RELATIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE 



RELICS 



633 



ledge is finite and subject to revision does not 

 deprive it of validity or objective truth in its own 

 time and place. The case for the relativity of 

 knowledge will be found strongly put in Sir W. 

 Hamilton's Discussions and Lectures on Meta- 

 physics, in Dean Mansel's Bampton Lectures, and 

 in Mr Herbert Spencer's First Principles. 



Relics (Gr. leinsana, Lat. reliquue, 'remains'), 

 personal memorials of those among the dead who 

 have been distinguished during life by eminent 

 qualities: especially, in the history of the church, 

 objects which derive their value from their connec- 

 tion with our Lord and with the saints ; as, for 

 example, fragments of our Lord's cross or crown of 

 thorns, portions of the dust, the bones, the blood, 

 the instruments of torture, the chains, &c. of the 

 martyrs, the mortal remains, the clothes, the books, 

 and other objects of personal use of the other 

 saints. With them may be grouped objects to 

 which a certain indirect sacred interest is given by 

 their being brought into contact with the direct 

 memorials of the distinguished dead, as by their 

 being placed on the tombs of the martyrs, touched 

 with the relics, or blessed at the shrine or sanctuary 

 of the saints, &c. Reverence for relics developed 

 with the increasing honour paid to Martyrs (q.v.). 



The earliest monuments of Christian history con- 

 tain evidences of the deep and reverential affection 

 with which martyrs of the faith, their mortal re- 

 mains, and everything connected with their martyr- 

 dom were regarded by their fellow-Christians, a'nd 

 for which Catholics profess to find warrant in many 

 passages of the Old and of the New Testament, aa 

 Ex. xiii. 19; 2 Kings, xiii. 21, and xxiii. 16-18; 

 Matt. ix. 20-22; Acts, v. 12-16, and xix. 11, 12. 

 The letter of the Church of Smyrna attests tliis 

 plainly as to the martyrdom of Polycarp ; Ponti;m's 

 Life of Cyprian tells of their stealing the martyr's 

 body, and carrying it away by night in holy 

 triumph. The Apostolical Constitutions bear wit- 

 ness to the honours paid. Miracles, too, are de- 

 scribed as connected with relics. Thus, Ambrose 

 tells of a blind man's sight restored by his touching 

 the bodies of the martyrs Gervawius and Protashis ; 

 and similar wonders are detailed by Gregory Naxi- 

 anzen, Chrysostom, and Leo the Great ; so that the 

 possession of relics of the martyrs, and even the 

 occasional touching of them, was regarded as a 

 special happiness. According to Theodoret, even 

 cities were content to share with each other por- 

 tions of the sacred treasure. Connected with this 

 feeling, too, is found a l>elief of a certain sacred 

 efficacy in the presence or the touch of the relics ; 

 and especially there is ascril>ed by Chrysostom, 

 Basil, Theodoret, and other Fathers, to prayers 

 offered l>efore the relics, a virtue in dispelling or 

 warding off sickness, dial>olical machinations, and 

 other evils. Hence we find that altars were 

 erected over the tombs of the martyrs, or at least 

 that relics were invariably placed on the altars, 

 wherever erected ; insomuch that the Trullan 

 Council ordered the demolition of all altars in 

 which no relics had been deposited. Far more 

 ".acred than the relics of martyrs was the cross of 

 our Lord, which was believed to have been dis- 

 covered at Jerusalem by Helena (q.v.), mother of 

 the Emperor Constantine. Minute portions of the 

 wood were distributed to the principal churches ; 

 and Cyril of Jerusalem, within less than a cen- 

 tury after the discovery of the cross, describes the 

 precious wood as dispersed throughout the world. 

 According to Rohault de Fleury's Memoire mtr lea 

 Instrument* de In Pussion, ' the total cubic volume 

 of all the known relics of the True Cross is about 

 5,000,000 cubic millimetres, whereas a cross large 

 enough for the execution of a man must have 

 contained at least 180,000,000 or thereby.' The 

 practice of rulic- worship, and the feeling on which 



it was founded, were not suffered to pass without 

 a protest. At quite an early period many abuses 

 and superstitions had crept in, which even the 

 Fathers who admit the worship do not fail to 

 condemn ; and Vigilantius, in a treatise now lost, 

 reprobated in the strongest terms the excesses 

 to which it was carried, and indeed the essential 

 principles on which the practice rests. He had 

 so few followers, however, that were it not for 

 the refutation by Jerome of his work against 

 relics we should have no record of his opposition 

 to the popular view; and it is urged by Catholics, 

 as a proof of the universal acquiescence of the 

 church of the 4th century in the practice of relic- 

 worship, that it was not even found necessary to 

 call a single council to condemn Vigilantius. 



The writings of Augustine, of Paulinus of Nola, 

 of Ephraem the Syrian, of Gregory the Great, and 

 others are full of examples of the miraculous 

 virtue ascribed to relics, and of the variety and the 

 extensive multiplication of sacred memorials of all 

 kinds. Nor was this confined to the orthodox 

 alone ; all the different parties in the controversy 

 on the Incarnation agreed with Catholics and with 

 one another on this subject, and even the Icono- 

 clasts, at the very time that they most fiercely 

 repudiated the use of images, admitted without 

 difficulty the veneration of relics. 



In the age of the Crusades a fresh impulse was 

 given to the worship of relics in the West by the 

 novelty and variety of the sacred objects brought 

 home from the churches of Syria, Asia Minor, and 

 Constantinople by crusaders, by palmers returning 

 from Palestine, and by the Latin conquerors of Con- 

 stantinople ; and it is admitted by the most zealous 

 Catholics that at this period many false, and perhaps 

 even al>surd and ridiculous relics were introduced, 

 and were successfully commended to the veneration 

 of individuals or individual churches in the West ; 

 nor do they venture to doubt that abuse and super- 

 stition found their way side by side with what tliey 

 regard as the genuine and authorised worship of the 

 church. Nevertheless, with the exception of the 

 Waldenses, \Vyelif, and a few isolated individuals, 

 the practice remained unchallenged till the 16th 

 century, when, in common with many other doc- 

 trines and practices of the Church of Rome, it was 

 utterly repudiated by the Reformers. Catholics, 

 however, allege that the practice, as sanctioned by 

 the church, lias nothing in common with the abuses 

 which form the main ground of the objections 

 alleged by Protestants. The Roman Catholic use 

 of relics, as authorised by the church, is to serve 

 as incentives to faith and piety, by recalling vividly 

 to men's minds the lives, and, as it were, the 

 corporeal presence and the earthly converse of the 

 saints, and thus placing before them, in a more 

 touching manner, the virtues which, in the 

 examples, are held up for men's imitation. The 

 decree of the Council of Trent connects the subject 

 of relic- worship with the general question of saint- 

 worshin, and regards the relics of the saints not as 

 possessing intrinsic virtue, but only as instruments 

 'through which God bestows benefits on men.' 

 The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) forbade the 

 sale or veneration of relics until their authenticity 

 hail been approved by the authorities ; the Council' 

 of Trent renewed the prohibition. In the pastoral 

 of the Bishop of Treves, inviting pilgrims to the 

 exhibition of the Holy Coat ( 1801 ), it is expressly 

 stated that ' the authenticity of no relic, be it the 

 most eminent of the oldest church of Christendom, 

 falls under any precept of Catholic faith.' Relics 

 are usually 'venerated in costly cases or 'reli- 

 quaries 'set on the altar; they are also carried in 

 procession, and the faithful are blessed with them. 

 The Greek and other Oriental churches, and 

 most of the Oriental sects, agree with Roman 



