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Fraudulent Religious Relics

AS AN honest, upright and sincere person you love truth and righteousness. You love those who speak the truth, who are honest and can be trusted. Naturally you hate all liars, thieves and cheats. Fakers of all kinds you despise, and especially so when you discover them to be among your closest friends in whom you have in times past put your implicit trust. And if there are any such masked frauds moving among your circle of associates you are happy and glad if your real friends point them out, in order that you in turn may warn other honest persons like yourself. It is therefore as true friends of the honest-hearted that we call attention to the relic racketeers that operate in the name of religion, and who have for many centuries filched from and plundered credulous people with their fake merchandise. Here are the facts.

Relic worship is of pagan origin and was introduced in the Roman Catholic religion many centuries ago. The Catholic Encyclopedia (vol. 12, pages 734-738) not only admits this, but also discloses other very startling facts about where these relics came from and how. Relic worship among Catholics, it says, “easily lent itself to error, fraud, and greed of gain,” and as a result “many grave abuses” were committed. As early as the fourth century, in the days of Augustine, Catholic monks were going around “making profit by the sale of spurious relics”.

“In the Theodosian Code,” the Encyclopedia continues, “the sale of relics is forbidden, but numerous stories, of which it would be easy to collect a long series, beginning with the writings of St. Gregory the Great and St. Gregory of Tours, prove to us that many unprincipled persons found a means of enriching themselves by a sort of trade in these objects of devotion, the majority of which no doubt were fraudulent.”

From and after the days of Charlemagne, when Church and State ruled supreme, the traffic in bones of “saints” and other so-called “holy” antiques became so riotous that even members of the Hierarchy complained that the church altars were being loaded down with bogus relics. There was a keen competition between various churches to outdo each other in rare relics. Says the Catholic Encyclopedia: “At the beginning of the ninth century, as M. Jean Guiraud had shown, the exportation of the bodies of martyrs from Rome had assumed the dimensions of a regular commerce, and a certain deacon, Deusdona, acquired an unenviable notoriety in these transactions. What was perhaps in the long run hardly less disastrous than fraud or avarice was the keen rivalry between religious centres, and the eager credulity fostered by the desire to be known as the possessors of some unusually startling relic.” “Such was the rage for them at one time that even Mabillon, the Benedictine, justly complains that the altars were loaded with suspected relics, numerous spurious ones being everywhere offered to the piety and devotion of the faithful. He adds, too, that bones are often consecrated which, so far from belonging to saints, probably do not belong to Christians.”—M’Clintock & Strong’s Cyclopœdia, vol. 8, p. 1928.

WHENCE CAME THESE ANTIQUES?

In later times the huge collections of duplicate relics even embarrassed the Hierarchy to the point that they were forced to do some explaining. To quote again, the Catholic Encyclopedia says: “The practice already noticed of attributing the same sanctity to objects which had touched the shrine as attached to the contents of the shrine itself, the custom of making facsimiles and imitations, a custom which persists to our own day in the replicas of the Vatican statue of St. Peter or of the Grotto of Lourdes—all these are causes adequate to account for the multitude of unquestionably spurious relics with which the treasuries of the great medieval churches were crowded.” When one appreciates how clerical rogues operated with unlimited license “it becomes easy to understand the multiplicity and extravagance of the entries in the relic inventories of Rome and other countries”, says this authority.

Italian churches close to their mother in Rome are especially full of fictitious relics. “The following is only a sample of those in the Church of Santa Croce de Gerusalemme: three pieces of the true cross, the title placed over the cross; two thorns from the crown of our Lord; the sponge extended to our Lord with vinegar and gall; a piece of the veil and hair of the Virgin; a phial full of the blood of Jesus; some of the manna gathered in the desert, etc.” (M’Clintock & Strong’s Cyclopædia) One observer has commented that “there is in existence throughout Catholicism today enough of the ‘True Cross’ to build several houses”. And besides the phial of Jesus’ blood here mentioned and another at Bruges, Belgium, the Denver Catholic Register newspaper says “other supposed relics of the Precious Blood are preserved in Wurttemberg, Sarzana, Mentone, and Mantua”.

Making a historical footnote on this fake-relic business in his day, Geoffrey Chaucer in his “Prologue to the Canterbury Tales” describes “The Pardoner” who had just arrived straight from the Vatican with his pockets full of pardons hot from Rome. Besides these, in his bag he had a pillowcase which he said was “Our Lady’s” veil; also a fragment of the very sail from Saint Peter’s fishing boat; also a glass full of pig’s bones. These latter “relikes” (relics), Chaucer says, he peddled, making twice as much money in a single day as a working man. And yet, for all of this, “he was in church a noble ecclesiaste”, gibed Chaucer.

A more recent example of a questionable relic being worshipfully bowed down to by thousands of trusting souls was that of St. Francis Xavier’s “right” forearm and hand. Life magazine published a picture of the relic when it toured the United States. Whereupon a doctor’s wife called the editor’s attention to the fact that it was actually a left arm and hand turned over. It can’t be, Life declared, because Xavier’s left arm is still attached to the body in Goa, India, which only proves the relic being circulated is somebody else’s left arm and hand. A blundersome forgery indeed!

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

Admitted by high dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, and other informed persons, that the majority of Christendom’s relics are fakes—why, then, are they worshiped in this enlightened twentieth century? What reasons, excuses or explanations do the clergy have for not informing the people in general that the majority of their antiques are fraudulent imitations? Their answers to these questions, as set forth in the Catholic Encyclopedia, will shock honest, truth-loving persons.

First of all, in view of the fact that relic worship extends back into remote antiquity, the clergy say they should not be blamed for allowing the practice to continue. But is this Christlike? Did not Jesus at all times speak the truth, even if it exposed and rooted out false teachings and demonic practices of the Jewish clergy that were rooted in remote antiquity? (Matt. 15:1-9; 23:1-5, 16-28) The task of determining which relics are genuine and which are spurious is too great, the “time and expense” too much, the clergy say, and besides it would cause a sensational scandal and disturbance among the peasantry. All right, why not do away with the whole inventory of relics? Why not tell the people that the whole business of worshiping relics is of pagan origin and of the Devil? Why not tell the people the truth? Why try to hide the real facts beneath a refuge of lies or bury them under ecclesiastical falsehoods? Do the clergy not know that soon now Jehovah God will wash away their refuge of lies and falsehoods?—Isa. 28:15-17.

“Supposing it [relic worship] to be in fact spurious,” the Catholic Encyclopedia says, “no dishonour is done to God by the continuance of an error which has been handed down in perfect good faith for many centuries.” How foreign and strange this doctrine to anything written in the Bible! Jehovah is the God of truth! (John 3:33; Rom. 3:4; Heb. 6:18) All error and lies are of the Devil and are certainly a great reproach and dishonor to God. (John 8:44; Rom. 1:25) Consequently, Jehovah is against all such pious frauds that teach lies in His name and He will clean them out at Armageddon.