Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/50

 a great number of cenotaphs of heroes, just as the shrines of Saints are honoured in Christian churches. More, the translations of the bones or ashes of heroes were common in Greece. Thus in the archonship of Apsephion, 469, the remains of Theseus were brought from Scyros to Athens, and carried into the city amid sacrifices and every demonstration of triumphal joy. Thebes recovered from Ilion the bones of Hector, and presented to Athens those of Œdipus, to Lebadea those of Arcesilaus, and to Megara those of Aigialeus.

The analogy between these ancient practices and Christianity may be pushed further yet. Just as, in our own churches, objects that have belonged to the Saints are exposed for the veneration of the faithful, so in the old temples visitors were shown divers curiosities whose connexion with a god or a hero would command their respect. At Minihi Tréguier we may reverence a fragment of the Breviary of S. Yves, at Sens the stole of S. Thomas of Canterbury, at Bayeux the chasuble of S. Regnobert, in S. Maria Maggiore the cincture and veil of S. Scholastica; so in various localities of Greece were exhibited the cittara of Paris, the lyre of Orpheus, portions of the ships of Agamemnon and Æneas. Can anything further be needed to prove that the veneration of Holy Relics is merely a pagan survival?

Superficially the theory seems plausible enough, and yet it will not stand a moment before the judgement of history. The cultus of the Saints and their Relics is not an outcome of ancient hero-worship, but of reverence for the Martyrs, and this can be demonstrated without any possibility of question. So here we have two very striking parallels, each of which has an analogous starting-point, two cults which naturally develop upon logical and similar lines, but without any interdependence whatsoever. Needless to say, the unbalanced folklorist, who is in general far too insufficiently equipped for any such inquiry, has rushed in with his theories—to his own utter undoing. And so, with regard to Witchcraft, there appear in the rites of the Sabbat and other hellish superstitions to be ceremonies which are directly derived from heathendom, but this, as a matter of fact, is far from the case. Accordingly we recognize that the thesis of Miss M. A. Murray in her anthropological study The