we have now travelled far, apparently, from that primitive stage of god-making where the only known gods are the corpses, mummies, skulls, ghosts, or spirits of dead chieftains or dead friends and relations. the god of christianity, in his fully-evolved form, especially as known to thinkers and theologians, is a being so vast, so abstract, so ubiquitous, so eternal, that he seems to have hardly and points of contact at all with the simple ancestral spirit or sacred stone from which in the last resort he appears to be descended. yet even here, we must beware of being misled by too personal an outlook. while the higher minds in christendom undoubtedly conceive of the christian god in terms of mansel and martineau, the lower minds even among ourselves conceive of him in far simpler and more material fashions. a good deal of enquiry among ordinary english people of various classes, not always the poorest, convinces me that to large numbers of them god is envisaged as possessing a material human form, more or less gaseous in composition; that, in spite of the thirty-nine articles, he has body, parts, and passions; that he is usually pictured to the mind’s eye as about ten or twelve feet high, with head, hands, eyes and mouth, used to see with and speak with in human fashion; and that he sits on a throne, like a king that he is, surrounded by a visible court of angels and archangels. italian art so invariably represents him, with a frankness unknown to protestant christendom. instead of 410being in all places at once, pervading and underlying nature, the deity is conceived of by most of his worshippers as having merely the power of annihilating space, and finding himself wherever he likes at a given moment. his omniscience and omnipotence are readily granted; but his abstractness and immateriality are not really grasped by one out of a thousand of his believers in britain.

the fact is, so abstract a conception as the highest theological conception of god cannot be realised except symbolically, and then for a few moments only, in complete isolation. the moment god is definitely thought of in connexion with any cosmic activity, still more in connexion with any human need, he is inevitably thought of on human analogies, and more or less completely anthropomorphised in the brain of the believer. being by origin an offshoot of the mind of man, a great deified human being, he retains necessarily still, for all save a few very mystical or ontological souls, the obvious marks of his ultimate descent from a ghost or spirit. indeed, on the mental as opposed to the bodily side, he does so for us all; since even theologians freely ascribe to him such human feelings as love, affection, a sense of justice, a spirit of mercy, of truth, of wisdom: knowledge, will, the powers of intellect, all the essential and fundamental human faculties and emotions.

thus, far as we seem to have travelled from our base in the most exalted concepts of god, we are nearer to it still than most of us imagine. moreover, in spite of this height to which the highest minds have raised their idea of the deity, as the creator, sustainer, and mover of the universe, every religion, however monotheistic, still continues to make new minor gods for itself out of the dead as they die, and to worship these gods with even more assiduous worship than it bestows upon the great god of christendom or the great gods of the central pantheon. and the christian religion makes such minor deities no less than all 411others. the fact is, the religious emotion takes its origin from the affection and regard felt for the dead by survivors, mingled with the hope and belief that they may be of some use or advantage, temporal or spiritual, to those who call upon them; and these primitive faiths and feelings remain so ingrained in the very core of humanity that even the most abstract of all religions, like the protestant schism, cannot wholly choke them, while recrudescences of the original creed and custom spring up from time to time in the form of spiritualism, theosophy, and other vague types of simple ghost-worship.

most advanced religions, however, and especially christianity in its central, true, and main form of catholicism, have found it necessary to keep renewing from time to time the stock of minor gods—here arbitrarily known as saints—much as the older religions found it always necessary from year to year to renew the foundation-gods, the corn and wine gods, and the other special deities of the manufactured order, by a constant supply of theanthropic victims. what i wish more particularly to point out here, however, is that the vast majority of places of worship all the world over are still erected, as at the very beginning, above the body of a dead man or woman; that the chief objects of worship in every shrine are still, as always, such cherished bodies of dead men and women; and that the primitive connexion of religion with death has never for a moment been practically severed in the greater part of the world,—not even in protestant england and america.

mr. william simpson was one of the first persons to point out this curious underlying connexion between churches, temples, mosques, or topes, and a tomb or monument. he has proved his point in a very full manner, and i would refer the reader who wishes to pursue this branch of the subject at length to his interesting monographs. in this work, i will confine my attention mainly to the continued presence of this death-element in christianity; but by way of illustration, i will preface my remarks 412by a few stray instances picked up at random from the neighbouring and interesting field of islam.

there is no religion in all the world which professes to be more purely monotheistic in character than mohammedanism. the unity of god, in the very strictest sense, is the one dogma round which the entire creed of islam centres. more than any other cult, it represents itself as a distinct reaction against the polytheism and superstition of surrounding faiths. the isolation of allah is its one great dogma. if, therefore, we find even in this most monotheistic of existing religious systems a large element of practically polytheistic survival—if we find that even here the worship of the dead remains, as a chief component in religious practice, if not in religious theory, we shall be fairly entitled to conclude, i think, that such constituents are indeed of the very essence of religious thinking, and we shall be greatly strengthened in the conclusions at which we previously arrived as to a belief in immortality or continued life of the dead being in fact the core and basis of worship and of deity.

