detract any from its former merit or reputation. Sterile women
flocked to the shrine, and pilgrimages and a set number of days of
devotion to this saint were in order. Scrapings from this statue infused
in water were said to make a miraculous drink which insured conception.
Similar shrines to this same saint were erected at other places, and we
are told that the good monks, who must have had an intense and lively
interest in seeing that the population was increased, were kept busy
supplying the statues with new members, as the women scraped away so
industriously, either to prepare a drink for themselves or for their
husbands, that a phallus did not last long. At one of these shrines, so
onerous became the industry of replacing a new phallus to the saint,
that the good monks placed an apron over the organ, informing the good
women that thereafter a simple contemplation of the sacred organ would
be sufficient; and a special monk was detailed to take special charge of
this apron, which was only to be lifted in special cases of sterility.
By this innovation the good monks stole a march on their brothers in
like shrines in other localities, such as those of St. Gilles, in
Brittany, or St. Rene, in Anjou, where the old-fashioned scraping and
replacing still was in vogue. Near the seaport town of Brest, in
Brittany, at the shrine of St. Guignole, the monks adopted a new
expedient. They bored a hole through the statue, through which a phallus
was made to project horizontally; as fast as the devotees scraped away
in front the good monks as industriously pushed forward the wooden peg
that formed the phallus, so that it gave the member the miraculous
appearance of growing out as fast as scraped off, which greatly added to
its reputation and efficacy. The shrine continued in great vigor until
the middle of the last century. Delaure mentions a similar shrine at
Puy, also in France, which existed up to the outbreak of the French
Revolution. The scrapings in this case were immersed in wine, and the
guardians of the statue saw to it that no amount of paring or scraping
should remove from the saint any of that appearance of vigor or
virility which his great reputation demanded, this being done by a
similar procedure as followed at the church near Brest, one of the
attendants having been sent to investigate into the marvelous growth of
the Brest phallus.

CHAPTER VIII.

HISTORY OF EMASCULATION, CASTRATION, AND EUNUCHISM.

For