There are no doubt differences to be traced between the Christian and the heathen cult of relics. And these differ- ences are not always to the advantage of the Christians. There is the matter of the partition of relics, for example, and the roaring trade which, partly in consequence of this, has from time to time been driven in them. The ancient world knew nothing of these horrors. In it the sentiment of reverence for the dead determined all its conduct toward relics. Christians seem to have been inspired rather with eagerness to reap the fullest possible benefit from their saints ; and, reasoning that when a body is filled with super- natural power every part of the body partakes of this power, they broke the bodies up into fragments and distributed them far and wide.61 The insatiable lust to secure such valuable possessions begot in those who trafficked in them a callous rapacity which traded on the ignorance and super- stition of the purchasers. The world was filled with false relics,62 of which, however, this is to be said — that they worked as well as the true.63 So highly was the mere pos- session of relics esteemed that the manner of their acquisi- tion was condoned in the satisfaction of having them. Theft was freely resorted to — it was called furtum lauda- bile;6i and violent robbery was not unknown — and that with (so it was said) the manifest approval of God. St.
94 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
Maximinus, bishop of Treves, died at Poitiers (of which town he was a native) on a journey to Rome, and very naturally was buried there. But the inhabitants of Treves wished their bishop for themselves, and stole him out of the church at Poitiers. When the Aquitanians pursued the thieves, heaven intervened and drove them back home, not without disgrace, while the thieves were left scathless,65 and furthered on their journey.
All sorts of irreverent absurdities naturally found their way into the collections of relics, through an inflamed craving for the merely marvellous. The height of the ab- surd seems already to be reached when we read in Pausa- nias that in the shrine of "the daughters of Leucippus," at Sparta, the egg which Leda laid was to be seen.66 The absurdity is equally great, however, when we hear of the Christians preserving feathers dropped from the wings of Gabriel when he came to announce to Mary the birth of Jesus ; and it is only covered from sight by the shock given by the irreverence of it, when we read of pilgrim monks boasting of having seen at Jerusalem the finger of the Holy Spirit.67 Any ordinary sense of the ridiculous, however, should be sufficiently satisfied by the solemn exhibition in the church of Saints Cosmas and Damien at Rome of a "vial of the milk of the Blessed Virgin Mary." But Ossa is piled on Pelion when we learn that this is far from the only specimen of Mary's milk which is to be seen in the churches. Several churches in Rome have specimens, and many in France — at Evron, and Soulac, and Mans, and Reims, and Poitiers, and St. Denis, and Bouillac, and the Sainte Chapelle at Paris; the Cathedral of Soissons has two samples of it; and the Cathedral at Chartres three. Then there is some more at Toledo and at the convent of St. Peter d'Arlanza in Spain, and of course in other countries as well. We are fairly astonished at the amount of it.68
This astonishment is only partly relieved when we are
THE MILK OF THE VIRGIN 95