some eight or ten years since, when i first came practically into connexion with islam in algeria and egypt, i was immediately struck by the wide prevalence among the mahommedan population of forms of worship for which i was little prepared by anything i had previously read or heard as to the nature and practice of that exclusive and ostentatiously monotheistic faith. two points, indeed, forcibly strike any visitor who for the first time has the opportunity of observing a mahommedan community in its native surroundings. the first is the universal habit on the part of the women of visiting the cemeteries and mourning or praying over the graves of their relations on friday, the sacred day of islam. the second is the frequency of koubbas, or little whitewashed mosque-tombs erected over the remains of marabouts, fakeers, or local saints, which form the real centres for the religion and worship of every village. islam, in practice, is a religion 413of pilgrimages to the tombs of the dead. in algeria, every hillside is dotted over with these picturesque little whitewashed domes, each overshadowed by its sacred date-palm, each surrounded by its small walled enclosure or temenos of prickly pear or agave, and each attended by its local ministrant, who takes charge of the tomb and of the alms of the faithful. holy body, sacred stone, tree, well, and priest—not an element of the original cult of the dead is lacking. numerous pilgrimages are made to these koubbas by the devout: and on friday evenings the little courtyards are almost invariably thronged by a crowd of eager and devoted worshippers. within, the bones of the holy man lie preserved in a frame hung about with rosaries, pictures, and other oblations of his ardent disciples, exactly as in the case of roman catholic chapels. the saint, in fact, is quite as much an institution of monotheistic islam as of any other religion with which i am practically acquainted.

these two peculiarities of the cult of islam strike a stranger immediately on the most casual visit. when he comes to look at the matter more closely, however, he finds also that most of the larger mosques in the principal towns are themselves similarly built to contain and enshrine the bones of saintly personages, more or less revered in their immediate neighbourhood. some of these are indeed so holy that their bones have been duplicated exactly like the wood of the true cross, and two tombs have been built in separate places where the whole or a portion of the supposed remains are said to be buried. i will only specify as instances of such holy tombs the sacred city of kerouan in tunisia, which ranks second to mecca and medina alone in the opinion of all devout western mohammedans. here, the most revered building is the shrine of “the companion of the prophet,” who lies within a catafalque covered with palls of black velvet and silver—as funereal a monument as is known to me anywhere. close by stands the catafalque of an indian saint while 414other holy tomb-mosques abound in the city. in algiers town, the holiest place is similarly the mosque-tomb of sidi abd-er-rahman, which contains the shrine and body of that saint, who died in 1471. around him, so as to share his sacred burial-place (like the egyptians who wished to be interred with osiris), lie the bodies of several deys and pashas. lights are kept constantly burning at the saint’s tomb, which is hung with variously-coloured drapery, after the old semitic fashion, while banners and ostrich-eggs, the gifts of the faithful, dangle ostentatiously round it from the decorated ceiling. still more sacred in its way is the venerable shrine of sidi okba near biskra, one of the most ancient places of worship in the mahommedan world. the tomb of the great saint stands in a chantry, screened off from the noble mosque which forms the ante-chamber, and is hung round with silk and other dainty offerings. on the front an inscription in very early cufic characters informs us that “this is the tomb of okba, son of nafa: may allah have mercy upon him.” the mosque is a famous place of pilgrimage, and a belief obtains that when the sidi is rightly invoked, a certain minaret in its front will nod in acceptance of the chosen worshipper. i could multiply instances indefinitely, but refrain on purpose. all the chief mosques at tlem莽en, constantine, and the other leading north african towns similarly gather over the bodies of saints or marabouts, who are invoked in prayer, and to whom every act of worship is offered.

all over islam we get such holy grave-mosques. the tomb of the prophet at medina heads the list: with the equally holy tomb of his daughter fatima. among the shiahs, ali’s grave at nejef and hoseyn’s grave at kerbela are as sacred as that of the prophet at medina. the shrines of the imams are much adored in persia. the graves of the peers in india, the ziarets of the fakeers in afghanistan, show the same tendency. in palestine, says major 415conder, worship at the tombs of local saints “represents the real religion of the peasant.”

i had originally intended, indeed, to include in this work a special chapter on these survivals in islam, a vast number of which i have collected in various places; but my book has already swelled to so much larger dimensions than i had originally contemplated that i am compelled reluctantly to forego this disquisition.

