The story of a petrified city is well known all over Africa, and has been believed by many considerable persons even in Europe. Louis XIV. was so fully persuaded of its reality that he ordered dered his ambassador to procure the body of a man petrified from it at any price. Dr Shaw's account of this affair is as follows: "About 40 years ago (now more than 70), when M. le Maire was the French consul at Tripoli, he made great inquiries, by order of the French court, into the truth of the report concerning a petrified city at Ras Sem; and amongst other very curious accounts relating to this place, he told me a remarkable circumstance, to the great discredit, and even contradiction, of all that had been so positively advanced with regard to the petrified bodies of men, children, and other animals.
"Some of the janizaries, who, in collecting tribute, traversed the district of Ras Sem, promised him, that as an adult person would be too cumbersome, they would undertake, for a certain number of dollars, to bring him from thence the body of a little child. After a great many pretended difficulties, delays, and disappointments, they produced at length a little Cupid, which they had found, as he learned afterwards, among the ruins of Leptis; and, to conceal the deceit, they broke off the quiver, and some other of the distinguishing characteristics of that deity. However, he paid them for it, according to promise, 1000 dollars, which is about 150l. sterling of our money, as a reward for their faithful service and hazardous undertaking; having run the risk, as they pretended, of being strangled if they should have been discovered in thus delivering up to an infidel, one of those unfortunate Mahometans, as they take them originally to have been.
"But notwithstanding this cheat and imposition had made the consul desist from searching after the petrified bodies of men and other animals; yet there was one matter of fact, as he told me, which still very strangely embarrassed him, and even strongly engaged him in favour of the current report and tradition. This was some little loaves of bread, as he called them, which had been brought to him from that place. His reasoning, indeed thereupon, provided the pretended matter of fact had been clear and evident, was just and satisfactory; for where we find loaves of bread, there, as he urged, some persons must have been employed in making them, as well as others for whom they were prepared. One of these loaves he had, among other petrifications, very fortunately brought with him to Cairo, where I saw it, and found it to be an echinites of the difficult kind, of the same fashion with one I had lately found and brought with me from the deserts of Marah. We may therefore reasonably conclude, that there is nothing to be found at Ras Sem, unless it be the trunks of trees, echinites, and such petrifications as have been discovered at other places.
"M. le Maire's inquiries, which we find were supported by the promise and performance of great rewards, have brought nothing further to light. He could never learn that any traces of walls, or buildings, or animals, or utensils, were ever to be seen within the verge of these pretended petrifications. The like account I had from a Sicilian renegade, who was the janizary that attended me whilst I was in Egypt; and as in his earlier years he had been a folder of Tripoli, he assured me that he had been several times at Ras Sem. This I had confirmed again in my return from the Levant by the interpreter of the British factory at Tunis, who was likewise a Sicilian renegade; and being the libertus or freed-
Vol. XVI. Part I. the abuses and remove the superstition that disgraced the beautiful simplicity of the gospel. His followers were numerous; and for 20 years his labour in the ministry was exemplary and unremitting. He was, however, burnt in the year 1130 by an enraged populace set on by the clergy.
The chief of Bruys's followers was a monk named Henry; from whom the Petrobrussians were also called Henricians. Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, has an express treatise against the Petrobrussians; in the preface to which he reduces their opinions to five heads.
1. They denied that children before the age of reason can be justified by baptism, in regard it is our own faith that saves by baptism. 2. They held that no churches should be built, but that those that already are should be pulled down; an inn being as proper for prayers as a temple, and a table as an altar. 3. That the cross ought to be pulled down and burnt, because we ought to abhor the instruments of our Saviour's passion. 4. That the real body and blood of Christ are not exhibited in the eucharist, but merely represented by their figures and symbols. 5. That sacrifices, alms, prayers, &c., do not avail the dead.
F. Langlois objects Manicheism to the Petrobrussians; and says, they maintained two gods, the one good, the other evil: but this we rather esteem an effect of his zeal for the catholic cause, which determined him to blacken the adversaries thereof, than any real sentiment of the Petrobrussians.