I& 79 *! an & Perpetual Lamps. J1Q 
of whom more hereafter, gives a letter of Maturantius, who 
tells his friend Alphenus that “ Both the urns and the lamps 
and the phials have fallen into my hands, and are now in 
my possession. If you saw them you would be astonished. 
I would not part with them for one thousand crowns of 
gold.” Two similar sepulchral lamps are to be seen in the 
Museum of Rarities at Leyden. 
Many other equally credible narratives were current in 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At the time of the 
suppression of the monasteries by King Henry VIII. (1537) 
a tomb was opened containing a lamp which had been 
burning at least twelve hundred years : the authority of 
Cassidiorus was quoted, whq says he himself made perpetual 
lamps for the use of the monks in his monastery at Viviers 
(about 500 A.D.). Reference was also made to the lamp of 
Pallas, son of Evander, whose brave deeds were sung by 
Virgil : this lamp was found at Rome about 800 A.D., and 
must have burned nearly 2000 years. Even St. Augustine, 
the most illustrious and holy Father of the Church, was 
claimed, by partisans of these traditions, as testifying to 
their truth. St. Augustine, mentioning the lamp in the 
Temple of Venus, says it “ burned perpetually, and the 
flame adhered so strongly to the combustible matter that 
neither wind, rain, nor tempests could extinguish it, though 
continually exposed to the inclemency of the seasons.” 
St. Augustine attempts to explain the marvel, and conjec- 
tures that the incombustible wick was made of asbestos, but 
that the inexhaustible aliment was the work of demons, who 
wrought the infernal miracle in order to blind the pagans 
more completely, and to attach them to the infamous deity 
worshipped in that temple. 
The famous chemist Glauber refers to these miraculous 
lamps in his brief essay entitled “ Book of Fires ” ( Libellus 
Ignium ). He writes of a lamp “ which, being closed up in 
a glass, may be made to burn continually by its own virtue, 
and give light without any other help.” He explains the 
admitted fadt that when the “ secret fire ” is “ touched by 
the least air it extinguisheth and goeth out,” by the sug- 
gestion that “ the fire is appropriated to the Elemental Air,” 
and hath its “ own air in itself.” Glauber, who was always 
ready to turn chemical discoveries to medical purposes, 
writes of this lamp that it may be “ very available to those 
who, by reason of continual weakness, are forced to lie 
much upon their beds,” and that it may be “kept continually 
burning in their bed-chamber, not only because of its clear 
shining light which doth neither smoak nor scent, like all 