one word, however, must be given to egypt, where the cult of the dead was always so marked a feature in the developed religion, and where neither christianity nor islam has been able to obscure this primitive tendency. nothing is more noticeable in the nile valley than the extraordinary way in which the habits and ideas as to burial and the preservation of the dead have survived in spite of the double and rapid alteration in religious theory. at sak-karah and thebes, one is familiar with the streets and houses of tombs, regularly laid out so as to form in the strictest sense a true necropolis, or city of the dead. just outside cairo, on the edge of the desert, a precisely similar modern necropolis exists to this day, regularly planned in streets and quarters, with the tomb of each family standing in its own courtyard or enclosure, and often very closely resembling the common round-roofed or domed egyptian houses. in this town of dead bodies, every distinction of rank and wealth may now be observed. the rich are buried under splendid mausolea of great architectural pretensions; the poor occupy humble tombs just raised above the surface of the desert, and marked at head and foot with rough and simple egyptian tombstones. still, the entire aspect of such a cemetery is the aspect of a town. in northern climates, the dead sleep their last sleep under grassy little tumuli, wholly unlike the streets of a city: in egypt, to this day, the dead occupy, as in life, whole lanes and alleys of eternal houses. even the spirit which produced the pyramids and the tombs of the kings is conspicuous in modern or mediaeval cairo in 416the taste which begot those vast domed mosques known as the tombs of the khalifs and the tombs of the mamelooks. whatever is biggest in the neighbourhood of ancient memphis turns out on examination to be the last resting-place of a dead man, and a place of worship.

almost every one of the great mosques of cairo is either a tomb built for himself by a ruler—and this is the more frequent case—or else the holy shrine of some saint of islam. it is characteristic of egypt, however, where king and god have always been so closely combined, that while elsewhere the mosque is usually the prayer-tomb of a holy man, in cairo it is usually the memorial-temple of a sultan, an emeer, a viceroy, or a khedive. it is interesting to find, too, after all we have seen as to the special sanctity of the oracular head, that perhaps the holiest of all these mosques contains the head of hoseyn, the grandson of the prophet. a ceremonial washing is particularly mentioned in the story of its translation. the mosque of sultan hassan, with its splendid mausolem, is a peculiarly fine example of the temple-tombs of cairo.

i will not linger any longer, however, in the precincts of islam, further than to mention the significant fact that the great central object of worship for the mahommedan world is the kaaba at mecca, which itself, as mr. william simpson long ago pointed out, bears obvious traces of being at once a tomb and a sacred altar-stone. sir richard burton’s original sketch of this mystic object shows it as a square and undecorated temple-tomb, covered throughout with a tasselled black pall—a most funereal object—the so-called “sacred carpet.” it is, in point of fact, a simple catafalque. as the kaaba was adopted direct by mohammad from the early semitic heathenism of arabia, and as it must always have been treated with the same respect, i do not think we can avoid the obvious conclusion that this very ancient tomb has been funereally draped in the self-same manner, like those of biskra, algiers, and kerouan, from the time of its first erection. 417this case thus throws light on the draping of the ashera, as do also the many-coloured draperies and hangings of saints’ catafalques in algeria and tunis.

nor can i resist a passing mention of the moharram festival, which is said to be the commemoration of the death of hoseyn, the son of ali (whose holy head is preserved at cairo). this is a rude piece of acting, in which the events supposed to be connected with the death of hoseyn are graphically represented; and it ends with a sacred adonis-like or osiris-like procession, in which the body of the saint is carried and mourned over. the funeral is the grand part of the performance; catafalques are constructed for the holy corpse, covered with green and gold tinsel—the green being obviously a last reminiscence of the god of vegetation. in bombay, after the dead body and shrine have been carried through the streets amid weeping and wailing, they are finally thrown into the sea, like king carnival. i think we need hardly doubt that here we have an evanescent relic of the rites of the corn-god, ending in a rain-charm, and very closely resembling those of adonis and osiris.

but if in islam the great objects of worship are the kaaba tomb at mecca and the tomb of the prophet at medina, so the most holy spot in the world for christendom is—the holy sepulchre. it was for possession of that most sacred place of pilgrimage that christians fought moslems through the middle ages; and it is there that while faith in the human christ was strong and vigorous the vast majority of the most meritorious pilgrimages continued to be directed. to worship at the tomb of the risen redeemer was the highest hope of the devout medi忙val christian. imitations of the holy sepulchre occur in abundance all over europe: one exists at s. stefano in bologna; another, due to the genius of alberti, is well known in the ruccellai chapel at florence. i need hardly recall the sacro monte at varallo.

for the most part, however, in christendom, and especially 418in those parts of christendom remote from palestine, men contented themselves with nearer and more domestic saints. from a very early date we see in the catacombs the growth of this practice of offering up prayer by (or to) the bodies of the dead who slept in christ. a chapel or capella, as dean burgon has pointed out, meant originally an arched sepulchre in the walls of the catacombs, at which prayer was afterwards habitually made: and above-ground chapels were modelled, later on, upon the pattern of these ancient underground shrines. i have alluded briefly in my second chapter to the probable origin of the cruciform church from two galleries of the catacombs crossing one another at right angles; the high altar stands there over the body or relics of a dead saint; and the chapels represent other minor tombs grouped like niches in the catacombs around it. a chapel is thus, as mr. herbert spencer phrases it, “a tomb within a tomb”; and a great cathedral is a serried set of such cumulative tombs, one built beside the other. sometimes the chapels are actual graves, sometimes they are cenotaphs; but the connexion with death is always equally evident. on this subject, i would refer the reader again to mr. spencer’s pages.

