John Calvin

“ Whoever is not wilfully prejudiced against all reason must certainly be convinced that the worship of relics, whether true or false, is an abominable idolatry; yet should not this even be the case with him, he must nevertheless perceive the evident imposture, and whatever may have been his former devotion to relics, he must lose all courage in kissing such objects, and become entirely disgusted with them. ”

“ Our reason shows us that this is an evident lie. Are we then to be so much imposed upon by words as to resist the evidence of our senses?
Moreover, in order to show how much reliance may be placed on the statements which are given about these relics, we must remark that those considered the principal and most authentic at Rome have been, according to those accounts, brought thither by Vespasian and Titus. Now, this is such a clumsy fabrication,—they might just as well tell us that the Turks went to Jerusalem in order to carry off the true cross to Constantinople! ”

“ But it is a very rare thing, that a heart disposed to value any relics whatever should not become to a certain degree polluted by some superstition.
I admit that people do not arrive at once at open idolatry, but they gradually advance from one abuse to another until they fall into this extremity, and, indeed, those who call themselves Christians have, in this respect, idolatrised as much as Pagans ever did. They have prostrated themselves, and knelt before relics, just as if they were worshipping God ”

“ Now, as one evil never comes alone but is always followed by another, it thus happened that where people were seeking for relics, either of Jesus Christ or the saints, they became so blind that whatever name was imposed upon any rubbish presented to them, they received it without any examination or judgment; thus the bones of an ass or dog, which any hawker gave out to be the bones of a martyr, were devoutly received without any difficulty. ”

“ Let us call to mind the practice of the early church. It is true that the first Christians were always anxious to get possession of the bodies of the martyrs, lest they might be devoured by beasts or birds of prey, and decently to bury them, as we read was the case with the bodies of St John the Baptist and St Stephen. This solicitude was shown, however, in order to inter them in their graves, and there to leave them until the day of the resurrection; but they did not expose these remains to the sight of men for their adoration. ”

“ It is of no use to discuss the point whether it is right or wrong to have relics merely to keep them as precious objects, without worshipping them, because experience proves that this is never the case.
It is true that St Ambrose, in speaking of Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine the Great, who sought with great trouble and expense for the cross of our Lord, says that she did not worship the wood, but the Lord who was suspended upon it. ”

“ Finally, I beseech and exhort, in the name of God, all my readers to listen to the truth now clearly displayed before them, and to believe that, by God's especial providence, those who have endeavoured thus to lead mankind astray have been rendered so blind and careless as to neglect a proper concealment of their deceptions, but that, like Midianites having their eyes put out, they run one against another, for we all know that they quarrel amongst themselves, and mutually injure each other. ”

“ Many of those who look at relics close their eyes from superstition, so that in regarding these they see nothing; that is to say, they dare not properly gaze at and consider what they properly may be. Thus many who boast of having seen the whole body of St Claude, or of any other saint, have never had the courage to raise their eyes and to ascertain what it really was. ”

“ But it is necessary to consider what St Paul says, that every service of God invented by man, whatever appearance of wisdom it may have, is nothing better than vanity and foolishness, if it has no other foundation than our own devising. ”

“ I repeat what I said at the commencement of this treatise, that it would be most important to abolish from amongst us Christians this pagan superstition of canonising relics, either of Christ or of his saints, in order to make idols of them; for this is a defilement and an impurity which should never be suffered in the Church.
We have already proved that it is so by arguments, and also from the evidence of Scripture. Let those who are not yet satisfied look to the practices of the ancient fathers, and conform to their examples. ”

“ The devil, perceiving man's folly, was not satisfied with having led the world into one deception, but added to it another, by giving the name of relics of saints to the most profane things. And God punished the credulous by depriving them of all power of reasoning rightly, so that they accepted without inquiry all that was presented to them, making no distinction between white or black. ”

“ Is it likely that the man who put him to death, whether a soldier or executioner, should have given away his sword and the sheet we have mentioned, in order to be converted into relics?
ST PETER AND ST PAUL.
It is now time to speak of the apostles, and I shall begin with St Peter and St Paul. Their bodies are at Rome; one part of them in the church of St Peter, and the other in that of St Paul. We are told that St Sylvester weighed their bodies in order to divide them into equal parts. Both their heads are preserved also at Rome in St John of the Lateran. ”

“ Moreover, it is necessary to set the profit derived from it against the dangers with which it is fraught, and it will thus be found that, to have relics is a useless and frivolous thing, which will most probably gradually lead towards idolatry, because they cannot be handled and looked upon without being honoured, and in doing this men will very soon render them the honour which is due to Jesus Christ. In short, the desire for relics is never without superstition, and what is worse, it is usually the parent of idolatry. ”

“ There is one at Besançon in the Church of St John the Great, a second at Toulouse, a third at Lyons, a fourth at Florence, and a fifth at St Jean des Aventures, near Maçon. Now I request my readers to examine this subject, and to judge for themselves whether they can believe, that whilst St John's finger, which, according to their own tradition, is the only remainder of his body, is at Florence, five other fingers can be found in sundry other places, or, in short, that six are one, and one is six. ”

“ In the same church they preserve the shoes of St Joseph, which could only fit the foot of a little child or a dwarf. The proverb says that liars need good memories, so as not to contradict their own sayings. This rule was not followed out at Aix-la-Chapelle, otherwise care would have been taken to maintain a better proportion of size between the shoes of the husband and the shirt of the wife. And yet these relics, so devoid of all appearance of truth, are devoutly kissed and venerated by crowds! ”

