Inventory of Relics

“It used to be believed by the vulgar,” wrote Evelyn Waugh, “that there were enough pieces of this ‘true cross’ to built a battleship.”  Waugh disagreed: “In the last century a French savant, Charles Rohault de Fleury, went to the great trouble of measuring them all.  He found a total of 4,000,000 cubic millimeters, whereas the cross on which our Lord suffered would probably comprise some 178,000,000.”

He concludes: “As far as volume goes, therefore, there is no strain on the credulity of the faithful.”