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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Notice * of France , ?§}
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in that superstitious age acquired such celebrity , that , as appears from the records of the second Council of Chalons , in 579 , great numbers of Christians , and even kings themselves , came to visit the Si . Ampoule , usually at two fetes which fallowed that of Easter ; and that compound of hypocrisy , cruelty , cowardice , shrewdness , and superstition—Louis XI ,, in the malady of which he died , obtained a bull from the Pope to bring to his succour at
Plessy the vaunted phial of Marmoutier . This phial ; with its holy oil , had been condescendingly brought from heaven by an angel for the cure of St . Martin ' s bruises , when he fell down the steps of his cell ; but though it cured the saint , it could not save the sinner . This miraculous gift , however , seems to have lost
none of its sanctity in the eyes of true believers on this occasion , for it was reconducted to the abbey , after its failure , with as much ostentatious pomp and ceremony , as accompanied its progress ta Plessis , and was greeted with equal devotion by the ignorant , priestridden multitude as it passed through the city of Tours * . Down to the period of the Reformation , the Abbey of Marmoutier had great possessions in England , which it then of course lost ,
notwithstanding which , and its having been pillaged by the Pro- * testants in 1562 , it still continued to be one of the most considerable in France ; and if , after all these deductions ., it was not the foremost for its riches , it ranked among the very highest both for its splendour and antiquity . Its extensive library contained many choice editions of the fifteenth century , and above all was rich in MSS ., which afterwards became serviceable in the republic of letters . A catalogue raisonne preserved in the noble public
library at Tours , describes no less than 820 of these different works . The church which was finished in the year 1320 was one of the finest in the kingdom , and part of the conventual building subsequently acquired great celebrity and notice from the curious , on account of a staircase , said to be of unparalleled workmanship , grandeur , and beauty f . Since the first creation of abbots , about the year 378 , Marmoutier reckoned one hundred
and twenty-three , of which the thirteen last were abbots in commendam , the last of whom , Louis de Bourbon Conde , Compte de Clermont , in 1740 , on the revenues of the abbey being seized and united with those of the Archbishopric of Tours , threw up in disgust his dignity and charge . Stripped of its immense weajth , and reduced to a state of downright dependauce , thus fell the pride , and thus was tarnished the glory of the oldest of one hundred and ninety-three establishments of ( . he kind which had existed in France ! There can be little doubt that such acts of spoliation practised by the Church , upon the Churcht struck deep
* Henry- IV . pressed this same St . Ampoule into his service at his coronation , the particulars of which are preserved in a curious volume in { he library at Tours , of which some account will be given . f A model of this staircase in cork is to bo seen fo Tours *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1832, page 731, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1824/page/11/
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