and Paul had been bound. These filings were regarded by Pope Gregory I as efficacious in healing as were the bones of the martyrs. How and by whom these relics were collected and preserved no one thought, no one dared, perhaps, to ask. To doubt was already heresy. Mr. Mackay, in his Popular Delusions half humorously remarks, "There were toe nails enough in Europe at the time of the Council of Cleremont to have filled a sack, all of which were devoutly believed to have grown on the sacred foot of St. Peter." Concerning the fragments of the true cross he says, " they would, if collected together in one place, have been almost sufficient to have built a Cathedral.” 1 Poor indeed was the church in those days which did not possess some of these relics. Touching the hangings about the tomb of St. Martin was sufficient to cure Bishop Gregory of Tours of a pain in the temples. He repeated the experiment three times with equal success. Once he was cured of an attack of mortal dysentery by drinking a glass of water in which he had dissolved a pinch of dust scraped up on the tomb of the Saint. At another time when his tongue had become swollen and tumefied, he licked the railing of the tomb of St. Martin and his tongue returned to its natural size. Even a toothache was cured by St. Martin's relics. In the following apostrophe of Bishop Gregory to the relics of St. Martin we have a very good example of symbolism degenerated into fetich worship. "Oh ineffable theriac! ineffable pigment! admirable antidote! celestial purge! superior to all drugs of the faculty! sweeter than aromatics! stronger than unguents together! thou cleanest the stomach like scammony, the lungs like hyssop, thou purgest the head like pyre-thrig!" Very important among these relics was the Agnus Dei, or piece of wax from the Paschal candles, stamped with the figures of a lamb and consecrated by the Pope. In 1471 Pope Paul II expatiated to the Church on the efficacy of this fetich in preserving men from fire, shipwreck, tempest, lightning, and hail, as well as assisting women in childbirth and he reserved to himself and his successors the manufacture of it. Even as late as 1517 Pope Leo X issued, for a consideration, tickets bearing a cross and the following inscription: "This cross measured forty times makes the 1 Vol. 1, p. 157. height of Christ in his humanity. He who kisses it is preserved for seven days from falling sickness, apoplexy, and sudden death." "Water in which a single hair of a Saint had been dipped was used as a purgative; water in which St. Remy's hair had been dipped cured fevers; wine in which the bones of a Saint had been dipped cured lunacy; oil from a lamp burning before the tomb of St. Gall cured tumors; St. Valentine cured epilepsy: St. Christopher, throat diseases; St. Utropius, dropsy; St. Ovid, deafness; St. Vitus, St. Anthony, and a multitude of other saints, the maladies which bear their names. Even as late as 1784 we find certain authorities in Bavaria ordering that any one bitten by a mad dog shall at once put up prayers at the shrine of St. Hubert, and not waste his time in any attempts at medical or surgical cure. In the twelfth century we find a noted cure attempted by causing the invalid to drink water in which St. Bernard had washed his hands. Flowers which rested on the tomb of a saint, when steeped in water, were supposed to be especially efficacious in various diseases," etc., etc.1 Similar beliefs and practices obtain to-day among the lower class French who visit the shrine at Lourdes, the Canadians who journey to the shrine of St. Anne d'Aupres, and among millions of Russian peasants. In all these cases we have symbolism degenerated into fetichism and idolatry of the crassest sort. It is a distinct backsliding from a height already attained, and is pathological in that it has proven injurious to the health of the believers and detrimental to the natural development of science. 66 Naturally, the belief thus sanctioned by the successive heads of the Church, infallible in all teachings regarding faith and morals," writes Mr. A. D. White, "created a demand for amulets and charms of all kinds; and under this influence we find a reversion to old pagan fetiches. Nothing on the whole stood more constantly in the way of any proper development of medical science than these fetich cures whose efficacy was based on theological reasoning and sanctioned by ecclesiastical policy." "2 Fetichism, like symbolism, is normal in its proper time 1 See A. D. White: Hist. of the Warfare of Science with Theology, Vol. 2, pp. 28 ff. 2 A. D. White: Hist. of the Warfare of Science with Theol., Vol. 2, p. 30. and place. There is not a plant, animal, or object on our earth; not a star or planet in the heavens; not a fish, perhaps, in the sea, that has not at some time been the object of religious worship, and believed to possess talismanic powers. And all this was and is natural and necessary to primitive peoples as it is to our own children; it harmonizes with their stage of development. But not so with the Christians of the Middle Ages and later, not so with modern Buddhism and Brahmanism, not so with the Russian army from the commander-in-chief down to the ordinary, who have taken with them icons of their favorite saints to protect them in their battles against the heathen Japanese,1 not so with the French and Canadians of to-day. In the one case fetichism is a natural religion, the only one possible to that stage of development; in the other it is superstition and inexcusable ignorance, a degeneration and disgrace to the religion to which it parasitically adheres. The Christianity of the Middle Ages, for example, seems to have entirely forgotten John's definition of religion and even the Sermon on the Mount in