facts demonstrated by experience or fully established by testimony.
We leave aside the chemistry involved in his supposition, since he candidly avowed that he never tried the experiment. It is a pity he did not make a similar candid avowal when speaking of the shape of the vial containing the blood. He should, for the sake of good faith, have warned his readers that he had never seen the vial itself, nor even an engraving of it; and should have let them understand that his whole explanation was based on his assumed ability to describe accurately and minutely the shape of a vial which, he must have been aware, and should have informed them, he was entirely ignorant of.
Any one who has seen the reliquary and the ampulla within it, or has even looked at the figure of it which we have given, or at engravings of it which are easily obtained in Naples and elsewhere, will see at a glance that the shape of the ampulla is just the reverse of an hourglass. In fact, in form it much more closely approaches a sphere. Not a single point set forth in the explanation is correct. There is no upper division in which the dry substance, compounded of crocus martis and cochineal, and perfectly resembling congealed blood, is or can be lodged; there is no lower division, unoccupied save by the few drops of aqua fortis, the color of which prevents its being discovered, even by keen, curious, prying eyes. There is in the liquefaction no sandlike fall, from an upper into a lower division, of a stream of particles of the dry substance, now separated or liquefied by the aqua fortis. The bishop has not only failed to hit the bull’s eye, he has entirely missed the target, every shot.
And yet, with what delicious complacency
he considers, and expects his readers to admit, that he, above all others, has correctly exposed the bungling trick, and has unmasked the fraudulent dealings of the priests, who can effect or prevent the miracle as they please! It is a genuine sample of the way in which a certain class of writers think they demolish anything Catholic. And how many, after reading this passage of the Criterion, may have closed the book in perfect confidence that, after such an exposure, so clear and detailed, by so learned and so respectable an authority, it would be waste of time to read another word on the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius!
Need we go back to the two previous explanations he mentions, but which he will not adopt, until he is forced by the failure of his pet explanation? So many others have urged them that we may not pass them entirely unnoticed.
The ordinary form of the first one is this: The officiating priest, who holds in his hands the vial containing the blood, rubs it with his handkerchief, and clasps it in his palms. The animal heat of his hands, and such heat as the friction may produce, suffices to bring about the liquefaction.
Let the reader cast an eye on the very correct figure of the reliquary which we give. The priest holds it by the stem below; sometimes, in turning it, he may put one hand on the crown above. He does not, for he cannot, touch the interior vials containing the blood. They are inside the case, held in position by the soldering above and below, and are enclosed and protected by the thick metal rim, and the plates of glass in front and rear. The heat of his hands, as he holds it, and the utmost heat that can be produced by the friction—as occasionally, every five or
ten minutes, he may, if he thinks it necessary, rub the plates of glass with his white handkerchief, in order to see better through them into the interior—cannot possibly affect the contents of the ampulla in any appreciable degree. As for causing them to melt or liquefy, one might as well expect the same animal heat of one’s hand to light a wax candle by simply grasping and holding the candlestick in which it stands, or that lightly rubbing the candlestick with a handkerchief, every five or ten minutes, to keep it bright and dry, would produce the same physical effect on the candle placed in it as ordinary mortals obtain nowadays by igniting a lucifer match and applying it to the wick.
No one who has ever witnessed the liquefaction can listen to this attempt at explanation without a smile of pity or of contempt. Even in those cases in which the liquefactions take place while the reliquary is in the hands of the priest, it is equally insufficient and absurd. It has no application whatever to the other many cases in which the liquefaction occurs while the reliquary stands on the altar or is borne in procession. Like the other solutions we have examined, it makes no attempt to account for the reiterated hardenings and liquefactions which may occur during the day, nor for the variations of volume and for the other phases which are presented. Yet we must bear in mind that all these are striking and characteristic points, which are to be strictly accounted for, equally with the simple fact of a solid substance becoming fluid.