It is in vain, however, to expect concord amongst etymologists; and, of course, there are other right learned wights who protest against this derivation.  They shake their heads and say, “no; you must trace the name, Fecamp, to Fici Campus;” and they strengthen their assertion by a sort of argumentum ad ecclesiam, maintaining that the precious blood, for which Fecamp was long celebrated, corroborates and confirms their tale.  A chapel in the abbey church attests the sanctity of this relic.  The legend states that Nicodemus, at the time of the entombment of our Saviour, collected in a phial the blood from his wounds, and bequeathed it to his nephew, Isaac; who afterwards, making a tour through Gaul, stopped in the Pays de Caux, and buried the phial at the root of a fig-tree[30].

Nor is this the only miracle connected with the church.  The monkish historians descant with florid eloquence upon the white stag, which pointed out to Duke Ansegirus the spot where the edifice was to be erected; the mystic knife, inscribed “in nomine sanctae et individuae trinitatis,” thus declaring to whom the building should be dedicated; and the roof, which, though prepared for a distant edifice, felt that it would be best at Fecamp, and actually, of its own accord, undertook a voyage by sea, and landed, without the displacing of a single nail, upon the sea-coast near the town.  All these contes devots, and many others, you will find recorded in the Neustria Pia[31].  I will only detain you with a few words more upon the subject of the precious blood, a matter too important to be thus hastily dismissed.  It was placed here by Duke Richard I.; but was lost in the course of a long and turbulent period, and was not found again till the year 1171, when it was discovered within the substance of a column built in the wall.  Two little tubes of lead originally contained the treasure; but these were soon inclosed in two others of a more precious metal, and the whole was laid at the bottom of a box of gilt silver, placed in a beautiful pyramidical shrine.  Thus protected, it was, before the revolution, fastened to one of the pillars of the choir, behind a trellis-work of copper, and was an object of general adoration.  I know not what has since become of it; but, as they are now managing these matters better in France, we may safely calculate upon the speedy reappearance of the relic.  Nor must you refer this legend to the many which protestant incredulity is too apt to class with the idle tales of all ages, the

    “... quicquid Graecia mendax
     Audet in historia;”

for no less grave an authority than the faculty of theology at Paris determined, by a formal decree of the 28th of May, 1448, that this worship was very proper; for that, to use their words, “Non repugnat pietati fidelium credere quod aliquid de sanguine Christi effuso tempore passionis remanserit in terris.”