Page:Rude Stone Monuments.djvu/414

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388

SPAIN, PORTUGAL, AND ITALY.

Chap. IX.

at this place, a dolmen of very considerable dimensions is enclosed within the walls of what seems to be a new modern church. It may, however, be the successor of one more ancient; but the fact of these great stones being adopted by the Christians at all shows that they must have been considered sacred and objects of worship by the natives at the time when the Christians enclosed

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161. Dolmen of Sail Miguel, at Arrichiuaga.

them in their edifice. If the facts are as represented in the woodcut,^[1] we can now easily understand why the councils of Toledo, in 681 and 692, fulminated their decrees against the "veneratores lapidum;"^[2] and why also the more astute provincial priesthood followed the advice that Pope Gregory gave to Abbot Millitus, and by means of a little holy water and an

↑ The woodcut is copied from one in Frank Leslie's 'Illustrated News;' which is itself, taken from a French illustrated journal. I do not doubt that the American copy is a correct reproduction of the French original; but there may be exaggrerations in the first. I see no reason, however, for doubting that the great stones do exist in the hermitage, and that they are parts, at least, of a dolmen — and this is all that concerns the argument. I wish, however, we had some more reliable information on the subject.
↑ Vide ante, p. 24.

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[1] The woodcut is copied from one in Frank Leslie's 'Illustrated News;' which is itself, taken from a French illustrated journal. I do not doubt that the American copy is a correct reproduction of the French original; but there may be exaggrerations in the first. I see no reason, however, for doubting that the great stones do exist in the hermitage, and that they are parts, at least, of a dolmen — and this is all that concerns the argument. I wish, however, we had some more reliable information on the subject.

[2] Vide ante, p. 24.

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