4 5 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Another favorite means with the clergy of the older Church, for 

 bringing to naught the powers of the air, was found in great Proces- 

 sions, bearing statues, relics, and holy emblems through the streets.* 

 Yet, even these were not always immediately effective. One at Liege, 

 in the thirteenth century, thrice proved unsuccessful in bringing rain, 

 when at last it was found that the image of the Virgin had been for- 

 gotten ! A new procession was at once formed, the Salve Regina 

 sung, and the rain came down in such torrents as to drive \ha devo- 

 tees to shelter, f 



In Catholic lands this custom remains to this day, and very impor- 

 tant features in these processions are the statues and reliquaries of 

 patron saints. Some of these excel in bringing sunshine, others in 

 bringing rain. The Cathedral of Chartres is so fortunate as to possess 

 sundry relics of Saint Taurin, especially potent against dry weather, and 

 some of Saint Piat, very nearly as infallible against wet weather. J In 

 certain regions a single saint gives protection alternately against wet 

 and dry weather as, for example, Saint Godeberte at Noyon.* Against 

 storms Saint Barbara is very generally considered the most powerful 

 protectress ; but, in the French diocese of Limoges, Notre Dame de 

 Crocq has proved a most powerful rival, for when, a few years since, 

 all the neighboring parishes were ravaged by storms, not a hailstone 

 fell in the canton which she protected. In the diocese of Tarbes, 

 Saint Exupere is especially invoked against hail, peasants flocking 

 from all the surrounding country to his shrine. || 



But the means of baffling the powers of the air which came to be 

 most widely used was the ringing of consecrated Church-Bells. 



This usage had begun in the time of Charlemagne, and there is 

 extant a prohibition of his against the custom of baptizing bells and 

 of hanging certain tags A on their tongues as a protection against hail- 

 storms ; but even Charlemagne was powerless against this current of 

 mediaeval superstition. Theological reasons were soon poured into it, 

 and, about the year 970, Pope John XIII is said to have baptized a bell 

 in the Lateran, christening it with his own name, to have stood sponsor 



vitentur ad laudes, fragor grandinum, procella turbinum, impetus tempostatum, ventorum 

 rabies, infesta tonitrua temperentur, f'ugiant atque tremiscant maligni spiritus ante Sanctse 

 Crucis vexillum, quod in illis exseulptum est. . . ." (" Sacr. Cer. Rom. Eccl.," as above.) 

 If any are curious as to the extent to which this consecrated wax was a specific for all 

 spiritual and most temporal ills during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, let them 

 consult the Jesuit " Litterae annua?," passim. 



* John of Winterthur describes many such in Switzerland in the thirteenth century, 

 and all the monkish chronicles speak of them. 



\ See Rydberg, " Magic of the Middle Ages," p. 74. 



% See the " Guide du touriste et du pelerin a Chartres," 1867 (cited by "Paul Parfait," 

 in his " Dossier des Pelerinages "). 



* See " Paul Parfait," as above, p. 139. 

 1 See " Paul Parfait," as above, p. 145. 



A "Perticae." See Montanus, " Hist. Xachricht von den Glockcn" (Chemnitz, 1726), 

 p. 121 ; and Meyer, " Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters," p. 186. 



