The Reliquary Effect

The Reliquary Effect

Enshrining the Sacred Object

Cynthia Hahn

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First published 2017

Copyright © Cynthia Hahn 2017

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Frontispiece: One of the masterpieces of reliquary art, in the form of a basilica. Nicholas of Verdun, Shrine of the Three Kings, completed 1225, gold, silver, enamel, gems, antique cameos and gems, wooden core, 110 × 153 × 220 cm, Cologne Cathedral (see illus. 12).

Introduction: The Eternal Relic

INSTEAD OF QUIETLY DECAYING in place as reliquiae (remains), relics have proved in recent accounts to be remarkably lively. Although stubbornly material, they do not moulder and decay, but are able to act and operate in the world. Despite their broken and fragmented nature, they adeptly seize their audience’s imagination and propel it on a trajectory that leads to distant destinations, from here and now to there and then.

As obdurately material objects, how do they do it? Without doubt, the answer is that the reliquary plays an essential role in this manoeuvre. Without the reliquary and ‘the reliquary effect’ to establish value, presentation and context, the relic could never succeed in capturing the attention required to launch a dynamic of meaning. But an even more essential question arises as we pursue this train of thought: what is a reliquary?

It is surely no coincidence that many people believe they have never heard the word ‘reliquary’, while at the same moment remaining confident they are certain of the meaning of ‘relic’. Perhaps the simplest definition of a reliquary is a container intended to protect its relic contents. (And yet, as we will see, some reliquaries are not containers at all.) Rather than a depository or safe, however, a reliquary must be understood to be like a gift box, with all the transient nature of such a thing. The reliquary performs a function of presentation, and then it is thoroughly and efficiently forgotten in the assertive presence of the relic. No one comes away from a church treasury saying they saw the reliquary of the True Cross. Devout and non-devout alike profess to having seen the relic of the True Cross.

More questions arise. How does physical material become imbued with such significance that it seems to shine forth from within its container? Or to begin at the ‘beginning’, how does an object become a relic? In the following discussion not just the container but also the process will be characterized as the ‘reliquary effect’. Through a framing action of physical context, legends and rituals, relics are identified and defined as unique, authentic, powerful and effective. Most importantly for our concerns, an object is most clearly identified as a relic when it is enclosed and presented in a reliquary (or other similarly definitive frame).

For its part, the reliquary’s first manoeuvre is to make a simple assertion of the oldness of the relic through the most basic comparison with its own shiny ‘newness’. This step implicates a ‘double condition’ of an old material thing: that is, it stands both for the present (presence) and the past.¹ In quick succession, presuppositions follow: that the provenance is unbroken, that the relic has been venerated since the moment the saint died (or a sacred event occurred) and ultimately, that the relic is precious. If the relic had to be discovered or found in some fashion, narratives of finding (inventio) are composed that connect the historical dots and activate the roles of legend and ritual, launching the inestimable powers of story and performance.

But how is the process initiated? How is a relic first identified; and what if the relic is false – inauthentic or even a fraud? Often there is little hard evidence of a relic’s authenticity. Stories about the moment of recognition are exceedingly rare except in instances where visions occur, and even then details are sparse.

Perhaps we can find the answer in a contemporary example. In a fascinating study of the manufacture of relics and reliquaries in modern-day France, the ethnographer Francesca Sbardella reveals the mysterious process whereby bodily remains are turned into sacral stuff, beautiful and authentic relics. The process is undeniably purposeful, involving a dual strategy of activation and embellishment.² Assuming the role of a postulant, and pursuing observation and interviews, Sbardella chronicled the (continuing) story of the remains of Françoise d’Amboise, a fifteenth-century founder of the Carmelite order in France. Françoise’s body had always been preserved and honoured by the order. After her beatification in 1863 and a twentieth-century revival of her fame as founder and a model of devotion and prayer, however, the nuns were ready to convert the commemorated body into something at the next level of sacralization, powerful relic fragments that could be disseminated by the Carmelites and allow Françoise to serve as an active intercessor, widely available for petition by prayer. As performed by select nuns, the procedure of transformation involved a number of specific actions: a careful delimitation of symbolic space within which the change occurred, the implementation of tools used in ritually specified ways, the performance of prayers and meditation, and the use of certain customary words and gestures (that is, the process was not fully liturgical but was controlled by formulaic practices).

As the nuns testified to Sbardella, a transformation was effected through this performance. Incomplete objects – fragments of bone or small pieces of fabric – were turned into functioning relics by being labelled, decorated and, above all, enclosed (behind glass). The product was described by the sisters as ‘beautiful’ and therefore authentic, but not, they insisted, a product of aesthetic concern. Enframement by means of container, religious materials and pious actions and prayers allowed the true beauty of the relic to emerge as a corollary to its religious power.

Such relic-making is both like and unlike the use of bodily sheddings to manufacture Buddhist relic-objects by a seventeenth-century Japanese nun. Bunchi incorporated the nail parings and hair of her father, a great and pious emperor, into calligraphy and images decorating a temple, thus both honouring him and aspiring to make him one with the Buddha, while ‘facilitat[ing] interaction between this world and the next’.³ Initially conceived as votive offerings, such religious practices came to be seen as a way to actively unify the worshipper with the divine. Furthermore, in the case of the emperor and other venerable men, manufactured portraits take on sainted status. A related practice, writing Buddhist sutras with the devotee’s own blood, joins body with devotion even more directly. One result of such manipulation of materials can be that a holy person is recognized as a ‘saint’.

Persistent issues of great concern to this study may be identified in both these scenarios. It has long been noted that relics do not have intrinsic worth but require ritual, story and social actors to find their place in religious meaning. As the French nuns insisted, the beauty of the relics is linked to their authenticity, and is also created socially rather than being essential to the nature of the object. Of great concern to our purposes here is that much of this work is done by actions of selection, collection and enshrinement – what we might, by putting the emphasis on action rather than object, call relic-ing,⁴ the making of relics.

As apparent in the examples of the Carmelites and the Buddhist nun, reliquaries and art play a key role in such operations. Additionally, as the Carmelites assert and as is often undeniably true, reliquaries are beautiful (and meant to be so) but they also rarely follow aesthetic norms. Vision is an issue because many times, as in the case of the Buddhist holy man, the bits of body are not visible or easily discerned in the larger whole. These questions of beauty and visibility remain open ones. We thus begin with a query about the nature of visibility of relics and we will return to this issue again and again in the following discussion.

1 Colars de Douai and Jacques de Nivelles (goldsmiths), Jacques d’Anchin (cleric, designer), reliquary of St Gertrude, 1272–98, silver, 180 × 80 × 54 cm, Collegiate Church of St Gertrude, Nivelles, Belgium (no longer extant).

The Role of the Reliquary

So, to repeat and amplify: precisely as a precious medieval reliquary is materiality glorified, sparkling silver, beautiful with precious metal and gems, it simultaneously erases its own existence, standing only as a setting or context for the staging of the relic (frontispiece; illus. 1). Without the script supplied by labels and inscriptions, without the set design and lighting of brilliant substances, without the supporting cast of other relics and sacred things in a surrounding treasury and the ritual actions of the devout, the relic remains mute – a silent and speechless thing, not even an object responding to a subject in dialogue. The reliquary makes the relic. In so doing, it has a wide, important and diverse set of duties.

When performing optimally, indeed, the reliquary is almost miraculous in allowing the relic to initiate response:

[It] allows a glimpse through immeasurable time and space . . . the witnessing of that place where past and future, flesh and spirit, are one. Interiors within interiors within interiors fracture any simple interior/exterior opposition . . . in a relation in which the smaller object, the relic . . . elides, and encompasses its multiple containers . . . in relations that not only hold and protect, hide and reveal, but displace one substance with another . . . the relics are never housed and never contained; instead they are always excessive, overflowing, spilling out.⁵

With this exuberant, indeed spilling out of words to match miraculous effects, Helen Hills tries to capture the aesthetic and spiritual impact of the Baroque chapel of San Gennaro in Naples (see illus. 69, and Chapter Four). She also precisely and eloquently evokes a series of the tasks that any reliquary must perform. Let us examine how these tasks arise and how one ineluctably leads to the next.

First, the reliquary encloses. By doing so, it makes a first move of establishing the place of the sacred in space. As a frame, such enclosure might be as subtle as the Jewish ritual eruv (or the spaces similarly defined through delimiting string by Fred Sandback on display at Dia:Beacon), or it might be as assertive and impenetrable as a strong locked box. In any case, the frame not only puts forward the value of the interior space, the contents, but also simultanously puts the relic into a larger context. Through contrast with its enclosure, the relic is set into an expanded environment, perhaps a series of successively defined spaces, perhaps even incommensurable space.

The ‘space’ of the relic is redefined as numinous, perhaps the space of salvation, thus situating the relic’s importance in a larger and much more complex field than would be implied by its, usually, fragmentary nature. The reliquary, while framing the relic and thus creating an interior, also joins together the relic and reliquary, simultaneously destroying any clear sense of interior and exterior and fusing the contained and the containing.

One of the essential qualities of the relic, however, is its power to trespass boundaries and containment (it is intrinsically linked to the unbounded heavens). This ability of the relic to ‘escape’ its confines through its power creates a paradox, and one common reaction to this quality of the relic as ‘escape artist’ is a multiple-containment strategy – a sort of funhouse sequence of iterations of enclosure, a veritable, physical mise en abyme of containment. Nevertheless, despite the multiplication of frames that attempts to fix the relic in place – in examples from early Christian churches (see illus. 24) to Buddhist temples (see illus. 21, 22) to Neapolitan Baroque chapels – the final result demonstrates that the power of the relic is never housed, never contained and always excessive. The relic works, as many have noted, through a sort of contagion that cannot be quarantined by physical confines, but which wonderfully – that is, miraculously – spreads its divine qualities through touch, through sight and even through air.

