Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/88

76 On the other hand, the odour of sanctity in mediæval times was a much more real perfume than that in which the Jackdaw of Reims died. It does not seem, so far as I can make out from my reading, that the sweet smell of the Saints was ever remarked in the early centuries of the Christian era, The odour diffused around his pillar by St. Simeon Stylites, for example, was by no means pleasant. But by A.D. 1000 the sweetness of the Saints’ persons was beginning to pervade the religious atmosphere. Writing about that time, Odericus Vitalis tells us that “from the sepulchre of St. Andrew” (at Patras, Asia Minor) “manna like flour and oil of an exquisite odour flow, which indicate to the inhabitants of that country” what the crops will be like that year. And the example thus set by this apostle is followed by all other saintly personages for many centuries.

In England, we read that when the Blessed Martyr Alban’s burial place on the hill above Verulamium was opened, in obedience to a sign from heaven in the shape of a flash of lightning, the good people were enraptured by the delicious fragrance of the Saint's remains, and the same characteristic attended those of the later martyr Thomas à Becket.

St. Thomas à Kempis is credited with the statement that the chamber of the blessed Leduine was so charmingly odorous that people who were