14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ally scouted the theory that diseases are due to natural causes, 

 and most of them deprecated a resort to surgeons and physicians 

 rather than to supernatural means.* 



Other considerations were developed as the middle ages went 

 on which strengthened this idea. Again we must bear in mind 

 that while there is no need to attribute the mass of these stories 

 regarding miraculous cures to conscious fraud, there was, without 

 doubt, at a later period, no small admixture of belief biased by 

 self-interest, with much pious invention and suppression of facts. 

 Enormous revenues flowed into various monasteries and churches 

 in all parts of Europe from relics noted for their healing powers. 

 Every cathedral, every great abbey, and nearly every parish 

 church claimed possession of healing relics. While, undoubtedly, 

 a childlike faith was at the bottom of this belief, there came out 

 of it unquestionably a great development of the mercantile spirit. 

 The commercial value of sundry relics was often very high. In 

 the year 1056 a French ruler pledged securities to the amount of 

 ten thousand solidi for the production of the relics of St. Just 

 and St. Pastor, pending a legal decision regarding the ownership 

 between him and the Archbishop of Narbonne. The Emperor of 

 Germany on one occasion demanded, as a sufficient pledge for the 

 establishment of a city market, the arm of St. George. The body 

 of St. Sebastian brought enormous wealth to the Abbey of Sois- 

 sons ; Rome, Canterbury, Treves, Marburg, every great city drew 

 large revenues from similar sources, and the Venetian Republic 

 ventured very considerable sums in the purchase of relics. 



Naturally, then, the corporations, whether lay or ecclesiastical, 

 which drew large revenue from relics looked with little favor on 

 a science which tended to discredit their investments. 



Nowhere perhaps in Europe can the philosophy of this devel- 

 opment of fetichism be better studied than at Cologne. At the 

 cathedral, preserved in a magnificent shrine since about the 

 twelfth century, are the skulls of the Three Kings or Wise Men 

 of the East, who, guided by the star of Bethlehem, brought in- 

 cense to the Saviour. These relics were an enormous source of 

 wealth to the cathedral chapter during many centuries. But 

 other ecclesiastical bodies in that city were both pious and shrewd, 

 and so we find that not far off, at the church of St. Gereon, a 

 cemetery has been dug up, and the bones distributed over the 



* For Origcn, see the Contra Celsum, lib. vii, chap. 31. For Augustine, De Divinit. et 

 Demon., chap, hi, p. 371. For Tertullian and Gregory of Nazianzen, see citations in Spren- 

 gcl and in Fort, p. 6. For Gregory of Tours and St. Nilus, see History of France, vol. v, 

 p. 6 ; De Mirac. S. Martini, vol. ii, p. 60 ; cited in the History of the Iniquisition of the 

 Middle Ages, by Henry Charles Lea, New York, 1888, p. 410, note. For the turning of 

 the Greek mythology into a demonology as largely due to St. Paul, see I Corithians, chap. 

 x, v. 20: "The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God." 