so long as christianity was proscribed at rome and throughout the empire, the worship of the dead must have gone on only silently, and must have centred in the catacombs or by the graves of saints and martyrs—the last-named being practically mere christian successors of the willing victims of earlier religions. “to be counted worthy to suffer” was the heart’s desire of every earnest christian—as it still is among fresh and living sects like the salvation army; and the creed of self-sacrifice, whose very name betrays its human-victim origin, was all but universal. when christianity had triumphed, however, and gained not only official recognition but official honour, the cult of the martyrs and the other faithful dead became with christian rome a perfect passion. the holy innocents, 419st. stephen protomartyr, the nameless martyrs of the ten persecutions, together with poly carp, vivia perp茅tua, f茅licitas, ignatius and all the rest, came to receive from the church a form of veneration which only the nice distinctions of the theological mind could enable us to discriminate from actual worship. the great procession of the slain for christ in the mosaics of sant’ apollinare nuovo at ravenna gives a good comprehensive list of the more important of these earliest saints (at least for aryan worshippers) headed by st. martin, st. clement, st. justin, st. lawrence, and st. hippolytus. later on came the more mythical and poetic figures, derived apparently from heathen gods—st. catharine, st. barbara, st. george, st. christopher. these form as they go a perfect new pantheon, circling round the figures of christ himself, and his mother the madonna, who grows quickly in turn, by absorption of isis, astarte, and artemis, into the queen of heaven.

the love-feasts or agapo of the early christians were usually held, in the catacombs or elsewhere, above the bodies of the martyrs. subsequently, the remains of the sainted dead were transferred to lordly churches without, like sant’ agnese and san paolo, where they were deposited under the altar or sacred stone thus consecrated, from whose top the body and blood of christ was distributed in the eucharist. as early as the fourth century, we know that no church was complete without some such relic; and the passion for martyrs spread so greatly from that period onward that at one time no less than 2300 corpses of holy men together were buried at s. prassede. it is only in rome itself that the full importance of this martyr-worship can now be sufficiently understood, or the large part which it played in the development of christianity adequately recognised. perhaps the easiest way for the protestant reader to put himself in touch with this side of the subject is to peruse the very interesting and graphic 420account given in the second volume of mrs. jameson’s sacred and legendary art.

i have room for a few illustrative examples only.

when st. ambrose founded his new church at milan, he wished to consecrate it with some holy relics. in a vision, he beheld two young men in shining clothes, and it was revealed to him that these were holy martyrs whose bodies lay near the spot where he lived in the city. he dug for them, accordingly, and found two bodies, which proved to be those of two saints, gervasius and protasius, who had suffered for the faith in the reign of nero. they were installed in the new basilica ambrose had built at milan. churches in their honour now exist all over christendom, the best known being those at venice and paris.

the body of st. agnes, saint and martyr, who is always represented with that familiar emblem, the lamb which she duplicates, lies in a sarcophagus under the high altar of sant’ agnese beyond the porta pia, where a basilica was erected over the remains by constantine the great, only a few years after the martyrdom of the saint. the body of st. cecilia lies similarly in the church of santa cecilia in trastevere. in this last-named case, the original house where cecilia was put to death is said to have been consecrated as a place of worship, after the very early savage fashion, the room where she suffered possessing especial sanctity. pope symmachus held a council there in the year 500. this earliest church having fallen into ruins during the troubles of the barbarians, pope paschal i., the great patron of relic-hunting, built a new one in honour of the saint in the ninth century. while engaged in the work, he had a dream (of a common pattern), when cecilia appeared to him and showed him the place in which she lay buried. search was made, and the body was found in the catacombs of st. calixtus, wrapped in a shroud of gold tissue, while at her feet lay a linen cloth dipped in the sacred blood of her martyrdom. near her were deposited the remains of valerian, tiburtius, and maximus, 421all of whom are more or less mixed up in her legend. the body was removed to the existing church, the little room where the saint died being preserved as a chapel. in the sixteenth century, the sacred building was again repaired and restored in the atrocious taste of the time; and the sarcophagus was opened before the eyes of several prelates, including cardinal baronius. the body was found entire, and was then replaced in the silver shrine in which it still reposes. almost every church in rome has thus its entire body of a patron saint, oftenest a martyr of the early persecutions.

