By these means an immense number of persons, excited by religious
curiosity, repaired to the places where these objects were exposed, and
the churches and the provinces of which became enriched by them. With
the same motive, in the year 1008, a portion of the rod of Moses was
discovered in France, which attracted a vast number of visiters, both
from that country and Italy. In 1014, some monks, on their return from a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem, brought with them a part of the napkin with
which our Saviour wiped the feet of the apostles at the Last Supper;
and, in order to prove its authenticity, they passed it uninjured
through the flames. This kind of miracles, which were in such favour
with the ignorant multitude in those days, produces no effect, since
chemical science has enabled us to penetrate into the hidden secrets of
nature; and if history is diligently examined, we shall perceive that
the human mind was occupied in the discovery of that science at this
period. The alchemists perhaps, although persecuted as the followers of
the devil, were not altogether extinct, and still read some books which
laid open the discoveries of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The
commercial cities of Italy, in communication with the East, acquired
extraordinary knowledge, of which they availed themselves
disadvantageously to the morality and piety of the Christian church.
About this time, too (the year 1000), the epoch at which, according to
prediction, the world was to be at an end, men began to make fresh
researches, and to build new churches, to repair the old ones, and to
invent novelties. The prophecy of Daniel, which says, "Tempus, tempora,
dimidium temporis," proving by experience to be inapplicable to the
interpretation which the monks and ecclesiastics had generally given it,
produced a new energy in the human mind: and if at first, the wealth of
the churches were aggrandized by profuse largesses, we shall hereafter
see them struggling to preserve it. A disposition also to study was now
induced: and a certain Guido, a monk of Pomposa, being called to Rome as