Omniana/Volume 2/Odour of Heresy
216. Odour of heresy.
The Jesuit P. Francisco de Fonseca has a curious story concerning relics in his account of the Embassy of the Conde de Villarmayor, Fernando Telles da Sylva, from Lisbon to Vienna, to bring home an Austrian princess for Joam V. "As we are upon the subject of the miracles which have been wrought by relics in Vienna," says he, "I will relate another prodigy that occurred in the same city, and which will serve not a little to confirm us in the faith with which we devoutly reverence these things. The Count of Harrach, who was greatly favoured by the Duke of Saxony, besought him that he would be pleased to bestow upon him some of the very many relics in his treasury, which he preserved rather for curiosity than for devotion. The Duke with much benignity ordered that various glasses, should be given him, full of precious relics of Christ, of the most holy Virgin, the Apostles, the Innocents, and other various Saints, and desired two Lutheran ministers to pack them with all decency in a valuable box, which the Duke himself locked, and sealed with his own seal, to prevent any fraud, and then sent it to Vienna. The box arrived at Vienna, and was deposited in the Count's chapel, which is in Preiner Street; the Count sent word to the Bishop that he might come to see open and authenticate the relics; the Bishop came, and upon his opening the box there issued out a stench so abominable that it was not to be borne, and the whole Chapel was infected with it. The bishop ordered that the relicaries should be taken out in order that he might carefully examine the cause of so strange an accident; this was done, and they soon discovered the mystery, for they found a case from which this pestilential odour proceeded; there was in it a piece of cloth with this inscription, "Relics of Martin Luther's Breeches,"..which the Lutheran preachers in mockery of our piety, had placed among the sacred relics. These abominable remains of the Heresiarch were burnt by command of the bishop, and then not only did the stink cease, but there issued from the sacred relics a most sweet perfume, which filled the whole chapel."
This story is certainly ben trovato. If the authenticity of the relic had not been established beyond all controversy by its odour of heresy, no Catholic would have raised a doubt concerning it, founded upon the nature of the thing preserved: for though the Romanists have not gone quite so far as the Priests of Thibet in preparing pastils of Zibethum occidentale from their human idols, they have exceeded them in indecency. The relic of which Antwerp boasted, quod tamen sub annum 1560, templis ac sacrariis immani Calvinistarum furore direptis, deperditum est, is one at which I can only hint. It is the subject of the first article in the Acta Sanctorum, and the manner in which its existence on earth may be reconciled with the fact of the Resurrection of Christ is there explained, according to the opinion of'Suarez,.. but the question had often been discussed before, de quo consuli possunt Titus Bostrensis et Theophilactus et alii Interpretes et Doctores!