in many similar cases, immense importance is attached to the fact that the body remains, as the phrase goes, “uncorrupted”; and i may mention in this connexion that in the frequent representations of the raising of lazarus, which occur as “emblems of the resurrection” in the catacombs, the body of lazarus is represented as a mummy, often enclosed in what seems to be a mummy-case. indeed, it is most reminiscent of the egyptian osiris images.

i pass on to other and more interesting instances of survival in corpse-worship.

the great central temple of the catholic church is st. peter’s at rome. the very body of the crucified saint lies enshrined under the high altar, in a sarcophagus brought from the catacomb near s. sebastiano. upon this rock, st. peter’s and the catholic church are founded. ana-cletus, the successor of clement, built a monument over the bones of the blessed peter; and if peter be a historical person at all, i see no reason to doubt that his veritable body actually lies there. st. paul shares with him in the same shrine; but only half the two corpses now repose within the stately confessio in the sacristy of the papal basilica: the other portion of st. peter consecrates the lateran; the other portion of st. paul gives sanctity to san paolo fuori le mura.

other much venerated bodies at rome are those of the quattro coronati, in the church of that name; s. praxedis 422and st. pudentiana in their respective churches; st. cosmo and st. damian; and many more too numerous to mention. several of the roman churches, like san clemente, stand upon the site of the house of the saint to whom they are dedicated, or whose body they preserve, thus recalling the early new guinea practice. others occupy the site of his alleged martyrdom, or enclose the pillar to which he was fastened. the legends of all these roman saints are full of significant echoes of paganism. the visitor to rome who goes the round of the churches and catacombs with an unprejudiced mind must be astonished to find how sites, myths, and ceremonies recall at every step familiar heathen holy places or stories. in the single church of san zaccaria at venice, again, i found the bodies of st. zacharias (father of john the baptist), st. sabina, st. tarasius, sts. nereus and achilles, and many other saints too numerous to mention.

how great importance was attached to the possession of the actual corpse or mummy of a saint we see exceptionally well indeed in this case of venice. the bringing of the corpse or mummy of st. mark from alexandria to the lagoons was long considered the most important event in the history of the republic; the church in which it was housed is the noblest in christendom, and contains an endless series of records of the connexion of st. mark with the city and people that so royally received him. the soul, as one may see in tintoret’s famous picture, flitted over sea with the body to venice, warned the sailors of danger by the way, and ever after protected the hospitable republic in all its enterprises. one must have lived long in the city of the lagoons and drunk in its very spirit in order to know how absolutely it identified itself with the evangelist its patron. “pax tibi, marce, evangelista metis,” is the motto on its buildings. the lion of st. mark stood high in the piazzetta to be seen of all; he recurs in every detail of sculpture or painting in the doges’ palace and the public edifices of the city. the body that lay 423under the pall of gold in the great church of the piazza was a veritable palladium, a very present help in time of trouble. it was no mere sentiment or fancy to the venetians; they knew that they possessed in their own soil, and under their own church domes, the body and soul of the second of the evangelists.

nor was that the only important helper that venice could boast. she contained also the body of st. george at san giorgio maggiore, and the body of st. nicholas at san niccolo di lido. the beautiful legend of the doge and the fisherman (immortalised for us by the pencil of paris bordone in one of the noblest pictures the world has ever seen) tells us how the three great guardian saints, st. mark, st. george, and st. nicholas, took a gondola one day from their respective churches, and rowed out to sea amid a raging storm to circumvent the demons who were coming in a tempest to overwhelm venice. a fourth saint, of far later date, whom the venetians also carried off by guile, was st. roch of montpelier. this holy man was a very great sanitary precaution against the plague, to which the city was much exposed through its eastern commerce. so the men of venice simply stole the body by fraud from montpelier, and built in its honour the exquisite church and scuola di san rocco, the great museum of the art of tintoret. the fact that mere possession of the holy body counts in itself for much could not be better shown than by these forcible abductions.

the corpse of st. nicholas, who was a highly revered bishop of myra in lycia, lies, as i said, under the high altar of san niccolo di lido at venice. but another and more authentic body of the same great saint, the patron of sailors and likewise of schoolboys, lies also under the high altar of the magnificent basilica of san nicola at bari, from which circumstance the holy bishop is generally known as st. nicolas of bari. a miraculous fluid, the manna di bari, highly prized by the pious, exudes from the remains. a gorgeous cathedral rises over the sepulchre. 424such emulous duplication of bodies and relics is extremely common, both in christendom and in islam.

