anywise the tenor of this our command and decree, by, as aforesaid inhumanly and barbarously treating, or causing to be treated the bodies of the dead, let them know that they will ipso facto incur the sentence of Excommunication, which we do hereby issue against them, from which they cannot, except in articulo mortis, obtain the grace of reconciliation, unless by the authority of the Holy See. Moreover let him whose body is thus inhumanly treated be deprived of Christian burial:' Boniface VIII.

Remark that the Holy Father defines in the preamble of that Decree that the custom of cutting into bits and boiling on the fire the bodies of the dead is an abuse detestable to both God and man, and then he decrees an Excommunication ipso facto against all persons of whatever rank, station, or dignity, even Episcopal, found guilty of that horrid abuse; and he decrees privation of Christian burial against the person himself, whose body is mangled or dissected. Remark moreover, that those spiritual penalties are incurred though the mangling or dissection is practised under the pretext of false piety-for carrying the remains of the deceased person to be entomed with the ashes of his fathers.

Our Surgeons, in violatian of that Heavenly Decree and of all the dictates of religion and humanity continue the same practice that is odious to God and to man; they dissect into bits the bodies of their fellow man; God's image and likeness, the temple of the Holy Ghost, the flesh of their dear brother; and that, under the pretence of false piety, for the improvement of the medical science, for prolonging perhaps a few days or years the existence of their patients. Can evil be done for the attainment of good. Physicians, when they draw upon the rich store of science which they had hoarded up from natural and ordinary sources-froin the works of eminent practitioners as well as from their own experience of the roots and progress of deseases, and the operation of different prescriptions, will be able, without doubt, to fulfil their important duty to the satisfaction of mankind. This impious profanation of the asylums of the dead, this horrid mangling of our brother's flesh that is destined to rise on the last day, is a sure

symptom of the growth of atheism, and a pressage of some public Scourge. Hearken to the illustrous traveller and historian, F. A. DE CHATEAUBRIAND. BEAUT. CHRIST. Chap. Christian Tombs.

Speaking of the terrific consequences of Atheism in the French Revolution of 1793, he says, The ancients would have considered that state as overthrown in which the asylum of the dead was violated. Every reader is acquainted with the excellent laws of Egypt, relative to burial places. The laws of Solon interdicted the violator of the tomb from the worship of the temple, and consigned him to the furies. Justinian's Institutes regulate even the bequest, inheritance, sale, and purchase of a sepulchre.

'It was reserved for our age to witness what was considered as the greatest of calamities among the ancients, what was the severest punishment inflicted on criminals, we mean the dispersion of their ashes; to hear this dispersion applauded as the masterpiece of philosophy. And what then was the crime of our ancestors that their remains should be treated with this indignity, except their having given life to such degenerate children as we ? But observe the end of all this, observe the enormity of human wisdom. In some towns of France, dungeons were erected on the site of Church-yards; prisons for human beings were raised on the spots where God had decreed an end to all slavery; places of torment succeeded those abodes where afflictions were wont to cease; in short, but one point of resemblance, and that indeed an awful one, remained between these prisons and those cemeteries, namely, that the iniquitous judgments of men were executed where God had pronounced the decrees of inviolable justice.'

'We pass over in silence the abominations perpetrated during the days of the Revolution. There is not a domestic animal in any nation ever so little civilized, but is buried with more decency than the body of a French citizen was at that time. It is well known how funerals were then conducted, and how for a few pence, a father, a mother, or a wife, was consigned to the highways. Even there the dead were not secure; for persons made a trade of stealing the shroud, the coffin, or the hair of the deceas

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ed. All these things can be ascribed only to a decree of God himself; they were a consequence of the first offences during the monarchy.'

'When impious miscreants conceived the idea of thus violating the asylum of the dead, and dispersing their ashes in order to destroy the memory of the past, the plan, horrible as it was, might seem in the eyes of human folly, to possess a certain specious grandeur; but it was tantamount to a conspiracy to overturn the world, not to leave in France one stone upon another, and to advance over the ruins of religion to the attack of all other institutions. To plunge into such excesses merely to strike out of the beaten track, is to be actuated by all the madness of guilt. What became of these despoilers of the tombs? They fell into the pits which themselves had dug, and their bodies were left with death as pledges for those of which they had plundered him.

