The World's Most Mysterious Objects. Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe
caught fire and that the Franciscans whom he honoured and revered were in serious danger. Running fearlessly inside to see if he could offer them assistance, Tiso halted in amazement when he saw Anthony sitting in ecstatic rapture with the Holy Child in his arms — just as though he were one of the Magi or shepherds at Bethlehem.
Within a year of Anthony’s death, the traditional rigorous ecclesiastical examination of his life and works was carried out with meticulous thoroughness, and as a result he was raised to sainthood. It was not until 1946, however, that he was declared to be a Doctor of the Church as well.
In addition to his special reputation as a recoverer of lost property and missing objects, Anthony is also the patron saint of the poor, the imprisoned, and all who have become despised social outcasts. It was to such people in particular that he gave help during his all too short earthly life.
Elbart of Temeswar believed that God had given the saint’s relics the power to bring back lost objects because during Anthony’s earthly life he had done everything he could to bring back people who had gone astray.
Those who had known and admired Anthony during his lifetime were assisted by the citizens of Padua in building a great basilica to him, which was begun within just one year of his death. In 1263, when Bonaventure was in charge of the Franciscans, Anthony’s body was transferred to this new basilica.
It was for his preaching and teaching in particular that Anthony was so admired, and, according to contemporary records, when the sarcophagus was opened during the transfer, his tongue was found to be uncorrupted. The thoughts of those who performed the transfer were that this was a special sign of the validity and truth of his preaching and teaching.
His tomb, which nowadays is referred to as the Ark of Saint Anthony, is constructed of fine marble with distinctive green veins, and it is so placed that pilgrims are able to walk all around it. As many as two thousand visitors an hour pass the tomb on peak days. These devout pilgrims usually try to touch the sacred green-veined marble, and the contact of reverent pilgrim hands over the years has worn the back of the tomb completely smooth. Hundreds of letters arrive at the basilica from all over the world each day. Anthony’s original home, Lisbon, Portugal, did not forget him either, and an impressive church was built over the site of his birthplace.
In 1981, on the 750th anniversary of Saint Anthony’s death, John Paul II gave permission for the tomb to be opened on the sixth of January. In addition to high ranking members of the Church, anthropologists, anatomists, and doctors of medicine attached to the University of Padua were present. Anthony’s remains were found to be enclosed inside two concentric wooden caskets. These sturdy old caskets contained three significant bundles wrapped in red damask and trimmed with gold. In the first bundle was the robe in which Anthony had been buried. The second contained an assortment of his bones, and the third contained his skull.
The thirteenth-century records of his tongue having been perfectly preserved were augmented by a report from this 1981 ceremony. It was recorded that the pathologists and anatomists present at this 750th anniversary examination commented that Anthony’s vocal cords could still be identified and were as well preserved as the tongue had been centuries before. The same symbolic conclusions were drawn. The vocal cords were removed from their red damask containers and placed in the reliquary chapel alongside the still uncorrupted tongue.
This reliquary for the tongue and vocal cords is itself a unique and mysterious object. It is fashioned in the form of a silver book with golden letters. Representations of flames made of the same precious metal are constructed so that they seem to be coming up from the book, and the sheath of golden flame supports a hand-shaped crystal container inside which the relics can be seen. The symbolism is plain enough as a memorial for a man whose preaching and teaching were so effective and so well remembered.
But what of the miracles surrounding Saint Anthony’s remains? The finding of lost objects is itself something of a mystery. Like the authors, most readers will have experienced episodes similar to the classic tale of the absent-minded professor who looked everywhere for his glasses, only to find that they were already resting on the bridge of his nose.
Writers, publishers, and proof readers — even with the aid of the latest computerized spell-checkers — also know only too well that it is possible for the keenest eye and the sharpest mind to look through a proof a dozen times and still miss something that a keen-eyed reader will report within an hour of opening the book!
A great deal could be said at this point about the psychological phenomenon of “mental set,” and Edward de Bono, whose theories and interesting experimental work have contributed enormously not only to our understanding of human thinking processes but to practical improvements in them, always emphazises the importance of lateral thinking.
One type of mind focuses in on a problem and hammers away at it relentlessly until a solution is found. The second type of mind, which belongs to the lateral thinker, whose technique may either be instinctive or learnt, goes outside the problem and attempts to solve it by methods that may seem impossibly tangential, wild, and imaginative, but which nevertheless lead to satisfactory, if unexpected, solutions on most occasions.
Idea teams in the media and creative arts worlds, as well as advertisers, inventors, and designers, frequently meet in “brainstorming” think-tank sessions in which new ideas are hurled uncritically in all directions, recorded, and then analyzed and critically evaluated at later sessions. This type of work frequently leads to quantum-leap progress. Could it be that when we are experiencing difficulties in locating lost objects, we need to get outside the immediate focus of our own particular mind set and to look in the least likely place that the object we’re hoping to recover might have gone?
A visit to the tomb of Saint Anthony, or a prayer invoking his help, might be just the mental nudge that the searcher needs in order to escape from his or her current ineffectual mind set and begin looking somewhere else.
It is, of course, equally possible that a man who devoted so much of his time and energy to thinking, doing, and saying good things during his short earthly life had not finished the excellent work he began. Is Anthony still helping others despite the interruption called death?
One well-known theory that goes the rounds among psychical researchers is that the fabric of a building in which extreme emotion was once experienced has absorbed those emotions, and, in a sense, recorded them, in much the same way that magnetic tape can record pictures and sounds. A man with Anthony’s spiritual power and charisma would have been a very impressive recording agent. It is reasonable to assume that, despite the joy he is experiencing in the abundant and eternal life of Heaven, Anthony’s characteristic concern for those whom he loved and helped on earth still takes up part of his time, in so far as “time” can have any meaning in Eternity.
In this context, we need to consider the real possibility that Anthony of Padua is still very much alive, active, and interested in our physical world as well as in his own spiritual one, and that he does genuinely intervene when his help is sought. So many posthumous miracles have been credited to him that they cannot lightly be ignored.
Anthony once lived a very good and positive life. His relics survive. The miracles associated with them are well documented. That is Anthony’s part; the conclusions we draw from that evidence are our own responsibility, but his mortal remains are among the world’s most mysterious objects.
CHAPTER EIGHTOrffyreus’s Perpetual Motion Engine
Every science student studying for his or her school or college examinations knows perfectly well that even the most efficient machine loses some of the energy that is put into it. Friction, air resistance, and a host of other “energy leakages” prevent the full force of what went in from performing one hundred percent of its optimum work before it comes out. Energy, like matter, cannot, theoretically, be created or destroyed, and only through Einstein’s famous E = mc2 formula can matter and energy be exchanged one for the other. Once this basic scientific principle is firmly grasped, it seems that a perpetual motion machine is a contradiction in terms.