i have made a point of visiting the shrines of a vast number of leading saints in various parts of italy; and could devote a volume to their points of interest. the corpse of st. augustine, for example, lies at pavia in a glorious ark, one of the most sumptuous monuments ever erected by the skill of man, as well as one of the loveliest. padua similarly boasts the body of st. antony of padua, locally known as “il santo,” and far more important in his own town than all the rest of the christian pantheon put together. the many-domed church erected over his remains is considerably larger than st. mark’s at venice; and the actual body of the saint itself is enclosed in an exquisite marble chapel, designed by sansovino, and enriched with all the noblest art of the renaissance. dominican monks and nuns make pilgrimages to bologna, in order to venerate the body of st. dominic, who died in that city, and whose corpse is enclosed in a magnificent sarcophagus in the church dedicated to him, and adorned with exquisite sculpture by various hands from the time of niccolo pisano to that of michael angelo. siena has for its special glory st. catherine the second—the first was the mythical princess of alexandria; and the house of that ecstatic nun is still preserved intact as an oratory for the prayers of the pious. her head, laid by in a silver shrine or casket, decorates the altar of her chapel in san domenico, where the famous frescoes of sodoma too often usurp the entire attention of northern visitors. compare the holy head of hoseyn at cairo. the great franciscan church at assisi, once more, enshrines the remains of the founder of the franciscans, which formerly reposed under the high altar; the church of santa maria degli angeli below it encloses the little hut which was the first narrow home of the nascent order. i could go on multiplying such instances without number; i hope these few will suffice to make the protestant reader feel how real is the reverence 425still paid to the very corpses and houses of the saints in italy. if ever he was present at milan on the festa of san carlo borromeo, and saw the peasants from neighbouring villages flock in hundreds to kiss the relics of the holy man, as i have seen them, he would not hesitate to connect much current christianity with the most primitive forms of corpse-worship and mummy-worship.

north of the alps, again, i cannot refrain from mentioning a few salient instances, which help to enforce principles already enunciated. at paris, the two great local saints are st. denis and ste. genevi猫ve. st. denis was the first bishop of lutetia and of the parish: he is said to have been beheaded with his two companions at montmartre,—mons martyrum. he afterwards walked with his head in his hands from that point (now covered by the little church of st. pierre, next door to the new basilica of the sacre cour), to the spot where he piously desired to be buried. a holy woman named catulla (note that last echo) performed the final rites for him at the place where the stately abbey-church of st. denis now preserves his memory. the first cathedral on the spot was erected before the frankish invasion; the second, built by dagobert, was consecrated (as a vision showed) by christ himself, who descended for the purpose from heaven, surrounded by apostles, angels, and st. denis. the actual head or skull of the saint was long preserved in the basilica in a splendid reliquary of solid silver, the gift of margu茅rite de france, just as hoseyn’s head is still preserved at cairo, and as so many other miraculous or oracular heads are kept by savages or barbarians elsewhere. indeed, the anthropological enquirer may be inclined to suppose that the severance of th茅 head from the body and its preservation above ground, after the common fashion, gave rise later to the peculiar but by no means unique legend. compare the bear’s head in the aino superstition, as well as the oracular german and scandinavian nithstangs.

as for 426ste. genevi猫ve, she rested first in the church dedicated to her on the site now occupied by the pantheon, which still in part, though secularised, preserves her memory. her body (or what remains of it) lies at present in the neighbouring church of st. etienne du mont, where every lover of paris surely pays his devotion to the shrine in the most picturesque and original building which the city holds, whenever he passes through the domain of ste. genevi猫ve. how real the devotion of the people still is may be seen on any morning of the working week, and still more during the octave of the saint’s fete-day.

as in many other cases, however, the remains of the virgin patroness of paris have been more than once removed from place to place for safe custody. the body was originally buried in the crypt of the old abbey church of the holy apostles on the ile de la cit茅. when the normans overran the country, the monks carried it away with them in a wooden box to a place of safety. as soon as peace was once more restored, the corpse was enshrined in a splendid ch芒sse; while the empty tomb was still treated with the utmost reverence. at the revolution, the actual bones, it is said, were destroyed; but the sarcophagus or cenotaph survived the storm, and was transferred to st. etienne. throughout the neuvaine, thousands of the faithful still flock to worship it. the sarcophagus is believed even now to contain some holy portions of the saint’s body, saved from the wreck by pious adherents.

other familiar examples will occur to every one, such as the bones of the magi or three kings, preserved in a reliquary in the cathedral at cologne; those of st. ursula and the 11,000 virgins; those of st. stephen and st. lawrence at rome; those of st. hubert, disinterred and found uncorrupted, at the town of the same name in the ardennes; and those of st. longinus in his chapel at mantua. all these relics and bodies perform astounding miracles, and 427all have been the centres of important cults for a considerable period.

