had their frequented shrines, such as to quote only some of the best known that of St. Thomas at Canterbury, our Lady at Walsingham, St. Edward the Confessor at Westminster, St. William at York, St. Cuthbert at Durham, St. Thomas at Hereford, St. Osmund at Salisbury, St. Erkenwald at London, St. Hugh at Lincoln, St. Wulfstan at Worcester, Little St. William at Norwich, St. Werburgh at Chester, St. Frideswide at Oxford, St. Audrey at Ely, St. Wilfrid at Ripon, St. Paulinus at Rochester, St. Swithun at Winchester, St. Edmund at Bury St. Edmunds, and St. Richard at Chichester- all of these, it will be noticed, except the famous centre of Walsingham, being the actual tombs of historical personages. The tomb of St. Edward the Confessor remains to-day: it escaped the violence of the sixteenth century, which, impatient as it was of the saints, had a mighty respect for kings.

If to these we were to add all the known centres of pilgrimage in England, the tombs, and the fragmentary relics, the holy roods and statues, we should begin to have some idea of the place which such things held in the devotion of medieval Christendom. They did not gain that place without reason: indeed, popular canonisation followed the most approved scientific methods of experiment, since a local worthy was not counted a saint until miracles had been wrought at his tomb.1 The shrines existed because people were healed at them, and they are themselves the best evidence of the fact that people were healed.

1 See p. 289.

A little while ago we accounted for them on the ground of superstition and imposture, which was really very unscientific of us; but now we are able to see that they were useful, beneficent centres of spiritual and physical helpfulness. Men left their homes for a while, and came into a new environment, a place sanctified to them by some holy and romantic association and surely not unhelped by the prayers of the saint they honoured, as well as by those of the ministers in the church and of the other pilgrims.

The Pilgrim

Very solemnly the pilgrim left his home, having first confessed himself, and received the church's blessing in his parish church at a beautiful service when his staff and scrip were given to him: one of these pilgrim's collects is retained, a little monument of English prose, in our present Prayer Book,2 with its references to the perils of the journey "Dispose the way of thy servants that, among all the changes and chances of this mortal life, they may ever be defended by thy most gracious and ready help.”

While he was away, the pilgrim was mentioned every Sunday in the Bidding Prayer at his parish church, where he hoped to return one day to give thanks. He took with him a license obtained from the rector, which procured for him kindly hospitality at the hostels founded by pious people

1 It will be found in the Sarum Missal as Servitium Peregrinorum, Burntisland ed., cols. 850*-855*.

2 The first Collect after the Communion Service.

1

on the road and at the journey's end: the perils were real and great in an age when a man could be lost within the sound of his own city's churchbells, as a legacy at St. Peter Mancroft in Norwich bears witness to this day;1 and we have to remember that, though there were necessarily many worldly pilgrims because everybody went on pilgrimages, yet Chaucer's company gives us only one aspect of the most fashionable way of all, and causes us to overlook the sick, and the miserable, and also the poor who were in the majority then as now. Those who were too ill to go long journeys could often find a holy place near at hand, and often to them also were brought by others little leaden bottles containing water in which some relic had been dipped.

To how many thousands must it have happened that their faith made them whole! The method was a wise one. After their solemn initiation they went out, feeding upon hope and faith, into new surroundings, where, breathing an atmosphere of concentrated devotion and helped by many prayers, they saw the beautiful and glittering shrine which contained something that all men venerated and was surrounded by the offerings of grateful patients. Then they made the supreme effort of faith, and prayed as men seldom pray in these colder times. There was something here better

1 The Mayor lost himself in the dense wood which then covered Mousehold Heath, and was in such imminent danger that when the bells of St. Peter's rang out and enabled him to find his way into the city, he determined to bequeath a sum to pay the sexton for ringing at 4 a.m. and 8 p.m. every day "for the help and benefit of travellers."

than a rest cure, something more comforting to many than the nursing homes of Bloomsbury, something which the doctors who inhabit the gloomy architecture of Harley Street might envy. What would happen if we combined these potent influences of older times with the science and the skill of our own age- if, lifting our heads above the fond devotion to relics and legends of relics which so greatly helped our simpler forefathers, we yet bowed these proud imperfect heads of ours to pass under the temple door into a fuller presence of God? What might not happen if we could bring our sick to holy places of rest and prayer, to centres of pilgrimage where both religion and science were at their best, to churches of deathless beauty, hallowed by worship and by sacraments, by past associations and by the present efficacy of united faith? The rich seek in many watering places a substitute where they find a little to help them at a high cost: but one thing is lacking, the power of vital religion. Once our ancient great churches welcomed the poor as well as the rich, and gave them the best they had of science and of religion, set in an inspiring atmosphere of harmonious beauty that was better than anything we have to offer. Their science was in its swaddling clothes, their religion had many imperfections; but what they had they gave: and we ought to be able to give much better, if those glorious churches which they have bequeathed to us should ever recover their large, original intention of ministering both to the spirit and the body.

CHAPTER XXVII

HEALING BY SAINTLY PERSONS

I HAVE spoken of certain methods of religious healing - external methods by which faith and prayer were used to help the sick —unction, and the use of other materials, relics in the wider sense, incubation at sacred places, and the visiting of shrines. These take us over the period from the Apostles to the Reformation and indeed, in the greater part of the Christian world, to the present day, since incubation and the visiting of shrines have never ceased in the Eastern and the Roman churches.

In addition to all this, there is right through Christian history a continuous record of healing by means of the exceptional virtue which belongs to those who live very near to God, and whom we call saints. Some such stories we have already had occasion to note; 1 but it will be well to give a small collection of typical instances, chosen not from legendary sources, but from contemporary witnesses. I have supplied such a collection in the first Appendix to this book.2

The material there given will, I think, bear careful reading. I have not attempted to classify or to criticise the very various cases which occur, think

1 See Chapters XVIII, XIX, XXIV-XXVI.

2 See Appendix I, pp. 353-400.