which the Master laid bare the living heart of religion. And indeed this is true of the Christianity of a comparatively late period, in which ceremony played the leading, and morality only a minor rôle. Mr. R. P. Knight, speaking of the early part of the 17th century, says, "In religious matters, while open impurity of life incurred little disapproval, there existed an extraordinary sensitiveness in regard to every possible encroachment upon the domain fenced off and consecrated to technical orthodoxy. There was a taboo as strict if not as mysterious as was ever imposed and enforced by the Sacerdotal caste of the Kanaka Islands."2 To disregard the smallest religious ordinance was considered a criminal act and punished as such. The rule of St. Columbanus, for instance, required, among other things, "a year's penance for him who loses a consecrated wafer; six months for him who suffers it to be eaten by mice; twenty days for him who lets it turn red; forty days for him who contemptuously flings it into the water; twenty days for him who brings it up through weakness of stomach, but if through illness, ten days. He who neglects his Amen to the Benedicite, 1 See Open Court, Sept., 1904. 2 Symbolical Lang. of Ancient Art and Mythology, Preface, p. iv. who speaks when eating, who forgets to make the sign of the Cross on his spoon, or on a lantern lighted by a younger brother is to receive six or twelve stripes."1 Similarly, among the Hindus, any mistake made in the food that might be eaten, in the dress that might be worn, in the sacrifice that might be paid; any error in pronunciation, a mistake about clarified butter, an unauthorized arrangement of raiment or hair might involve the worshipper in pains and penalties of the most awful character. "The seventeenth Fargard or chapter of the Vendidad— a portion of the Zendavesta, is tediously liturgical and discusses such minutiæ as the arrangement of the hair of the head, the extraction of bad or gray hairs, and the cutting of nails. If these operations are performed without certain prescribed ceremonies, the devs or demons come upon earth, and parasitical organisms are produced to the great discomfort and injury of man. Little wonder, then, that the common people employed the priests at the price practically of their freedom, to assist them in their worship."2 The religion of the Buddhists of Thibet requires that the believer should be all his time immersed in holy contemplation of the perfections of Buddha, and the believer is taught that it is a meritorious act and a patent cure for sin to be continually reading or reciting portions of the sacred books of Buddha. But, as many of the people could not read, and still more had not the time to carry out these injunctions, a contrivance had to be invented whereby they could serve their God and attend to their work at the same time. The priests declared that it would be sufficient for those who could not read, if they merely turned over the rolled manuscripts which embodied the invaluable precepts. But this, too, required a vast amount of time and trouble, and therefore a further simplification had to be made. Praising wheels or cylinders, varying in size from a few inches to many feet in height and diameter were constructed so that they could be easily rotated by hand or by water. These cylinders are filled with paper or cloth, on which is repeated as many times as can be written a Mantra, i. e., a word or combination of words which may be used by way of invocation during an act of worship. Each time the cylinder re 1 Quoted by Herbert Spencer: Ecclesiastical Institutions. 2 W. H. D. Adams: Curiosities of Superstition. volves on its axis the devotee is accredited with having uttered the pious invocation written on the strips of paper or cloth, and receives so much Kharma or merit. Since, therefore, the more the wheel is turned, the more Kharma is acquired by the person who caused it to turn, the easiest and best thing to do is to construct cylinders which can be turned by hand or better still by water. 66 "On the outside of many a temple" (in Thibet), writes Mr. Wm. Simpson, there was a long row of small cylinders, each about the size of an oyster barrel, placed in the wall at such a height that any one in passing could turn them with the hand." He also describes several wheels turned by water power. A cheaper variation of the same machine was a small cylinder which could be tied around the wrist, and would continue to grind out acts of worship while the owner carried on his daily work. Mr. Adams compares these turnings to the telling of beads done so frequently in European lands, not only by nuns and monks, but even by the workmen as homeward along the road they plod their weary way,' and says: "Prayer, even among Christians, is apt to degenerate into a dull, mechanical uniformity, and to become scarcely less perfunctory than that which the Thibetans grind out of their prayer-machine."2 Note, for example, the repetitions in the following: Heart of Mary, full of grace, pray for us! sanctuary of the Holy Trinity, pray for us ! ! etc. Also the oft-recurring "Good Lord deliver us!" and "We beseech Thee to hear us, Good Lord." The orthodox Jews repeat on the Day of Atonement and New Year the following phrase, with slight additions and variations, 168 times: "For the sin that we have committed in thy presence," etc. And on week days they repeat the following 44 and 26 times respectively: "Our Father, our King," etc. "For His mercy endureth forever," etc. Besides these there are numerous other prayers which consist of long and tedious repetitions of the same phrase. "There is a coarse superstition embodied in the praying 1 The Buddhist Praying Wheel. 2 W. H. D. Adams: Curiosities of Superstition, p. 2. |