The Rimini Madonna is but a poor plagiarism of Our Lady of Boxley. Maundrill, at the end of the seventeenth century, saw an image of Christ, so flexible, that it was difficult to distinguish, at a distance, between it and a dead body. These figures were so often used to deceive the people, that the employment of them was forbidden by several Councils; but in vain. Some of them were of such exquisite workmanship, that their makers were taxed with having the devil for an ally; and the figure-makers generally were consigned to infamy. One day, in the year 1086, the holy Abbot Thergius, attending at Cluny to give investiture to some half hundred novices, refused conferring the benediction upon one of them, under the plea, “Mechanicum ilium esse et necromantiæ deditum.” And yet the abbot artists were among the priests themselves; nay, were sometimes to be found among the Popes. Sylvester II. is said to have constructed a brazen head. Roger Bacon and Robert Greathead were celebrated for the same achievement; while Albertus Magnus has the reputation of having constructed an _android_ or semblance of a man, of such perfection, that it would support an argument with satisfaction to itself and discomfort to its opponents. Thomas Aquinas, when young, ventured to enter upon a discussion with this figure; when the _androide_ so perplexed the priest with his shower of syllogisms, that the latter broke his head for his pains, and ruined his argumentative powers for ever. The ecclesiastical puppets were probably productions with more than mere pretensions to rank among objects of art and science. The semi-religious and popular puppets were too gross to deceive; and yet the great dragon of Paris, slain by St. Marcel, whose _simulacrum_ dragged itself through the city during the Rogation Days, was probably contemplated with as much awe by the youthful beholders, us the sacred dragon of Minerva was at Athens, by such of the citizens as lived before the innovating period of the free-thinking Anaxagoras. Galen speaks of puppets so anatomically perfect, that Heaven might have taken a hint therefrom. Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemaïs, too, referring to effects following at long intervals, the impelling cause divinely given, stumbles upon an unprofitable simile, and compares such effects to the motion in the limbs of the puppet long after the showman has ceased to pull the strings.