The reliquary seeks to control such contagion by initiating a teasing game of hide-and-seek. Many reliquaries do not allow visual access to their relics and devotees were rarely allowed to touch. Some manage an exchange in which the power of the relic is transferred to another substance or even from brute material to the descriptive and narrative power of the image. As has been argued in regard to African sacral remains (see illus. 96), if the secret is to be effective, it has to be known that there is a secret, and the constitution of the secret is far more important than the secret itself. Its production, but also its obscurity, allows levels of access, as well as hierarchies of competency in interpretation that regulate the power of the sacred.⁶

Different scenarios abound, and in some sense this book – it will be more or less chronological – will be about the history of reliquaries and how possibilities play out. Nevertheless, it will not, and cannot, be a simple story that traces an arc of development. Above all, reliquary-making is not a teleological development, as some have argued, that progresses from the hidden to the visible relic. Even though a trajectory from the earliest medieval objects to modern Plexiglas containers can be described, it must be admitted that clear sight is almost never the goal.

A more accurate metaphor for relic presentation might, indeed, be the striptease. Giorgio Agamben insists that it is the process of disrobing that is the point of that exercise:

Strip-tease, that is to say, the impossibility of nakedness, is . . . the paradigm for our relationship with nudity. As an event that never reaches its completed form, as a form that does not allow itself to be entirely seized as it occurs, nudity is, literally, infinite: it never stops occurring.⁷

This fleeting notion of unending process captures something of the operation of relics in their function of allowing access to the divine. Unending process also suggests the role of reliquaries vis-à-vis relic secrets. Reliquaries both reveal but also always hide the nature, the secrets, the power of what they contain.

So in some sense, the reliquary is better defined as a space containing the ineffable; a never defined but defining container, a shapeless but also shapely frame; a comely deformity, a deformed comeliness (pace Bernard of Clairvaux). If the reliquary is the intersection of the abject and the beautiful, the precious and the valueless, these values also continually change place – because, as so many Fathers of the Church inform us, the dust contained within the reliquary is more valuable than any gem.

To take the comparison of sexual and divine desire just a bit further,⁸ we might compare the ‘history’ of relic-making and the manufacture of reliquaries to the history of erotica. As above, the reliquary finds its purpose in stimulating attention and capturing desire. It often does so with the most current and coveted of artistic innovations. Just as pornography has been said to drive technical innovation – financing advances in the wake of demand – reliquaries can be said to have generated and supported new artistic techniques and materials: enamel, such a beautiful technique with which to depict blood, became popular in the age of blood relics (here used for Christ’s cloak, illus. 2); new sources of very clear rock crystal were discovered in Africa when the French court’s urge to display specific relics became a primary motivation (see illus. 43); reverse painted gold glass becomes ubiquitous when Italian Renaissance artists inserted tiny relics behind glass into icon-like presentations, a technique especially recommended for reliquaries by the artist Cennino Cennini;⁹ sheets of plate glass and mirrors of unprecedented size were manufactured when churches wanted to exhibit whole bodies on or under altars (illus. 3); and finally, contrary to the usual glitter and brightness of reliquaries, the use of ebony became all the rage as it emerged as one of the most precious of imported commodities from new colonial outposts (see illus. 90). One might even compare all this to another infamous and more properly modern process that manufactures desire – setting a product in place through advertising. (That is surely a topic that could be explored at length!)

2 Unknown court goldsmith, Paris, Goldenes Rössl (detail), made for Isabeau de Bavière as a gift for Charles IV, 1404. Gold, ronde-bosse enamel, pearls, sapphires and rubies, h. 62 cm, Wallfahrtsmuseums, Altötting, Bavaria, Germany (see illus. 39).

3 Adalbert Eder and others, remains of St Maximus, 1734–66, bones, glass, silver, gems, paper and other materials, Waldsassen Basilica, Bavaria, Germany.

Clearly there is a richness of invention here that is inexhaustible. Within the limited pages of this book we will sketch only a quick picture: an overview of the continually changing appearance of reliquaries, but also an appreciation of the wondrous creativity of the artists involved, and their ability to produce startling revelations of these powerful substances. In the following pages, although our primary focus will be on Christian relics, objects and rituals from other traditions and venues – Buddhism, Islam, tribal Africa and contemporary art – will serve to expand our frame of reference.

1

Relics and Reliquaries: Matter, Meaning, Multiplication

WE BEGIN THIS CHAPTER with a consideration of the seemingly unpromising materials of which relics are made, proceed to a discussion of the form and function of reliquaries and conclude with an investigation into the ur-reliquary of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the Ark of the Covenant. Along the way we will discuss the question of how relics multiply, and highlight one of their foremost attributes – their reputed persistence. Above all we will be concerned with an exploration of the possibilities of sacred matter.

But first we must pause to further explore the meaning of ‘relic’ – surely the core concept at the heart of our endeavour, but also a consistently problematic one. We think we know what the word relic means; most of us think of bodies or bones. This conception is, however, not sufficient to describe the substance of venerated relics in any era (and far from comprehensive when considering secular relic objects). For example, Buddhist relics often claim to be a body part such as a bone, but when examined might reveal themselves to be man-made jade simulacra of such bones. (To complicate matters, certain jewels are also considered to be relics of the Buddha.) Some of the most renowned Islamic relics are a footprint or a sandal. The earliest Christian relics were often cloth, pebbles or even dust (see illus. 4). Evidence from treasuries as well as from comments in early texts confirm this variety of relic material, and two of the most prominent commentators on relics of the Christian Middle Ages, Paulinus of Nola (c. 420) and Thiofridus of Echternach (c. 1100), consistently refer to relics as dust.¹

All relics, it should be noted, share a quality in that they are indexical – that is, in Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic definition, they are representative of a sacred person or place in terms of being a product of (as blood indicates a body), adjacent to (as touching or having touched) or actually being a portion of (a fragment or splinter) the holy thing.² In these associations, as index, the relic is testimony or ‘indicative’ because it shares an authentic physical relationship with the holy thing.

The Material Sacred

We might, then, begin our query into relic materials, substances and things by asking, why dust? What is it? The answer to the latter question might seem obvious – dust is fine powder or earth, very similar in origin and as outcome to ashes (a common relic material – Buddha was cremated and early Christian martyrs were often burned to death). If we, however, examine the meaning of the word ‘dust’, we find it operates through a process of exclusion rather than through positive identity. Dust is a secondary product of dirt. Dust is what we unhappily discover in corners. Dust is the opposite of the valuable, whole and active; it is the extraneous, the inert, the unwanted, the other. How does dust become the powerful and valuable relic? Why disparage precious objects with such a demeaning term? The answer is both simple and complex.

‘Dirt constitutes a border between being and not-being’ and as ‘the material dissolution of matter that becomes the dust of mortification and physical decay . . . [it] is cast aside through purification rituals, in order that the body might live.’³ As the very essence of the non-living, the no-longer-living or the yet-to-live, dust as a category features large in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, especially the biblical Old Testament, which contains 102 occurrences in the King James translation, including the oft-cited, ‘And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground’ (Genesis 2:7); ‘For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return’ (3:19); and ‘[I] am but dust and ashes’ (18:27). The body is disparaged as dust, humiliated as dust and will return to this most base state at death. However, dust is also generative: God used dust to make man, and further: ‘And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed’ (Genesis 28:14). Finally, dust has paradoxical potential: ‘Shall the dust praise thee? shall it declare thy truth?’ (Psalm 30:9).

Dust as relic in the Christian era finds its place above all as a base material that is collected and honoured and then disseminated. The immolated remains of St Polycarp were gathered by his followers and declared more precious than gems. In this first identifiable act of Christian relic-ing, the faithful recognized ashes as valuable and equivalent in meaning to a holy human being, despite their unpromising form.

Intrinsic to this act of collection and identification (or transformation) of dust into relic is the corollary act of framing. As already mentioned in the introduction, reliquaries offer a relic more than mere spatial delimitation and enframement. A reliquary’s enshrinement constitutes a temporal act, and implicates an array of practices such as ritual, storytelling and collecting. A reliquary’s nature is above all intrinsically paradoxical; its function is emphatically contrary to its core message that no act of relicing ever took place. Through a reliquary’s construction and its display of precious materials, it asserts that the relic is by nature valuable, eternal and has existed from a designated and pregnant historical moment worthy of remembrance – the death of a saint, the Crucifixion of Christ, the moment of a touch – and will be preserved forever without change. The reliquary therefore constitutes as its very mission the support of memory (which also, without doubt, implies a value that precedes its existence). In that it insists on truth and authenticity, it cannot allow making or time, least of all history. But here again, contrary to sense, the relic does not exist without the reliquary in that the presentation serves to fix the relic’s authenticity and meaning and prove its persistence.

Perhaps even more importantly, as part and parcel of these assertions of importance and permanence, the reliquary has the essential job of teaching the devotee the significance of the relic. Defining the means of approach, it constructs an environment and instructs the viewer in terms of use and decorum. Finally, in a last and once again paradoxical move, it deflects attention from itself, promising truth and spiritual interiority at its secret and ineffable centre. It must therefore be emphasized that enframement does not stage the relic subsequent to its importance, but is coterminous with its moment of recognition. Of fundamental and ontological importance,⁴ the reliquary and its ritual or story define the relic as valuable and worthy of preservation and honour, and occur simultaneously with its identification. Acts of selection and enframement make the relic rather than the reverse, especially in the case of dust in its quality as amorphous and undefined or transitional. And then they do their best to disappear.

