Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/22

12 sainted personages in the early Church and throughout the middle ages. For the story of travelers converted into domestic animals, see St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, liber xviii, chaps, xvii, xviii, in Mique, torn, xli, p. 674. For Gregory of Nazianzen and the similarity of these Christian cures in general character to those wrought in the temples of.Esculapius, see Sprengel, vol. ii, pp. 145, 146. For the miracles wrought at the shrine of St. Edmund, see Samsonis Abbatis Opus de Miraculis Sancti Ædmundi, in the Master of the Rolls series, passim, but especially chaps, xiv and xix, for miracles of healing wrought on those who drank out of the saint's cup. For the mighty works of St. Dunstan, see the Mirac. Sanct Dunstan, Auctore Eadmero and Auctore Osberno, in the Master of the Rolls series. As to Becket, see the materials for the Life of Thomas a Becket in the same scries, and especially the lists of miracles—the mere index of them in the first volume requires thirteen octavo pages. For St. Martin of Tours, see the Guizot edition of French Chronicles. For miracle and shrine cures chronicled by Bede, see his Ecclesiastical History, passim, but especially from page 1 10 to page 267. For similarity between the ancient custom of allowing invalids to sleep in the temples of Serapis and the mediæval custom of having them sleep in the church of St. Antony of Padua and other churches, see Meyer, Aberglaube des Mittelalters, Basel, 1884, chap. iv. For the effect of "the vivid belief in supernatural action which attaches itself to the tombs of the saints," etc., as "a psychic agent of great value," see Littré, Médecine et Médeeins, [sic] p. 181. For the Jansenist miracles at Paris, see La Vérite des Miracles opérés par l'lntercession de M. de Paris, par Montgéron, Utrecht, 1737, and especially the cases of Mary Anne Couronneau, Philippe Sergent, and Gautier de Pezenas. For some very thoughtful remarks as to the worthlessness of the testimony to miracles presented during the canonization proceedings at Rome, see Maury, Légendes Pieuses.

But miraculous cures were not ascribed to persons merely. Another growth, mainly from germs in our sacred books developed by the early Church, took shape in miracles wrought by streams, by pools of water, and especially by relics. Here, too, the old types persisted, and just as we find holy and healing wells, pools, and streams in all other ancient religions, so we find in the evolution of our own such examples as Naaman the Syrian cured of leprosy by bathing in the river Jordan, the blind man restored to sight by washing in the pool of Siloam, and the healing of those who touched the bones of Elisha, the shadow of St. Peter, or the handkerchief of St. Paul.

St. Cyril, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and other great fathers of the early Church sanctioned the belief that similar efficacy was to be found in the relics of the saints of their time; hence, St. Ambrose declared that "the precepts of medicine are contrary to celestial science, watching, and prayer"; and we find this statement reiterated from time to time throughout the middle ages. From this idea was evolved that fetichism which we shall see for ages standing in the way of medical science.

Theology, developed in accordance with this idea, wrapped all scientific effort more and more in an atmosphere of supernaturalism. The vividness with which the accounts of miracles in the sacred books were realized in the early Church continued the idea of miraculous intervention throughout the middle ages. The