Part 41

DOM. (turning to the people.) God forbid, O Christians! that you should believe all that is said by the devils, who are liars, and inventors of lies. Not but that the Almighty is able to communicate so much strength to the vilest and most miserable sinner, as will overcome all infernal hosts, as you see I do at this time, who am the greatest of sinners.

DEV.—Cursed be so great humility as this, which tears and torments us so much.

DOM. (Throwing his stole, for he had not his scapulary yet, which has much more virtue, about the neck of the Demoniac.) Of which state of men among Christians are there the most damned?

Here an extraordinary circumstance took place, for no sooner had Dominick’s stole touched the neck of the demoniac than a great quantity of thick gory blood burst out at his nose, and a poisonous clay from his ears. At this sight, Dominick commanded the rebellious devils to desist from tormenting the poor sinner.

DEV. We will with all our heart, if ye will suffer us to depart.

DOM. Ye shall not stir until ye have answered the question put you.

DEV. In hell there are a great many bishops and princes, but not many country people, who, though not perfect, are not very great sinners. There are also a great many merchants, and townspeople, such as pawnbrokers, fraudulent bakers, grocers, Jews, apothecaries, gamblers, rakes, &c. who were sent there for covetousness, cheating, voluptuousness, &c.

DOM. Are there any priests or monks in Hell?

DEV. There are a great number of priests, but no monks, with the exception of such as had transgressed the rule of their order.

DOM. How are you off for Franciscans?

DEV. Alas! alas! we have not one yet, but we expect a great number of them after their devotion is a little cooled.

DOM. What saint in heaven does the devil fear most?

Instead of returning any answer to this question, the devils begged Dominick by all that was sacred to be satisfied with the torments he had already inflicted upon them, and with those to which they were condemned in hell, begging he would not insist upon a true answer to that question before so great a congregation, to the ruin of their kingdom; telling him, that if he would ask the angels they would tell him who it was. This, however, would not satisfy Dominick, who, whatever virtues he might have, had little mercy in his composition, especially, it would appear, towards devils. He persisted upon their telling; and, perceiving how reluctant the demons were to comply with his wishes, he threw himself upon the ground, and went to work, hammer and tongs, with his rosary; upon which sulphureous flames of fire burst forth from his nose, mouth, eyes and ears; after this above an hundred angels, clad in golden armour, appeared with the blessed virgin in the midst of them, holding a golden rod in her hand, with which she gave the demoniac a switch on the back, commanding, at the same time, the devils to return true answers to Dominick’s questions; at this they all roared out lustily, O our enemy! O our damner! O our confusion! Why didst thou come down from heaven to torment us here? Why art thou so powerful an intercessor for sinners? O thou most certain and secure way to heaven; but since thou commandest it, we must tell the truth, though it will confound us, and bring woe and misery on our princes of darkness for ever. Hear, O Christians, continued the devils, this mother of Christ is too powerful in preserving all her servants from hell; it is she that, as a sun, dissipates all our darkness, and enervates and brings to nought all our machinations. We are forced to confess that nobody is damned who perseveres in her holy worship, and is devoted to her. One sigh from her has more power than the prayers of all the saints; and we fear her more than all the citizens of Paradise; and you must all know, that vast numbers of Christians are, contrary to right, saved by calling upon her at the time of their death; and that we should long ago have destroyed the church, if it had not been for this little Mary; and being now forced to it, we must own, that none who persevere in the exercise of the rosary, can undergo the eternal torments of hell, for she obtains contrition for all her devout servants.

Here the confab ended between 15,000 cowardly devils, and Dominick, who exhorted the congregation to join with him in reciting the rosary: and behold a great miracle: at every angelical salutation, a multitude of devils rushed out of the demoniac in the shape of burning coals, and the blessed virgin having given the congregation her benediction, disappeared, leaving Dominick in quest of fresh enterprises against the devil and his horde.

Dominick was a proud designing man, and of a very ferocious disposition. The stories related of the St. Franciscan order, are equally absurd and ridiculous.

