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We shall conclude with the words of a holy and eloquent bishop of Costantinople of the 4th century, "When thou seest the Lord immolated and placed there, and the priest engaged in the sacrifice and praying, and all present empurpled with precious blood, dost thou think that thou art among men, and art standing on the earth? and not rather that thou art instantaneously transferred to heaven, where casting out of thy soul every fleshly thought thou lookest around on heavenly things.
[Footnote 76: The emperors of Costantinople used (according to Codinus De Officiis Aulæ Costantinop.) to wash the feet of twelve poor persons: and Vespasiano Fiorentino in the fifteenth century, in his life of Alfonso di Napoli quoted by Cancellieri, says that "Il Giovedi Santo lavava i piedi a tanti poveri, quant' egli aveva anni, et lavavagli, come si deve ... et a tutti dava una veste bianca, et un pajo di calze, et un Alfonsino, et un fiorino et un carlino, et non so che altra moneta. Dipoi il Giovedi medesímo faceva ordinare una cena,... et la Maest
The lance also with which our divine Saviour's side was pierced, was found by S. Helen, as the Bollandists shew: and it was preserved in Jerusalem, as S. Gregory of Tours and our venerable Bede observe: but towards the end of the 6th cent., the iron part of it was transfered to Costantinople; of this the point was placed in the imperial palace; the other part in the church of S. Sophia, and afterwards in that of S. John.
Pius IV demanded them for the use of the apostolic chapel, and, after he had heard them, declared that Palestrina had surpassed his expectations. Renaudot T. I, p. 70. According in the Menologium Græcum and S. John Damascen it was first used in the reign of Theodosius, when public supplications were offered to heaven during a terrible earthquake at Costantinople. This Palmer admits, I, 64.
When Mahomet subdued Costantinople, he preserved all the relics, as Theodore cited by Benedict XIV relates in his history of the Turks, and his son Bajazet sent an ambassador with the relics of the lance to Pope Innocent VIII, in order to induce his Holiness not to protect Zizimus, who disputed with him the succession to the Turkish throne.
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