rgin martyrs: the fact that many
of them, as anatomists now declare, are the bones of MEN does not appear
in the Middle Ages to have diminished their power of competing with the
relics at the other shrines in healing efficiency.

No error in the choice of these healing means seems to have diminished
their efficacy. When Prof. Buckland, the eminent osteologist and
geologist, discovered that the relics of St. Rosalia at Palermo, which
had for ages cured diseases and warded off epidemics, were the bones
of a goat, this fact caused not the slightest diminution in their
miraculous power.

Other developments of fetich cure were no less discouraging to the
evolution of medical science. Very important among these was the Agnus
Dei, or piece of wax from the Paschal candles, stamped with the figure
of a lamb and consecrated by the Pope. In 1471 Pope Paul II expatiated
to the Church on the efficacy of this fetich in preserving men from
fire, shipwreck, tempest, lightning, and hail, as well as in assisting
women in childbirth; and he reserved to himself and his successors
the manufacture of it. Even as late as 1517 Pope Leo X issued, for a
consideration, tickets bearing a cross and the following inscription:
"This cross measured forty times makes the height of Christ in
his humanity. He who kisses it is preserved for seven days from
falling-sickness, apoplexy, and sudden death."

Naturally, the belief thus sanctioned by successive heads of the Church,
infallible in all teaching regarding faith and morals, created a demand
for amulets and charms of all kinds; and under this influence we find
a reversion to old pagan fetiches. Nothing, on the whole, stood more
constantly in the way of any proper development of medical science than
these fetich cures, whose efficacy was based on theological reasoning
and sanctioned by ecclesiastical policy. It would be expecting too much
from human nature to imagine that pontiffs who derived large revenues
from the sale of the Agnus Dei, or priests who derived both wealth
and honours from cures wrought at shrines under their care, or lay
dignitaries who had invested heavily in relics, should favour the
development of any science which undermined their interests.(301)

(301) See Fort's Medical Economy during the Middle Ages, pp. 211-213;
also the Handbooks of Murray and Baedeker for North Germany, and various
histories of medicine passim; also Collin de Plancy and scores of
others. For the d