Christian Relics: History, Practices and Policies | Early European History And Religion

CHRISTIAN RELICS

reliquary said to contain the blood of Christ in Santa Maria della Scalla, Siena, Italy

Relics are parts of the bodies, , or objects, associated with saints. They have been important since the earliest days of Christianity — as well as the earliest days of other religions — because they "provided the only physical link to a holy person after death." For some Christians the worship of relics seems macabre and smacks of superstition. Why were paintings of saints considered sacrilegious and the relics and body parts of saints not?

The word relics comes from the Latin reliquiae (the counterpart of the Greek leipsana) which already before the propagation of Christianity was used in its modern sense, viz., of some object, notably part of the body or clothes, remaining as a memorial of a departed saint.

Crusaders brought back two heads of John the Baptist and it is said there were enough pieces of the true cross to fill the hold of a good-size ship. Touching the true cross was supposed to give people the power to bring back the dead. In Canterbury it was possible to see stains of Thomas Beckett's brains on paving stones where he was murdered. Most of these relics were stored in gold and silver reliquary boxes outfit with a small opening so you can see the relic inside. ["Life in a Medieval City" by Joseph and Frances Gies, Harper Perennial]

Candida Moss wrote in Daily Beast: Is it possible that any of them are the real deal? At first blush it seems unlikely that any given European relic of the cross would be authentic. In the first place there are just so many. By the end of the medieval period, every royal, high ranking noble, and semi-large was claiming to house important relics of one kind or another. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, April 23, 2017]

Websites and Resources on Christianity BBC on Christianity bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity ; Candida Moss at the Daily Beast Daily Beast; Christian Answers christiananswers.net ; Christian Classics Ethereal Library www.ccel.org ; Sacred Texts website sacred-texts.com ; Internet Medieval Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Saints and Their Legends: A Selection of Saints libmma.contentdm ; Lives of the Saints - Orthodox Church in America oca.org/saints/lives ; Lives of the Saints: Catholic.org catholicism.org ;

Origin of Christian Relic Veneration

replica of the Holy Grail in Valencia

Candida Moss wrote in Daily Beast, The origins of relic practices are obscure, but arguably the earliest evidence for Christian relic logic comes from the beginning of the third century. Dr. James Corke-Webster, a Senior Lecturer at King’s College London, told The Daily Beast, “We get a glimpse of the origins of such thinking about relics in one of Christianity’s first martyr narratives, the Passion of Perpetua. As that story reaches its climax, a Christian on the cusp of his death turns to his jailor, tells him, ‘Don’t let these things upset you; let them strengthen you,’ then takes the ring off the man’s finger, dips it in his open wound, and returns it to him ‘as a symbol and a memory.’” This might seem alarmingly unhygienic, but the blood of the martyr transforms the ring into an object of religious power as well as a memento. “We can only wonder,” Corke-Webster added, “what the jailor did with the ring; I wonder if he realized he had the first deliberate relic in Christianity’s history?”

Joanne M. Pierce wrote in The Conversation: In the first three centuries of Christianity, Christians, whose religion was outlawed prayed at the entombed bodies of martyrs, who were executed for refusing to renounce their new faith. After the Roman Empire legalized Christianity in the early fourth century, smaller buildings called shrine churches were sometimes built around the tomb of a martyr. At times, the bodies of the martyr were exhumed by local bishops and reburied within the city itself, in a special tomb beneath the floor of a larger church or basilica. [Source: Joanne M. Pierce, Professor Emerita of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross, The Conversation]

Prior to this practice, bodies of the dead were kept in tombs and catacombs built outside of the city’s walls so as to separate them from the “city” of the living. But Christians believed in the power of the martyrs and, later, other saintly persons to intercede on their behalf with God. Saints were respected and their relics and images venerated, but they were not adored or worshipped as God might be.

Relic Veneration Among Greeks, Romans, Buddhists and Muslims

Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: The phenomenon is not exclusively Christian: relics are important in Islam, some forms of Buddhism, and other smaller religions. It is not even exclusively religious. Anyone who has kept a lock of hair a loved one, the sweatshirt of the “one who got a way,” or a signed photograph of a celebrity understands the power of physical connection in contexts of grief, separation, and adulation. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, April 23, 2022]

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia: “The veneration of relics, in fact, is to some extent a primitive instinct, and it is associated with many other religious systems besides that of Christianity. At Athens the supposed remains of Oedipus and Theseus enjoyed an honour which it is very difficult to distinguish from a religious cult. Plutarch gives an account of the translation of the bodies of Demetrius and Phocion which in many details anticipates the Christian practice of the Middle Ages.

