Naturally, then, corporations, whether lay or ecclesiastical,
which drew large revenue from relics looked with little favour
on a science which tended to discredit their investments.
Nowhere, perhaps, in Europe can the philosophy of this
development of fetichism be better studied to-day than at
Cologne. At the cathedral, preserved in a magnificent shrine
since about the twelfth century, are the skulls of the Three
Kings, or Wise Men of the East, who, guided by the star of
Bethlehem, brought gifts to the Saviour. These relics were an
enormous source of wealth to the cathedral chapter during many
centuries. But other ecclesiastical bodies in that city were both
pious and shrewd, and so we find that not far off, at the church
of St. Gereon, a cemetery has been dug up, and the bones
distributed over the walls as the relics of St. Gereon and his
Theban band of martyrs! Again, at the neighbouring church of St.
Ursula, we have the later spoils of another cemetery, covering
the interior walls of the church as the bones of St.
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