Those in the know will have enjoyed dipping into Calvin's lesser known and brief work Admonition Showing the Advantages Which Christendom Might Derive From An Inventory of Relics. Anyone who doubts whether Calvin had a sense of humour will be disabused here. In response to the apparent existence of the very broiled fish Jesus ate with his disciples after the resurrection, he says "It must have been wondrously well salted if it has kept for such a long series of ages!" The book has a serious point but it is full of such things. Here's an example.
There is a similar fiction with regard to the steps of Pilate’s judgment-seat. These exist at Rome, in the church of Joannes Lateranensis, together with the holes into which they say that drops of blood fell from our Saviour’s body. In like manner, in the church of Praxed is shown the pillar to which he was bound when he was scourged, and three other pillars in the church of Santa Croce, round which he was led when taken away to die. I know not how they came to dream of all these pillars. This much, at least, is certain, that they are the offspring of their own brain; for we read not a word of them in the whole Gospel history. We read, no doubt, that Christ was scourged; but that he was bound to a pillar is their own invention. It must be obvious, therefore, that these impostors have done nothing else than attempt to rear up a huge pile of lies. In doing this, they have carried their license to such a length that they have not hesitated to make a relic of the tail of the ass on which our Savior rode, and which is exhibited at Genoa. But it is not so much their impudence that astonishes us as the infatuation and stupidity of men, in religiously embracing such absurdities. Here, perhaps, some one will allege it to be improbable that the relics which I have now named would be exhibited with so much pomp if they were not able to show whence they came, and by whose hands they were received. I answer, in one word, that nothing like probability is employed to cloak these transparent lies. For how much soever they may shelter
themselves under the name of Constantine, or King Louis, or some of the Popes, all this avails them not when they have to prove that 14 nails were used in fixing our Savior to the cross, that a whole hedge was plaited in making his crown of thorns, that the spear’s point produced three other points, that his robe was so multiplied as to be converted into three, or that it changed its form so as to be metamorphosed into a robe for mass, to which it had not the least resemblance, or that one napkin produced as many other napkins as a hen does chickens, or that our Saviour was buried after a different fashion from that which the Evangelists relate. Were I to take a lump of lead, and pointing to it, to say, “This gold was given me by such a prince,” I would deservedly be thought mad. At all events, my assertion would make no change upon the colour or the nature of the lead, so as to convert it into gold. In the same way, when it is said, “See what
Godfrey of Boulogne sent into these quarters after he had subdued Judea,” though the lie is obviously repugnant to reason, will we allow ourselves to take the account without using our eyes to see what lies plain before them?
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