Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/98

82 82 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. psalms;" while Richard Fouler^ propitiates St. Romwold, in the aisles of whose church he was to be buried, by directing that : — "a new tombe or shrine for the saide saint, where the old is now standing, be made curiously with marble, and upon the same that there be set a coffin or chest curiously wrought and gilt as it appertaineth for to lay the bones of the said saint in ; and this all to be done at my cost and charge." It is also noticeable that this was felt as a legal obligation in favor not only of the testator but of his connections, and was dis- charged ex debito jtistiticB. Thus Katherine Lady Hastings, Nov. 22, 1503,^ provides that a priest shall sing " for my fadyr, and my lady my modar, my lord my husband's soule for my soule and for all Christian soules ; and in special for those soules which I am most bounden to cause to be prayed for." " For all for whom I am most bounden to pray," says Sir Thomas Lyttleton,^ the judge; includ- ing under that term, by a sort of collateral warranty, his wife's former husband. So Joane Lady Bergavenny, in the will already quoted from,* refers her pious bequests as made " for the profit of my own soul and all theirs I am bounden to," whom a later enumer- ation shows to be her husband, father, mother, etc. ; and Elizabeth Lady Abergavenny provides for a priest to pray for all her four husbands, enumerated by name.^ No means were neglected to defeat the machinations of the " auncient and goostly enemy of mankind." Chief perhaps among these agencies were relics. It would require volumes to do justice to this subject. We can only point out in passing that the efficacy of these was so absolutely automatic that it mattered not how their possession was obtained. A stolen body, arm, leg, bone, or tooth of St. Denis,^ St Nicolas,^ or Venerable Bede,® was as efficacious for the thief as for the true owner. Nay, such was their potency that people were healed by them against their will. Thus a twelfth-century chronicler piously narrates that when in the year 887 the relics of St. Martin of Tours were brought home from Auxerre, two cripples of Touraine, who earned an easy livelihood 1 Nicolas, Test. Vet. i. 344. 3 Supra, p. 78. 2 Id. ii. 450. * Supra, p. 75. 6 Will Apr. 24, 1500 ; Nic. Test. Vet. ii. 444. ^ Odericus Vitalis, ii. 384 (Rohn ed.). 8 Simeon of Durham, ap. Bede's Works, Int. xxi, xxii.
 * See Translatio S. Dionysii, Pertz Men. Germ. Hist. xiii. 343.