ changed water into wine at the marriage feast of Cana in Galilee.
One would naturally inquire how they were preserved for so long a time? for it is necessary to bear in mind that they were not discovered until eight hundred or a thousand years after the performance of the miracle.
I cannot tell all the places where these water pots are shown; I only know that they can be seen at Pisa, Ravenna, Cluny, Antwerp, and Salvatierra in Spain.[131]
At Orleans they have even the wine which was obtained by that miracle, and once a-year the priests there give to those who bring offerings a small spoonful, saying that they shall taste of the very wine made by our Lord at the marriage feast, and its quantity never decreases, the cup being always refilled. I do not know of what date are his shoes, which are preserved in a place at Rome called Sancta Sanctorum, or whether he had worn them in his childhood or manhood; but this is of little moment, for what I have already mentioned sufficiently shows the gross imposition of producing now the shoes of Jesus Christ, which were not possessed by the apostles in their time.
Now, let us proceed to the last supper which Christ had with his apostles. The table is at St John of the Lateran at Rome; some bread made for that occasion at Salvatierra in Spain; and the knife with which the paschal lamb was carved is at Tréves. Now, it is necessary to observe that Christ made that supper in a borrowed room, and on going from thence he left the table, which was not removed by the apostles. Jerusalem was soon afterwards destroyed. How, then, could the table be found after a lapse of eight hundred years?
Moreover, in the early ages tables were made of quite a different shape to those of our days, for people then took their repasts in a lying, not in a sitting posture—a circumstance expressly mentioned [pg 230] in the Gospels. The deceit is therefore quite manifest, without more being added to prove it.
The cup in which Christ gave the sacrament of his blood to the apostles is shown at Notre Dame de l'Isle, near Lyons; and there is another in a convent of Augustine monks in the Albigéois;—which is the true one? Charles Sigonius, a celebrated historian of our times, says, in his fourth book on Italy, that Baldwin, second king of Jerusalem, captured in 1101, with the assistance of the Genoese, the town of Cesarea in Syria, and amongst the spoils taken by his allies was a vessel or cup of emerald, which was considered to have been made use of by Jesus Christ at his last supper. “Therefore,”—these are his own words,—“this cup is even now devoutly preserved in the town of Genoa.”
According to this account, our Lord must have had a splendid service on that occasion; for there would be as little propriety in drinking from such a costly vessel without having the rest of the service of a similar description, as there is in some Popish pictures where the Virgin Mary is represented as a woman with her hair hanging over her shoulders, dressed in a gown of cloth of gold, and riding on a donkey which Joseph leads by the halter. We recommend our readers to consider well the Gospel texts relating to this subject.
The case of the dish upon which the paschal lamb [pg 231] was placed is still worse, for it is to be found at Rome, at Genoa, and at Arles. If these holy relics be genuine, the customs of that time must have been quite different from ours, because, instead of changing viands as we now do, the dishes were changed for the same food!
The same may be said of the towel with which Jesus Christ wiped the feet of the apostles, after having washed them; there is one at Rome at the Lateran, one at Aix-la-Chapelle, and one at St Corneille of Compiegne, with the print of the foot of Judas. Some of these must be false.