Peter's, but is made of common iron, united with a part of one
of the nails of the cross.]
[Footnote 108: These relics are shewn to the people on holy-Wednesday
after the matins of Tenebrae; on Thursday and Friday several times in
the day: on holy Saturday morning after mass: on Easter Sunday after
the Pontifical mass: on Easter Monday, and a few other festivals.]
[Footnote 109: The opinion of Roestell (Beschreibung der Stadt Rom, B.
I, p. 400) that these phials contained the blessed eucharist under
the form of wine, if admitted, would form a new proof of the real and
permanent presence of Christ's blood in the B. Sacrament; yet it is
a novel, unsupported, and untenable conjecture. Some of the ancient
Christian Fathers complain, it is true, of the abuse of burying the
eucharist with the deceased under the form of bread; but the phials of
blood have been found with so many bodies, that we cannot reasonably
suppose the custom to have been an abuse: and who among the ancients
mentions that the eucharist was ever buried with them under the form
of _wine_? That the palm-branch or crown accompanied by these phials
of blood are authentic signs of martyrdom, see Raoul-Rochette's
Memoires sur les pierre sepulcrales, t. XIII des Mem. de l'Academie,
p. 210, 217. On one of the phials mentioned by Roestell was found the
inscription Sanguis Saturnini.]
[Footnote 110: In the Vatican Library is a small relic-case, marked
with the monogram, of great simplicity and consequent antiquity.
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