epuce--long
lost, but now found. It was placed in charge of the Ursuline Sisterhood,
where it has remained ever since undisturbed, except by a controversy in
regard to the propriety of the relic, in which the good bishop ambled
about in the most ambiguous manner, the only clearly defined portion of
his dissertation being the one wherein he laments "the decadence of that
truly Christian spirit which animated the laity of the middle ages with
a radiant zeal. A piety also pervaded those gentle Christians of former
times, who were possessed of a religious instruction which determined
for them the tenets of the creed and its practices,--a happy state or
condition of affairs, which prevented the intelligence of the faithful
from wandering into the sloughs of unprofitable skepticism." This
settled the question as to the propriety of the prepuce being converted
into a miracle-working relic; at least, as far as the good bishop was
concerned.

It would be an injustice not to mention the other shrines in detail
after the prominence that has been given to the abbeys of Coulombs and
Charroux; so the history of another will be given. We are not told just
how the Church of St. John Lateran in Rome first became possessed of
_its_ holy prepuce, but it nevertheless had one; also the only authentic
one in existence, like all the others. It disappeared at one of the
periodical sackings that Rome has repeatedly suffered at the hands of
Goth, Vandal, or Christian. This time it was the soldiery of the eldest
son of the church--- Charles V--who did the sacking; it was in the year
1527, a soldier--probably some impious, heathenish mercenary--broke into
the holy sanctuary of the church and stole therefrom the box that
contained the holy relics, among them the holy prepuce. These impious
wretches, as a rule, came to grief in short order; hence we are told
that this mercenary and sacrilegious soldier was compelled to secrete
his box, when only a short distance from Rome, where the box remains and
the mercenary wretch disappears, probably carried off bodily by the
devil, as he deserved. Thirty years afterward the box is discovered by a
priest, who, ignorant of its contents, carries it to the lady on whose
domain it was found. On being opened it was found to contain a piece of
the anatomy of Saint Valentine, the lower jaw of Saint Martha, with one
tooth still in place, and a small package upon which the name of the
Saviour was inscribed. The lady pi