At some remote period—in the thirteenth or fourteenth century—the abbey church of Coulombs, in the diocese of Chartres, in France, became possessed in some miraculous manner of the holy prepuce. This holy relic had the power of rendering all the sterile women in the neighborhood fruitful,—a virtue, we are told, which filled the benevolent monks of the abbey with a pardonable amount of pride. It had the additional virtue of inducing a subsequent easy delivery, which also added to the reputation and pardonable vanity of the good monks. This last virtue, however, we are told, came near causing the loss to the abbey of this inestimable prize, for, as a French writer observes, a too great reputation is at times an unlucky possession; at any rate, the royal spouse of good and valiant King Henry V—he of Agincourt, whom England waded up to its knees in the sea at Dover to meet on his return from that campaign—had followed the example of all good dames and was about to give England an heir. Henry then governed a good part of France. Having heard of the wonderful efficacy of the relic of Coulombs, he early one morning threw the good monks into consternation by the arrival at the convent gate of a duly equipped herald and messenger from his kingship, asking for the loan of the relic with about as much ceremony as Mrs. Jones would ask for the loan of a flat-iron or saucepan from her neighbor, Mrs. Smith. The queen, Catherine of France, was of their own country and Henry was too powerful to be put off or refused; there was no room for evasion, as the holy prepuce could not be duplicated; so the poor monks with the greatest reluctance parted with their precious relic, entrusting it into the hands of the royal envoy, which wended its way to London, where it in due time, being touched by the queen, insured a safe delivery. Honest Henry then returned the relic to France; but so great was its reputation that royalty caused a special sanctuary to be erected for its reception, and a full period of twenty-five years occurred before the monks of Coulombs again regained possession of their prize, during which period the population of the neighborhood must have suffered from the natural increase of sterility and the physicians must have reaped a rich harvest owing to the increased difficulty and complications of labor induced by the absence of the relic. On its return, the relic was found to have lost none of its virtues, and the good people and monks were all correspondingly made happy; in 1870, when the writer was in France, it was still working its miracles. Balzac found ample facts to found his famous “Droll Stories” without straining his imagination.
So great an attraction was not to go without attempted rivalry or imitators; hence we find in the “Dictionary of Moreri,” edition of 1715, in the third volume, at page 108, that several other establishments claim the honor of a like relic,—namely, the Cathedral of Puy, in Velay; the collegial church of Antwerp; the Abbey of our Saviour, of Charroux; and the Church of St. John Lateran, in Rome. All of these have had very adventurous histories. The Abbey of Charroux was founded by Charlemagne in 788, and among the relics with which that monarch endowed the abbey the principal one was a fragment of the holy prepuce. This abbey enjoyed great reputation, and indulgences were granted by Papal bull to all those who assisted at the adoration of the relics. In the internecine wars of the sixteenth century the abbey fell into the hands of the godless and heretical Huguenots and the holy relic disappeared. In 1856, while some workmen were at work demolishing an ancient wall on the abbey site, they discovered some relic cases. The bishop was at once notified, who immediately proceeded to investigate, when, lo and behold! there, sure enough, was a piece of desiccated flesh, with marks of coagulated blood; nothing more or less than the lost prepuce—long lost, but now found. It was placed in charge of the Ursuline Sisterhood, where it has remained ever since undisturbed, except by a controversy in regard to the propriety of the relic, in which the good bishop ambled about in the most ambiguous manner, the only clearly defined portion of his dissertation being the one wherein he laments “the decadence of that truly Christian spirit which animated the laity of the middle ages with a radiant zeal. A piety also pervaded those gentle Christians of former times, who were possessed of a religious instruction which determined for them the tenets of the creed and its practices,—a happy state or condition of affairs, which prevented the intelligence of the faithful from wandering into the sloughs of unprofitable skepticism.” This settled the question as to the propriety of the prepuce being converted into a miracle-working relic; at least, as far as the good bishop was concerned.
