Annotation CII
”For they enlarge their phylacteries, and magnify [their] fringes.” — Matthew 23:5
Whether it is lawful to hang gospels and crosses on the neck.
Jerome, in the fourth book on Matthew, seems to condemn the custom of those who, out of a pious affection of mind, carry divine words and sacred things hung on the neck, saying thus: “The Pharisees did not understand that these [things] are to be carried in the heart, not on the body; otherwise both cupboards and chests have books, and [yet] do not have the knowledge of God. This, among us, superstitious little women — with tiny gospels, and with the wood of the cross, and things of this kind, which have indeed a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge — do to this day, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.” The author of the Opus imperfectum, homily 44, in the exposition of the same sentence, seems to agree with Jerome, in these words: “Many, by the example of the scribes and Pharisees, invent certain Hebrew names of angels, and write [them], and bind [them] on themselves — which to those not understanding the Hebrew tongue seem, as it were, [things] to be feared. But some [bind on themselves] a written part of the gospel. Tell [me], foolish priest: is not the gospel read daily in the church, and heard by men? To whom, then, the gospels placed in [his] ears profit nothing — how shall [they], suspended around [his] neck, be able to save him? Then, where is the power of the gospel — in the figures [shapes] of the letters, or in the understanding of the meanings?
If in the figures, [then] you rightly suspend [it] around [your] neck; but if in the understanding, then [the gospels], placed in the heart, profit more than [when] suspended around the neck.” St. Thomas notices this passage, in the Secunda Secundae, question 96, article 4, saying that by these words are not condemned those who, for the sake of piety and religion, carry the divine Scriptures, the relics of the saints, and other sacred things; but [rather] those who look more to the [written] characters of Scripture than to the understanding of Scripture — and those especially who, either led by vain superstition or puffed up by ambition, carry these [things] about. Those, therefore, who carry things and words of this kind out of trust in God and reverence for the saints, are in no way to be accused. For we read that blessed Cecilia always carried the gospel-codex in [her] bosom; and that Constantine Augustus carried the nail of Christ about in [his] diadem; and that the Apostle Barnabas cured the sick by the touch of the gospel-writing.