RELICS, personal memorials of those among the dead who have been distin guished during life by eminent qualities: especially, in the history of the Church, objects which derive their value from their connection with our Lord and with the saints; as, for example, fragments of our Lord's cross or crown of thorns, portions of the dust, the bones, the blood, the instruments of torture, the chains, etc., of the martyrs, the mortal remains, the clothes, the books, and other objects of personal use of the other saints. With them may be grouped ob jects to which a certain indirect sacred interest is given by their being brought into contact with the direct memorials of the distinguished dead, as by their being placed on the tombs of the martyrs, touched with the relics, or blessed at the shrine or sanctuary of the saints, etc. Reverence for relics developed with the increasing honor that was paid to martyrs.
The earliest monuments of Christian history contain evidences of the deep and reverential affection with which martyrs of the faith, their mortal re mains, and everything connected with their martyrdom were regarded by their fellow Christians, and for which Roman Catholics profess to find warrant in many passages of the Old and of the New Testament, as Ex. xiii: 19; II Kings xiii: 21; and xxiii: 16-18; Matt. ix: 20-22; Acts v: 12-16, and xix: 11, 12. The letter of the Church of Smyrna attests this plainly as to the martyrdom of Polycarp; Pontian's "Life of Cyprian" tells of their stealing the martyr's body, and carrying it away by night in holy triumph. The Apostolic Constitutions bear witness to the honors paid. Mir acles, too, are described as connected with relics. Thus, Ambrose tells of a blind man's sight being restored by his touching the bodies of the martyrs Ger vasius and Protasius; and similar won ders are detailed by Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and Leo the Great; so that the possession of relics of the martyrs, and even the occasional touching of them, was regarded as a special happi ness. According to Theodoret, even cities were content to share with each other portions of the sacred treasure.
Connected with this feeling, too, is found a belief of a certain sacred effi cacy in the presence or the touch of the relics; and especially there is ascribed by Chrysostom, Basil, Theodoret, and other fathers, to prayers offered before the relics, a virtue in dispelling or warding off sickness, diabolical machinations, and other evils. Hence we find that altars were erected over the tombs of the mar tyrs, or at least that relics were invari ably placed on the altars, wherever erected; insomuch that the Trullan Council ordered the demolition of all altars in which no relics had been deposited. Far more sacred than the relics of martyrs was the cross of our Lord, which was believed to have been discovered at Jerusalem by Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine. Minute portions of the wood were dis tributed to the principal churches; and Cyril of Jerusalem, within less than a century after the discovery of the cross, describes the precious wood as dispersed throughout the world. According to Ro hault de Fleury, "The total cubic volume of all the known relics of the True Cross is about 5,000,000 cubic millimeters, whereas a cross large enough for the execution of a man must have contained at least 180,000,000 or thereby." The practice of relic worship and the feeling on which it was founded, were not suf fered to pass without a protest. At quite an early period many abuses and superstitions had crept in, which even the fathers who admit the worship do not fail to condemn; and Vigilantius, in a treatise now lost, reprobated in the strongest terms the excesses to which it was carried, and indeed the essential principles on which the practice rests. He had so few followers, however, that were it not for the refutation by Jerome of his work against relics we should have no record of his opposition to the popular view; and it is urged by Roman Catholics, as a proof of the universal ac quiescence of the Church of the 4th cen tury in the practice of relic-worship, that it was not even found to be neces sary to call a single council for the pur pose of condemning Vigilantius.