The bones or ashes of Aesculapius at Epidaurus, of Perdiccas I at Macedon, and even—if we may trust the statement of the Chronicon Paschale )—of the Persian Zoroaster (Zarathustra), were treated with the deepest veneration. As for the Far East, the famous story of the distribution of the relics of Buddha, an incident which is believed to have taken place immediately after his death, seems to have found remarkable confirmation in certain modern archaeological discoveries. (See "Journ. of R. Asiatic Society", 1909, pp. 1056 sqq.). In any case the extreme development of relic-worship amongst the Buddhists of every sect is a fact beyond dispute. [Source: New Advent, Catholic Encyclopedia ^\^]

Power of Christian Relics

Head of Mary Magdalene in Saint Maria Maddalena

Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: Because relics are associated with saintly individuals and heroes, they very quickly accrued a reputation as sources of deployable power. Pilgrims who visited the shrines of saints weren’t just tourists. Just like those who had visited shrines dedicated to Asclepius or the Delphic Oracle, they were looking for healing and answers. The logic of intensified power mean that relics quickly became protective. John Chrysostom, the Bishop of Antioch, said that the relics of the saints were more powerful than “walls, trenches, weapons, and hosts of soldiers.” As Patrick Geary puts it in his book Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages, “the bodies of saints were the security deposits left by the saints” they “brought the special protection of the saint to the community, shielding it from enemies both spiritual and temporal and assuring its prosperity.” [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, April 23, 2022]

By the sixth century, the idea that a saint’s relics could protect a city and ensure military victory (over both enemies abroad and heretics within) had become a popular propagandistic tool. Conceptually, accruing relics was a means of reinforcing the defense system of a city or capital. Practically, it was a means of moving power around. When King Alfonso II of Asturias (northern Spain), a rough contemporary of Charlemagne, established a capital at Oviedo he invoked the legend of St. Turibius of Astorga. According to legend, the fifth-century saint had transported a huge chest of high-status relics relating to Jesus and other saints to Africa for safe keeping. The chest then moved to Toledo and then Oviedo in 711. Alfonso was able to use the mythology of relic transport to transfer political and cultural power to his new capital. The most famous relic is the Sudarium of Oviedo, the cloth that was supposedly wrapped around the head of Jesus at his burial. Even today, pilgrims detour to Oviedo to visit this Spanish companion piece to the Turin shroud.

This broad trend of using relics to cement political authority could be deployed in battle as well. Relics were portable and, thus, the thinking went the spiritual protection they afforded the possessor could be leveraged in military engagement as well. A fragment of the True Cross allegedly secured by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius became part of the spiritual arsenal of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. It was carried into battle by crusaders. And, according to historians Alan Murray and Norman Housely, was present at four battles in Egypt in the 11th and 12th centuries. When it was subsequently captured by Saladin, Richard the Lionheart attempted to ransom it. Queen Tamar of Georgia allegedly offered 200,000 gold pieces as ransom for it, but Saladin was no fool: the motivational power of the True Cross was worth more than that.

Though the formal use of relics in battle is a hallmark of the medieval period, we see echoes of it even more recently. In World War I, soldiers sometimes carried their Bibles into combat as a form of protection. A report of the events that followed the beginning of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July, 1916, notes that some members of the British military who perished were not discovered for three weeks. Eyewitness Gerald Brenan wrote “The wounded who could not be brought in, had crawled into shell holes… taken out their Bibles, and died like that.” This, of course, is a more personal and defensive use of the Bible, but it is part of a larger worldview of relic power.

Early History of Christian Relic Veneration

Saint Oliver Plunket's head

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia: “Few points of faith can be more satisfactorily traced back to the earliest ages of Christianity than the veneration of relics. The classical instance is to be found in the letter written by the inhabitants of Smyrna, about 156, describing the death of St. Polycarp. After he had been burnt at the stake, we are told that his faithful disciples wished to carry off his remains, but the Jews urged the Roman officer to refuse his consent for fear that the Christians "would only abandon the Crucified One and begin to worship this man". Eventually, however, as the Smyrnaeans say, "we took up his bones, which are more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold, and laid them in a suitable place, where the Lord will permit us to gather ourselves together, as we are able, in gladness and joy, and to celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom." This is the keynote which is echoed in a multitude of similar passages found a little later in the patristic writers of both East and West.

