Note 109 — CHAP. V.
Reading edition
Footnote 109:
(return)
The opinion of Röstell (Beschreibung der Stadt Rom, B. I, p. 400) that these phials contained the blessed eucharist under the form of wine, if admitted, would form a new proof of the real and permanent presence of Christ's blood in the B. Sacrament; yet it is a novel, unsupported, and untenable conjecture. Some of the ancient Christian Fathers complain, it is true, of the abuse of burying the eucharist with the deceased under the form of bread; but the phials of blood have been found with so many bodies, that we cannot reasonably suppose the custom to have been an abuse: and who among the ancients mentions that the eucharist was ever buried with them under the form of wine? That the palm-branch or crown accompanied by these phials of blood are authentic signs of martyrdom, see Raoul-Rochette's Memoires sur les pierre sepulcrales, t. XIII des Mem. de l'Academie, p. 210, 217. On one of the phials mentioned by Röstell was found the inscription Sanguis Saturnini.