As for the second mode of solution mentioned by Bishop Douglas, that which attributes the liquefaction to the general heat around the altar due to the “vast number of wax tapers of enormous size” burning on the
altar, and also, not to omit what others have said, to the crowd closely packed around the officiating clergyman—that attempted solution has already been disposed of. Thermometrical investigations by scientific professors, and the many times that the liquefaction takes place at the altar when there is little or no crowd, and also away from the altar and its “wax tapers of enormous size” during a procession in the streets, and while the reliquary is freely exposed to the open air of December—all alike combine to exclude this solution. As for the convenient position in which the bishop places some of those wax tapers, and the practice of the priests to make use of this position and, “without any appearance of design,” to “hold the glass so near to them as to make it hot, and consequently dispose the enclosed substance to melt,” we may ask, if he did not believe this to be true, why has he repeated the statement, and expressed his inclination “to subscribe to this opinion” even as a pis aller? If he did believe that the priest really so manipulated the vial in order to produce the liquefaction, ought not that to be sufficient? Why postpone the truth in favor of a pet theory about crocus martis, cochineal, aqua fortis, and the hour-glass? Evidently, his mind was rather cloudy on the subject. Seriously, the priest could not hold the reliquary so near to a lighted wax taper of enormous size, long enough to make it hot, without attracting the attention of hundreds each time he did it. Not to overlook the smallest point, we may remark that, on the six occasions when we were present at the liquefaction, on all of which it invariably occurred at the main altar of the Tesoro chapel, the lighted tapers on the altar were few. If our memory serves us right, they were just six,
three on each side of the crucifix over the centre of the altar, and all of them placed on tall and elevated altar candlesticks. The nearest blaze must have been, at least, seven feet away from and above the reliquary, as the chaplain held it in front of the altar. To achieve the feat which Bishop Douglas mentions, it would have been necessary to move back a portion of the crowd, near the altar, in order to get room, and then to bring in and make use of a good-sized step-ladder! The only burning light ever held in proximity to the reliquary is the single small taper, sometimes held by an assistant chaplain, and used on cloudy or hazy days, when the general light in the Tesoro chapel is not sufficiently strong to show through the glass plates of the reliquary and the sides of the ampulla, as distinctly as desired, the state of the blood in the interior of the ampulla. In such cases, this taper is now and then brought for half a minute or a minute within eight or ten inches of the reliquary, and is held a little downward, and behind it, in such position that its light may shine obliquely onward through the glasses, on the surface of the blood, and show, as we saw it show, the state of the interior with perfect distinctness. It is not applied to the reliquary in any way that can appreciably heat it. When the atmosphere is perfectly clear, the general light of the chapel is amply sufficient, and this taper is not needed nor brought forward.
What we have said of the modes thus examined is true of all attempted explanations based on some supposed feat of jugglery or legerdemain during the exposition. To one who has witnessed the liquefaction at Naples, and knows what is really done, they are simply ridiculous. We
repeat: if nothing else can be urged, the miracle must stand.
This has been felt, and in consequence we have another class of proposed solutions, of a seemingly higher character. Chemistry is brought into service. Some compound is skilfully prepared, we are told, and inserted by the priests into the ampulla beforehand. It is of such a character that it appears more or less hard and solid at the beginning of the exposition, and, during the exposition, is made to melt or to appear to melt. Chemists, we are assured, can easily prepare such substances, and can thus reproduce the liquefactions at will. These experiments, it is claimed, settle the question. What the chemists do and acknowledge, the priests do, and pass off as a miracle.
Let us analyze these experiments, and see whether in reality they repeat and renew the liquefaction with its characteristic and essential phenomena, or in what respects and how far they fail to do so.
The first of these of which we have any account dates from Berlin, in 1734. On the 26th of January in that year—so we are told in a letter dated a few days after, and published in Paris—Gaspar Neumann, councillor of his majesty’s court, doctor in medicine, and professor of chemistry, entertained a party consisting of fourteen learned friends, assembled to dine at his festive board, with an imitation of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. The letter was written by one of the party to his friends at home. We carefully reproduce the facts which the letter states, omitting the badinage and sneering remarks with which it accompanies them—remarks quite characteristic of the school of Voltaire whenever religion or anything connected with it was
in question. In default of the original French, we quote from a translation published in England.
The professor, we are told, placed before his friends “a human skull.” He also produced from his laboratory “three vials of crystal or very clear and transparent glass, in each of which was contained a matter in a very small bulk, dry, black, and so hard as to produce a noise on the sides of the vial when shaken.” The first vial being brought near to the head, the matter in it “became of a deep-red color, liquefied, bubbled, increased its bulk, and filled the vial.” The second vial was also brought near to the head, and the portion of matter in it “bubbled but little.” But when the third vial was similarly brought near the head, the whole of its contents “remained dry, hard, and black.”