him; so that at last he went weary to bed. And behold! in the morning he found engraved on the tomb by the hands of an angel Hac sunt in fossa Bedæ Venerabilis ossa. The inscription which was visible in the time of Erasmus on the shrine of Beda in the abbey church of Durham, and which is historically known to have been inscribed by Bishop Pudsey at the beginning of the twelfth century, commenced in like manner, and consisted of these four lines Continet hæc theca Bedæ Venerabilis ossa. Sensum factori Christus dedit, æsque datori : (10) The scroll brought to Saint Giles. Saint Giles was abbat of Arles in Provence, in the time of the emperor Charlemagne; who invited him to Orleans, and requested him to intercede with the Almighty for the pardon of his sins. The saint was performing this office, when an angel appeared, and laid upon the altar a scroll thus inscribed, Egidii merito Caroli peccata remitto. (11) Stones which conceal nothing. The Dutch annotators of Erasmus say that he here alludes to the Lapis Lydius, or touchstone used for testing metals: but an Englishman will think of his own proverb, Stone walls have ears. (12) Paul carries a sword. The conceit of Erasmus in this passage, that the saints might turn their instruments of martyrdom into weapons of defence, was anticipated, so far as Saint Paul is concerned, in the motto of a very elegant monastic seal, which represents a kneeling monk, holding the banner of the Church of London, charged with a figure of Saint Paul, bearing his sword drawn. This motto is derived from NON SINE CAUSA GLADIUM PORTAT. "Rom. XIII. 4 (Vul) (13) Saint William. We had in England a saint of this name at York, who was one of the early archbishops; and another at Norwich, a boy said to have been martyred by the Jews; but the saint to whom Erasmus alludes was a count of Aquitaine, one of the most distinguished commanders G under Charlemagne, who in his latter days, in the year 806, retired into a monastery which he had founded near Lyons. Hence the combination in his costume of the warrior and the monk. (14) Saint Anthony hath his sacred fire. This alludes to the disease now known as erysipelas. Mr. Pettigrew, in his interesting work on Medical Superstitions, 8vo. 1844, remarks that, "Bollandus gives an account of many miracles wrought by the intercession of Saint Anthony, particularly in the distemper called sacred fire, which since his time has been called Saint Anthony's fire; it having miraculously ceased through his patronage when raging violently in many parts of Europe in the eleventh century." (15) Situation of Walsingham. The words of the original are, " Ad extremum Angliæ finem, inter Occidentem et Septemtrionem, haud procul a mari, passuum fere tribus millibus:" a description which certainly is far from accurate, and which would be enough to puzzle any commentator, if it was not ascertained from so many other proofs that Walsingham is intended. There is, indeed, a note in the Dutch editions of the Colloquies, the writer of which was so far misled as to suppose the Virgo Parathalassia was "Saint Maries,” near Falmouth, in Cornwall (an evident confusion with Saint Mawe's). Even as respects the distance of Walsingham from the sea, Erasmus had not preserved an accurate recollection. It is about seven miles from the town of Wells, the nearest port, and eight from the sea; but most of the pilgrims coming by sea would probably land at Lynn, at a distance of twenty-seven miles. (16) It is a town maintained by scarcely anything else but the number of its visitors. There is a remarkable similarity between this passage of Erasmus and the description given by Mr. Russel of Mariazell, in Styria, the modern focus of Austrian pilgrimage. "The town," says that traveller, "is small and mean-looking; it consists, in fact, principally of inns and alehouses, to accommodate the perpetual influx of visitors, which never ceases all the year round, except when snow has rendered the mountains impassable. The immense size of the beds in these hostelries shows at once to how many inconveniences the pious are willing to submit. The pilgrims, however, who can pretend to the luxury of a bed are few in number. Above all, during the time that the annual procession from Vienna is on the spot, it is not possible that the greater part of the crowd can be able to find lodgings; and, though there were accommodation, no small portion of them are too poor to pay for it. These, from necessity, and many others from less justifiable motives, spend the night in the neighbouring woods, both sexes intermingled; and till morning dawns they continue drinking and singing songs, which are anything but hymns of devotion. Fighting used to be the order of the night, so long as the procession from Gratz (which likewise is always a numerous one) performed its pilgrimage at the same time with that from Vienna. It was found necessary to put a stop to this public scandal, by ordering the pilgrimages to take place at different times." About 80 different processions of pilgrims proceed annually to Mariazell from different places in the Austrian dominions. The Vienna procession arrives on the 2nd of July; that from Gratz on the 12th of August; and the total number of pilgrims who visit the spot in one year is about 100,000. In Dr. Dibdin's Bibliographical Tour there are some graphic representations, by Mr. F. C. Lewis, of the bivouacs of these pilgrims on their journey. (17) This college has scarcely any other resources than from the bounty of the Virgin. Here Erasmus was not fully informed. The priory |