Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/195

Rh He used to handle the holy objects as if they were expensive medicines. At the approach of death he sent to all parts of the world for extraordinary relics. The pope sent him the corporal of Saint Peter. The Great Turk actually offered him a collection of relics which were still at Constantinople. On the table beside his bed was the “Sainte Ampoule,” the vase in which the holy oil for coronation was kept, and which had never left Reims before. According to Commines, the king wanted to try its miraculous virtue by having his whole body anointed. The cross of Saint Laud was specially sent for from Angers to take an oath upon, for Louis made a difference between oaths taken on one relic and on another. These are traits reminding us of the Merovingian times.

In him the fervent venerator of relics blends with the collector of curiosities. He corresponds with Lorenzo de Medici about the ring of Saint Zanobi and about an Agnus Dei, that is to say, one of these figures cut out of the fibrous trunk of an Asiatic fern, which were also called Agnus Scythicus, or Tartarian lamb, and to which rare medicinal virtues were attributed. At Plessis lès Tours the holy persons, summoned thither to say prayers for the king, rub shoulders with musicians of all sorts. “At that time the king had a great number of players of deep-toned and sweet instruments brought to him, whom he lodged at Saint-Cosme, near Tours, where they assembled, as many as a hundred and twenty, among whom there were many shepherds from the country of Poitou. Who often played before the king’s mansion (but they did not see him), that the king might enjoy the aforesaid instruments as a pleasure and pastime and to prevent him from sleeping. And, on the other hand, he also sent for a great number of male and female bigots and devout people like hermits and saintly creatures, to pray God incessantly to allow that he should not die and that He might let him live longer.

Saint Francis of Paula, the Calabrian hermit, who surpassed the Minorite friars in humility by founding the order of the Minims, was literally a purchase of the royal collector. After having failed with the king of Naples, Louis’s diplomacy succeeded, by the pope’s intervention, in securing the miraculous man. A noble escort bore him from Italy, sorely against