St. Gregory of Nyssa in his sermons on the forty martyrs, after describing how their bodies were burned by command of the persecutors, explains that "their ashes and all that the fire had spared have been so distributed throughout the world that almost every province has had its share of the blessing. I also myself have a portion of this holy gift and I have laid the bodies of my parents beside the ashes of these warriors, that in the hour of the resurrection they may be awakened together with these highly privileged comrades". We have here also a hint of the explanation of the widespread practice of seeking burial near the tombs of the martyrs. It seems to have been felt that when the souls of the blessed martyrs on the day of general were once more united to their bodies, they would be accompanied in their passage to heaven by those who lay around them and that these last might on their account find more ready acceptance with God. ^\^

“We may note also that, while this and other passages suggest that no great repugnance was felt in the East to the division and dismemberment of the bodies of the saints, in the West, on the other hand, particularly at Rome, the greatest respect was shown to the holy dead. The mere unwrapping or touching of the body of a martyr was considered to be a terribly perilous enterprise, which could only be set about by the holiest of ecclesiastics, and that after prayer and fasting. This belief lasted until the late Middle Ages and is illustrated, for example, in the life of St. Hugh of Lincoln, who excited the surprise of his episcopal contemporaries by his audacity in examining and translating relics which his colleagues dared not disturb.

Eusebius wrote (c. 325) such objects as the hair of St. James or the oil multiplied by Bishop Narcissus were clearly venerated as relics, and St. Augustine, in his City of God, gives numerous instances of miracles wrought by soil from the Holy Land flowers which had touched a reliquary or had been laid upon a particular altar, oil from the lamps of the church of a martyr, or by other things not less remotely connected with the saints themselves.

“During the Merovingian and Carlovingian period (450-987) the cultus of relics increased rather than diminished. Gregory of Tours abounds in stories of the marvels wrought by them, as well as of the practices used in their honour, some of which have been thought to be analogous to those of the pagan "incubations"; neither does he omit to mention the frauds occasionally perpetrated by scoundrels through motives of greed. It was mentioned how the bodies of the holy martyrs had been adorned with gold and precious stones, those same bodies which the Romans burnt with fire, and pierced with the sword, or threw to wild beasts to be torn to pieces." In England we find from the first a strong tradition in the same sense derived from St. Gregory himself. Bede records how the pope "forwarded to Augustine all the things needful for the worship and service of the church, namely, sacred vessels, altar linen, church ornaments, priestly and clerical vestments, relics of the holy Apostles and martyrs and also many books".

Early Objections to Christian Relic Veneration

reliquary with Christ's shroud

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia: ““From the Catholic standpoint there was no extravagance or abuse in this cult as it was recommended and indeed taken for granted, by writers like St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and by all the other great doctors without exception. To give detailed references besides those already cited from the Roman Catechism would be superfluous. Suffice it to point out that the inferior and relative nature of the honour due to relics was always kept in view. Thus St. Jerome says: "We do not worship, we do not adore , for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than to the Creator, but we venerate the relics of the martyrs in order the better to adore Him whose martyrs they are." And St. Cyril of Alexandria writes : "We by no means consider the holy martyrs to be gods, nor are we wont to bow down before them adoringly, but only relatively and reverentially ." [Source: New Advent, Catholic Encyclopedia ^\^]

Perhaps no single writing supplies a more striking illustration of the importance attached to the veneration of relics in the Christian practice of the fourth century than the panegyric of the martyr St. Theodore by St. Gregory of Nyssa . Contrasting the horror produced by an ordinary corpse with the veneration paid to the body of a saint the preacher expatiates upon the adornment lavished upon the building which had been erected over the martyr's resting place, and he describes how the worshipper is led to approach the tomb "believing that to touch it is itself a sanctification and a blessing and if it be permitted to carry off any of the dust which has settled upon the martyr's resting place, the dust is accounted as a great gift and the mould as a precious treasure. And as for touching the relics themselves, if that should ever be our happiness, only those who have experienced it and who have had their wish gratified can know how much this is desirable and how worthy a recompense it is of aspiring prayer" (col. 740). ^\^

