The Emperor Constantine consecrated to the archangel Michael two
churches near Byzantium, one was at Anaplous, on the Bosphorus, the
other on the opposite shore at Brochoi. This second church replaced a
temple that had, according to tradition, been founded by the Argonauts,
and was called the Sosthenion. According to John Malala, Constantine
slept in the temple and asked that he might be instructed in dream to
whom the church which was to replace it should be dedicated. Great
numbers from Byzantium and the country round had resort to these
churches to seek the guidance of the archangel in their difficulties
and a cure when sick. Sozomen, the ecclesiastical historian, relates an
instance of a cure effected in one of the churches of S. Michael.
Aquilinus, a celebrated lawyer, was ill with jaundice. "Being half
dead, he ordered his servants to carry him to the church, in hopes of
being cured there or dying there. When in it, God appeared to him in
the night and bade him drink a mixture of honey, wine and pepper. He
was cured, although the doctors thought the potion too hot for a malady
of the bile. I heard also that Probian, physician of the Court, was
also cured at the Michaelon by an extraordinary vision, of pains he
endured in his feet." "Not being able to record all the miracles in
this church, I have selected only these two out of many." [Footnote:
_Hist. Eccles._, ii. 3; see for many illustrations Maury (A.),
_La Magic_, Paris, 1860. Part II., chap. i.]
That which took place at the Michaelons on the Bosphorus occurred
elsewhere, in churches dedicated to SS. Cosmas and Damian. At Ægae in
Cilicia was a shrine of Æsculapius, and incubation was practised in his
temple. It afterwards became a church of Cosmas and Damian, and the
same practices continued after the rededication. The chain of
superstitious practices continued after the change in religion without
any alteration. In the church of S. Hilaire in France is to be seen the
saint's bed, "to which they carry insane persons, and after certain
prayers and religious rites, they lay them to sleep in the bed, and
they recover." [Footnote: _Jodocus Sincerus, Itin. Galliae,
1617._]
In my "Book of South Wales" I have shown that the same usage continued
as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century in the church of
Christchurch near Caerleon, on the gravestone of one John Colmer, and
have reproduced a print of 1805, representing a man lying there to get
cured.
We have accordingly a series of customs beginning in caves dedicated to
heathen deities, transferred to their temples, then to churches under
the invocation of Christian saints and of angels.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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