Note 193 — Chapter XXI · SOUTHERN COAST

It is curious to observe how widespread is this custom of hanging up models of the limb restored or for which healing is craved. In the long-isolated temples of Japan I have seen thousands of such models. We know that they were offered in ancient Greece, for the British Museum possesses two votive hands made of bronze. They were also common in Egypt, generally entwined with figures of serpents, emblematic of recovered health. Hands, arms, ears, eyes, and other members, modelled in terracotta or carved in ivory, have been found at Thebes and elsewhere, with a thanksgiving dedication to whichever deity received credit for the cure effected.

Most remarkable of all is the fact that in many of these heathen offerings the hand is modelled with the third and fourth fingers closed, while the first and second (the fingers of benediction, as a Ritualist would call them) are upraised in the orthodox attitude of ecclesiastical benediction. Hence we may infer that not only the presentation of such ex votos at Roman Catholic shrines, but also this peculiar priestly attitude, are directly borrowed from Paganism, probably introduced into the Alexandrian Church by some Egyptian convert. Those who have travelled in Roman Catholic countries can scarcely fail to recall various churches (such as those of San Publio in Malta or of Notre Dame de la Garde at Marseilles, where votive offerings of every sort, but chiefly of miniature arms, legs, eyes, and ears, modelled in wax or silver, as the case may be, are hung up round the altars of divers saints, as thank-offerings for cures attributed to their intercessions.)intercessions.)