The nature of the relic-reliquary relationship did not go unremarked in the Christian Middle Ages. Just about 1100, in his Flores epytaphii sanctorum (the only medieval treatise dedicated solely to relics and reliquaries), Thiofrid, Abbot of Echternach, insists that relic and reliquary are truly a single unit and that without the compensatory beauty of the reliquary, a relic could be repulsive (and thus ineffective).⁵ He further argues that, although by necessity of earthen materials, reliquaries of sufficient beauty to honour a saint should be made of the finest materials, aureus atque gemmis (gold and gems).⁶ Elaborating on the comment on value made in the life of Polycarp, Thiofrid insists that repulsive and intrinsically valuable contents must be joined to and enclosed by beautiful but earthen and intrinsically valueless stuff, in a symbiotic union.

By calling attention to the earthen origin of even the most seemingly valuable materials, Thiofrid intends to deepen our understanding of reliquaries, their worth and their link to their contents through a reference to 2 Corinthians 4:7: ‘But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.’ This text seems to discuss terracotta, but metaphorically refers to the human body and its nature as a container for the divine, and of course also thus implicates Christ’s human body. Furthermore, although emphasizing the material nature of both relics and reliquaries, Thiofrid, in something like sleight of hand, reveals the reliquary to be an index of the divine, setting the stage for a clear value and meaning for reliquaries themselves in their place in the created universe – made of materials derived from God’s earth. Thus, we insistently circle back to matter, to the material and questions of its intrinsic meaning.

Through its participation in what we might call a ‘reliquary strategy’, dust is revelatory of the paradoxical nature of sacred substances and their need for reliquaries. A similarly unexpected relic material that, unlike dust, actually at times resists ‘gathering’, circumscribing and enclosure, reveals instead how relics and reliquaries function as indices of ‘sacred space’.

What material could be more indicative of God’s earth than stone? Although some reliquaries are fashioned of stone, especially those in the form of tombs, it is striking that a common form of early relic was stone itself: the pebble, or, in other words, small mineral fragments. Although the diminutive pebble is seemingly insignificant and worthless, its outsize value lies in its indexical reference to the earth – to rocks of larger size and even to immovable bedrock (which, as we shall see, sometimes also might move).⁷

Stone relics may present a more impenetrable and troubling aspect than dust, and are ultimately and particularly resistant to assigned meaning. Nevertheless, as one of the most essential of materials, stone is instrumental in turning us towards spatial concerns: ‘When space is not overseen by the geometer, it is liable to take on the physical qualities and properties of the earth.’⁸ In speaking of the invisibility of space and its tendency to delude the viewer/inhabitant into believing it is transparent, natural and pre-existent, the famed theoretician of space Henri Lefebvre counters such an intuition with the corollary perception of space as confrontational in the form of the earth. Stones can be presented in reliquaries, or rock-as-relic may appear in more spatially complex configurations, including displays in the open air, but in any case, the potential for the dense materiality of stone to be perceived as a condensation of the significance and essence of place is near universal to human culture.

As with dust, stone is mentioned frequently in the Bible, from Jacob’s pillow to pillars and altars or, metaphorically, in Deuteronomy 32:4, which states, ‘He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgement: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.’ Rocks are an unmovable foundation (or person – Peter), have clefts and caves at their depths, or represent the ultimate heights. They have blood spilled upon them and give up water and oil in both the Old and New Testament: ‘And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ’ (1 Corinthians 10:4). They are precious stones, foundation stones, cornerstones and bedrock:⁹

As you come to him, the living Stone – rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him – you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2:4–5)

‘In many countries stone is the symbol of indestructibility, invulnerability, stability, light, and immortality.’¹⁰ The German word Eckstein is both cornerstone and diamond; such stones can be pillars that are grounded but also rise to the heavens, objects of immeasurable value – the cornerstone of the Gospels might even be the apex of a pyramid rather than a stone located at the foundation.

Perhaps it is, therefore, not surprising that rocks and stones are so often treated as relics or numinous matter. The mysterious, perhaps meteoric black rock of the Ka’aba in Mecca is a prominent example. Stones and pebbles are used in burial ritual by Jews, in pilgrimage by Muslims and in burial and shrine cairns by Native Americans, which have also served syncretistically for North American Christians when they are topped with crosses. In the Buddhist tradition in China, mountainous rock formations are marked (enshrined) with monumental inscriptions.

4 Pilgrim’s box from the Sancta Sanctorum, Rome, 6th century, Palestine(?), painted wood, stones, wood fragments and plaster, 24 × 18.4 × 3 cm, lid 1 cm thick, Museo Sacro, Vatican.

Christian Holy Land relics are often stones that represent or point to their locus of origin. The famous sixth-century wooden box from the Sancta Sanctorum, now in the Vatican, preserves a selection of pebbles, labelled and inserted into a narrative dynamic through the use of a set of loca sancta, or Holy Land images of the life of Christ, on the inner lid (illus. 4). The pilgrim could relive his or her itinerary by recalling the sites, perhaps touching the stones that had been collected while doing so. Some sacred sites – Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome, the Italian city of Sansepolcro, the Campo Santo in Pisa, or lesser-known shrines such as Kutná Hora near Prague (see illus. 76) – gained their renown via quantities of earth imported to ‘recreate’ the Holy Land and, in the latter two cases, create hallowed places for burial.¹¹ Other stones, stained with blood – an example in Halberstadt Cathedral purportedly used to kill the martyr Stephen, or another once displayed by Italian Fascists – could testify to the violence of martyrdom.¹²

But one extraordinary form of stony relic does not descend from outer space, is not thrown or used in building, is not marked with other substances and is not carried away – but instead remains firmly attached to the earth. In a demonstration of the sacred established through the miraculous change in the nature of stone, footprint relics testify to past presence through the evidence of impression. On the Mount of Olives, in the Chapel of the Ascension, the stone at the centre of the martyrium-like building is said to show the marks of Christ’s feet; the footprint(s) speak simultaneously to both divine presence and to absence (illus. 5), that is, both to Christ’s historical place on earth and his soteriological action of Ascension. As with the cornerstone, this relic connects heaven and earth, but in this case the connection is made as much through divine action as through material substance.

Similarly, at the centre of the fifth-century octagonal Church of the Kathisma (Gr. seat or place of rest), located on the road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, there is again an impression in the stone. It was said to be the stone upon which the pregnant Mary rested on her journey to Bethlehem, and so one sees evidence of her presence, her weight (gravitas), her supernatural burden in carrying the child in her womb. A spring is reported to have emerged from the rock and there is a story of a miracle in which the stone resisted an attempt to cut it to make an altar to be sent to Constantinople (illus. 6).¹³

5 Crusader Chapel of the Ascension, detail showing footprint of Christ, 12th century building with earlier foundations and later additions, Mount of Olives, Jerusalem.

Examples of rocks that have been impressed are common in many religions: the bedrock at the centre of the Dome of the Rock shows the footprints of Muhammad as he departed for the Night Journey; Buddha’s footprints document his earthly presence and are revered as cult objects whether natural, as at Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka, or man-made copies (illus. 7), and various footprints survive of the devil, angels and saints, as well as the imprint of Patrick’s head on a stone pillow.¹⁴ Stone in these instances has changed its nature, at some point becoming fluid or soft in order to receive an impress. As if two spatial regimes – the heavenly and the earthly – intersected, one perceives that the divine is able to change the mundane in an instant that is captured for ever. The mark is both eternal and the evidence of a moment of great import.

6 Church of the Kathisma, 5th century (part-excavated 1992), Hebron Road, south of Jerusalem.

7 Buddhapada or Footprints of the Buddha, 2nd century, Gandhara (Peshwar), Kushan period (c. late 1st–early 4th century CE), grey schist, 127 × 80.1 cm, 136.1 kg, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.

In the Buddhist examples, such traces are a boon to the devout, allowing the devotee in humility to place his or her head at or under the feet of the revered Buddha. The presence of the dharmachakra wheel in the centre of manufactured footprints along with other religious symbols and markings shows the cultural/cultual creation of such a relic. Other footprints in the ancient world were unabashedly manufactured as instruments to be used in rituals associated with endeavours as diverse as travel and coronation, by cultures ranging from the Celts to the Romans. Some were intended to allow social actors to match their bodies against the declivities, that is, insert their own feet in the footprints. (And, one assumes, put their own heads on the pillow.)

Significantly, the Church of the Ascension in Jerusalem, as above, with its footprint of Christ, was originally open to the sky, supplied with a roof only once it was rebuilt by the Crusaders (illus. 8). The potential connection, originally framed by a set of circular architectural surrounds, was a direct one between heaven and earth. The pilgrim’s interaction with the footprints is not one of mediation through a formal reliquary, but the marks, insofar as one can see them, are framed. Today, in addition to a square stone frame, a nearby sandbox of sorts can be used to interact with the miraculous stone – one can fix candles in the sandy surface and one can fill the declivity of the footstep with sand and then carry it away as a holy souvenir (see illus. 5). (One might compare these possibilities to the use of rose water to fill the footprint of Muhammad at Mecca.¹⁵) At one time there was an altar stone above the spot and mass was said.¹⁶ Although the rock is hard and holy, it still interacts with the pilgrim through ritual and prayer. The Crusaders in particular, in accepting the cross of their vow, swore, ‘We will worship in the place where his feet stood’ (Psalm 131.7), pledging to make the journey to the holy space.¹⁷

8 Crusader Chapel of the Ascension, 12th-century building with earlier foundations and later additions, Mount of Olives, Jerusalem.