Similar stories are too numerous: we shall therefore close this subject with

The Hermit of the Pillar. (St. Simeon Stylites, St. Telesephorus, St. Syncletia.)

We are informed by Alban Butler, that St. Simeon Stylites, the ycleped hermit of the pillar, astonished the whole Roman Empire by his mortifications. In the monastery of Heliodorus, a man 65 years of age, who had spent 62 years so abstracted from the world that he was ignorant of the most obvious things in it; the monks ate but once a day; Simeon joined the communities, and ate but once a week. Heliodorus required Simeon to be more private in his mortifications: “with this view,” says Butler, “judging the rough rope of the well, made of twisted palm tree leaves, a proper instrument of penance; Simeon tied it close about his naked body, where it remained unknown both to the community and his superior, till such time as it having ate into his flesh, what he had privately done was discovered by the effluvia proceeding from the wound.” Butler says, that it took three days to disengage the saint’s clothes, and that “the incisions of the physician, to cut the cord out of his body, were attended with such anguish and pain, that he lay for some time as dead.” After this he determined to pass the whole forty days of Lent in total abstinence, and retired to a hermitage for that purpose. Bassus, an abbot, left with him ten loaves and water, and coming to visit him at the end of the forty days, found both loaves and water untouched, and the saint stretched on the ground without signs of life. Bassus dipped a sponge in water, moistened his lips, gave him the eucharist, and Simeon by degrees swallowed a few lettuce leaves and other herbs. He passed twenty-six Lents in the same manner. In the first part of a Lent he prayed standing: growing weaker, he prayed sitting; and towards the end, being almost exhausted, he prayed lying on the ground. At the end of three years he left his hermitage for the top of a mountain, made an inclosure of loose stones, without a roof, and having resolved to live exposed to the inclemencies of the weather, he fixed his resolution by fastening his right leg to a rock with a great iron chain. Multitudes thronged to the mountain to receive his benediction, and many of the sick recovered their health. But as some were not satisfied unless they touched him in his enclosure, and Simeon desired retirement from the daily concourse, he projected a new and unprecedented manner of life. He erected a pillar six cubits high, (each cubit being eighteen inches,) and dwelt on it four years; on a second of twelve cubits high, he lived three years; on a third of twenty-two cubits high, ten years; and on a fourth, of forty cubits, or sixty feet high, which the people built for him, he spent the last twenty years of his life. This occasioned him to be called Stylites, from the Greek word stylos, a pillar. This pillar did not exceed three feet in diameter at the top, so that he could not lie extended on it; he had no seat with him; he only stooped or leaned to take a little rest, and bowed his body in prayer so often, that a certain person who counted these positions, found that he made one thousand two hundred and forty-four reverences in one day, which if he began at four o’clock in the morning, and finished at eight o’clock at night, gives a bow to every three quarters of a minute; besides which, he exhorted the people twice a day. His garments were the skins of beasts; he wore an iron collar round his neck, and had a horrible ulcer in his foot. During his forty days’ abstinence throughout Lent, he tied himself to a pole. He treated himself as the outcast of the world and the worst of sinners, worked miracles, delivered prophecies, had the sacrament delivered to him on the pillar, and died bowing upon it, in the sixty-ninth of his age, after having lived upon pillars for six and thirty years. His corpse was carried to Antioch attended by the bishops and the whole country, and worked miracles on its way. So far this account is from Alban Butler.

