But The Finger That Shewed
Our Lord, Saying, ECCE AGNUS DEI; That Is To Say, 'Lo!
The Lamb of
God,' that would never burn, but is all whole; - that finger let
Saint Thecla, the holy virgin, be born into the hill of Sebast; and
there make men great feast.
In that place was wont to be a fair church; and many other there
were; but they be all beaten down. There was wont to be the head
of Saint John Baptist, enclosed in the wall. But the Emperor
Theodosius let draw it out, and found it wrapped in a little cloth,
all bloody; and so he let it to be born to Constantinople. And yet
at Constantinople is the hinder part of the head, and the fore part
of the head, till under the chin, is at Rome under the church of
Saint Silvester, where be nuns of an hundred orders: and it is yet
all broilly, as though it were half-burnt, for the Emperor Julianus
above-said, of his cursedness and malice, let burn that part with
the other bones, and yet it sheweth; and this thing hath been
proved both by popes and by emperors. And the jaws beneath, that
hold to the chin, and a part of the ashes and the platter that the
head was laid in, when it was smitten off, is at Genoa; and the
Genoese make of it great feast, and so do the Saracens also. And
some men say that the head of Saint John is at Amiens in Picardy;
and other men say that it is the head of Saint John the Bishop.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 102 of 305
Words from 27234 to 27507
of 81655