Halfway around the Christian world, another set of footprints has been carefully preserved as a relic, and the Risen Christ by Michelangelo in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome (illus. 9) may be an artistic rejoinder to the cult of those prints. The statue represents the figure of Christ carrying the Passion instruments, as he appeared to Peter just as the Apostle, fearful of Nero’s persecutions of Christians, was leaving Rome. When Peter queried ‘Quo Vadis?’, ‘Where are you going?’, Christ replied that he was coming to Rome to be martyred again. Peter understood the answer to be a rebuke, did not flee, and in consequence Christ ascended once again, leaving footprints, said to be those now preserved in the Quo Vadis church.

The miracle both locates the miraculous presence of Christ in Rome and clarifies that Apostolic martyrdom repeats that of Christ. The sculpture by Michelangelo, responding to these ideas, emerges from deep shadow towards the viewer. The leading foot pushes down on the earthen support as if in the act of making the impression – the footprint that becomes the relic. This marble foot, however, also concretizes Christ’s presence in the space of Rome and in a sense is offered to pilgrims. As can be seen in old photographs, it had to be covered with a metal cap to protect it from kisses. Observers have long remarked on the sculpture’s reference to ‘classical’ nudes as an assertion of its antiquity, and to the ‘true portrait’ of Christ in its distinctive profile – two more elements that respond to issues of presence and authenticity, making the sculpture itself relic-like.¹⁸

With this example, we have moved from one extreme of our story to another, from the prehistoric and early Christian veneration of rock shrines to a Renaissance attempt to create an image of the body implied by a print in a rock, an image of a living, breathing figure that animates not the stone but the story. As a natural feature of the landscape, hard, resistant stone is an element that is indistinguishable from its surroundings, without social marks, boundaries or ceremonies that delineate it. Once cult operations are in place, earth/rock/stone is used to define space, is literally a landmark, and ultimately emerges as a relic or sacred space insofar as it miraculously and effectively expresses its own nature.

9 Michelangelo, Risen Christ, 1519–21, marble, h. 205 cm, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome.

Although it may or may not be a universal human urge, clearly the need to use physical materials that have a deep and significant potential to carry meaning is shared by many cultures. Relics are only one expression of this story, but a compelling one. We have begun with dust and rock, both unpromising but important materials that find their place in the processes of relic-ing. Dust is that which is unwanted and becomes valuable through enclosure; rock is stubbornly intractable, a mute but powerful witness to place. If a generalization can be made about relics, it is that they represent the paradoxical and the persistent. The paradoxical turns meaning on its head: the useless is valuable, the fixed is fluid, or, also, vice versa.

Persistence, above all, proves that the paradox is not an evanescent phenomenon. If the idea that matter is changeable by its very nature was an unshakeable principle in medieval thought, then relics established their miraculous nature and their value through their ability to endure. Hosts that do not crumble and that hold the marks of visionary blood are compelling testimony to the meaning of the Eucharist.¹⁹ Ideas of permanence, however, can be dramatically demonstrated in other sorts of relics and reliquaries. Persistence through time can be paradoxically captured in the preservation of flesh – a material that is perhaps the ultimate symbol of the potential for decay. Alternatively, Tibetan stones that materalize as apparitions, from thin air, carry the same message.

In Tibetan Buddhism, a persecuted religion that first emerged in the seventh and eighth centuries and has found a resurgence in the twentieth and twenty-first, a treasure tradition of relics that are revealed to worthy and reincarnated disciples helps to bind religious ideas across time. Objects from the earlier era, tertons, said to have been strategically left behind or actually buried, emerge in the present era to teach principles of Buddhism. They take the form of texts, statues of the Buddha and ritual implements.²⁰ The most remarkable aspect of this tradition is that some of the reliquaries that contain these supposedly ancient objects are not containers at all. They are simple spherical or ovoid stones of great natural beauty that, at times, drop from the sky (still warm like meteorites), or emerge from walls into the hands of the designated disciples (illus. 10). How they offer up their contents has never been revealed, but their status as mystical objects that are also timeless, natural and valuable seems incontrovertible. Thus, they establish a frame of value against which the status and value of the emergent relics is asserted. They also reverse the conventional order of relics and reliquaries – the relics are man-made objects of cult, the reliquaries natural, attesting to the persistence of relics against all odds, as well as the value of reliquaries.

In striking contrast, the most telling instance of persistence of relics in Christianity does not of course consist of materials of ‘natural persistence’ but instead is realized in the bodies of the saints themselves, miraculously incorrupt. In the early Middle Ages, as in the example of St Cuthbert of Northumbria, such incorruption was thought to be evidence of virginity. On the occasion of two different exhumations at intervals of four hundred years, it was remarked that the saint’s joints were still flexible, in the first instance to the pleasure of church officials, in the second instance to the dismay of the commissioners of Henry VIII.²¹

Such flexibility, along with natural colour and freshness, are the gold standard of incorruption versus artificial mummification (as in the De cadaverum incorruptione of Benedict XIV, 1743), although other things are sure signs as well, such as the presence of the heavenly odour of sanctity as opposed to the smell of decomposition, emissions of oil or blood, or the presence of glowing rays of light. The Church is ill-disposed today to take such incorruption as miraculous but, historically, it was often a deciding factor in declaring a holy person a saint.

Even more convincing than simple incorruption, however, are stories that tell of incorruption against any logic of situation or matter. Francis Xavier remained incorrupt even though he was packed in lime that was intended to aid in the decomposition of his flesh. In life, Rita of Cascia was miraculously marked with a thorn fallen from a crucifix, receiving a wound that smelled rotten during her life. Yet in death, her body remained wondrously sweet and incorrupt. When Zita of Lucca, a virgin, was exhumed in 1580, three centuries after her burial, and found incorrupt, her body was displayed in the Basilica of San Frediano (illus. 11). In a more metaphorical example, Paulinus of Nola tells of an occasion at the tomb of Felix, when ‘a heap of dust . . . burst out from below [an altar with relic repository]’.²² This miracle of lively dust was an occasion for joy, for as Paulinus clarifies, ‘those bones of the saint’s body are not choked with the dust of death, but endowed with the hidden seed of eternal life’.²³ In post-medieval European examples, incorruptible bodies are most often enclosed in glass coffins in order to clearly display the miracle; in these instances the reliquary really does seem to disappear.

10 Tibetan tertön ‘reliquary’, 20th century, rock crystal.

11 Incorrupt body of St Zita, mixed media, Basilica of San Frediano, Lucca, Italy.

Reliquaries and Viewers, Rhetoric and Reception

In the absence of a relic of clearly miraculous material – malleable rock, lively dust, incorruptible flesh – reliquaries of precious materials are necessary in order to represent the power of a saint. An impressive reliquary or shrine was assembled or reassembled using the best available resources: perhaps donated materials and spolia (reused artworks or gems); certainly prayers and artisanal skill. Although we will encounter wood, ceramic, ivory and glass, the preferred materials for the making of reliquaries have always been silver, gold and as many precious gems as possible (illus. 12). Indeed the reliquary is by preference ‘over the top’ and excessive. In its sumptuous materials, its evocation of stories, its shining beauty and its indexical power, the reliquary courts an awestruck response from its viewers – making a rhetorical argument, materially asserted, for the significance and power of the relic. As the fourth-century bishop of Nola, Paulinus, wrote of his shrine to St Felix:

12 Nicholas of Verdun, Shrine of the Three Kings (detail; see frontispiece), completed 1225, gold, silver, enamel, gems, antique cameos and gems, wooden core, 110 × 153 × 220 cm, Cologne Cathedral, Germany.

A new look gleams on the outside of the walls while the antiquity is hidden, enclosed within . . . [The buildings of the shrine] are simultaneously old and new . . . as they depict the shape of future and present blessings . . . So it will be on the day when men are permitted to rise again with life renewed. Amongst those who rise, precedence will be given to the group whose flesh is covered with a shining garment.²⁴

A fittingly constructed reliquary and/or shrine produces a ‘shining garment’ worthy of the saint, and carries blessings from the past through the present to the future in the hope of resurrection – a reification of the intercessory promise of the saint, knitting time together in material.

Reliquaries evidence aspirations of very complex goals in their work of presenting relics. Although some believers assert that incorrupt bodies allow the faithful ‘to look upon the very faces’ of the saints,²⁵ normally the possibility of direct vision of a relic is deferred or partial. The relic fragment, or bare bones, are housed in a reliquary in order to re-present them to the faithful. In their enclosure in a reliquary, moreover, the relic is often kept ‘secret’ and hidden. Even if devotees wish to ‘see’, they are not likely to see much or see clearly. Instead, the reliquary presents something that seems like an alternative ‘body’ or presence of the saint.

Often a form that faces us, confronts us or addresses us, the reliquary must act in a way that is direct and produces a visceral response. Whether facilitated by materials or form, however, such communication is neither simple nor natural. Although ‘representing’ bodies, reliquaries do not necessarily take the shape of a body – certainly, at least, not a whole body. Despite appearances and assertions to the contrary, medieval reliquaries that do take the shape of body parts are not shaped like human heads and appendages in order to make them familiar to their viewers: they are meant to be exceedingly strange and correspondingly powerful. To paraphrase an anthropological notion of mimicry, ‘the spirit of the [relic/reliquary] is not its outer form.’ The strikingly mimetic yet fragmentary quality of the reliquary instead serves ‘[to lift us] out of ourselves’, leaping the gap between the material world and thought through ‘sensuous fidelity’.²⁶ Nor is it safe to assume that body-part-shaped reliquaries always enclose a corresponding body-part relic – demonstrably they often do not. In the light of these incongruities, the assertion that reliquaries are straightforward representations of their contents falls apart, leaving instead objects that are complexly metaphorical and relational.

