“If in Naples
I should report this now, would they believe me?”
TEMPEST.
EV. The science of chemistry has unfolded most of the secrets of
_material_ miracles, as Psychology those of the intellect and senses.
Not that I would attempt thus to _explain_ your wonders of Palingenesy,
Astrophel; I will rather favour you with another batch, for I was once
fond of unkennelling these sly foxes.
It is solemnly attested by the noble secretary of a Duke of Guise, that,
in company with many scientific men, he saw the face of a person in his
blood, which had been given by a bishop, for experiment, to La Pierre,
the chemist, of Le Temple, near Paris.
There is an old book of one Dr. Garmann, “De Miraculis Mortuorum,” and
thus _he_ writes:—“When human salt, extracted and depurated from the
skull of a man, was placed in a water dish, there appeared next morning
in the mass, figures of men fixed to a cross;” and “when human skulls,
on which mosses had vegetated, were pounded, the family of the
apothecary who pounded them were alarmed in the night by strange and
terrific noises from the chamber.”
The body of the Cid, Ruy Diaz, as we read in Heywood’s “Hierarchie,” sat
in state at the altar of the cathedral at Toledo for ten years. A Jew
one day attempted, in derision, to pull him by the beard; but on the
first touch, the Cid started up, and in high resentment scared the
Israelite away by the unsheathing of his mighty sword. And Master
Planche has brought you legends from the church of Maria Taferl, in
Lower Austria, and other noted spots on the Danube.
When Bernini’s bust of Charles I. was being conveyed in a barge on the
Thames, from a strange bird there descended a drop of blood on the bust,
_which could never be effaced_.
This is nothing but a fact in nature _mystified_, and (like the growth
of the Christmas flowering thorn of Glastonbury, from the
_walking-staff_ of Joseph of Arimathæa) is too glaring to be
misconstrued.
Other of these blood miracles are still more easy of solution. The blood
spots from David Rizzio are _shown_ to this day in Holyrood: and it was
believed, that after the Irish massacre the blood of the victims then
slain on Portnedown Bridge, has indelibly stained its battlements. But
these spots are nothing but the brown vegetative stains which geology
has discovered on many fossils.
Now listen to Father Gregory of Tours. “A thief was committing sacrilege
at the tomb of Saint Helius, when the saint caught him by the skirt, and
held him fast.” Probably his garment hitched on a nail. Another old man,
while removing a stone from the grave of a saint, was in a moment struck
blind, dumb, and deaf. Probably the mephitic gases exhaling from the
tomb were the source of all this mystery.
Then, as to the impositions of the priesthood. In Naples was the blood
of Saint Januarius concealed in a phial, and on certain solemn days this
so called blood really became liquified; but it was effected secretly,
by chemical means; and I remember, the archbishop who confessed the
secret to the French general Championet, was exiled by the Vatican.
In the reign of Henry VIII. too (I quote from Hume), other bloody
secrets of this sort were unfolded. “At Hales, in the county of
Gloucester, there had been shown during several ages the blood of Christ
brought from Jerusalem; and it is easy to imagine the veneration with
which such a relic was regarded. A miraculous circumstance also attended
this relic. The sacred blood was not visible to any one in mortal sin,
even when set before him; and, till he had performed good works
sufficient for his absolution, it would not deign to discover itself to
him. At the dissolution of the monastery the whole contrivance was
detected. Two of the monks, who were let into the secret, had taken the
blood of a duck, which they renewed every week; they put it in a vial,
one side of which consisted of thin and transparent crystal, the other
of thick and opaque. When any rich pilgrim arrived, they were sure to
show him the dark side of the vial till masses and offerings had
expiated his offences, and then, finding his money, or patience, or
faith, nearly exhausted, they made him happy by turning the vial.”
But there is no end to relics in Italy. Even two hundred years ago, John
Evelyn makes out this catalogue of those he saw in St. Mark’s, at
Venice.
“Divers heads of saints, inchased in gold; a small ampulla, or glass,
with our Saviour’s blood; a great morsel of the real cross; one of the
nails; a thorn; a fragment of the column to which our Lord was bound
when scourged; a piece of St. Luke’s arm; a rib of St. Stephen; and a
finger of Mary Magdalene!”
Among the more innocent illusions of art, I may remind you of concave
and cylindrical mirrors and lenses, the magic lanthorn, “les ombres
chinoises,”and the phantasmagoria of Cagliastro, by which daggers appear
to strike the breast of the spectator, and images of objects in other
rooms are thrown on the walls of that in which we are sitting. A mirror,
thus accidentally placed, has afforded the evidence of murder within our
own time.
The duration of impressions on the eye, is another source of illusion.
An image remains on the retina, I believe, about the eighth of a second;
as it departs, if another object supplies its place in quick succession,
the two images form, as it were, a union, and become blended. A
knowledge of this law, in the ages of blind superstition, would have
placed an overwhelming weapon in the hands of priestcraft; in our day,
it is the source of rational and innocent pleasure, by the invention of
optical toys.
The whisking of an ignited stick produces a fiery circle—why? Because
from _excessive rapidity_ the rays from one point remain impressed on
the retina, until the revolution completes the circle.
The _Thaumatrope_, or wonder-turner, and the Phantasmascope, are
ingenious illustrations of this law of impression; so also is the
_whirling machine_, which so beautifully evinces the fact of white being
compounded of all the prismatic colours, blended in certain proportions.
The prismatic Iris is painted on a revolving circle; by excessive
rapidity of revolution, the colours are actually blended (as if mixed in
a vessel) on the retina, and the surface of the machine is white to the
eye.
To these may be added the combustion of phosphorus and other substances,
in oxygen: red, green, and blue lights, which change the angel face of
beauty into the visage of a demon; and the inhalation of noxious fumes
and gases, creating altogether a new train of phantoms in the world of
experimental magic, and developing the formerly occult mysteries of the
art of incantation.
Chance may also involve a seeming mystery of very awful import. Some
years ago the town of Reading was thus bewildered. On the loaves were
seen the most mysterious signs. On one, a skeleton’s head and
cross-bones; on another, the word “resurgam;” on another, a date of
death was marked in deep impressions. The loaves of course were, by some
mysterious influence, the vehicles of solemn warning from the Deity.
The baker was _churchwarden_ of St. Giles’s; his oven needed flooring,
and, winking at the sacrilege, he stole the flat inscribed tombstones
from the church-yard, and therewith floored his oven. From the
inscriptions of these stones the loaves took their mystic impressions.
In the reign of Edward the Martyr, during one of the synods assembled by
Dunstan, the floor of the chamber suddenly gave way, involving the death
of many of its members. It chanced that Dunstan had on that day warned
the king not to attend the synod, and the only beam which did not give
way was that on which his own chair was placed. This might be
coincidence merely, although I believe it was discovered that it was a
concerted trick; but the preservation of the king and the priest were,
of course, attributed to special interference of the Deity.
But there is one phenomenon in animal chemistry so rare, and indeed so
wonderful, that there are few even among philosophers who can give it
credence. This is “spontaneous combustion,” the result of an evolution
of phosphorated hydrogen from the blood; the remote cause of which may
be traced in some cases to the free use of alcohol. The records of these
cases are very circumstantial, especially the two most remarkable—that
of the Contessa Cornelia Bandi, of Cerena; and of Don Bertholi, an
ecclesiastic of Mount Valerius. But I check my wanderings into this maze
of mystery, in pity to your patience, fair ladies; for I perceive
Astrophel is again out of our sphere, and, enveloped in the cloud of his
own mystic meditations, will not know that this spontaneous combustion
is almost as wondrous a tale as his “Lady of the Ashes.”