Volume 2

A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood.

Date:: [between 1890 and 1899?]

Credit: A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

994/1016 (page 2046)

$a like humility in attributing the cures he worked to the means he employed, and not least to the relics he bore about his person (Vie du grand St. Germain, par Dom Viole). Secondly, we may note the acknowledgment on the part of those who fully believed in and themselves recorded contemporary miracles, that those who wrought them were liable to be unduly elated by their own performances. Thus pope Gregory reminds Augustine, in respect of the miracles that saint had wrought in England, that the working of miracles was no requisite for obtain- ing a place amongst the elect {Ep. xi. 28). II. Wonders wrought by Relics. The relics of a saint perpetuated the benefits which the saint himself during his lifetime had conferred upon those who stood in need of heal- ing or succour. [RiiLics.] The translation, again, of a saint’s body, for the purpose of obtaining for it a safer or more honourable resting-place, frequently gave rise to a display of its thaumaturgic virtues (e.g. Translatio S. Severini, Acta SS. ad d. 8 Jan.). We must note that, unlike those which were wrought by living saints, miracles due to relics form no continuous chain reaching from the earliest to the latest portion of our period, originating as .they did in the latter half of the 4th century. The church, however, was prepared to believe in the working of miracles by relics through the operation of various causes: first, by the regard she had long paid to the remains of mr.rtyrs; secondly by the association of these remains—placed as they were beneath the altars of churches—with the mysteries: “Episcopus, qui super mortuorum hominum, Petri et Pauli, secundum nos, ossa veneranda . . . offert Domino sacrificia, et tumulos eorum, Christ! altaria ar- bitratur ” (Hieronym. ii. adv. Vigil, p. 153); thirdly, by the prevalence of a notion, of heathen origin, that the souls of the departed lingered about the graves in which the bodies rested (Lactant. ii. 2; Greg. M. Dial. ii. 38). Perhaps also in accounting for a readiness to believe in the virtue of that which was inanimate and possessed no powers of volition, we must not wholly eliminate even from the mind of the populace the effect of the teaching of philosophy that the Deity Himself wrought by inherent virtue rather than by will—(puaei ov ; —while as an influence acting immediately and most effectually in bringing about this belief we must place the example of notable men such as Ambrose, Augustine, Basil and Chrysostom. 1. Miracles of beneficence. (1) Exorcism, healing ; (2) Raising the dead ; (3) Deliverance, protection, succour. (1) Exorcisms and miraculous cures wrought. 1. By the bodies of saints. 2. By objects brought into contact with or proximity to the bodies of saints, living or dead, (a) The gar- ments of saints or other objects possessed by saints. (6) Cloths laid upon the bodies of dead saints, (c) The candles which illuminated or the lamps which were suspended above the tomb of a saint, (d) The dust which gathered upon the tomb, (p) Water with which the tomb was washed. (/) The fabric and furni- ture of the church which held the relics. 1. By saints’ bodies. Many miracles were wrought by St. Stephen's relics.* And first upon their discovery at Ca- phargamala near Jerusalem, in consequence of a twofold revelation. The town of Calama had possessed relics of St. Stephen for about eight years, and that of Hippo for less thaii two years, when St. Augustine made the assertion that many books would have to be written in order to recount all the miracles of healing—to say nothing of others—which had been wrought by means of these relics during this space of time in the two districts of Calama and Hippo, and that of those which had taken place in the latter district alone nearly seventy accounts had already been written (^De Civ. Dei, xxii. 8, § 20). For further examples of miraculous cures wrought by saints’ bodies we may refer to the following instances : the cures which took place at Milan, after the discovery made by St. Ambrose of the bodies of SS. Gervasius and Protasius, of the blind Severus [Relics, p. 1769], and of demoniacs and other sick people upon their touching the cloths which lay upon the relics, or by means of the shadow the relics cast when borne through the streets of the town (Ambros. Ep. xxii. 9); the healing of a leper at Alexandria by the body of Elisha, A.D. 456 (Theoph. 176); the cure of a blind man who on touching the covering of the bier of St. Theuderius found blood flow from his eyes and received sight (Ado Viennensis in Migne, Patrol. Lat. cxxiii. 447); of a blind woman at the funeral of St. Aigulphus of Lerins, a.d. 675 (^Acta SS. Ben. saec. ii.); of five blind persons and two with shrunken limbs, at St. Martin’s tomb at Tours (Greg. Turon. de Mir. Mart. i. 12, 25 ; ii. 44, 58 ; iv. 42) ; of a palsied man at the tomb of Germanus, bishop of Paris (^De Gloria Confessor. 90); frequent cures of ague at the tomb of St. Genevifeve (ib. 91); one of tooth- ache at that of St. Medard near Soissons (ib. 95) ; and various miracles of healing wrought by St. John Baptist’s head at Emesa (Theoph. 665). 2. By objects'brought into contact with, or proximity to, the bodies of saints, living or dead. Miracles wrought by such means were, accord- ing to Gregory the Great, likely to make a deeper impression upon the popular mind than those which were wrought by the actual bodies of saints (^Dial. ii. 38); and for this reason: in the latter case they might be regarded as wrought, in answer to prayer, by the saint him- self whose spirit was supposed to hover about its former tenement. (a) Saints’ garments or possessions. The tunic of St. John the Evangelist, preserved in Rome, worked many miracles ( Vita Greg. M. auctore Jo. Diacono, lib. iii. 59). The 'shoes of St. Gall, A.D. 646, healed a man, to whom they were given after the saint’s death, of contraction of the limbs (^Acta SS, Ben. saec. ii.) ; those of St. Cuthbert, A.D. 687, one afflicted with paraly- sis (ibid.), ^rhe bed on which St. Gertrude, abbess of a convent at Nivelles in Brabant, A.D. 658, had been wont to sleep, wrought cures (ibid.), as did also the fringe or threads of a “ So many indeed were wrought in the course of the ages as to give rise to a proverb ■ “ Whoever pretends to have read all the miracles of St. Stephen, he lies ” (^Freculphus apud Basnage, nisi, dts Juifs, tom. vlil, p. 249, Gibbon, xxviii.).$