The little town of Trier (Treves) will soon wear a festive appearance.
Pilgrims will be flocking to it from all parts of Germany, and God knows
from where besides. Its handful of inhabitants have obtained licenses to
open hotels and restaurants; every inch of available space has been let,
so that whirligigs, panoramas, and menageries have to be refused the
sites they apply for; every room in the town is to be let, more or less
furnished; and not only is the tram company doubling its line, but the
railway company is constructing special stations for special trains.
All this excitement springs from a superstitious source. After an
interval of several years the Church will once more exhibit an old rag,
which it calls the Holy Coat, and which it pretends is the very garment
we read of in the Gospels. Such a precious relic is, of course, endowed
with supernatural qualities. It will heal the sick, cure cripples, and,
let us hope, put brains into idiotic heads. Hence the contemplated rush
to Trier, where more people will congregate to see Christ's coat than
ever assembled to hear him preach or see him crucified.
The pilgrims will not be allowed to examine the Holy Coat. Few of them,
perhaps, would be inclined to do so. Thev have the faith which removes
mountains, and swallowing a coat is but a trifle. Nor would the Church
allow a close inspection of this curious relic, any more than it
would allow a chemist to examine the bottle in which the blood of St.
Januarius annually liquefies. The Holy Coat will be held up by priests
at a discreet and convenient distance; the multitude of fools will fall
before it in ecstatic adoration; and the result will be the usual one in
such cases, a lightening of the devotees' pockets to the profit of Holy
Mother Church.
According to the Gospels, the Prophet of Nazareth had a seamless
overcoat. Perhaps it was presented to him by one of the rich women who
ministered unto him of their substance. Perhaps it was a birthday gift
from Joseph of Arimathaea. Anyhow he had it, unless the Gospels lie;
and, with the rest of his clothes, it became the property of his
executioners. Those gentlemen raffled for it. Which of them won it we
are not informed. Nor are we told what he did with it. It would be a
useless garment to a Roman soldier, and perhaps the warrior who won the
raffle sold it to a second-hand clothes-dealer. This, however, is merely
a conjecture. Nothing is known with certainty. The seamless overcoat
disappeared from view as decisively as the person who wore it.
For many hundreds of years it was supposed to have gone the way of other
coats. No one thought it would ever be preserved in a Church museum. But
somehow it turned up again, and the Church got possession of it, though
the Church could not tell now and when it was found, or where it
had been while it was lost. One coat disappeared; hundreds of years
afterwards another coat was found; and it suited the Church to declare
them the same.
At that time the Church was "discovering" relics with extraordinary
success and rapidity. Almost everything Christ ever used (or didn't use)
came to light. His baby linen, samples of his hair and teeth, and the
milk he drew from Mary's breast, the shoes he wore into Jerusalem,
fragments of the twelve baskets' full of food after the miracle of
the loaves and fishes, the dish from which he ate the last supper, the
thorns that crowned his brow, the sponge put to his lips on the cross,
pieces of the cross itself--these and a host of other relics were
treasured at varions churches in Europe, and exhibited with unblushing
effrontery. Even the prepuce of Jesus, amputated at his circumcision,
was kept at Rome.
Several churches boasted the same articles. John the Baptist's body was
in dozens of different places, and the finger with which he pointed to
Jesus as his successor was shown, in a fine state of preservation, at
Besancon, Toulouse, Lyons, Bourges, Macon, and many other towns.
John Calvin pointed out, in his grim _Treatise on Relics_, that the Holy
Coat of Christ was kept in several churches. In our own time, a book on
this subject has been written by H. von Sybel, who proves that the Trier
coat is only one of twenty that were exhibited. All were authentic, and
all were guaranteed by the same authority. Holy Mother Church lied and
cheated without a twinge of compunction.
Nineteen Holy Coats have gone. The twentieth is the last of the tribe.
While it _pays_ it will be exhibited. When it ceases to pay, the Church
will quietly drop it. By and bye the Church will swear it never kept
such an article in stock.
Superstition dies hard, and it always dies viciously. The ruling passion
is strong in death. A journalist has just been sent to prison for
casting a doubt on the authenticity of this Holy Coat. Give the Catholic
Church its old power again, and all who laughed at its wretched humbug
would be choked with blood.
Protestants, as well as Freethinkers, laugh at Catholic relics. Were
we to quote from some of the old English "Reformers," who carried on a
vigorous polemic against Catholic "idolatry," we should be reproached
for soiling our pages unnecessarily. John Calvin himself, the Genevan
pope, declared that so many samples of the Virgin Mary's milk were
exhibited in Europe that "one might suppose she was a wet nurse or a
cow."
Freethinkers, however, laugh at the miracles of Protestantism, as
well as those of the Catholic Church. They are all of a piece, in the
ultimate analysis. It is just as credible that Christ's Coat would work
miracles, as that Elisha's bones restored a corpse to life, or that
Paul's handkerchiefs cured the sick and diseased. All such things belong
to the same realm of pious imagination. Thus, while the Protestant
laughs at the Catholic, the Freethinker laughs at both.