in britain, from the first stages of christianity, the reverence paid to the bodies of saints was most marked, and the story of their wanderings forms an important part of our early annals. indeed, i dwell so long upon this point because few northerners of the present day can fully appreciate the large part which the dead body plays and has played for many centuries in christian worship. only those who, like me, have lived long in thoroughly catholic countries, have made pilgrimages to numerous famous shrines, and have waded through reams of anglo-saxon and other early mediaeval documents, can really understand this phase of christian hagiology. to such people it is abundantly clear that the actual dead body of some sainted man or woman has been in many places the chief object of reverence for millions of christians in successive generations. a good british instance is found in the case of st. cuthbert’s corpse. the tale of its wanderings is too long to be given here in full; it should be read in any good history of durham. i epitomize briefly. the body of the devoted missionary of the north was first kept for some time at lindisfarne. when, at the end of eleven years, the saint’s tomb was opened, his outer form was found still incorrupt; and so for more than 800 years it was believed to remain. it rested at lindisfarne till 875, when the piratical danes invaded northumbria. the monks, regarding st. cuthbert as their greatest treasure, fled inland, carrying the holy body with them on their own shoulders. such translations of sacred corpses are common in christian and heathen history. after many wanderings, during which it was treated with the utmost care and devotion, the hallowed body found an asylum for a while at chester-le-street in 883. in 995, it was transferred to ripon, where it sanctified the minster by even so short a sojourn; but in the same year it went forth again, on its way north to lindisfarne. on the way, however, it miraculously 428signified (by stubborn refusal to move) its desire to rest for ever at durham—a town whose strong natural position and capacity for defence does honour to the saint’s military judgment. here, enclosed in a costly shrine, it remained working daily miracles till the reformation. the later grave was opened in 1826, when the coffin was found to enclose another, made in 1104: and this again contained a third, which answered the description of the sarcophagus made in 698, when the saint was raised from his first grave. the innermost case contained, not indeed the uncorrupted body of cuthbert, but a skeleton, still entire, and wrapped in fine robes of embroidered silk. no story known to me casts more light on corpse-worship than does this one when read with all the graphic details of the original authorities.

but everywhere in britain we get similar local saints, whose bodies or bones performed marvellous miracles and were zealously guarded against sacrilegious intruders. bede himself is already full of such holy corpses: and in later days they increased by the hundred. st. alban at st. alban’s, the protomartyr of britain; the “white hand” of st. oswald, that when all else perished remained white and uncorrupted because blessed by aidan; st. etheldreda at ely, another remarkable and illustrative instance; edward the confessor at westminster abbey; these are but a few out of hundreds of examples which will at once occur to students of our history. and i will add that sometimes the legends of these saints link us on unexpectedly to far earlier types of heathen worship; as when we read concerning st. edmund of east anglia, the patron of bury st. edmund’s, that ingvar the viking took him by force, bound him to a tree, scourged him cruelly, made him a target for the arrows of the pagan danes, and finally beheaded him. either, i say, a god-making sacrifice of the northern heathens; or, failing that, a reminiscence, like st. sebastian, of such god-making rites as preserved 429in the legends of ancient martyrs. compare here, once more, the aino bear-sacrifice.

but during the later middle ages, the sacred body of britain, above all others, was undoubtedly that of thomas a’becket at canterbury. hither, as we know, all england went on pilgrimage; and nothing could more fully show the rapidity of canonisation in such cases than the fact that even the mighty henry ii. had to prostrate himself before his old enemy’s body and submit to a public scourging at the shrine of the new-made martyr. for several hundred years after his death there can be no doubt at all that the cult of st. thomas of canterbury was much the most real and living worship throughout the whole of england; its only serious rivals in popular favour being the cult of st. cuthbert to the north of humber, and that of st. etheldreda in the eastern counties.

holy heads in particular were common in britain before the reformation. a familiar scottish case is that of the head of st. fergus, the apostle of banff and the pictish highlands, transferred to and preserved at the royal seat of scone. “by sanct fergus heid at scone” was the favourite oath of the scotch monarchs, as “par sainct denys” was that of their french contemporaries.

in almost all these cases, again, and down to the present day, popular appreciation goes long before official roman canonisation. miracles are first performed at the tomb, and prayers are answered; an irregular cult precedes the formal one. even in our own day, only a few weeks after cardinal manning’s death, advertisements appeared in catholic papers in london, giving thanks for spiritual and temporal blessings received through the intervention of our lady, the saints, “and our beloved cardinal.”

this popular canonisation has often far outrun the regular official acceptance, as in the case of joan of arc in france at the present day, or of “maister john schorn, that blessed man born,” in the kent of the middle ages. thus countries like wales and cornwall are full of local and 430patriotic saints, often of doubtful catholicity, like st. cadoc, st. padern, st. petrock, st. piran, st. ruan, and st. illtyd, not to mention more accepted cases, like st. asaph and st. david. the fact is, men have everywhere felt the natural desire for a near, a familiar, a recent, and a present god or saint; they have worshipped rather the dead whom they loved and revered themselves than the elder gods and the remoter martyrs who have no body among them, no personal shrine, no local associations, no living memories. “i have seen in brittany,” says a french correspondent of mr. herbert spencer’s, “the tomb of a pious and charitable priest covered with garlands: people flocked to it by hundreds to pray of him that he would procure them restoration to health, and guard over their children.” there, with the christian addition of the supreme god, we get once more the root-idea of religion.