But whither are we hurried by useless descriptions of these tombs long since swept from the face of the earth! Those renowned sepulchres are no more. Little children have played with the bones of the mighty monarchs. St. Denis is laid waste; the bird has made it her resting place; the grass grows on its shattered altars, and instead of the eternal hymn of death which resounded beneath its domes, nought is now to be heard save the pattering of the rain that enters at the roofless top, the fall of some stone dislodged from the ruined walls, or the sound of the clock which still runs its wonted course among empty tombs and plundered sepulchres:' Chataubriand.

The ancient Roman Emperors as soon as they embraced the doctrine of Christ, enacted the severest laws against the violaters of the graves, and against those that would put a detainer on a dead body, or disturb during the days of mourning his family or relatives.

JUSTINIAN LAW, Codicis Lib. 9. Tit. 19. c. 3. If any person violate a sepulchre, let the judges of that place, if they neglect to pursue this crime, be fined not less than twenty pounds of gold, the very penalty decreed against the violators of tombs; and let them be compelled to pay that sum into our treasury:' Constantius A. An. 349.

Chap. 2. If a servant be detected violating graves, let him, in case he did so without the privity of his master, be sentenced to hard labour; but if he had been urged into the crime by the order, or authority of his master, let him be punished. And if any thing be found carried away from the tomb to his house or villa, let the house, or villa, or edifice, whatever sort it be, be confiscated:' Idem, An. 340.

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Chap 4. Those who violate sepulchres--the mansions of the dead, seem to perpetrate a double crime: they despoil the dead by pulling down their houses, and pollute the living by building up. If any person therefore carry from tombs for building with, or trafficking thereon, stones, or marble, or columns, or any other material whatever, let him be fined ten pounds of gold, payable to the public treasury. This penalty is decreed in addition to all others that had been already provided by the ancient laws. Liable to this penalty shall they also be, who will touch the bodies or remains that be interred:' Idem. An. 357.

Chap. 5. The audacity of people now a-days reaches the monuments of the dead, and the consecrated burial places. Whereas our predecessors always held next to sacrilege, both to carry from them a stone and to dig the earth, and to take away the sod; and also to carry away from tombs any ornaments for decorating houses, or porticoes. Providing against these crimes in particular for fear the religion of the dead be, to the great offence of God, violated, We forbid, under the same penalties that are levelled against sacrilege, the commission of this crime:' Emperor Julian, at Antioc. An. 363.

Chap. 6. Whereas it is unjust, and foreign to our days, that an insult be offered to the remains of the dead by those who arrest the body, and prevent its interment under the pretence that he was their debtor. To stay the further progress of this insult, We decree that Creditors, by using compulsion against the persons, who superintend the dead man's funeral, forfeit their title, and We totally annul all the proceedings taken at the grave, either by demanding the debt, or taking acknowledgments, pledges, or securities, but that the principal affair be, after the restoration of the pledges, and of any money that might have been paid, the discharge of the se

curities, and after the reinstatement of all things, without alteration, to their original condition, discussed over again. And that he who is detected in a crime of this nature forfeits fifty pounds of gold; and that, if not solvent for that fine, he receive corporal punishment from the competent Judge:' Emperor Justinian, 526. Authen. Collat. 5, Tit. 15. Novell. 60, Chap. 1. We therefore decree that if any person come to a sick man's house, whom he considers his debtor, or annoys him, or his family, his wife, or children, or the house at all, or even puts of himself, and without the observance of the legal formalities, brands, upon the substance, he forfeits, after the said patient's death, his action altogether; whether he had, or had not a just one. Let the amount of his claim, be recovered from him; and let it be paid over to the heirs of the person aggrieved; and let him moreover forfeit the third part of his own property, according to the laws of the Emperor Mark Philosophus; and let him besides be branded with infamy. For the man, who respects not human nature, should be punished in his honor, substance, and in every other respect:' Emperor Justin.

'We remember having

Coll. 8, Tit. 16, Novell. 115, c. 5. passed a law ordaining that no person whatever have liberty to detain for debt the bodies of the dead or raise an obstacle to their interment. But whereas we have learned that a certain man has arrested for debt the father returning from his son's funeral, We deem it right and proper to meet by a holy law such barbarity, and we therefore decree that no man whatever have liberty to summon, or anywise disturb within the nine days of mourning, either the heirs, or parents, or children, or the wife, or the cousins, or cousins-in-law, or relatives, or sureties, or to serve notice upon them, or to cite them before any tribunal, either for the dead man's debt, or for any other cause whatever appertaining to themselves. If any man presume to destrain within the space of nine days any of the aforesaid persons, or demand of him any bond, promise, or security, We declare all them proceedings invalid. But should any man think that he has a claim against the above mentioned people, he may