[Illustration: Fig. 280.--St. Barbara, a Maiden of Nicomedia, who suffered Martyrdom in the Third Century.--Drawn with the pen and pencil by John Van Eyck, called John of Bruges, in honour of the building of a church dedicated to her.--In the Museum at Antwerp (Fifteenth Century).] The worship of relics, whatever be its origin, was a natural adjunct to the worship of the tombs in which Christ’s confessors were laid, and of the soil where their martyrdom had taken place; thus the smallest fragment of a saint’s body, the most trifling piece of raiment, or most insignificant object (_tantillæ reliquiæ_) that had belonged to a blessed martyr, and more especially anything which represented a material reminder of the glorious death which a Christian had won in confessing the Gospel, was carefully preserved as a relic. Thus the periods of persecution were the most favourable for the multiplication of these relics. Almost before the martyr’s sufferings were over, a crowd of believers invaded the amphitheatres and arenas, carried off and concealed the mortal remains of the victim, collected his precious blood in sponges, and almost fought for the very sand upon which it was shed; and when the new saint had been laid in some sure resting-place, they vied with each other in sprinkling sweet perfumes over the body, in wrapping it up in white linen, and even in purple and gold. His solemn interment afterwards took place in some sanctuary (_loculum_) of the Catacombs, which was afterwards visited by numerous and devout pilgrims who came to pay their pious homage to his memory. One of the earliest instances of this worship of the martyrs is furnished us in the hagiography of St. Ignatius, who suffered martyrdom at Rome in the reign of Trajan. We see therein how, in spite of the armed attendants and heathen crowds which filled the amphitheatre where the execution had taken place, some courageous Christians, at the risk of their own lives, secured the remains of the prelate in order to convey them to his own church at Antioch. In a letter concerning the martyrdom of St. Polycarp, quoted by Eusebius, it is stated that the faithful carried away his bones, more precious in their eyes than gold and precious stones, and concealed them in a fitting-place (_ubi decebat_).