It would be an injustice not to mention the other shrines in detail after the prominence that has been given to the abbeys of Coulombs and Charroux; so the history of another will be given. We are not told just how the Church of St. John Lateran in Rome first became possessed of its holy prepuce, but it nevertheless had one; also the only authentic one in existence, like all the others. It disappeared at one of the periodical sackings that Rome has repeatedly suffered at the hands of Goth, Vandal, or Christian. This time it was the soldiery of the eldest son of the church—- Charles V—who did the sacking; it was in the year 1527, a soldier—probably some impious, heathenish mercenary—broke into the holy sanctuary of the church and stole therefrom the box that contained the holy relics, among them the holy prepuce. These impious wretches, as a rule, came to grief in short order; hence we are told that this mercenary and sacrilegious soldier was compelled to secrete his box, when only a short distance from Rome, where the box remains and the mercenary wretch disappears, probably carried off bodily by the devil, as he deserved. Thirty years afterward the box is discovered by a priest, who, ignorant of its contents, carries it to the lady on whose domain it was found. On being opened it was found to contain a piece of the anatomy of Saint Valentine, the lower jaw of Saint Martha, with one tooth still in place, and a small package upon which the name of the Saviour was inscribed. The lady picked up the package, when immediately the most fragrant odor pervaded the apartment, being exhaled by the miraculous packet, while the hand that held it was seen perceptibly to swell and stiffen; investigation proved it to be the holy prepuce stolen by the miscreant mercenary from St. John Lateran. It is related that in 1559, a canon of the church of St. John Lateran, impelled by a worldly curiosity untempered by piety, undertook to make a critical examination of this relic, in the process of which, to better satisfy himself, he had the indiscretion to break off a small piece; instantly the most dreadful tempest broke over the place, followed by crashing peals of thunder and blinding flashes of lightning; then a sudden darkness covered the country, and the luckless priest and his assistants fell flat on their sacerdotal noses, feeling that their last hour had arrived.[26]
Wonderful and miraculous cures are performed at these shrines, and some of the cures are of a nature that would baffle the intelligence of the most learned mind to ascertain the intricate and devious way that nature must at times journey to accomplish some of these changes. The writer well remembers seeing, in the Church of Corpus Christi, in Turin,[27] a long hall, covered, from marble pavement to ceiling, with votive tablets, after the manner inaugurated in the old temples of Greece. Modern votaries have the advantage of being able to record their cure, safe venture or escape from peril, by means of faithful representation of the event in painting or drawing, as the material and art is more common now than in the days of ancient Greece, who recorded its cures by simple inscription in laconic terms. Modern medicine labors under the disadvantage of presuming that the people are endowed with an intelligence that was unknown to ancient or mediæval people, when, in fact, the people are as credulous and as subject to imposition as they were in the earlier centuries of the present era. With all its supposed superior intelligence, there is no fatter pasture for quacks and impostors than that presented by the people of the United States. Whenever I see the poor, intelligent, broad-minded physician struggling along, barely able to procure for himself the necessaries required to maintain himself with proper books and appliances, while the itinerant quack or dogmatic practitioner rolls in undeserved affluence, I question the wisdom of our ethical code. Braddock, at the Monongahela, scorned to have his regulars, who had fought under Marlborough and Eugene, break ranks before a lot of breech-clouted savages, and take shelter that the nature of the ground and the trees could afford, thinking it an unfit action for men who had faced the veterans of Louis XIV on many a hard-fought European field. I sometimes think that if our regulars were, for only a season, to follow the example of the provincial militia at that battle, it would be better for the country, the people, science, and last, but not the least, for the profession. The theory that we should not counsel with quacks is altogether mischievous and fallacious, although right and rigidly orthodox in its intent; were we to counsel and meet these gentry, we should expose their ignorance and assumption, and we should not be exposed to the charge of jealousy and of fear to meet them in consultation. I remember on one occasion a client went to a lawyer for advice as to how he might dispossess some parties who had some adverse claim to some property which he owned, after due deliberation and a protracted siege of the house, in the vain hope of gaining admittance; the lawyer advised his client to go and nail up all exits and fasten them in, which had the effect of driving them out. So with our profession—we should not neglect an opportunity of meeting a quack in consultation, regardless of the nature of the case; it is the only way to nail them up; as it is, we have simply chained up the shepherd-dog and given the wolves full play.
The French Guards at Fontenoy, who out of courtesy refused to fire first on the English, may have been very ethical and chivalrous, but they were very foolish, as the English discharge nearly swept them from the field, and but for the Irish Brigade, who knew no ethics, Louis XV would in all likelihood have followed the example of King John, who, after Crecy, visited England for a season. A disregard of ethics gave Copenhagen to Lord Nelson, who insisted on looking at Admiral Parker’s signal to withdraw from action with his sightless eye, which could not see it. A fear of disregarding ethics lost to Grouchy the chance of assisting Napoleon at Waterloo. In our strife against ignorance and quackery the profession should follow the general plan of action usually adopted by Lord Nelson—lie alongside of whom you can and sink or capture your enemy; let each man do his duty; never mind any general plan. A reverse to this mode of fighting invariably lost the battle to the French and Spaniards, who were, as a rule, all tied up in ethical red tape. Our profession is broad, intelligent, and fearless; we do not profess any exclusive dogma, and should not, therefore, exclude persons; as a large ship throws its grappling-irons on to its adversary, we should always seek an opportunity to meet these gentry when practicable. As it is, we have placed them on the vantage-ground of appearing as being persecuted; our ethics need circumcising in this regard, and the prepuce of exclusion should be buried in the sands of the desert.
