Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/822

 RELICS

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RELICS

bone or cloth, small parcels of dust, etc., first became common. We can only say that it was widespread earh' in the fourth century, and that dated inscrip- tions upon blocks of stone, which were probably altar slabs, afford evidence upon the point which is quite conclusive. One such, found of late years in North- ern Africa and now preserved in the Christian Museum of the Louvre, bears a list of the relics probably once cemented into a shallow circular cavity excavated in its surface. Omitting one or two words not adequately explained, the inscription runs: "A holy memorial [memoria sancia] of the wood of the Cross, of the land of Promise where Christ was born, the Apostles Peter and Paul, the names of the martyrs Datian, Donatian, C>"prian, Xemesianus, Citinus, and Victoria. In the year of the Province 320 [i. e. A. D. 359] Benenatus and Pequaria set this up" ("Corp. Inscr. Lat.", VIII, n. 20600. Cf. Audol- lent in " M^hanges d'archeol. et d'hist.", X, 397-588).

We learn from St. Cyril of Jerusalem (before 350) that the wood of the Cross, discovered c. 318, was al- ready distributed throughout the world; and St. Gregory of Nyssa, in his sermons on the forty martyrs, after describing how their bodies were burned by conmiand of the persecutors, explains that "their ashes and all that the fire had spared have been so distributed throughout the world that almost every province has had its share of the blessing. I also myself have a portion of this holj' gift and I have laid the bodies of my parents beside the reUcs of these warriors, that iii the hour of the resurrection they may be awakened together with these highly privi- leged conu-ades " (P. G., XLVI, 764). We have here also a hint of the explanation of the widespread prac- tice of seeking burial near the tombs of the martjTS. It seems to have been felt that when the souls of the blessed mart^Ts on the day of general resurrection were once more united to their bodies, they would be accompanied in their passage to heaven by those who lay around them and that these last might on their account find more ready acceptance with God.

We may note also that, while this and other pass- ages suggest that no great repugnance was felt in the East to the division and dismemberment of the bodies of the saints, in the West, on the other hand, particularly at Rome, the greatest respect was shown to the holy dead. The mere unwrapping or toucliing of the body of a martyr was considered to be a terribly perilous enterprise, which could only be set about by the hohest of ecclesiastics, and that after prayer and fasting. This belief lasted until the late Middle Ages and is illustrated, for example, in the life of St. Hugh of Lincoln, who excited the surprise of his episcopal contemporaries by his audacitj' in examin- ing and translating relics which his colleagues dared not disturb. In the Theodosian Code the transla- tion, division, or dismemberment of the remains of martyrs was expressly forbidden ("Nemo martyrem distrahat". Cod. Theod., IX, x^ii, 7); and some- what later Gregorj' the Great seems in very emphatic terms to attest the continuance of the same tradi- tion. He professed himself sceptical regarding the alleged "customs of the Greeks" of readily trans- ferring the bodies of martjTs from place to place, declaring that throughout the West any interference with these honoured remains was looked upon as a sacrilegious act and that numerous prodigies had struck terror into the hearts of even well-meaning men who had attempted anything of the sort. Hence, though it was the Empress Constantina herself who had asked him for the head or some portion of the body of St. Paul, he treated the request as an im- possible one, explaining that, to obtain the supply of relics needful in the consecration of churches, it Wiis customan,' to lower into the Confession of the Apostles [as far as the second "cataract" — so we learn from a letter to Pope Ilermisdas in 519 (Thiel,

"Epist. gen.", I, 873) ] a box containing portions of silk or cloth, known as brandea, and these hrandea, after lying for a time in contact with the remains of the holy .\postles, were henceforth treated as reUcs. Gregory further offers to send Constantina some fil- ings from St. Peter's chains, a form of present of which we find frequent mention in his correspondence (St. Gregory, "Epist.", Mon. Germ. Hist., I, 264-66).

It is certain that long before this time an extended conception of the nature of a relic, such as this im- portant letter reveals, had gradually grown up. Al- ready when Eusebius wTote (c. 325) such objects as the chair of St. James or the oil multiplied by Bishop Narcissus (Hist. Eccl., VII, xxxix, and VI, ix) were clearly ^•enerated as relics, and St. Augustine, in his "De Civit. Dei" (xxii, 8), gives numerous instances of miracles wrought by soil from the Holy Land, flowers which had touched a relicjuary or had been laid upon a particular altar, oil from the lamps of the church of a martj-r, or bj- other things not less remotely connected with the saints themselves. Further, it is noteworthy that the Roman prejudice against translating and di\'iding seems only to have apphed to the actual bodies of the martyrs reposing in their tombs. It is St. Gregory himself who en- riches a little cross, destined to hang round the neck as an encolpion, with filings both from St. Peter's chains and from the gridiron of St. Laurence ("Epist.", Mon. Germ. Hist., I, 192). Before the year 350, St. Cyril of Jerusalem three times over informs us that the fragments of the wood of the Cross found by St. Helen had been distributed piecemeal and had filled the whole world (Cat., iv, 10; x, 19; xiii, 4). This implies that Western pilgrims felt no more im- propriety in ^ecei^^ng than the Eastern bishops in giving.

During the Merovingian and Carlovingian period the cultus of rehcs increased rather than diminished. Gregory of Tours abounds in stories of the mar^els wrought by them, as well as of the practices used in their honour, some of which have been thought to be analogous to those of the pagan "incubations" (De Glor. Conf., xx); neither does he omit to mention the frauds occasionally perpetrated by scoundrels through motives of greed. Verj' significant, as Hauck (Kirchengesch. Deutschl., I, 185) has noticed, is the prologue to the text of the Salic Laws, probably written by a contemporarj- of Gregorj- of Tours in the si.vth century. "That nation", it says, "which has undoubtedly in battle shaken off the hard yoke of the Romans, now that it has been illuminated through Baptism, has adorned the bodies of the holy martjTs with gold and precious stones, those same bodies which the Romans burnt ^%ith fire, and pierced with the sword, or threw to wild beasts to be torn to pieces." In England we find from the first a strong tradition in the same sense deri\-ed from St. Gregor>' himself. Bede records (Hist. Eccl., I, xxix) how the pope "forwarded to Augustine all the things needful for the worship and service of the church, namely, sacred vessels, altar linen, church ornaments, priestly and clerical vestments, relics of the holy .\postles and martyrs and also many books". The Penitential ascribed to St. Theodore, .\rchbishop of Canterbury, which certainly was known in England at an early date, declares that "the relics of the saints are to be venerated", and it adds, seemingly in connexion with the same idea, that "if possible a candle is to burn there every night" (Haddiin .and Stubbs, "Councils", III, 191). When we remember the candles which King Alfred con- stantly kept burning before his relics, the .authenticity of this cl.ause in Theodore's Penitential seems the more probable. Again the relics of English saints, fi)r example those of St. Ciithbert. and St. Oswald, soon became famous, while in the case of the latter we hear of them all over the continent. Mr. Plummer