For example, one of the most popular types of body-part reliquaries – arm reliquaries – plays upon a biblical metaphor and reveals the saint as the active limb of the ‘body of the Church’ (through his or her relics). They allow the clergy to point and to extend their reach, literally and figuratively, perhaps in the form of miracles of healing, or in the form of theatrical liturgies where such a prop could be used to bless the crowd. Two common gestures appear frequently, an open-hand gesture and a blessing gesture, as here in twelfth-century arm reliquaries of Bernward and Vincentius in the Hildesheim Treasury (illus. 13).

Each of these gestures supplies a variety of possibilities for the dramatic use of the arm. One medieval text tells of a bishop using such an object to stroke a sick man, ‘chasing’ away the illness with a saintly touch. The fingers of the reliquaries often show damage and wear, as do, to a lesser degree, the shaft of the arms. Certainly put to use, carried and moved about, the arms were ornamented in fictive vestments and the ‘fall’ of these garments show that the arm was equally plausible in the vertical or horizontal position. Indeed, the realism of many of these life-size reliquaries has startled modern viewers, but such realism only made them more effective in their tasks.

Head reliquaries make other claims and work other strategies. Most significantly, they allow us to see a face (see illus. 28, 29). Indeed, many reliquaries are said to speak but they do not do so in the conventional manner; rather, they address their audiences with inscriptions and confrontational imagery. At times the imagery solicits comparison, whether bodily or in terms of action and narrative, and often inscriptions speak in the first person (as if the reliquary itself had a voice). Thus, whether or not a face or portrait is included, the reliquary always addresses its audience.

Ultimately, as above, reliquaries are made to stimulate reaction. It is our surprise, astonishment or even our stunned silence that marks the effectiveness of the reliquary’s beauty, lavish material, visual references and story (iconography), perceived antiquity, or the way the reliquary is presented and used. Above all, as we are engaged in looking, the reliquary is activated and valuable.²⁷

13 Arm reliquaries of Vincentius and Bernward, 12th century, gilded silver, gems, wooden core, h. 56.2 and 54.5 cm, Dommuseum Hildesheim, Germany.

The Ark and the Temple as Sacred Space

In order to delve into the iconography of reliquaries – their meaning as circumscribed by visual tradition – we must first understand the place in Christian tradition of the ur-reliquary and fundamental prototype for all Jewish and Christian sacred containers and shrines: the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle and the Temple.

Over and above a human urge to enclose and protect the precious, God’s directives to build the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle and the Temple can be understood as divine commands to make spaces suitable to contain the holy. The spaces of the Tabernacle and Ark – and thus sacred architectural order, measure and its material realization – are at the heart of relic display. Because such objects are constructed, the space of reliquaries provides a means of viewing and, above all, experiencing the relic and its power.

The Ark was an essential part of both the Tabernacle and the Temple, surely the most important of the implements that God directed to be made:

And they shall make an ark of shittim [that is cedar or acacia] wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof . . . (Exodus 25:10)

Specifying a gold covering, staves and rings to carry the Ark, two cherubim and the insertion of objects of testimony, God concludes with the assertion that he would visit the mercy seat or place of propitiation between the cherubim.

These divine specifications were, of course, central to medieval questions of the legitimacy and production of images, as well as interpretable as instructions concerning notions of the ideal. Indeed, in terms of the former – image legitimacy – the fact that God required figural elements to be manufactured for the Ark legitimized the presence of figures in the most holy spaces of Judaism and Christianity. But above all, I would like to first focus on how the Ark is like a reliquary in its construction and meaning.

14 Gerard Hoet (1648–1733) and others, illustration of Exodus 40:17–19 from the Figures de la Bible (1728).

Like a reliquary, the Ark held relics or, as they are called in the Bible, testimony, including the tablets of the Law (the divine word), a pot of manna (divine sustenance) and the rod of Aaron (a tool of leadership, marked as miraculous by its flowering). Above all, like a reliquary, the Ark was a contingent object, interacting with viewers in a social environment (illus. 14).

The Ark was quintessentially portable, made with rings and staves for carrying and indeed, once it was fixed in place in Solomon’s Temple, it seems to have mysteriously disappeared.²⁸ According to God’s command in Exodus, it was made by divinely appointed artisans (led by Bezalel) of shittim or cypress wood (resistant to decay) and covered with sheet gold. The figural cherubim were made of massive gold and according to Jewish commentary, were capable of movement and response. Associated with light in Jewish tradition, the Ark was used to both lead and save the Jewish people in their wanderings. It circled the walls of Jericho seven times and was instrumental in the walls’ destruction. In public showings, it was covered and not truly visible. Those that treated it carelessly or inappropriately were mortally punished.

The Ark’s home was in the Tabernacle, another structure for which God gave instructions to Moses on Sinai. With the making and remaking of the Tabernacle, a temporary tent-like enclosure constructed of curtains, veils and pillars, we move more closely to architecture, although a structure of an impermanent form. Remarkably, medieval Exegetes took the biblical directives as instruction for spiritual exercise in the full sense of edification as both building and moral improvement, an intersection of the categories of the material and devotional that is well suited to conceptualizing reliquaries.²⁹

There is no doubt that these biblical prototypes stood behind the making of reliquaries (and churches) throughout the Middle Ages. One of the most common Latin designations for a reliquary was arca; commentary on the Ark and the Temple by the Venerable Bede, Pope Gregory the Great (in the Regula pastoralis, c. 590) and many others makes it clear that this term was not used casually. As with Hrabanus Maurus, the Carolingian abbot of the German monastery of Fulda, who discusses an Ark (reliquary) that he commissioned, comparing its form and movements explicitly to those of the Ark of the Covenant,³⁰ medieval patrons of reliquaries felt a deep connection between their efforts and those of the patriarchs and kings of the Old Testament. In creating beautiful artworks for the Church, and beautiful environments for the holy, they believed they were fulfilling God’s commandments as given to Moses.

Crucially, in medieval exegesis, the Ark no longer holds its Old Testament status as a place of sacrifice. The ultimate sacrifice – that of Christ – had already occurred. Instead, the Ark became the space of the Trinity and a reminder of the Passion. As Paul wrote, the veil of the temple is replaced in the New Covenant by a spiritual reality:

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. (Hebrews 9:11–12)

Or as Abbot Suger of the Abbey of Saint-Denis wrote of one of his twelfth-century windows that depicted the Ark: ‘[it is] urging us onward from the material to the immaterial . . . / What Moses veils, the doctrine of Christ unveils . . . / From the ark of the covenant is established the altar of Christ.’³¹ In the later Middle Ages the Ark even became a place of revelation for individual devotions:

And by this [the interior of the Ark] is signified the state of contemplation in which God reveals his glory and reveals his secrets. There no one can enter but the most intimate friends who have arrived at a perfection of very great grace. And they still cannot enter except after great suffering and after many tears.³²

This elision of the Ark as the place of sacrifice with the Ark as embodiment of the promise of the Resurrection could not be more beautifully imaged than in the Marian chapel at Karlštejn Castle (illus. 15), which offers the Ark as a means of encountering and seeing the divine (catching a glimpse of the invisible through the visible). In illustration of Revelation 11:19 in a sequence of Apocalyptic images (at the location of one of the great relic collections of the Middle Ages, see Chapter Three), a compassionate Christ is depicted as emerging from the depths of the unlocked Ark as if from the tomb. Surrounding the floating temple that encloses the golden reliquary-like Ark are howling masks, perhaps signifying the visionary nature of this image or the end of time.³³ Rather than display the wounds and abused body of the Man of Sorrows, Christ is gloriously robed as the Salvator Mundi of the Last Judgement and in his left hand he holds a silver globe upon which is limned a map of the earth. With his right hand, however, held in a blessing gesture, Christ points to his eyes. This gesture alerts us to question what we see, and we are reminded that this vision, granting us privileged access to the interior of the Temple of the Lord, can only properly be viewed with the eyes of the spirit. In some sense, this cautionary gesture warns us that the viewing of any Ark/reliquary must be a spiritual experience.

15 Nicholas Wurmser of Strasbourg(?), Apocalyptic Ark from Revelation 11:19, wall painting on the eastern wall of the Chapel of Our Lady, Karlštejn Castle, Czech Republic, before 1362–3.

The Multiplication of Relics

As we embark on an investigation of reliquaries, we should remember that, despite the rhetorical claims for the purported uniqueness and persistence of relics, and their status as eternal (discussed above), the Tabernacle was not itself a singular or persistent object. More accurately, it was a set of instructions for the making of a space. The parts may have been retained from one making to the next, but the whole could be recreated anew, even recreated in the imagination from instructions. This sense of seriality and reproducibility creates the possibility of dispersal, universality and potential power that is crucially important to both relics and reliquaries.

Many reliquaries or relic-like works are quintessentially reproductions, some as miraculous reiterations, such as the acheiropoeta, or images ‘made without hands’. The most famous is the Veronica (discussed in Chapter Three, see illus. 41), which was said to have been made on Christ’s way to Golgotha, when a sympathetic woman named Veronica (vera icona, true image) offered a cloth to Christ so he could wipe the sweat from his brow. An image of Christ’s face was imprinted on the towel. Reproduction of this miraculous divine image did not diminish its power, as each copy was equally powerful. Similarly, images of the Madonna painted by St Luke could be copied and yet retain their authentic and miraculous qualities, just as Buddha’s footprints could be reproduced and Muhammad’s sandal could be traced.

The last example, the sandal, is a particularly instructive case of reproduction of the holy as the mechanism of copying is reputed to have an authoritative lineage. One of the prophet’s sandals, said to be authentic, was encased and supplied with a keeper, and given by a thirteenth-century Ayyubid ruler to a madrasa (or medrese, an institution of higher learning) in Damascus. There it became the symbol of just rulership as well as an object of pilgrimage and devotion. At a certain moment, the object was copied or traced exactly. This tracing was then available to make other tracings, thereby allowing an intimate interaction with the relic for many viewers. One possible form of interaction, attested in an early text that discussed the original, was to place the sandal over the face, a gesture that humbles the devotee (the dust of the sandal is venerated and the devotee is lower than the low), and emphatically reverses the usual disgust with which shoes are treated in the Muslim world. There is also evidence that the tracings were used in the same way.

