This practice of sending reliques from place to place for working miracles,
and thereby inflaming the devotion of the nations towards the dead Saints
and their reliques, and setting up the religion of invoking their souls,
lasted only till the middle of the reign of the Emperor _Theodosius_ the
great; for he then prohibited it by the following Edict. _Humatum corpus,
nemo ad alterum locum transferat; nemo Martyrem distrahat, nemo mercetur:
Habeant vero in potestate, si quolibet in loco sanctorum est aliquis
conditus, pro ejus veneratione, quod _Martyrium_ vocandum sit, addant quod
voluerint fabricarum. Dat. _iv._ Kal. Mart. Constantinopoli, Honorio nob.
puero & Euodio Coss._ A.C. 386. After this they filled the fields and
high-ways with altars erected to Martyrs, which they pretended to discover
by dreams and revelations: and this occasioned the making the fourteenth
Canon of the fifth Council of _Carthage_, A.C. 398. _Item placuit, ut
altaria, quae passim per agros aut vias, tanquam memoriae Martyrum
constituuntur, in quibus nullum corpus aut reliquiae Martyrum conditae
probantur, ab Episcopis, qui illis locis praesunt, si fieri potest,
evertantur. Si autem hoc propter tumultus populares non sinitur, plebes
tamen admoneantur, ne illa loca frequentent, ut qui recte sapiunt, nulla
ibi superstitione devincti teneantur. Et omnino nulla memoria Martyrum
probabiliter acceptetur, nisi aut ibi corpus aut aliquae certae reliquiae
sint, aut ubi origo alicujus habitationis, vel possessionis, vel passionis
fidelissima origine traditur.
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