In the Theodosian Code the translation, division, or dismemberment of the remains of martyrs was expressly forbidden.and somewhat later Gregory the Great seems in very emphatic terms to attest the continuance of the same tradition. He professed himself sceptical regarding the alleged "customs of the Greeks" of readily transferring the bodies of martyrs from place to place, declaring that throughout the West any interference with these honoured remains was looked upon as a sacrilegious act and that numerous prodigies had struck terror into the hearts of even well meaning men who had attempted anything of the sort. Hence, though it was the Empress Constantina herself who had asked him for the head or some portion of the body of St. Paul, he treated the request as an impossible one. Instead, Gregory offers to send Constantina some filings from St. Peter's chains,

Relic Pilgrimages and Feasts

Joanne M. Pierce wrote: As Christianity spread throughout Europe, beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire, so did the practice of venerating the saints. The demands for a saintly “body” increased, and so the remains of famous or local saints were divided into pieces, which included clippings of hair, or sometimes whole body parts. These “relics” — from a Latin word meaning “something left behind” — were frequently placed in special containers or display cases, called reliquaries. These were usually especially elaborate, made of precious metals and adorned with jewels as a reflection of the special reverence for these elements that had touched the body of Jesus Christ. [Source: Joanne M. Pierce, Professor Emerita of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross, The Conversation]

tunic of Saint Francis

The more famous the relic, the more pilgrims would make their way to the church or monastery where it was kept, and the more the clergy could earn through the offerings visitors made at the shrine. By the turn of the millennium, the number of pilgrims traveling to visit Jerusalem from Europe increased, but tensions mounted between Muslim rulers and Christian leaders. There was friction among various Christian nobles and kings as well. Because of this, in the late 11th to the late 13th centuries, Christian political and religious leaders led a series of major wars — the Crusades — to regain control of the Holy Land from its Muslim ruler.

One result was an increase in the number of “relics” of Jesus, Mary and other New Testament figures brought back to Europe and circulated as authentic. Some of these included fragments of bone or hair from apostles or other saintly figures, while others consisted of scraps of fabric from their clothing. Most esteemed of all were objects that supposedly had touched the body of Jesus himself, especially those connected with his suffering and death, such as the spikes used to nail him to the cross.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia: “It has long been customary especially in churches which possessed large collections of relics, to keep one general feast in commemoration of all the saints whose memorials are there preserved. An Office and Mass for this purpose will be found in the Roman Missal and Breviary, and though they occur only in the supplement Pro aliquibus locis and are not obligatory upon the Church at large, still this celebration is now kept almost universally. The office is generally assigned to the fourth Sunday in October. In England before the Reformation, as we may learn from a rubric in the Sarum Breviary, the Festum Reliquiarum was celebrated on the Sunday after the feast of the Translation of St. Thomas of Canterbury (7 July), and it was to be kept as a greater double "wherever relics are preserved or where the bodies of dead persons are buried. [Source: New Advent, Catholic Encyclopedia ^\^]

Purchasing a Relic From a Relic Bank

Paul Halsall of Fordham University wrote: “Although relics are often considered "medieval", they are still widely used as objects of devotion in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. In fact, it is possible to obtain a relic (if you have a letter from Catholic priest) from a "relic bank" in Rome. It is illegal under church law to charge for a relic, but there is a charge for the required relic case. In most cases the relix acquired is a very small piece of bone or skin. Such relics are placed in a reliquary, and sealed. Each is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity. [Source: sourcebooks.fordham.edu]

The following is a sample of modern certificate (1952) for relics from St. George: “CLEMENS MISERATIONE DIVINA EPISCOPUS VELITERNUS S.R.E. CARD. MICARA SS.MI. D.NI N.RI PAPAE VICARIUS GENERALIS ROMANAE CURIAE EIUSQUE DISTRICTUS IUDEX ORDINARIUS ETC. CLEMENTE MICARA, BY THE MERCY OF GOD BISHOP OF VOLTURNO, CARDINAL OF THE HOLY ROMAN CHURCH, VICAR GENERAL OF OUR MOST HOLY LORD THE POPE, ORDINARY JUDGE OF THE ROMAN CURIA AND OF ITS DISTRICT ETC. [Source: translation by Daniel Williman, danielw@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu, of the Hagiomail list (hagiomail@belnet.be)]