But the sandal is not only a relic that represents Muhammad’s body. It also indicates his presence and potential for action. Representations of the sandal are often combined with imagery that concerns pilgrimage, especially to Mecca, so that one reads the sandal representations as footsteps but also footsteps that can travel. Each iteration of the sandal, even if abstract in its rendering (illus. 16), recreated the beneficial aura or baraka of the original (this example may reference a collection of the relics of the Prophet gathered in the Topkapi Palace, as it finds its place in a prayer book).³⁴ The multiplication and dispersal of relics may even demarcate territory, and in some sense track the spread of civilization, thus, in the case of the Topkapi collection, asserting Ottoman authority and rule.³⁵

So, although reliquaries make rhetorical claims to the singularity of the relics they contain, it was important to religions that relics and miraculous images, and even reliquaries, were disseminated and reproduced. The understanding of the power of a relic, and its civilization, culture or religion, was more efficaciously spread if copies and fragments could be disseminated – thus, reproducibility as well as divisibility are essential qualities of relics.

Although in contemporary medieval thought bodies would rise entire at the Resurrection, it should be noted that theologians also specified that parts would reunite, reflecting a network of powerful effects – in the case of relics, sacred effects. Paulinus of Nola compared the dispersal of the relics of St Felix to the scattering of seeds by birds (or even the insemination of the earth): ‘the sacred ashes have been scattered over different areas like life-giving seeds . . . the drops of ashes have begotten rivers of life’.³⁶ As early as the twelfth century, it was argued that relics were multiplied (like the loaves and the fishes) in order to magnify the grace of the Lord. Just as, according to a well-known Buddhist legend, King Ashoka collected and then dispersed 84,000 relics of the Buddha in order to establish the religion across Asia, in each of these cases, unity is is forged rather than lost in dispersal.

16 ‘Sandal of Prophet’ (recto), ‘Supplication to God’ (verso), folio 93 from an Anàm-i Sharif, c. 1790, prayer book in Ottoman Turkish, ink, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, single folio 22.5 × 14 cm.

In sum, relics are ubiquitous, contagious and often virtually invisible. They would seem to be dangerous and difficult to control and at times that will prove to be true. It surely can be said that reliquaries have their job cut out for them.

2

Objects of Infinite Power: Relics in the Early Middle Ages

IF THUS FAR OUR FOCUS has been on materials and relatively universal characteristics of relics, here we turn to issues of history and change. Neither a straightforward narrative with clear beginning, middle and end, nor a chronologically calibrated series of changes of style or type, the history of reliquaries tells a story of change in response to the demands of faith – artistic solutions using ever more provocative forms. As such, reliquaries are most emphatically not art for art’s sake, but objects of spiritual utility.

Indeed, early medieval reliquaries have many roles, suiting the relics that they house and the circumstances of their use. As commodities with ‘social lives’, relics begin with an inherent lack of identity. In fact, their neutrality and flexibility are the very qualities that allow them to be put into service as gifts and exchange, as well as to be shaped by story, culture and context into objects of immeasurable value, even subject to theft. Performing in such an unstable environment of desire, however, means that relics – that is, their reliquaries – are subject to continual remaking, endlessly edited and revised to better inspire devotion and arouse the faithful to prayer. Objects of infinite potential, essential elements in the production of power, and means for the delimitation of the proper attitude towards the sacred – that is, the production of social decorum – relics and their reliquaries played a central role in the history of the early Middle Ages.¹

In the course of our discussion of examples of reliquaries and their primarily pre-millennial historical context, a few trends in relic presentation will be of particular interest. First, the recursive layering or nesting of relics within successive reliquaries will prove to be a transcultural and enduring approach of securing and ‘treasuring’ the relic, with, in fact, perhaps the most striking example coming from medieval China.

Second, reliquary shapes will be seen to promote relics in specific sorts of ways – reliquaries take the shape of sarcophagi, medicine bottles and boxes, purses, churches, books, arms, feet, heads and many other forms, each carrying a particular meaning. Although the German notion of a redende Reliquiar – that is, a reliquary that ‘speaks’ by indicating its contents via its outer form – is an appealing concept, it proves to be an oversimplification. Reliquaries have much more complex things to ‘say’, and although they sometimes seem like isolated objects, they take their place in a complex dialogue or interaction of things.

Hence, relic collecting is a third essential strategy of relic presentation of the early Middle Ages and will figure in the discussion of almost every relic example in this chapter, an important part of the historical circumstances of most relics that continually emerges as a meaningful aspect of relic display. Relics were collected assiduously, they travelled in flocks and were almost what one might call ‘gregarious’. If we were to imagine them speaking, we might have to imagine such speech as very noisy gossip! Collecting is perhaps the first gesture of relic-ing.

From the time of Emperor Constantine and his establishment of Christianity as the legitimate religion of the Roman Empire, Christian leaders both collected and distributed relics. The first material remains and the reliquaries that housed them survive from the fourth century, and it is clear that the Church quickly saw the advantage in taking the lead in legitimating and establishing cults. Bishop Ambrose, in fourth-century Milan, may have been the first ‘impresario’ of the relic cults of his city, moving relics about to great effect, but soon enough Pope Damasus was building up Rome as a veritable capital of martyrs.²

Insofar as relics were used to dedicate every church, every altar and even every portable altar, saints of local significance loomed large throughout Europe, as in Milan and Rome. Such saints became associated with particular churches and territories and, as patrons and protectors, marked the land as sacred. The power of personal intercession by these saints is the origin of the regionalism that distinctively marks the early period of relic cult in Western Europe (in contrast to the more universal cults of the late Middle Ages and after). Nevertheless, we cannot properly tell the story of relics of the early Middle Ages without also discussing the circulation of relics.

Despite intensely local cults, saints also moved out of their localities, ‘overlapping’ with other saints and creating kinships and networks. Although not known for a wealth of bodily relics of saints, Ireland offers a vivid example of how a reliquary can intervene in such issues. The shrine of St Manchán, the founder of the monastery at Lemanaghan, County Offaly, reiterated the form of a ‘grave’, as its inscription notes, but was also portable (illus. 17). The figures of unarmed soldiers affixed to its surface vividly represent a community brought together under a cross. The shrine seems to have served as an expediter of political contracts as well as the means of empowerment of ritual circuits of churchmen. Such spatial mobility allowed the control and definition of territory, and continued the peripatetic traditions first instituted by St Patrick.³

But saintly kinship circles were not created just within the clans of Ireland, nor among the noblemen of France. They also extended across Europe from one side to another and from north to south in an international exchange of relics of remarkable extent.⁴ Notwithstanding the Church’s nominal control of cults, secular rulers following Constantine’s lead collected and disseminated relics and may have been the most effective in using relics as instruments of power. By the time of the Merovingian period, the collecting of relics was called the ‘custom of kings’ (and queens if we consider Radegund’s efforts as discussed below). A first major era of collecting culminates in the efforts of the emperor Charlemagne, who both gave and received relics in unprecedented numbers, in part as diplomatic exchange, building upon the efforts of his predecessors and firmly establishing a model for the manipulation of relics as a central feature of the power of a Christian king – although his accomplishments in this arena are greatly exaggerated by spurious later monastic claims and fanciful romance epics.

17 Shrine of St Manchán, c. 1130, yew wood with bronze and brass metalwork and enamelled fittings, 58 × 33 × 48 cm approx., St Manchán’s Church, County Offaly, Ireland.

The myriad relics that Emperor Charlemagne gave to the abbot Angilbert and the monastery of Saint-Riquier (Centula) are a case in point. Although the monastery, unfortunately, is no longer extant, Saint-Riquier’s reception of those relics is well documented. The relics (probably tiny fragments) came from the east, from the popes, from the Holy Land and from across Europe, and many passed through Charlemagne’s collection. They were subsequently distributed to a series of altars in the church that became the focus of ritual liturgies. These liturgies were performed in complex itineraries that wove their way around the church, in performances that employed the bodies of the monks, servants and townspeople in celebrations and processions on a yearly, weekly, even daily basis. Such rituals were effective in magnifying the saints’ glory, but also in ‘recreating’ a sort of image of the saints in the court of the Heavenly Jerusalem.

Saint-Riquier surely was not unique. Churches did not receive relics by chance; they were acquired with purpose and, as at the Carolingian monastery, with the clear intention of creating sacred spaces on earth. Of course, as above, they also created networks of affiliation: at Saint-Riquier bonds were forged between a patron and a specially favoured courtier, between the emperor’s court and the monastery, and between secular and clerical interests. In the Carolingian period, indeed, another significant network of affiliations developed through the exchange of relics and the encouragement of prayer brotherhoods.

Remarkably, if the desired relics were not readily available, it is clear that there were means by which abbots, bishops or kings could obtain them. Requests could be sent, exchanges take place and in extreme cases, furta sacra, or sacred relic theft, could be and was justified. Such thefts could involve the premeditated acquisition of a patron saint of great potential power, as in the case of St Foi, who was described in historical accounts as amenable to the move (see illus. 19), or they could be the result of a stealthy grab of a handful of powder, as recounted by the irritated Carolingian churchman Einhard, discovering a theft that occurred when his agent was carrying the ‘ashes’ of Marcellinus north from Rome.⁵ Einhard’s story, in fact, represents another very important episode in the redistribution of relics in the early Middle Ages. Relics were traded, especially as a means to supply the north – lacking martyrs – with a distribution from the rich deposits in the catacombs in the south – that is, Rome. Much of such trade was not legitimate, in that the outright sale of relics for profit was never condoned by the Church (although there were many ways to get around such prohibitions).

