Another favorite means with the clergy of the older Church, for bringing to naught the powers of the air, was found in great Processions, bearing statues, relics, and holy emblems through the streets.[1] Yet, even these were not always immediately effective. One at Liége, in the thirteenth century, thrice proved unsuccessful in bringing rain, when at last it was found that the image of the Virgin had been forgotten! A new procession was at once formed, the Salve Regina sung, and the rain came down in such torrents as to drive the devotees to shelter.[2]
In Catholic lands this custom remains to this day, and very important features in these processions are the statues and reliquaries of patron saints. Some of these excel in bringing sunshine, others in bringing rain. The Cathedral of Chartres is so fortunate as to possess sundry relics of Saint Taurin, especially potent against dry weather, and some of Saint Piat, very nearly as infallible against wet weather.[3] In certain regions a single saint gives protection alternately against wet and dry weather—as, for example, Saint Godeberte at Noyon.[4] Against storms Saint Barbara is very generally considered the most powerful protectress; but, in the French diocese of Limoges, Notre Dame de Crocq has proved a most powerful rival, for when, a few years since, all the neighboring parishes were ravaged by storms, not a hailstone fell in the canton which she protected. In the diocese of Tarbes, Saint Exupère is especially invoked against hail, peasants flocking from all the surrounding country to his shrine.[5]
But the means of baffling the powers of the air which came to be most widely used was the ringing of consecrated Church-Bells.
This usage had begun in the time of Charlemagne, and there is extant a prohibition of his against the custom of baptizing bells and of hanging certain tags[6] on their tongues as a protection against hailstorms; but even Charlemagne was powerless against this current of mediæval superstition. Theological reasons were soon poured into it, and, about the year 970, Pope John XIII is said to have baptized a bell in the Lateran, christening it with his own name, to have stood sponsor
- ↑ John of Winterthur describes many such in Switzerland in the thirteenth century, and all the monkish chronicles speak of them.
- ↑ See Rydberg, "Magic of the Middle Ages," p. 74.
- ↑ See the "Guide du touriste et du pèlerin à Chartres," 1867 (cited by "Paul Parfait," in his "Dossier des Pèlerinages").
- ↑ See "Paul Parfait," as above, p. 139.
- ↑ See "Paul Parfait," as above, p. 145.
- ↑ "Perticæ." See Montanus, "Hist. Nachricht von den Glocken" (Chemnitz, 1726), p. 121; and Meyer, "Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters," p. 186.
vitentur ad laudes, fragor grandinum, procella turbinum, impetus tempostatum, ventorum rabies, infesta tonitrua temperentur, fugiant atque tremiscant maligni spiritus ante Sanctæ Crucis vexillum, quod in illis exsculptum est. . . ." ("Sacr. Cer. Rom. Eccl.," as above.) If any are curious as to the extent to which this consecrated wax was a specific for all spiritual and most temporal ills during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, let them consult the Jesuit "Litteræ annuæ," passim.