“To all and each who will see these present letters we give our faithful assurance and we attest that, to the greater glory of Almighty God and the veneration of His Saints, we have recognized the sacred particles "From the bones of Saint George, Soldier [or Knight], Martyr" which, taken out of their authentic places, we have gathered in a "metal chest of round shape," decorated with crystal, tightly closed and tied with a silk cord of red color, marked with our seal; and we have sent them with permission to keep them, to send them out of the City, and to expose them to the public veneration of the faithful. But we warn the faithful into whose hands these sacred relics shall come now or later, that they are in no way permitted to sell them nor to exchange them with such things as show the appearance of marketing...In witness of those things we have ordered these testimonial letters, signed by us or by our Most Excellent Substitute, and sealed with our seal, to be sent by the undersigned Keeper of Sacred Relics. At Rome, from our palace, 5 March 1952]

Relics, Reliquaries and Art

reliquary of Saint Valentine in Poland

In a review of the “Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe” exhibition at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Blake Gopnik wrote in Newsweek, “The gem-studded crosses, golden caskets, and finely carved ivories that got the modern art world started, back in the Middle Ages, were about as beautiful as anything could be. But most of them also had more important, vitally practical functions: they cured illnesses, won battles, protected infants, and helped farmers bring in crops. Good looks and precious materials were symbols of those works’ amazing functionality rather than their central point. [Source: Blake Gopnik, Newsweek, February 27, 2011 ^^^]

“The true “working parts” of the golden objects at the Walters are hidden deep inside them: all these artifacts either contained actual remnants of the bodies of Christianity’s holiest figures, or held lesser objects—oil, bits of cloth, or even instruments of torture—that had come in contact with the figures or their relics. Two carved and painted busts of beautiful young girls, dressed and coiffed for a holiday Sunday near Brussels in the 1520s, conceal chunks of skull said to have come from martyred Christian virgins. Each bust has a discreet trap door on top to reveal its sacred bone. The Walters is keeping them closed. ^^^

“Several ornately gilt caskets and crosses contain fragments of the True Cross, which Christ was believed to have died on, while one of several rock-crystal vessels in the show still contains the “Tooth of John the Baptist,” as its inscription informs us. (The gold casings for these relics also functioned as cash reserves for their owners, to be melted down in tough times. This is one of several fascinating facts in an essay by co-curator Martina Bagnoli, from the show’s gorgeous and comprehensive catalog.) ^^^

“The art collecting that went on to become a hobby for the rich and powerful, such as the Walters’s founder, had its roots in the equally eager relic collecting of earlier times. By 1520, Prince Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, had amassed 19,013 precious relics in his collection. At the tail end of the Middle Ages, churches and chapels were crowded with stunning objects of virtue, and people flocked to them—to pray, of course, but also for the sheer wonder of it all. One object at the Walters is a fabulous, yard-long “Griffin’s Claw” said to have come from a griffin companion of Saint Cuthbert of England. (Spoiler alert: it’s actually a mountain-goat horn.) As Europe secularized, such objects migrated to the “cabinets of wonder” of the wealthy, which in turn begat our modern museums, which function more like wondrous, relic-filled halls than we tend to acknowledge. After something like 2 million years of living from the artifacts we make, humans may be hard-wired to show them respect.” ^^^

Catholic Church Doctrine Regarding Relics

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia: “The teaching of the Catholic Church with regard to the veneration of relics is summed up in a decree of the Council of Trent (Sess. XXV), which enjoins on bishops and other pastors to instruct their flocks that "the holy bodies of holy martyrs and of others now living with Christ—which bodies were the living members of Christ and 'the temple of the Holy Ghost' (1 Corinthians 6:19) and which are by Him to be raised to eternal life and to be glorified are to be venerated by the faithful, for through these [bodies] many benefits are bestowed by God on men, so that they who affirm that veneration and honour are not due to the relics of the saints, or that these and other sacred monuments are uselessly honoured by the faithful, and that the places dedicated to the memories of the saints are in vain visited with the view of obtaining their aid, are wholly to be condemned, as the Church has already long since condemned, and also now condemns them."