Indeed, to return to Rome, such depredations of the catacombs were enough of a threat that Pope Paschal I (817–24) effected a mass transfer of bodies from the unprotected catacombs outside the city of Rome into the church of Santa Prassede. His work could be considered a kind of collecting. He commemorated his actions, casting them as a demonstration of Rome’s sanctity and the creation of a communion of saints that was, once more, a reflection of the Heavenly Jerusalem, as represented in the mosaic on the apse of the church, the saints gathered around Christ within the jewelled walls (illus. 18).

As we have already begun to see, it was staging and ritual that demonstrated relics’ personhood or agency, and therefore power. Relics were inserted into ceremonies and practices that treated them as if they actually were the saints they represented (a treatment entirely congruent with relic doctrine). In one legal procedure, relics could be ‘put to the test’, in other words burned, to ascertain whether they were genuine, much in the way of witches who were subject to trial by fire to determine whether they had magical powers or not. It was also common to swear oaths on relics, just as today witnesses are asked to swear on a Bible in a U.S. or British court of law. Of course miracles were also a clear demonstration of a saint’s ability to act in the world, and miracles, especially those of healing, encouraged pilgrimage and visits to the saints.

One sort of saintly social interaction, ‘relic humiliation’, although rare, is a fascinating and radical confirmation of the medieval belief that the saint resided in his or her relics. If a community believed its patron was not responding to their prayers, they had recourse – in effect, they shamed the saint, overturning and reversing the usual veneration. The ritual at Saint-Martin, Tours, is revealing:

18 The Saints Welcomed to the Heavenly Jerusalem, mosaic commissioned by Pope Paschal I, c. 822, Santa Prassede, Rome.

[They] place on the ground . . . all of the reliquaries of the saints and put thorns on top of and all around the tomb of Saint Martin. In the centre of the nave they place a wooden crucifix likewise covered with thorns, and they block with thorns all but one of the church doors.⁶

This behaviour found its power precisely in its ability to shock. It may have worked to coerce lay leaders into modifying their actions towards the monastery, but the ritual was clearly and specifically addressed to the saints themselves; it was not public, and put the saints, in a sense, in ‘solitary’.

Above all, however, it was properly regular liturgical practices that established the liveliness and presence of saints in their relics and their ability to act in this world. In particular, processions put saints into motion; whether on feast days or special occasions, sacred parades asserted the saints’ powers. St Foi of Conques (illus. 19) was particularly formidable in procession:

19 Majesty of St Foi, 2nd–10th centuries and later additions, gilded silver, copper, enamel, rock crystal and precious stones, cameos, wooden core, 85 × 36 × 24 cm, Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy de Conques, France.

. . . clergy and laity . . . move forward with great formality, carrying candles and lamps . . . the holy relics, embellished all around with enamels and gold and studded with a variety of gems, flashing like stars . . . [one hears the sounds of] clashing cymbal, and even horns made of ivory that was donated by noble pilgrims to adorn the monastery . . . such great numbers [of the sick] were healed . . . the divine work never stopped . . .

There were, indeed, so many miracles occasioned by this particular procession that the monks could not even get a chance to sit down to their evening meal. Given that Foi was famous for her practical jokes (which also served as models to the faithful), it is no surprise that during the procession a few miracles occurred that taught lessons: when a monk ridiculed an infirm old woman who blocked the way, sneering that old age was not a curable disease, the woman suddenly leaped to her feet, proving that God had compassion for all and that monks too could be fools. In another example, a pious deaf man customarily carried St Foi’s litter, and when suddenly cured, nearly went mad from the loud noises and commotion of the event! (He did recover, and praised Foi.)

This specific miracle-inducing procession had been initiated by the monks to resolve a dispute over a contested property. St Foi, in the form of her reliquary, was often carried to the site of territory disputes in order to resolve them in favour of her monastery. Her ‘presence’ asserted by her oversize head, the ‘attentive, observant gaze’ of her ‘reflective’ eyes, her hands that reached into the viewer’s space and her elaborately powerful and magnificently gemmed body not only served to welcome supplicants’ prayers but also, apparently, intimidated the monastery’s foes. She was so effective that the monks complained that the townspeople of Conques asked too often for the relics to be processed.⁷

The stories about St Foi clearly show us how the relics of the saints were powerful forces in the politics and daily life of the Middle Ages, amplified via impressive and portable reliquaries that were useful as part of a social performance. A relic’s power might also be amplified through its association with a community of other relics, an aesthetic/material relic-ing manoeuvre we will call nesting and enclosure.

Nesting and Enclosure

What led to the enclosure of relics? First, a common principle in the Middle Ages, one that contrasts strikingly with the presentation of relics in late medieval reliquaries, was the conviction that relics should be protected from carnal sight. There are few crystals or other means of direct access to relics before around 1000; other ideas of visuality and meaning apply in this era.⁸

At the same time that reliquaries were designed around the urge to protect and ‘treasure’ the relic by hiding it, however, their construction testified to the common belief in the impossibility of that action. That is, it was taken as an article of faith that the relic’s power would always escape any enclosure. The manoeuvre of enclosure, given its futility, leads to multiple further acts of enclosure and something we might call the scalability of the relic cult. That is, in addition to the micro-environment of the portable reliquary, the power network of the relic is successively ‘increased’ through various layers: the sharing of space with other relics, and placement in altars, chapels and the larger environment of the church. In that many of the reliquaries we will discuss survive in museums or treasuries, an effort to remember their original place in a larger architectural setting of ritual and space is paramount. Or, as one scholar has argued, a proper consideration of relics is

grounded in an understanding that space is socially produced: the shrines, the sanctuary, the monastery, the . . . church – all, rather than absolute or ‘natural’ spaces, are local and contingent, and their significance is generated through interests and regulated through representation.

Therefore, one has to consider ‘multiple, overlapping sacral geographies’.⁹

Already in the fifth century, Paulinus of Nola effectively argued that the tiniest sliver of a relic gained in power in inversion to its size, and that hiding relics within successive structures magnified their potential power and intensified faith. Enshrinement practices indicate that each successive layer of material, especially if precious or aesthetically value-added, seems to have increased potential, as if the relic were under pressure like a seltzer bottle that has been shaken – as if the very act of containment increased power: ‘in relations that not only hold and protect, hide and reveal, but displace one substance with another . . . the relics are never . . . contained; instead they are always excessive, overflowing, spilling out.’¹⁰

Yet at the same time, relics must be contained. This is a notion that is embedded deeply in Christian story and tradition. Enclosure serves to define relics and to honour them, while their hiddenness allows them to participate in a larger, more expansive discourse of faith. Also, an enclosure, necessarily ‘new’, defines the relic as ‘old’.¹¹ Already in the Jewish tradition, as related in the Old Testament, ‘testimonies’ were honoured, enclosed in the Ark of the Covenant, and subsequently the Ark was enclosed in the Tabernacle.

In the twelfth century, Bernard of Clairvaux wrote:

In its deep and mystical breast, [faith] can grasp what is the length and breadth and height and depth. ‘What eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived’ [I Cor. 2:9] is borne within itself by faith, as if wrapped in a covering and kept under seal . . . Why wish to touch what is ugly? . . . You will touch me with the hand of faith, the finger of desire, the embrace of love; you will touch me with the mind’s eye.¹²

Bernard is weaving together images: of the doubting Thomas’s probing finger, the ‘length and breadth’ of the cross or the world, and the ugly matter that is the stuff of the mundane revelation of the divine, perhaps bone or blood ‘wrapped’ and ‘sealed’. Bernard may be thinking of relics along with many other material and performative revelations of the divine that blossom and turn to desire in the ‘mind’s eye’. If this is materiality and its function is devotion, wrapping and unwrapping, whether literal or figural, is a first step, not so much to hide the relic, but to honour it, to cultivate its power – ultimately, to allow it to release its potential.

A first means of enclosure (and transportation), therefore, may be taken as archetypal. Just as the body of Christ was wrapped in cloth in preparation for burial (that led subsequently to resurrection), relics were carefully wrapped in linen, in silk and in fabric of all types. Furthermore, they were often deposited and carried in little cloth sacks or purses, which were then occasionally preserved in treasuries. What of such initial or preliminary enclosure? Remarkably, even the cloth that might be used in this first and expeditious step (later part of a double wrapping, again like wrapping a body for the grave) was often luxurious and valuable in itself. Much of the figured silk or brocade that survives from early centuries – which can be seen on display today in museums and church treasuries – was removed from reliquaries. The honour of the relic demanded the best available, and the luxury of the material was more important than any subject depicted on the cloth, even if that subject might be pagan (illus. 20 shows a Sassanian mythical creature, the Senmerv, woven in silk). A similar approach applies to the use of other materials used to honour relics, including spolia – that is, reused materials (discussed below).

But cloth, apart from serving as wrapping and purses for relics, could also itself be a relic, a so-called contact relic, gaining its power through having wrapped or touched a holy body. Cloth is central in Islamic practices for its representation of the ‘mediated mingling’ of bodily fluids.¹³ In Christianity, many cloths may carry special power because this sort of relic is one of the few that can be called dominical or Marian; that is, directly related to Christ or Mary.¹⁴

Finally, cloth takes a special meaning and place in medieval culture when considered from the perspective of gender. Weaving is almost always women’s work;¹⁵ according to the Apocryphal Gospels, Mary herself was said to have spun and woven during her time in the Temple. Theologically, Mary is envisioned as responsible for weaving the cloth that is the flesh that ‘contains’ Christ, and of course she is also credited with creating a seamless robe that expanded throughout his life and was gambled for at his death, becoming associated with the Passion. (Interestingly, ‘seamless garment’ is a phrase used by pro-life supporters in the U.S.) Cloth becomes, in effect, the equivalent of skin, and thus again a relic in itself. In all these senses, wrapping in cloth becomes a consequential and primary layer and action that is the first of layer upon layer of precious materials that is the Christian strategy of presentation and display.

