and were shown both at Cologne and Magdeburg.
The splinters of the true cross were a year's
firewood for any city, and of nails there were
found many hundredweight. Thorns from the
crown were everywhere, and many of them bled
every Friday. The chalice used at the institution
of the Lord's Supper was recovered, together
with the bread remaining from that supper.
Somebody found the dice used by the Roman
soldiers when raffling for the tunic, which was
to be seen at Treves, Argenteuil, Rome,
Triant, and other places; the tunic in each
town having a papal bull to prove its
authenticity. One pair of the Virgin's slippers
was particularly neat, but those she wore when
visiting St. Elizabeth are wonderfully large and
red. A precious wedding-ring of the Virgin
was shown at Perusa, and her hair, which was of
all colours, is preserved, together with some of
her combs, in many places. Blood of Our Lord
was found, sometimes in single drops, sometimes
in bottles. Some of it, legend says, was
collected by Nicodemus, who worked wonders with
it. But the Jews persecuted him, and he was
compelled to put it in a bird's beak, with a
written document, and throw it into the sea. Of
the beak, cast on the shore of Normandy, a
miraculous discovery was made. A party, hunting
in the neighbourhood, missed suddenly both
dogs and stag. They were found at last, kneeling
together before the miraculous beak. The
Duke of Normandy built on the spot a monastery,
called Bee, to which the holy blood brought
a rich treasure of gold. At another time the
very small breeches of St. Joseph were revealed,
together with his tools. One of the thirty
shekels of Judas was found, and also the twelve
feet of stout rope with which he hung himself,
and his small empty purse, with the lantern he
used on the night of the betrayal. Even the
perch was found on which the cock sat when he
warned Peter, and a few of the cock's feathers.

Even relics from the Old Testament were
discovered, after having been buried for several
thousands of years. Among these were the
staff with which Moses parted the Red Sea;
manna from the desert; the beard of Noah;
the brazen serpent; a piece of the rock out of
which Moses struck water, with four holes in
it, not larger than peas; the razor used by
Dalila in shaving Samson; and the tuning-key
of David's harp, which was shown at Erfurt. A
relic of great reputation was the cloak of St.
Martin, called cappa, or capella, which served as
a flag in war. The priests who carried this holy
standard were called Capellani, and the church
in which it was kept, Capella. These names
were afterwards used more generally, and from
them are derived our chapel and chaplain.

The belief of the people was so strong, that
the priests could venture to show even impossible
things, and, before naming a few of them,
let us distinctly say that we are not joking. There
were to be seen, among other such marvels, the
dagger and the shield of the archangel Michael,
which he used when fighting the devil; a bottle
full of Egyptian darkness; some of the sounds
of the bells which rang when Our Lord entered
Jerusalem; a beam of the star which guided the
three wise men of the East; a few sighs of St.
Joseph, caught when he was planing knotty
boards; and the thorn in the flesh which gave
so much trouble to St. Paul. Pious frauds
never seem to have been too gross for a believing
crowd. A monk, named Eiselin, came, in
the year fifteen hundred, to Aldingen, a little
place in Wurtemberg, where he exhibited to the
good Christians a feather of the wing of the
angel Gabriel. He who kissed this feather—and
paid for the kiss—was safe against infection
from the plague. This precious feather was
stolen; but the monk was none the poorer. In
presence of his landlady, he filled the box that
had contained the feather with stale hay, which
he called hay from the manger in which Christ
was laid when born; kiss, therefore, and pay,
and be safe against infection. Pictures, libellous
daubs, were produced as works of the Evangelist
St. Luke. Others that fell from Heaven were
not better painted. These pictures were not
only revered as relics, but for the sake of their
subjects were soon worshipped as idols. Question
about the orthodoxy of this kind of service
arose, and grew into bloody strife, which lasted
for two centuries, occasioning a schism in the
Christian Church. The Emperor Constantine
the Fifth, who died in the eighth century,
declared all pictures to be idols, and swept from
the country all pictures of saints, as well as
relics. He transformed the monasteries in
Constantinople into barracks, and made public scoff
of monks and nuns.

In the West, this worship of images and relics
also at first found resistance. Bishop Claudius of
Turin, says: "If you worship the cross on which
Christ suffered, you must also worship the ass
on which he rode;" and this was really done
afterwards. Other people, however, attached
importance to the image service; it was adhered
to in Europe, and adopted, at last, by the Greek
Church also.

In the first days of the Christian Church,
persons who, for gross misdemeanour, had been
expelled from the community and were desirous
of being readmitted, openly told their sins
before the congregation, and this penitence was
called confession. When the power of the priests
increased, they changed this public confession into
a secret one. Pope Innocent the Third, early in
the thirteenth century, ordered every Catholic
to confess privately to a priest, at least once a
year, and submit to the penance he imposed.
They who neglected this duty were to be
excommunicated and deprived the rites of Christian
burial. Thus it was given in the hands of the
priest to absolve the confessor or not, and he
used his discretion very shrewdly, with one eye
upon the sinner's purse.

Purgatory was an invention of Pope Gregory
the First, in the first years of the sixth century.
The rule of this place was known to none but
the priests, and they alone were able to judge
how many paid masses were required for any
soul's deliverance therefrom. The Crusades were