Without mentioning circumstances and miracles in the Golden Legend, which are too numerous, and some not fit to be related; it may be observed, that it is there affirmed of him, that after his residence on the pillars, one of his thighs rotted a whole year, during which time he stood on one leg only. Near Simeon’s pillar was the dwelling of a dragon, so very venemous that nothing grew near his cave. This dragon met with an accident; he had a stake in his eye, and coming all blind to the saint’s pillar, and placing his eye upon it for three days, without doing harm to any one, Simeon ordered earth and water to be placed on the dragon’s eye, which being done, out came the stake, a cubit in length; when the people saw this miracle, they glorified God, and ran away for fear of the dragon, who arose and adored for two hours, and returned to his cave. A woman swallowed a little serpent, which tormented her for many years, till she came to Simeon, who causing earth and water to be laid on her mouth, the little serpent came out four feet and a half long. It is affirmed by the Golden Legend, that when Simeon died, Anthony smelt a precious odour proceeding from his body; that the birds cried so much, that both men and beasts cried; that an angel came down in a cloud; that the Patriarch of Antioch, taking Simeon’s beard to put among his relics, his hand withered, and remained so, till multitudes of prayers were said for him, and it was healed; and that more miracles were worked at and after Simeon’s sepulture, than he had wrought all his life.

HOLY RELIQUE-MANIA.

On the first introduction of the relics of saints, the mania became universal; they were bought and sold, and, like other collectors, made no scruple to steal them. It is not a little amusing to remark the singular ardour and grasping avidity of some to enrich themselves with religious morsels; their little discernment, the curious impositions and resources of the vender to impose on the good faith and sincerity of the purchaser. It was not uncommon for the prelate of the place to ordain a fast, in order to implore God that they might not be cheated with the relics of saints, which he sometimes purchased for the holy benefit of the village or town. Guibert de Nogen wrote a treatise on the relics of saints: acknowledging that there were many false ones, as well as false legends, he reprobates the inventors of those lying miracles. It was on the occasion of one of our Saviour’s teeth, that De Nogen took up his pen on this subject, by which the monks of St. Medard de Soissons pretended to work miracles; a pretension which he asserted to be as chimerical as that of several persons who believed they possessed the navel, and other parts less comely, of the body of Christ.

There is a history of the translation of Saint Lewin, a virgin and a martyr, by a monk of Bergavinck; her relics were brought from England to Bergs. The facts were collected from her brethren with religious care, especially from the conductor of these relics from England. After the history of the translation, and a panegyric on the saint, he relates the miracles performed in Flanders since the arrival of her relics. The prevailing passion of the times to possess fragments of saints is well marked, when the author particularises, with a certain complacency, all the knavish modes they resorted to, to carry off those in question. None then objected to this sort of robbery, because the gratification of the ruling passion had made it worth while to supply the market.

There is a history, by a monk of Cluny, of the translation of the body of St. Indalece, one of the earliest Spanish bishops; written by order of the Abbot of St. Juan de la Penna; wherein the author protests to advance nothing but facts; having himself seen, or learnt from other witnesses, all he relates. It was not difficult for him to gain his information, since it was to the monastery of St. Juan de la Penna that the holy relics were transported, and those who brought them were two monks of that house. His minute detail of circumstances, he has authenticated by giving the names of persons and places; and the account was written for the great festival immediately instituted in honour of this translation. He informs us of the miraculous manner by which they were so fortunate as to discover the body of this bishop, and the different plans that were concerted to carry it off; with the itinerary of the two monks who accompanied the holy remains; during which they were not a little cheered in their long and hazardous journey by visions and miracles.

Another has written a history of what he terms the translation of the relics of St. Majean to the monastery of Villemagne. Translation is, in fact, only a softened expression for the robbery committed on the relics of the saints, by two monks who carried them off secretly, to enrich their monastery; and they did not stick at any artifice, or lie, to achieve their undertaking. They imagined every thing was permitted to get possession of these fragments of mortality, which now had become such an important branch of commerce. They even regarded their possessors with a hostile eye. Such was the religious opinion from the ninth to the twelfth century. Our Canute commissioned his agent at Rome to purchase St. Augustine’s arm for one hundred talents of silver and one of gold! a much greater sum, observes Granger, than the finest statue of antiquity would then have sold for. Another monk describes a strange act of devotion, attested by several contemporary writers. When the saints did not readily comply with the prayers of their votaries, they flogged their relics with rods, in a spirit of impatience, which they conceived necessary to enforce obedience. To raise our admiration, Theofroy, abbot of Epternac, relates the daily miracles performed by the relics of saints—their ashes, their clothes, or other mortal spoils, and even by the instruments of their martyrdom. He inveighs against that luxury of ornaments which was indulged in under a religious pretext. “It is not to be supposed that the saints are desirous of such a profusion of gold and silver. They wish not that we should raise to them magnificent churches, to exhibit that ingenious order of pillars, which shine with gold; nor those rich ceilings, nor those altars sparkling with jewels. They desire not the purple parchment for their writings, the liquid gold to decorate the letters, nor the precious stones to embellish their covers, while you have such little care for the ministers.” The pious writer has not forgotten himself, in his partnership-account with the saints.