Further, the council insists that "in the invocation of saints the veneration of relics and the sacred use of images, every superstition shall be removed and all filthy lucre abolished." Again, "the visitation of relics must not be by any perverted into revellings and drunkenness." To secure a proper check upon abuses of this kind, "no new miracles are to be acknowledged or new relics recognized unless the bishop of the diocese has taken cognizance and approved thereof." Moreover, the bishop, in all these matters, is directed to obtain accurate information to take council with theologians and pious men, and in cases of doubt or exceptional difficulty to submit the matter to the sentence of the metropolitan and other bishops of the province, "yet so that nothing new, or that previously has not been usual in the Church, shall be resolved on, without having first consulted the Holy See." [Source: New Advent, Catholic Encyclopedia ^\^]

Reliquary of the True Cross in Jerusalem

“The justification of Catholic practice, which is indirectly suggested here by the reference to the bodies of the saints as formerly temples of the Holy Ghost and as destined hereafter to be eternally glorified, is further developed in the authoritative "Roman Catechism" drawn up at the instance of the same council. Recalling the marvels witnessed at the tombs of the martyrs, where "the blind and cripples are restored to health, the dead recalled to life, and devils? expelled from the bodies of men" the Catechism points out that these are facts which "St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, most unexceptionable witnesses, declare in their writings that they have not merely heard and read about, as many did but have seen with their own eyes",

And from thence, turning to Scriptural analogies, the compilers further argue: "If the clothes, the kerchiefs (Acts 19:12), if the shadow of the saints (Acts 5:15), before they departed from this life, banished diseases and restored strength, who will have the hardihood to deny that God wonderfully works the same by the sacred ashes, the bones, and other relics of the saints? This is the lesson we have to learn from that dead body which, having been accidentally let down into the sepulchre of Eliseus, "when it had touched the bones of the Prophet, instantly came to life"

“According to the more common opinion of theologians, relics are to be honoured; There is nothing, therefore, in Catholic teaching to justify the statement that the Church encourages belief in a magical virtue, or physical curative efficacy residing in the relic itself . It may be admitted that St. Cyril of Jerusalem (A.D. 347), and a few other patristic and medieval writers, apparently speak of some power inherent in the relic. For example, St. Cyril, after referring to the miracle wrought by the body of Eliseus, declares that the restoration to life of the corpse with which it was in contact took place: "to show that even though the soul is not present a virtue resides in the body of the saints, because of the righteous soul which has for so many years tenanted it and used it as its minister". Be this as it may, it is certain that the Church, with regard to the veneration of relics has defined nothing, more than what was stated above. Neither has the Church ever pronounced that any particular relic, not even that commonly venerated as the wood of the Cross, as authentic; but she approves of honour being paid to those relics which with reasonable probability are believed to be genuine and which are invested with due ecclesiastical sanctions.

Relics Handed Down in Gregory's Family

The “Book in Honor of the Martyrs: I shall now describe what was brought to pass through the relics which my father carried with him in former times. When Theodobert [note: Theodobert I, 534―548.]t gave orders that sons of men in Auvergne should be taken as hostages, my father, at that time lately married, wished to be protected by relics of the saints, and he asked a certain bishop kindly to give him some, thinking he would be kept safe by such protection when absent on his distant journey. Then he enclosed the holy ashes in a gold case the shape of a pea―pod and placed them around his neck; but the man did not know the blessed names. He was accustomed to relate that he was saved by them from many dangers; for he bore witness that by their miraculous power he had often escaped attacks of highwaymen and dangers on rivers and the furies of civil war and thrusts of the sword. And I shall not fail to tell what I saw of these with my own eyes.

Girdle of Mary carried in a procession in Maastricht, Netherlands

After my father's death my mother always wore these precious things on her person. Now the grain harvest had come and great grain stacks were gathered at the threshing places. And in those days when the threshing was going on, a cold spell came on, and seeing that Limagne [note: One of the most fertile spots in France. Cf. Lavisse, Histoire de France, I, pp 296-301] has no forests, being all covered with crops, the threshers made themselves fires of straw, since there was nothing else to make a fire of. Meantime all went away to eat. And behold, the fire gradually increased and began to spread slowly straw by straw. Then the piles suddenly caught, with the south wind blowing; it was a great conflagration and there began a shouting of men and shrieking of women and crying of children. [note: "Insequitur clamor virorum strepitusque mulierum, ululatus infantum,"- a reminiscence of Vergil, Aen. I, 87, "Insequitur clamorque virum stridorque rudentum."] Now this was happening on our own land. My mother, who wore these relics hanging on her neck, learned this, and sprang from the table and lifted up the holy relics against the masses of flame, and all the fire went out in a moment so that scarcely a spark of fire could be found among the burnt piles of straw and it did no harm to the grain which it had just caught. [Source: Book in Honor of the Martyrs: Chap 83]

