Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/390

 372 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. to whom it was of importance to possess certified relics. The "poor little house of Bromholm," which had been enabled, from its possession of a cross made out of the sacred wood, to become large and powerful, became the envy of many other poor little houses, and throughout the West the demand for relics which might bring profit to their possessors continued to increase. At length the Chufch deemed it necessary to put a stop to the supply, and especially to that of the apocryphal and legendary acts which testified to their authenticity, and in 1215 the fourth Lateran Council judged it necessary to make a decree enjoining the bishops to take means to prevent pilgrims from being deceived.^ It is easy to ridicule the respect and veneration paid to the sacred tears, the numerous small crosses made from Absence of iiii iii sceptical the lioly wood, the heads, arms, and old garments of saints and martyrs. It is more difiicult to un- derstand how the men of the thirteenth century could have regarded these objects as genuine. It seems reasonable to sup- pose that many persons must have suspected their genuineness. The relics existed in such numbers, there were so many pro- fessing to be originals of the same object, the wood of the true cross was so abundant, and the legends relating to the preser- vation of such relics, as, for example, the tear of Christ, were so extraordinary, that it is almost incomprehensible that men's suspicions were not generally aroused. It must be remem- bered, however, that we are dealing with the ages of faith, and that relics in the East were not regarded with the same superstitious veneration as they were at the end of the twelfth century, and subsequently, by the masses in the West. Neither earnestness in religion nor belief in its superstitions were, or are, so intense in the Eastern as in the Western Churches. In the East I doubt whether relics have ever been regarded with the same veneration as they were in the West. The Eastern spirit was less gross or more spiritual than that of the West. The tendency to drive a harmless and natural habit accedunt vanis figmentis aut falsis decipi documentis." — "Deer." Ixii.
 * " Praclati non permittant illos qui eorura ecclesias causa yenerationis