St Cuthbert's Corpse by David Willem

Author:David Willem [Willem, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Medieval, Religion, Christian Church, Christianity, Saints & Sainthood, Christian Rituals & Practice, General
ISBN: 9781908381156
Google: 948NDgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Sacristy Press
Published: 2013-07-01T04:10:22+00:00

The effect on the craning witnesses and on the waiting crowds would have been intense.

There were some who could no longer look upon such a scene as this with a fearless gaze, and covering their eyes with their hands, exclaimed, that he, the investigator, insisted upon a greater proof of the truth than circumstances called for, that he had before him the fact in all its certainty. After a while, when the inquisitor had over and above satisfied himself of the truth of the miracle, he raised his voice in the midst of the assembled multitude, and cried aloud, “My brethren, the body which we have before us is unquestionably dead, but it is just as sound and entire as when it was forsaken by its holy soul on its way to the skies.”

After this, all things being arranged about the holy body as they had been before, those who were present pronounced the brethren of the monastery veracious and worthy to be trusted, and he who had a while before judged them unworthy of credit, affirmed, whether he would or not, in conjunction with the rest, that what he had before denied deserved to be believed.

They all straightway chanted the Te Deum in solemn exultation, and every thing which was necessary being decently arranged, the holy body of the Father was placed upon the shoulders of a fit number of bearers; and in honour of the Omnipotent God a band of singers scattered their celestial peals on the gale. The various caskets of relics, the remains of the other saints, went before—the venerable body of the blessed Cuthbert the Bishop followed after, and no sooner was it out of the door and in the open air, than the immense crowd which was waiting for it, from very joy, burst into tears, and fell flat on the ground, rendering it almost impossible for the procession to advance—all the while the voices of the singers were drowned by the strong cries of the praying, the exulting, and the weeping for joy.

Having gone round the outside of the new church, the procession halted at its eastern end, where the Bishop began a sermon, and there stood by his side men to inform the assembled multitudes of the fact that they had seen and handled this miracle of incorruption, which had lasted for four hundred and eighteen years. It was a matter of new exultation to them, that their devotion had been thought worthy to be rewarded with such a manifestation of celestial grace.

That day had far advanced, and the Bishop kept preaching on, touching many points not at all appropriate to the solemnity, and fairly wearing out the patience of many of his hearers by the prolixity of his discourse. The brightness of the day had been such that there was no sign of bad weather whatever in the sky, when on a sudden such torrents of rain began to fall, that the brethren, interrupting the sermon, snatched up the coffin in which the holy body was contained, and hastily conveyed it into the church.

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