Relics, Shrines and Pilgrimages

Sanctity in Europe from Late Antiquity

Antón M. Pazos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367188672
• eBook ISBN: 9780429581724
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: 19th Century History

Since Late Antiquity, relics have provided a privileged spiritual bond between life and death, between human beings and divinity. Royalty, nobility and clergy all tried to obtain the most prestigious remains of sacred bodies, since they granted influence and fame and allowed the cult around them to be used as a means of sacralization, power and propaganda. This volume traces the development of the veneration of relics in Europe and how these objects were often catalysts for the establishment of major pilgrimage sites that are still in use today.

The book features an international panel of contributors taking a wide-ranging look at relic worship across Europe, from Late Antiquity until the present day. They begin with a focus on the role of relics in Jacobean pilgrimage, before looking at the link between relics and their shrines more generally. The book then focuses in on two major issues in the study of relics, the stealing of relics ( Furta Sacra ) and their modern-day scientific examination and authentication. These topics demonstrate not only symbolic importance of relics, but also their role as physical historical objects in material religious expression.

This is a fascinating collection, featuring the latest scholarship on relics and pilgrimage across Europe. It will, therefore, be of great interested to academics working in Pilgrimage, Religious History, Material Religion and Religious Studies as well as Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Cultural Studies.

1
Relics as historical objects

Overview, methods, and prospects^*

Philippe George

What is a relic? What are they for? How did their cult develop? Which are the most venerated? These questions immediately come to mind and are of interest both to scholars, in all disciplines, and to the general public.

As André Vauchez notes: “While there has been a remarkable expansion among medievalists since the mid-1960s in the historical study of forms of sanctity, hagiographic texts and miracles, relics have only recently come within the purview of research”.¹ Relics have become historical objects.

The word, from the Latin reliquiae, -arum, feminine plural, denotes remains.² In ecclesiastical language it is identified as the holy remains of Christ, the saints, and the blessed, and by extension as objects sanctified by their touch. It was used in this sense for the first time by St Augustine in 397.³

First, we must clearly define the actual nature of the object. The basic terminology of relics distinguishes between corporeal and historical relics. The former are bones and blood, the latter all objects associated with the memory of Christ or of a saint, their legend as well as their history, those that they used or owned, in fact or by repute: clothing, everyday items, instruments of their penance, captivity, or torture. A third category comprises representative or contact relics, objects contained in reliquaries that have absorbed the holy virtus, the “living, miraculous, protective force”, by proximity to other relics: tombs, strips of cloth touched to tombs (brandea), or any other object.

An overview

The Middle Ages saw a prolonged development of the cult of saints, a pervasive element of the medieval mindset. Relics played a considerable part in this process, as the saint was considered to be present and to exercise power through their intermediation. While the quintessential examples are bones, there was a whole series of other relics. The Holy Shroud and the Holy Cross are well known, and some secular ostentations (public showings or displays) and pilgrimages are still practised today. Too often only the spectacular aspect of relics has been considered: their trafficking seems shocking to us. But the research domain is vast, and there are numerous centres of historical interest. Relics are outstanding instruments of communication with profound media power in society. The cult of relics runs through every historical period, from Late Antiquity onward; it concerned Christ and every saint, or group of saints, though the sworn devotion of both religious and lay people. Relics have become a new and real historical field.⁴

The ongoing systematic publication of the holdings of church treasuries is providing new documents. The opening of shrines by skilled archaeologists has made it possible to compile reliable inventories of their contents and publish the results. The written sources that have been discovered, quite apart from their obvious palaeographic interest, sometimes throw light on the history of a religious building or an artwork – the container, the reliquary – and mention the names of saints, places, and characters. The archaeological objects that accompany them are of various kinds. All this maps out the “routes of faith” and, in a broader sense, reveals the traces of human contacts, a remarkable puzzle to piece together, falling largely outside the strictly hagiological domain. The circulation of property and people and the networks put in place are revealed by these multifarious material traces, which greatly contribute to our knowledge of the past. Here begins “the job of the historian”.

Actually, interest in relics is not new; what has changed is their interpretation: the perspectives we have acquired have altered our approach to the subject. I have long been arguing for a new approach to this new historical object, entirely setting aside its spectacular dimension and working in a calm, dispassionate manner conducive to research.

By way of an overview,⁵ in the French-speaking context, I would first like to pay tribute to two general works that represent milestones in the field: the proceedings of the colloquium organized by Edina Bozoky and Anne-Marie Helvetius in Boulogne in 1997, and then the volume of Pecia edited by Jean-Luc Deuffic in 2005.⁶ And I would also like to recall here the memory of Marie-Madeleine Gauthier, a pioneer in this field in relation to art history.