Moreover, we often are apt to learn something from even the most ignorant of these men. Rush investigated the nature of a cancer-cure by not refusing to meet and talk with one of this kind;[28] Fothergill learned from an old, unlicensed practitioner that there was a knowledge important to the physician beyond that picked up in the pathological laboratory or the study of microscopy; and that the practiced eye of an otherwise unlearned man could detect that there were general physical signs that negatived the unfavorable prognosis suggested by the presence of tube-casts.[29] It is related of Sir Isaac Newton, that while riding homeward one day, the weather being clear and cloudless, in passing a herder he was warned to ride fast or the shower would wet him. Sir Isaac looked upon the man as demented, and rode on, not, however, without being caught in a drenching shower. Not being able to account for the source of information through which the rustic had gained his knowledge, he rode back, wet as he was, to learn something. “My cow,” answered the man, “always twists her tail in a certain way just before a rain, your Worship, and she so twisted it just before I saw you.”[30] Although twisting cow-tails do not figure in his “Principia,” it is very probable that such a lesson was not without its remote effects on a mind like Newton’s. A spider taught a lesson to one of Scotland’s kings; so that one man may learn something from another.
Professor Letenneur, of the Medical School of Nantes, in his “Causerie à propos de la Circoncision,” mentions that the Convent of Saint Corneille, in Compiègne, claims to possess the identical instrument with which the Holy Circumcision was performed. Such a holy relic must have been unusually potential in performing many miracles.
In this connection it will not be amiss to notice the lapping over that the old phallic worship and idea has made on the new religions. It is also as interesting to observe how the human mind still leans toward observances and ideas which are believed to belong to a solely pagan people. Hargrave Jennings, in a chapter devoted to phallic worship among the ancient Gauls, gives many interesting and curious examples, the first example that he notices being that of Saint Foutin (from whom the very expressive French word “foutre” is taken). Foutin was the first Christian bishop of Lyons, and after his death, so intimately was priapic worship intermingled with the religion or theology of the Gauls, that somehow the memory of St. Foutin and the old, dethroned Priapus became commingled, and finally the former was unconsciously made to take the place of the latter. St. Foutin was immensely popular. He was believed to have a wonderful influence in restoring fertility to barren women and vigor and virility to impotent men. It is related that, in the church at Varages, in Provence, to such a degree of reputation had the shrine of this saint risen, it was customary for the afflicted to make a wax image of their impotent and flaccid organ, which was deposited on the shrine. On windy days the beadle and sexton were kept busy in picking up these imitations of decrepit and penitent male members from the floor, whither the wind wafted them, much to the annoyance and disturbance of the female portions of the congregation, whose devotions are said to have been sadly interfered with. At a church in Embrun there was a large phallus, which was said to be a relic of St. Foutin. The worshippers were in the habit of offering wine to this deity,—after the manner of the early Pagans,—the wine being poured over the head of the organ and caught underneath in a sacred vessel. This was then called “holy vinegar,” and was believed to be an efficacious remedy in cases of sterility, impotence, or want of virility.
Near the city of Bourges, at Bourg Dieu, there existed, during the Roman occupation of Gaul, an old priapic statue, which was worshipped by the surrounding country. The veneration in which it was held and the miracles with which it was accredited made it impolitic as well as impossible for the early missionaries and monks to remove it; it would have created too much opposition. It was therefore allowed to remain, but gradually changed into a saint,—St. Guerluchon,—which, however, did not detract any from its former merit or reputation. Sterile women flocked to the shrine, and pilgrimages and a set number of days of devotion to this saint were in order. Scrapings from this statue infused in water were said to make a miraculous drink which insured conception. Similar shrines to this same saint were erected at other places, and we are told that the good monks, who must have had an intense and lively interest in seeing that the population was increased, were kept busy supplying the statues with new members, as the women scraped away so industriously, either to prepare a drink for themselves or for their husbands, that a phallus did not last long. At one of these shrines, so onerous became the industry of replacing a new phallus to the saint, that the good monks placed an apron over the organ, informing the good women that thereafter a simple contemplation of the sacred organ would be sufficient; and a special monk was detailed to take special charge of this apron, which was only to be lifted in special cases of sterility. By this innovation the good monks stole a march on their brothers in like shrines in other localities, such as those of St. Gilles, in Brittany, or St. Rene, in Anjou, where the old-fashioned scraping and replacing still was in vogue. Near the seaport town of Brest, in Brittany, at the shrine of St. Guignole, the monks adopted a new expedient. They bored a hole through the statue, through which a phallus was made to project horizontally; as fast as the devotees scraped away in front the good monks as industriously pushed forward the wooden peg that formed the phallus, so that it gave the member the miraculous appearance of growing out as fast as scraped off, which greatly added to its reputation and efficacy. The shrine continued in great vigor until the middle of the last century. Delaure mentions a similar shrine at Puy, also in France, which existed up to the outbreak of the French Revolution. The scrapings in this case were immersed in wine, and the guardians of the statue saw to it that no amount of paring or scraping should remove from the saint any of that appearance of vigor or virility which his great reputation demanded, this being done by a similar procedure as followed at the church near Brest, one of the attendants having been sent to investigate into the marvelous growth of the Brest phallus.