86 ON AN ALABASTER SCULPTURE. 



tablets by Fosbrooke and others, relates that Christ gratified the 

 faith of King Abgarus by granting to him the perfect impression 

 of His face on linen, he having invoked Christ's healing power, 

 and offered the strong city of Edessa to protect Him against the 

 malice of the Jews. Precisely the same reasons that militate 

 against these carvings representing the Vernicle apply also to the 

 Abgarus legend. 



These carvings seem to be specially English. Eleven of them 

 are known to be extant. Probably there are several others not yet 

 noted in private collections. When we consider the iconoclastic 

 fury of the Reformation and Commonwealth eras, it is remarkable 

 that so many remain. Their number must originally have been 

 very considerable, to be counted probably by the hundred or 

 hundreds. It was loosely asserted some time ago that such 

 representations are often met with on the Continent, but having 

 applied to travellers of repute with considerable knowledge of the 

 sacristies of Italy, France, and Spain, we cannot learn of any like 

 examples, nor have we? met with them in foreign works on 

 ecclesiology. Monsieur Rohault de Fleury, of Paris, whose great 

 work Stir les Monuments de la Messe, makes him one of the best 

 Continental authorities on such subjects, has been good enough to 

 correspond with us about this matter, and he assures us that he 

 has never met with any sculpture similar to that of our frontispiece. 



The suggestion that these sculptures represent some version of 

 " St. Gregory's Pity " was made by the Rev. Joseph Hirst, at 

 Derby, last August, and herein, we believe, lies the true solution. 



The following is the account of St. Gregory's vision given bv 

 Dr. Rock : — " The vision, in which the Apostle of the Saxon- 

 English, Pope S. Gregory, was given to behold Christ's flesh 

 in the Sacrament, is related by both his biographers, Paulus 

 Diaconus ( Vita S. Greg., op. S. Greg., t. iv., p. 10, c. xxiii.), and 

 by Johannes Diaconus (Ibid, p, 58, c. xli.), and the latter, who 

 wrote about a.d. 875, particularly tells his readers that it was 

 one among the miracles of that Pontiff read in the English 

 Church, for he begins his recital of it with this remark : — 

 ' Quae autem de Gregorii miraculis penes easdem Anglorum 