The general survey I published on relics was subtitled “the fourth power”, referring in general terms to media and channels for disseminating information and to means of communication in a broad sense.⁷ I chose this short and incisive expression in apposition to the word “relics” to underline the pervasive influence exerted by relics on society, in the Middle Ages, obviously, but also long afterwards, and to venture a comparison with the current ubiquity, indeed pre-eminence, of information. I am of course aware of the liberty I have thereby taken with the exact meaning of the expression, and especially with its historical meaning. The further I pursue my research, the more I am amazed by the role of relics as a mediator (a medium, an “intermediary”), the media power they exerted and how deeply embedded they were at every level of society, quite apart from the recognized intercessory role of saints. Relics were involved in grand ceremonies which shaped opinion, but they also played a major role in people’s private lives. These sacred objects were instruments of communication, media avant la lettre, even if they were primarily thought of as “leading us to the hereafter”.⁸

English-speaking scholars have a knack for synthesis, and also perhaps for catchy titles. Both Peter Brown⁹ and Patrick Geary¹⁰ were quickly translated. The title Thefts of Relics made an impression at the time: the book was particularly useful for providing a rapid means of referring to the most important thefts. Ireland, in turn, is also very fertile territory for research; one recalls the importance Colombanus († 615) attributes to relics in his letters.¹¹

Scandinavia is revisiting its saints and their relics.¹² The Netherlands, despite the ravages of the Wars of Religion, still has interesting relics,¹³ and some beautiful examples are preserved in the Catherijneconvent Museum in Utrecht. Here, as elsewhere, we find ourselves in the realm of exhibitions.¹⁴

The Swiss, for their part, have not only expatiated on the term “Treasury”¹⁵ but also restored one of their most ancient examples, that of Agaunum (Saint-Maurice).¹⁶

Philippe Cordez’s thesis serves as a transition to Germany, as it has also appeared in German.¹⁷ In the Germanic sphere, Hedwig Röckelein has been working for a long time on relics and treasuries:¹⁸ she adopts an interdisciplinary perspective that the Centre d’Études Médiévales d’Auxerre has been developing for a number of years.¹⁹ A remarkable research instrument for Cologne is provided by Hans-Joachim Kracht and Jakob Torsy,²⁰ following Anton Legner’s exhibitions, which include Ornamenta ecclesiae in 1985.

And of course there are the treasuries themselves, those that have survived through the centuries, those that have disappeared, and those whose holdings have been dispersed. Renovation makes it possible to take a new approach to the works that have constituted their basis and ensured their development. So it is with Agaunum, Halberstadt, Quedlimburg, and Essen, among many others, and indeed also Liège, where we have just completed the renovation begun over 20 years ago.²¹

On the Iberian region, let me just mention Marc Sureda i Jubany’s research on Vic,²² from the art history point of view, and the corpus of crosses valiantly undertaken by César García de Castro Valdés in Oviedo.²³ Oviedo has just recently taken a critical look at its treasury.²⁴ In Santiago, as well as the Instituto de Estudios Gallegos Padre Sarmiento, I would like to mention José Suárez Otero and his archaeological excavations.²⁵

This international survey could be continued, but it is doomed from the outset to be inexhaustible, whether we turn to Italy, Poland, the Baltic or Adriatic coasts, or Byzantium. In this inventorial spirit, we should a adapt a phrase from a Mosan list of relics of around 1185 to our overview: the monk had had enough of copying out the names of the relics and ended his writing with the comment “whose name only God knows”,²⁶ which had already occurred in relation to the Holy Ark of Oviedo: e aliis qvam plvrimis sanctis qvorvm nomina sola dei sciencia coligit (“and of many other saints whose names only the wisdom of God can recall”).²⁷

Treasuries of relics led to cabinets of curiosities. The shift from the sacred to the profane took place gradually, depending on the objects the treasury came to contain, such as those reliquaries made from coconuts or ostrich eggs, or the use of coral or unusual precious stones to decorate reliquaries. In a kind of inventory of the treasuries of churches in Venice, it is recorded that “en la Maison Dieu de Venise est l’un des gros dens d’un jayant c’om appeloit Goliast, lequel jayent David occist. Et sachiés que icellui dent a plus de demypié de long” (“In the Almshouse in Venice is one of the large teeth of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Contributors
• Introduction: relics, holiness, and devotion
• 1 Relics as historical objects: overview, methods, and prospects
• PART 1 The relics of St James in Europe
• PART 2 Furta sacra
• PART 3 The resilience of relics and shrines
• PART 4 Relics and science
• Index