Note 225.1 — Chapter XI · SACRED WELLS AND TREES.

The converse case of measurement as a method of conveying the divine effluence was a favourite during the Middle Ages, and is still practised in Roman Catholic countries. It consisted in measuring with a string or fillet the body of a saint, and passing the string afterwards round the patient. Many miracles performed in this way were attributed to Simon de Montfort. Pope Clement VIII. is said to have given his sanction to a similar measurement purporting to be the “true and correct length of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” found in the Holy Sepulchre. Copies of this measurement were current in Germany up to a comparatively late date.225.1 By an application of the same reasoning it seems to have been believed up to the seventeenth century in this country that, to measure a living person with a rope which had been used in a prescribed manner to measure a corpse, was to inflict misfortune and misery.225.2 The object specially in view of the Athenian women was attained in Germany towards the end of the Middle Ages by measuring a wick by Saint Sixtus’ image, and wearing it as a girdle.225.3 In Japan it is enough to wear, inside the sash, a coloured strip made in imitation of a temple-flag.225.4 The underlying thought in these cases is the same as that of the Breton girdles of Notre Dame de Délivrance, mentioned in a previous chapter. And so far is the practice carried in China that a woman who wishes to bear children will borrow on certain days in the year from the temple of the goddess of children one of the votive shoes offered there, and, taking it home, will pay it the same honours as to the goddess herself; while another woman will take a flower from the hands of the sacred image, or from a vase beside it, and wear it in her hair.226.1 Saint Francis’ girdle and other “blessed girdles” were formerly worn in Europe for the purpose of facilitating delivery, and for healing various diseases.226.2 And still in Mexico the measure of the head of an image of Saint Francis at Magdalena is sovran for headache, the measurement of his waist for diseases of the abdomen, and so on of other parts.226.3