“Many years later I received these relics from my mother; and when we were going from Burgundy to Auvergne, a great storm came upon us and the sky flashed with many lightnings and roared with heavy crashes of thunder. Then I drew the blessed relics from my bosom and raised my hand against the cloud; it immediately divided into two parts and passed on the right and left and did no harm to us or any one else thereafter. But being a young man of an ardent temperament I began to be puffed up with vain glory and to think silently that this had been granted not so much to the merits of the saints as to me personally, and I openly boasted to my comrades on the journey that I had merited by my blamelessness what God had bestowed. At once my horse suddenly shied beneath me and dashed me to the ground; and I was so severely shaken up by the fall that I could hardly get up. I perceived that this had come of vanity, and it was enough to put me on guard thenceforth against being moved by the spur of vain glory. For whenever it happened after that that I had the merit to behold any of the miracles of the saints, I loudly proclaimed that they were wrought by God's gift through faith in the saints.

Abuses of Relic Veneration

piece of the seamless robe of Jesus

The making of forged holy relics was big business in medieval times. Crusaders that returned from sacking Constantinople after the 4th crusades where the ones who came back with two heads of John the Baptist not just one. In 1300 Pope Boniface VIII based an edict prohibiting the mutilation of bodies to reduce the sale of bones as fake holy relics.According to the Catholic Encyclopedia: “Naturally it was impossible for popular enthusiasm to be roused to so high a pitch in a matter which easily lent itself to error, fraud and greed of gain, without at least the occasional occurrence of many grave abuses. As early as the end of the fourth century, St. Augustine denouncing certain impostors wandering about in the habit of monks, describes them as making profit by the sale of spurious relics. [Source: New Advent, Catholic Encyclopedia ^\^]

In the Theodosian Code the sale of relics is forbidden , but numerous stories, of which it would be easy to collect a long series, beginning with the writings of St. Gregory the Great and St. Gregory of Tours, prove to us that many unprincipled persons found a means of enriching themselves by a sort of trade in these objects of devotion, the majority of which no doubt were fraudulent. At the beginning of the ninth century, as M. Jean Guiraud had shown , the exportation of the bodies of martyrs from Rome had assumed the dimensions of a regular commerce, and a certain deacon, Deusdona, acquired an unenviable notoriety in these transactions . What was perhaps in the long run hardly less disastrous than fraud or avarice was the keen rivalry between religious centres, and the eager credulity fostered by the desire to be known as the possessors of some unusually startling relic. We learn from Cassian, in the fifth century, that there were monks who seized upon certain martyrs' bodies by force of arms, defying the authority of the bishops, and this was a story which we find many times repeated in the Western chronicles of a later date.

“In such an atmosphere of lawlessness doubtful relics came to abound. There was always a disposition to regard any human remains accidentally discovered near a church or in the catacombs as the body of a martyr. Hence, though men like St. Athanasius and St. Martin of Tours set a good example of caution in such cases, it is to be feared that in the majority of instances only a very narrow interval of time intervened between the suggestion that a particular object might be, or ought to be, an important relic, and the conviction that tradition attested it actually to be such. There is no reason in most cases for supposing the existence of deliberate fraud.

“On the other hand it must not be supposed that nothing was done by ecclesiastical authority to secure the faithful against deception. Such tests were applied as the historical and antiquarian science of that day was capable of devising. Very often however, this test took the form of an appeal to some miraculous sanction, as in the well known story repeated by St. Ambrose, according to which, when doubt arose which of the three crosses discovered by St. Helena was that of Christ, the healing of a sick man by one of them dispelled all further hesitation. Similarly Egbert, Bishop of Trier, in 979, doubting as to the authenticity of what purported to be the body of St. Celsus, "lest any suspicion of the sanctity of the holy relics should arise, during Mass after the offertory had been sung, threw a joint of the finger of St. Celsus wrapped in a cloth into a thurible full of burning coals, which remained unhurt and untouched by the fire the whole time of the Canon" . ^\^