“ But let us leave the contending parties to settle this point between themselves, though it would be easy enough to show the absurdity of their pretensions, because the cross which, according to some writers, appeared to Constantine, was not a material cross, but simply a vision.
There are several carved images, as well as paintings, of Jesus Christ to which many miracles are attributed. Thus the beard grows on the crucifixes of Salvatierra and Orange, and other images are said to shed tears. ”

“ It is, therefore, evident that those who invented all these relics never expected contradiction, or they would not have devised such audacious falsehoods. The authenticity of St Peter's altar at Rome (which I have just mentioned) is denied by Pisa, that town pretending to possess the real one. The least objectionable of St Peter's relics is undoubtedly his staff, it being most probable that he had made use of one during his travels, but unfortunately there are two of them at Cologne and Treves, each town claiming exclusive possession of the identical one. ”

“ Milan only assumes to have possession of the graves of the wise men, not their bodies, which were removed to Cologne at the capture of Milan in 1162, by Frederick Barbarossa.↑ St Anthony is venerated, or rather worshipped, by the Eastern as well as the Western Church, and he seems to have bestowed his favours upon each with the utmost impartiality, for a body of his is shown at Novgorod, in Russia, where a church, with a convent attached to it, is dedicated to him. ”

“ That man must be of little mind who cannot see the folly of it. There is no mention of these things in the Gospels, and they were never heard of in the times of the apostles. About fifty years after the death of Jesus Christ, Jerusalem was destroyed. Many ancient doctors have written since, mentioning fully the occurrences of their time, even to the cross and nails found by Helena, but these absurdities are not alluded to. But what is more, these things were not brought forward at Rome during the days of St Gregory, as may be seen from his writings ”

“ Is it possible that they would have permitted the disciples to take them away as relics, since these very men had been bribed by the Pharisees to perjure themselves by saying that the disciples had stolen the body of our Lord? I shall conclude with a convincing proof of the audacity of the Papists. Wherever the holy sudary is exhibited, they show a large sheet with the full-length likeness of a human body on it. Now, St John's Gospel, chapter nineteenth, says that Christ was buried according to the manner of the Jews ”

“ Since the origin of this abuse is so ancient, there can be no doubt that it has greatly increased during a long interval of years, particularly as the world has been much corrupted since that age, and has continued to deteriorate until it has arrived at its present condition. Now, the origin and root of this evil has been, that, instead of discerning Jesus Christ in his Word, his Sacraments, and his Spiritual Graces, the world has, according to its custom, amused itself with his clothes, shirts, and sheets, leaving thus the principal to follow the accessory. ”

“ This is indeed no difficulty for those who will only exercise their reason, for amongst the numerous evident impostures we have here mentioned, where may we find one real relic of which we may feel certain that it is such as is represented?
Moreover, all those that I have enumerated are nothing comparatively to the remainder yet untold by me. Even whilst this treatise is in the press, I have been informed of many relics not mentioned in it; and if a general visitation of all existing relics were possible, a hundredfold more discoveries would be made. ”

“ I hope, however, that this little treatise will be of general service, by inducing people to think on the subject; for, if we could have the register of all the relics that are to be found in the world, men would clearly see how much they had been blinded, and what darkness and folly overspread the earth.
Let us begin with Jesus Christ, about whose blood there have been fierce disputations; for many maintained that he had no blood except of a miraculous kind; nevertheless the natural blood is exhibited in more than a hundred places. ”

“ The Gospel testifies that the cross could be borne by one single individual; how glaring, then, is the audacity now to pretend to display more relics of wood than three hundred men could carry! As an explanation of this, they have invented the tale, that whatever quantity of wood may be cut off this true cross, its size never decreases. ”

“ Its history is curious, inasmuch as it shows that the efforts of enlightened and pious prelates to prevent idolatrous practices invading their churches proved unavailing against that general tendency to worship visible objects, so strongly implanted in corrupt human nature, that even in this enlightened age we are continually witnessing such manifestation of its revival as may be compared only to that of the dark period of the middle ages. ”

“ Mistakes of this kind must frequently happen to the worshippers of relics, for there is such confusion amongst them that it is quite impossible to worship the bones of a martyr without danger of rendering such honours by mistake to the bones of some brigand or thief, or even to those of a horse, a dog, or a donkey. ”

“ Occupying such high rank, it is therefore very natural that his relics should be so liberally dispersed; his whole bodies are, however, only preserved at the Abbey of St Dénis in France, and at Ratisbon in Germany. About a century ago Ratisbon instituted a lawsuit at Rome to prove that the body in its possession was truly that of the saint, and the justice of the claim was established by a decision of the Papal Court, delivered in the presence of the French Ambassador. ”

“ It is thus that the foolish fancy which people had at first for collecting relics, ended in this open abomination,—they not only turned from God, in order to amuse themselves with vain and corruptible things, but even went on to the execrable sacrilege of worshipping dead and insensible creatures, instead of the one living God. ”

“ With regard to his head, Sosomen, another chronicler, relates that it was carried to Constantinople by the Emperor Theodosius; therefore, according to these ancient historians, the whole body of John the Baptist was burnt with the exception of his head, and the ashes were all lost excepting the small portion secretly taken away by the hermits of Jerusalem. Now, let us see what remains of the head are extant. ”