i should like to add that beyond such actual veneration of the bodies of saints and martyrs, there has always existed a definite theory in the roman church that no altar can exist without a relic. the altar, being itself a monumental stone, needs a body or part of a body to justify and consecrate it. dr. rock, a high authority, says in his hierurgia, “by the regulations of the church it is ordained that the holy sacrifice of the mass be offered upon an altar which contains a stone consecrated by a bishop, enclosing the relics of some saint or martyr; and be covered with three linen cloths that have been blessed for that purpose with an appropriate form of benediction.” the consecration of the altar, indeed, is considered even more serious than the consecration of the church itself; for without the stone and its relic, the ceremony of the mass cannot be performed at all. even when mass has to be said in a private house, the priest brings a consecrated stone and its relic along with him; and other such stones were carried in the retables or portable altars so common in military expeditions of the middle ages. the church is thus 431a tomb, with chapel tombs around it; it contains a stone monument covering a dead body or part of a body; and in it is made and exhibited the body of christ, in the form of the consecrated and transmuted wafer.

not only, however, is the altar in this manner a reduced or symbolical tomb, and not only is it often placed above the body of a saint, as at st. mark’s and st. peter’s, but it also sometimes consists itself of a stone sarcophagus. one such sarcophagus exists in the cathedral at st. malo; i have seen other coffin-shaped altars in the monastery of la trappe near algiers and elsewhere. when, however, the altar stands, like that at st. peter’s, above the actual body of a saint, it does not require to contain a relic; otherwise it does. that is to say, it must be either a real or else an attenuated and symbolical sarcophagus.

in the eastern church, a sort of relic-bag, called an antimins, is necessary for the proper performance of the holy eucharist. it consists of a square cloth, laid on the altar or wrapped up in its coverings, and figured with a picture representing the burial of christ by joseph of arimathea and the holy women. this brings it very near to the adonis and hoseyn ceremonies. but it must necessarily contain some saintly relic.

apart from corpse-worship and relic-worship in the case of saints, catholic christendom has long possessed an annual commemoration of the dead, the jour des morts, which links itself on directly to earlier ancestor-worship. it is true, this commemoration is stated officially, and no doubt correctly, to owe its origin (in its recognised form) to a particular historical person, adam de saint victor: but when we consider how universal such commemorations and annual dead-feasts have been in all times and places, we can hardly doubt that the church did but adopt and sanctify a practice which, though perhaps accounted heathenish, had never died out at all among the mass of believers. the very desire to be buried in a church or churchyard, and all that it implies, link on christian usage here 432once more to primitive corpse-worship. compare with the dead who sleep with osiris. in the middle ages, many people were buried in chapels containing the body (or a relic) of their patron saint.

in short, from first to last, religion never gets far away from these its earliest and profoundest associations. “god and immortality,”—those two are its key-notes. and those two are one; for the god in the last resort is nothing more than the immortal ghost, etherealised and extended.

on the other hand, whenever religion travels too far afield from its emotional and primal base in the cult of the nearer dead, it must either be constantly renewed by fresh and familiar objects of worship, or it tends to dissipate itself into mere vague pantheism. a new god, a new saint, a “revival of religion,” is continually necessary. the sacrifice of the mass is wisely repeated at frequent intervals; but that alone does not suffice; men want the assurance of a nearer, a more familiar deity. in our own time, and especially in protestant and sceptical england and america, this need has made itself felt in the rise of spiritualism and kindred beliefs, which are but the doctrine of the ghost or shade in its purified form, apart, as a rule, from the higher conception of a supreme ruler. ~and what is positivism itself save the veneration of the mighty dead, just tinged with vague ethical yearnings after the abstract service of living humanity? i have known many men of intellect, suffering under a severe bereavement—the loss of a wife or a dearly-loved child—take refuge for a time either in spiritualism or catholicism. the former seems to give them the practical assurance of actual bodily intercourse with the dead, through mediums or table-turning; the latter supplies them with a theory of death which makes reunion a probable future for them. this desire for direct converse with the dead we saw exemplified in a very early or primitive stage in the case of the mandan wives who talk lovingly to their husbands’ skulls; it probably forms the basis for the common habit of keeping the head 433while burying the body, whose widespread results we have so frequently noticed. i have known two instances of modern spiritualists who similarly had their wives’ bodies embalmed, in order that the spirit might return and inhabit them.

thus the cult of the dead, which is the earliest origin of all religion, in the sense of worship, is also the last relic of the religious spirit which survives the gradual decay of faith due to modern scepticism. to this cause i refer on the whole the spiritualistic utterances of so many among our leaders of modern science. they have rejected religion, but they cannot reject the inherited and ingrained religious emotions.