“The decrees of synods upon this subject are generally practical and sensible, as when, for example, Bishop Quivil of Exeter, in 1287 after recalling the prohibition of the General Council of Lyons against venerating recently found relics unless they were first of all approved by the Roman Pontiff, adds: "We command the above prohibition to be carefully observed by all and decree that no person shall expose relics for sale, and that neither stones, nor fountains, trees, wood, or garments shall in any way be venerated on account of dreams or on fictitious grounds." So, again, the whole procedure before Clement VII (the antipope) in 1359, recently brought to light by Canon Chevalier, in connexion with the alleged Holy Shroud of Lirey, proves that some check at least was exercised upon the excesses of the unscrupulous or the mercenary. ^\^

More Than a Million Russians Check Out Rib of Saint Nicholas

bones of Saint Nicholas

David Filipov wrote in the Washington Post: “They have come to pray for the health of loved ones. They have come to ask for help to pass a tough exam or just to get by in hard times. But mostly, they have come to be part of a once-in-a-millennium spiritual event: Saint Nicholas has come to town. Since relics of Russia’s most beloved saint were brought to Moscow on May 21, more than a million people have waited in line as long as 10 hours to spend just an instant at the gilded ark that holds one of his ribs. Lines to see the saint Russians call “the miracle worker” have stretched up to five miles from the giant, onion-domed Christ the Savior Cathedral, a reconstruction of a cathedral demolished by the Soviets in 1931. [Source: David Filipov, Washington Post, June 29, 2017]

Some waited to ask for a miracle from Saint Nicholas.“It’s important to be close to the grace of Saint Nicholas,” said Denis Knyazyev, 32, who drove four hours from his home west of Moscow to stand in line for Saint Nicholas last week. “All saints are special, but this is the one most dear to us.” What they see at the ark is an icon of Saint Nicholas, under a panel of bulletproof glass, with a crescent-shaped opening in the middle through which a bone is visible. As priests and burly security guards look on, a choir chants a harmonious prayer that echoes through the cavernous, ornate cathedral. But the music is drowned out by the stentorian instructions of volunteers in ―fluorescent-green vests.

They warn worshipers to cross themselves before they reach the ark and to have their prayers ready, to avoid backing up the line. As soon as the faithful bend to kiss the glass, a volunteer grabs them by the shoulders and nudges them, usually lightly, toward the exit. Those who linger get a special shove and an order to move on. Another volunteer wipes the glass with a cloth. But if this brusque treatment bothered anyone, it did not show. People coming out of the cathedral on a recent Friday expressed something resembling a combination of bliss over what they had seen and relief that they had survived the ordeal. “We were so afraid we wouldn’t make it,” a pregnant woman said through tears, as her husband comforted her.

Blood of Jesus Relic Returned — Out of Fear of Being Cursed?

In 2022, thieves returned a relic reputed to contain the blood of Jesus Christ, stolen in France, apparently fearing it might curse them or bring bad luck. Business Insider reported: What began as a holy heist in Normandy ended with the blood of Jesus at the doorstep of a Dutch art detective three weeks later. On June 1 2022, thieves stole ancient artifacts from the Fécamp Abbey, a historic church in France. The artifacts included dishes, a gilded copper box covered in religious art, and most notably, two vials supposedly holding the blood of Christ, collected during his cruxifiction, Artnet reported. [Source: Hannah Getahun, Business InsiderJuly 18, 2022]

After the artifacts were stolen, detective Arthur Brand told Artnet that he began receiving anonymous emails from a person saying they were in possession of the valuable relics. The thieves most likely hid the art at a friend's house after learning that it was bad luck to steal religious artifacts, Brand told ArtNet. The friend then emailed him asking to return the artifact, Brand deduced. "To have the ultimate relic, the blood of Jesus in your home, stolen, that's a curse," Brand told AFP.

Brand told the email sender to leave the art at his doorstep and waited in his home for a week until he heard the doorbell ring. He told Artnet News that he didn't see anybody outside, but saw the box on the ground and ran downstairs. He then notified Dutch authorities. While the box was in his possession, Brand told Artnet that he did not "curse" in his home.

Image Sources: Wikimedia, Commons except Pope Francis with the Blood of St. Gennaro, Catholic.org

Text Sources: Internet Medieval Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File); “ Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions” edited by R.C. Zaehner (Barnes & Noble Books, 1959); King James Version of the Bible, gutenberg.org; New International Version (NIV) of The Bible, biblegateway.com; Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ccel.org , Frontline, PBS, Wikipedia, BBC, National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Live Science, Encyclopedia.com, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, Business Insider, AFP, Library of Congress, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2024