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 [pg 263] 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 scraps 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 [pg 264] 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, [pg 265] &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.