145 This multiplication of St John’s head reminds one of an anecdote related by Miss Pardoe in her “City of the Magyar.” A museum of curiosities was kept in the chateau of Prince Grassalkovich in Hungary, and it was usually shown to strangers by the parish priest of that place. This worthy man was once conducting a traveller over the collection, and showed him amongst other curiosities two skulls, of large and small size, saying of the first, “This is the skull of the celebrated rebel Ragotzi;” and of the second, “That is the skull of the same Ragotzi when he was a boy!” 146 Calvin has not rendered full justice to the relics of John the Baptist exhibited in various places. He only mentions the different parts of his head and the fingers; and the quantity altogether shown implies no doubt that the head was one of no ordinary dimensions. He evidently was not aware that there are about a dozen whole heads of St John the Baptist, which are or were exhibited in different towns. The most remarkable of them was undoubtedly that one which the notorious Pope John XXIII., who was deposed for his vices by the Council of Constance, had sold to the Venetians for the sum of fifty thousand ducats; but as the people of Rome would not allow such a precious relic to quit their city, the bargain was rescinded. The head was afterwards destroyed at the capture and pillage of Rome by the troops of Charles V. in 1527. There are, besides, many other parts of St John’s body preserved as relics. A part of his shoulder was pretended to have been sent by the Emperor Heraclius to King Dagobert I.; and an entire shoulder was given to Philip Augustus by the Emperor of Greece. Another shoulder was at Longpont, in the diocese of Soissons; and there was one at Lieissies in the Hainault. A leg of the saint was shown at St Jean d’Abbeville, another at Venice, and a third at Toledo; whilst the Abbey of Joienval, in the diocese of Chartres, boasted of possessing twenty-two of his bones. Several of his arms and hands were shown elsewhere, besides fingers and other parts of his body; but their enumeration would be too tedious here. 147 Calvin here alludes to the haircloth worn by the monks of some orders, and other Roman Catholic devotees, instead of the ordinary shirt. 148 There is a French edition of the New Testament, published, I think, at Louvaine, in which the 13th chapter of Acts, 2d verse, is thus translated: “_Etquand ils disotent la messe_,”—“And when they were saying mass.”