Religious Relics

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Religious Relics

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1sergerca
marraskuu 24, 2008, 8:24 pm

This isn't strictly about Europe, but I'm reading A Short History of Byzantium and Norwich talks about some of the religious artifacts housed in Constantinople. For example, the True Cross and the table from the Last Supper.

Is there any legitimacy to these claims? So far, he hasn't gone into any of the proof that these really were what they were said to be.

Has anyone found any book about these artifacts that confirms/debunks the authenticity of some of these religious artifacts?

2Arctic-Stranger
marraskuu 24, 2008, 8:36 pm

Probably not, but you never know. I recommend Peter Brown's The Cult of the Saints for more on relics and how they were used.

3timspalding
marraskuu 24, 2008, 9:49 pm

So, I suspect there's real, real fakes, fakes and fake fakes. In the case of the True Cross, the trail goes back to St. Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine, who found the cross while excavating for and then erecting a church by the site of the crucifixion in the early 4c. That what she found really was the true cross has no evidence anyone without a faith position is bound to respect. The was probably right about the general area, but I think Roman historians who know something about crucifixions do not think crosses were left lying about and, even if they were, discovering which of the crosses was Jesus' required divine intervention.

From that point, however, it seems that all sorts of pieces of the true cross went here and there. Some new pieces were, no doubt, invented, particularly when demand picked up after the First Crusade, and pieces circulated that were basically specs. So, some of these are probably from the piece of wood that Helena proclaimed the true cross, but that's as far as you can go with the tools of history.

See the wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Cross

4Nicole_VanK
marraskuu 25, 2008, 4:11 am

Well, there is validity to the claim that Byzantium housed those religious artifacts - and many others. But, like Tim pointed out, believing that they actually were what they were claimed to be requires an leap of faith since there usually is no way to establish their provenance in any detail.

Lets put it this way, put the still existing relics strewn out over Europe together and some Saints would have to have had several bodies. ;-)

Byzantium, by the way, lost most of its relics when it was sacked by Crusaders in 1204. The Treasure Chamber of San Marco in Venice still holds a lot of that loot, but much of it was dispersed all over Europe.

5sergerca
marraskuu 25, 2008, 8:59 am

Thanks, all. This is what I thought as well. It's just interesting that whenever I read about these SUPER relics (like the True Cross) the author mentions it as a matter of fact. Whether real or fake, it doesn't really change the story he's telling which may be why he doesn't go into it very deeply.

6Gwendydd
marraskuu 25, 2008, 10:14 pm

Historians and other authors who talk about relics in the Middle Ages tend to discuss them as a matter of fact simply because that's how medieval people talk about them. It would get pretty tedious to have to go into the question of authenticity every time relics come up in discussions of the Middle Ages....

Another book that's worth a look is Furta Sacra: the theft of relics in the Middle Ages by Patrick Geary. He looks at stories of relics being stolen, which was a surprisingly common occurrence in the Middle Ages. It's really fascinating, and gives good insight into how relics were used as propaganda, but how medieval people understood the movement of relics and their propaganda value.

7Nicole_VanK
marraskuu 26, 2008, 7:54 am

>6 Gwendydd:: Thanks for that recommendation. Sounds fascinating.

8sergerca
marraskuu 26, 2008, 9:33 am

Thanks for both of the recommendations. I'm adding them to the long list of TO BE READ.

9PossMan
marraskuu 26, 2008, 9:41 am

I seem to remember reading that in pre-Reformation England and I expect elsewhere in Europe that the consecration of a church altar required relics - I think the relics were made part of the altar. If this is true one wonders where they all came from even allowing for the fact they would not be as exalted as the ones mentioned in #1.

10Nicole_VanK
marraskuu 26, 2008, 10:03 am

Not sure if it was mandatory, but certainly not unusual. Well, of course there were lots and lots of saints + even minute fragments were seen as relics.

11Gwendydd
marraskuu 26, 2008, 6:28 pm

To expand on Barking Matt's comments... Yes, throughout Europe most churches had relics in them (and I'm pretty sure it was a requirement for consecration in ALL churches). But there were zillions of saints - only a tiny fraction were ever officially canonized by the Church. Relics don't have to be just body parts either: relics could also be objects owned by the saint during his or her lifetime, or even objects that have touched a relic of a saint. So lots of people would go visit saints' shrines and take a ring or a coin or something special and touch the relics with that object, and then the object took on some of the powers of the relics.

This link has some good basic information about the worship of saints and relics:
http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/religion/hagiography/cult.htm

12PossMan
marraskuu 27, 2008, 7:17 am

Had a quick glance at that link Gwendydd and it looks very interesting, thanks. I've bookmarked it to go back to when I've got the time to read it properly.

13lilithcat
marraskuu 27, 2008, 10:29 am

I was surprised to learn that the creation of relics from the body parts of saints still occurs: http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/religion/chi-mother-cabrini-shrin-24nov24...

I don't know if she was dismembered right after death (which probably would have violated some Illinois law), or if, after sainthood, she was exhumed and dismembered.

14Nicole_VanK
marraskuu 27, 2008, 12:45 pm

Oh wow.

Though I would guess the second (dismembered after exhumation) since the Catholic church usually takes several years before pronouncing / bestowing - sorry, "heathen" here, don't know which one applies - sainthood.

15timspalding
marraskuu 27, 2008, 1:07 pm

I don't know about this case, but a lot of religious orders follow the southern mediterranean tradition of burying a body and digging it up a few years when the flesh has been eaten off, then stacking up the bones somewhere.

16P_S_Patrick
tammikuu 19, 2009, 12:55 pm

I've read quite a few books set in medieval times, and a good number of them feature fake relics. Baudolino by Umberto Eco revolves around fake relics, and several of the books in the Matthew Bartholomew Chronicles by Susanna Gregory involve fake relics in their plots too. Both of these authors are very knowledgable about medieval times, and I don't think they would place such an emphasis on something that never happened. They were also mentioned in another unlikely book I've just read, The Leopard, and the impression I get from that, and in general, is that most of the relics around are of dubious origin. They appealed to the superstitious mind of the medieval peasant, and that is why they were so popular. To this day they remain more important in Catholic countries, who are more superstitious anyway, and I have never seen any emphasis being placed on them in any of the other Christian Denomenations, as I suspect they do not have any confidence in their potency.

17papyri
Muokkaaja: tammikuu 20, 2009, 12:03 am

This image nicely illustrates Tim's earlier comment about the burial practices of some religious orders.



Chamber in the Cappuccino Catacombs containing the Sacred earth from Palestine. Though this image dates from about 1897, the chapel has changed little since this photograph was taken.

The Capuchin Monastery is located on the Via Veneto, near Piazza Barberini in Rome, Italy. The crypt of the church contains a series of chapels decorated with the bones of thousands of dead monks.

18timspalding
tammikuu 20, 2009, 2:15 am

I saw such a place in Portugal. Pretty awesome.

19jjskye
helmikuu 1, 2009, 8:31 pm

I read Magnificent Corpses by Anneli Rufus that debunked a few reliquaries. She's an odd duck, a Jewish woman who used to read books about the Saints when she was a girl, and set out to visit some Catholic reliquaries in her adult years.

A tad cynical and tongue in cheek, but if you want realism, she'll give you that. Quirky and somewhat creepy, but so are some reliquaries. I always like to read widely on subjects and get all kinds of views so this was great for me.

She definitely debunks a few.