Bayle observes, the Roman church not being able to deny that there have been false relics which have wrought miracles, they reply that the good intentions of those believers who have recourse to them, obtained from God the reward for their good faith! In the same spirit, when it was shown that three bodies of the same saint are said to exist in several places, and that therefore they could not all be authentic, it was answered, that they were all genuine! for God had multiplied and miraculously reproduced them, for the comfort of the faithful! A curious specimen of the intolerance of good sense.

Prince Radzivil was so much affected by the Reformation being spread in Lithuania, that he went in person to pay the Pope all personal honours. On this occasion his holiness presented him with a precious box of relics. On his return home, some monks entreated the prince’s permission to try the effects of them on a demoniac, who hitherto had resisted every exorcism. They were brought into the church with solemn pomp, accompanied by an innumerable crowd, and deposited on the altar. After the usual conjurations, which were unsuccessful, the relics were applied. The demoniac instantly recovered. The people called out a miracle! and the Prince raising his hands and eyes to heaven, felt his faith confirmed. During this transport of pious joy, he observed that a young gentleman, who was keeper of his treasure of relics, smiled, and by his motions ridiculed the miracle. The Prince, indignantly, took the young keeper of the relics to task; who, on promise of pardon, gave the following secret intelligence concerning them. In travelling from Rome he had lost the box of relics; and not daring to mention it, he had procured a similar one, which he had filled with the small bones of dogs and cats, and other trifles similar to those that were lost. He hoped he might be forgiven for smiling, when he found that such a collection of rubbish was eulogized with such pomp, and had even the virtue of expelling demons. It was by the assistance of this box that the Prince discovered the gross impositions of the monks and demoniacs, and Radzivil afterwards became a zealous Lutheran.

Frederick the Elector, surnamed the Wise, was an indefatigable collector of relics. After his death, one of the monks employed by him, solicited payment for several parcels he had purchased for our wise Elector; but the times had changed! He was advised to resign this business; the relics for which he desired payment they were willing to return; that since the Reformation of Luther, the price of such ware had considerably fallen; and that they would be more esteemed, and find a better market in Italy than in Germany!

In his “Traité preparatif à l’Apologie pour Herodote,” c. 39, Stephens says, “A monk of St. Anthony, having been at Jerusalem, saw there several relics, among which was a bit of the finger of the Holy Ghost, as sound and entire as it had ever been; the snout of the seraphim that appeared to St. Francis; one of the nails of a cherubim; one of the ribs of the Verbum caro factum, (the Word was made flesh,) some rays of the star that appeared to the three kings of the east; a phial of St. Michael’s sweat, when he was fighting against the devil; a hem of Joseph’s garment, which he wore when he cleaved wood, &c. All which things,” observes our treasurer of relics, “I have brought with me home very devoutly.” Henry III. who was deeply tainted with the superstition of the age, summoned all the great in the kingdom to meet in London. This summons excited the most general curiosity, and multitudes appeared. The king then acquainted them that the great master of the knights templars had sent him a phial containing a small portion of the sacred blood of Christ, which he had shed upon the cross! and attested to be genuine by the seals of the patriarch of Jerusalem, and others. He commanded a procession on the following day, and, adds the historian, that though the road between St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey was very deep and miry, the king kept his eyes constantly fixed on the phial. Two monks received it, and deposited the phial in the abbey, “which made all England shine with glory, dedicating it to God and St. Edward.”