"This truth is further confirmed by the quality of the wood from which the statue is carved, which is commonly believed to be cedar; by the Eastern character of the work; by the resemblance both of the lineament and the colour to those of other statues by St. Luke; by the tradition of the neighbourhood, which extends in an unbroken and well- assured line to the time of St. Eusebius himself; by the miracles that have been worked here by its presence, and elsewhere by its invocation, or even by indirect contact with it; by the miracles, lastly, which are inherent in the image itself, {311} and which endure to this day, such as is its immunity from all worm and from the decay which would naturally have occurred in it through time and damp--more especially in the feet, through the rubbing of religious objects against them. * * * * * "The authenticity of this image is so certainly and clearly established, that all supposition to the contrary becomes inexplicable and absurd. Such, for example, is a hypothesis that it should not be attributed to the Evangelist, but to another Luke, also called 'Saint,' and a Florentine by birth. This painter lived in the eleventh century--that is to say, about seven centuries after the image of Oropa had been known and venerated! This is indeed an anachronism. "Other difficulties drawn either from the ancient discipline of the Church or from St. Luke the Evangelist's profession, which was that of a physician, vanish at once when it is borne in mind--firstly, that the cult of holy images, and especially of that of the most blessed Virgin, is of extreme antiquity in the Church, and of apostolic origin, as is proved by ecclesiastical writers and monuments found in the catacombs which date, as far back as the first century (see among other authorities, Nicolas, La Vergine vivente nella Chiesa, lib. iii. cap. iii. section 2); secondly, that as the medical profession does not exclude that of artists, St. Luke may have been both artist and physician; that he did actually handle both the brush and the scalpel is established by respectable and very old traditions, to say nothing of other arguments which can be found in impartial and learned writers upon such matters." I will only give one more extract. It runs:-- "In 1855 a celebrated Roman portrait-painter, after having carefully inspected the image of the Virgin Mary at Oropa, declared it to be certainly a work of the first century of our era." {313} I once saw a common cheap china copy of this Madonna announced as to be given away with two pounds of tea, in a shop near Hatton Garden.