20 Patterned silk fragment with large simurgh (sēnmurw) in roundel, Iran or Central Asia, 8th century, 36.5 × 54.3 cm (maximums), Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Perhaps the most fascinating example of multiple nested containers for relic objects of power, however, occurs not in the Christian but in the Buddhist tradition and, as such, deserves extended treatment that may allow us to pursue some of the motivations for such ‘nesting’ of relics, as well as parallels in relic collecting and dissemination for purposes of political power. The underground shrine at Famen Si (Dharma Gate Monastery) in Shaanxi Province in China was first sealed during the Tang dynasty (618–907) and topped by a four-storey stupa. The stupa was expanded in the Ming dynasty (1569–1620) to a thirteen-storey construction, which began to collapse in 1981 (illus 21). The excavation of 1987 discovered, in the foundations of the stupa, four nested sets of relics of Buddha’s ‘finger-bones’, as well as a treasure-trove of inscribed gifts and liturgical objects donated by devotees, attesting to the prasada, or grace, experienced in the physical presence of Buddha’s relics.¹⁶

Although many presentations of Buddhism portray it as a philosophy spread through preaching to an intellectually persuadable populace, more recent scholarship has focused on the potential of Buddhism’s material culture and practice; stories tell of Buddha himself having to promote relic veneration to a sceptical audience. But such material expression of faith has long been ensconced in practice and legend, including a legendary dispute over his body at his death that initiated Buddhist relic veneration with an archetypal division and enshrinement of the ashes by eight contending Indian rulers.¹⁷ The relic of the Buddha’s finger at Famen Si, indeed, is said to have been a gift from the emperor Ashoka (r. 273–32 BCE), an ideal Buddhist ruler of India who is reputed to have dispersed relics and built 84,000 stupas to enshrine and honour them, as well as a central stupa from which to celebrate a great festival of relics. The number 84,000 inextricably allied stupa to relic, 84,000 being both the number of atoms reputed to be in Buddha’s body and an enumeration of his teachings.

In the sixth century CE, Emperor Wen of Sui, as part of his programme to unify China, emulated Ashoka and made empire-wide relic distributions with reported miraculous consequences. Then, in the seventh century, the Famen Si relic itself surfaced and was documented in records that attest to its veneration by the Tang emperors on many occasions over more than two centuries. After travelling 150 miles to the palace from the monastery, the relic was received and venerated lavishly by court and emperor. On one such occasion, this reception received bitter criticism by a renowned Confucian, Han Yu, who complained that such actions were contrary to tradition, promoted superstition and were even indecorous for the emperor. Notwithstanding the clash of cultures that such criticism reveals, the relic may have received special attention because of imperial interest in the monastery and the healing nature of relics. In light of the later history of the relic, what is perhaps most striking about the ceremonies and their consequences is that the relic’s fame was contingent on public display. In sum, although the provenance of Famen Si’s relic is ascribed to a seminal moment in the spread of Buddhism by the Indian ruler Ashoka, its celebration by the Chinese Tang court came at a later historical turning point for Buddhism in China, a moment when China became an important region for Buddhist pilgrimage, a ‘legitimate Buddhist realm’.¹⁸ Relics were important in this change, as they allowed followers to experience spiritual intimacy despite distances in time and space.

Over and above texts such as the Lotus Sutra (c. 100 BCE–200 CE), which advocates the veneration of relics and the building of stupas (in effect monumental architectural reliquaries), practices such as the honouring of remains, and especially the giving of gifts and the ritual circumambulation of stupas, grew essential to religious practice. Of course, in some sense, such community-supported rituals are supportive of the operation of state building and maintenance. In Buddhism the response to relics, the habitus of gift-giving in the presence of relics (that is habitus in Pierre Bourdieu’s sense as a practice grounded in societal norms rather than individual choice), is such that it is perceived as natural and automatic; not a faith-based act or one that requires a prepared mental state, but one that nevertheless wins spiritual reward. Such reactions and rewards are predicated more on the presence (whether visible or not) of the body or relics, than on the possibility of sight. However, it has also been argued that seeing the relic was an iconic, revelatory event, even miraculous, when the sacred substance gave off otherworldly light.

Perhaps all this explains some of the remarkable aspects of the Famen Si finger-bone relic, or relics. Indeed the greatest mystery of the site is which one of the four relics is the ‘authentic’ one, especially given that all four have been called ‘patent fabrications’.

21 Ming dynasty stupa, 1569–1620, at Famen Si, after partial collapse in 1981, Shaanxi province, China.

22 Eight-part reliquary set, Tang dynasty, Famen Si, chamber number 3, gold, silver, jade, gems and sandalwood (not pictured), 9th century, near Xi’an, Shaanxi province, China.

Furthermore, challenging the credibility and beliefs both of priests and devotees, two of the four that are actually composed of bone (the others are jade) are not finger bones, and none of the four is trying to pass as such. They are large and tubular, and one has star positions (the Northern Dipper) etched on the interior. But this may be fitting:

What better expression of the ‘true body’ . . . of the Buddha than a relic whose center is empty and whose compass is the entire universe? . . . constructed and contingent . . . [it is] the dharma body itself.¹⁹

Furthermore, such a form literally indicates Buddha’s wordless teaching while also calling upon metaphor: ‘the wise student looks not at the finger but at where the finger is pointing’ (at the moon – the luminous mind). The relic object becomes ‘self-emptying’, or ironic, and the relics become genuine works of art. Alternatively, the events, containers and relics can be said to indicate the ‘true body’ mentioned in inscriptions at the site.

Notably, these relics-as-art could incite action – not only the giving of gifts but also acts of self-mortification as documented in response to this relic, such as the cutting off of a finger or even an arm.²⁰ One story tells of a devotee who, in the presence of the relic, was not able to see it and chose to burn his finger. The act and offering was effective and allowed him to see the relic perfectly. Perhaps such self-immolation drew upon the spiritual power of the Buddha, perfected the suppliant’s body and ultimately turned that body as well into a ‘holy living relic’.²¹ Surely if any relic could do without a reliquary, it would be such a white jade ‘bone’, an object made for devotion and contemplation that has inspired extreme acts of personal sacrifice. But, as above, the Famen Si relics are not just enclosed, but multiply and even excessively enclosed.

All four reliquary ensembles at Famen Si are multi-part, made of precious materials such as jade, gold and rock crystal, carefully sealed into their respective crypt areas. Are the additional relics diversions, false relics or somehow acts of devotion? Perhaps they survive as a sort of heavenly assembly, for just this sort of celestial gathering is depicted on some of the reliquaries. Perhaps the multiplication of containers speaks to a process of journeying of the body/relic and reflects funerary practice.

The most magnificent reliquary at Famen Si is the ninth-century ensemble surrounding the jade bone with stars. It has eight nested parts and, unlike the others, was made in a single programme of production – in a single go: it is an intentional and complete art object, not a cumulative one (illus. 22). The first container or enclosure is a tiny gold pagoda with a central post to hold and display the relic through the four sides with open ‘doors’; the second container is made from a material like alabaster, set with gems and decorated with lotus motifs; the third container is again gold and is gemmed with lotus motifs; the fourth is gold and decorated with images of Buddha and celestial assemblies; the fifth again is gilded silver with celestial assemblies; the sixth is plain silver; the seventh silver with a large pearl and images of celestial kings and processions; the eighth and last (now in pieces) was sandalwood with precious fittings and images of Paradise and preaching. When the whole was ‘assembled,’ each container was wrapped in silk before being deposited into the next.

This assemblage has meaning both in terms of everyday encounters with relics, and in terms of elaborate rituals of purification and binding performed at altars. Liturgies from Esoteric Buddhism describe an ‘adamantine’ spike (of a hard substance or diamond; compare with the rock crystal) and create an ‘adamantine wall’, after which the ‘impregnable seat of enlightenment’ (or altar) is ready to welcome the deity and his celestial ensemble. Finally, the whole is sealed and further veneration focused on circumambulation of the massive stone-built stupa rather than interaction with smaller relics or reliquaries.

As relics shifted, in Chinese imperial usage, from instruments of healing to the means of support of political regimes, perhaps the stabilization of the relic in place at Famen Si was necessary. The sealing with adamantine, a mythically impervious material, may be a gesture towards securing and fixing the power of the relic. At any rate, the relic was no longer visible or public. Indeed, the sealing was extremely effective, after the many public displays documented from the sixth to the eighth centuries, the ‘palace’ of the ‘True Relic’ crypt remained closed and undisturbed for 1,100 years (only opened as a museum in 1988; expanded in 2009).

Christian reliquaries of the early Christian and early medieval era do not generally have the same sort of surviving historical documentation as Famen Si, and are not quite as spectacular or as definitive in terms of processes of sealing and enclosing. Nevertheless, they take up much the same strategy of successive enclosure and may entail similar stories, rituals and political manoeuvres (also a similar habitus). A cylindrical box of silver discovered in the altar of St Euphemia in Grado (illus. 23) is divided into wedge-shaped compartments that contained a tiny gold box, a few miniature glass vials and a silver capsule. Each of these objects was probably a reliquary itself, the whole very like early Gandharan Buddhist reliquaries made of steatite found in many collections, including the British Museum, which have similar internal divisions.

23 Silver pyx reliquary, found in situ in the altar of St Euphemia in Grado, Italy, c. 5th–6th century.

24 Set of three reliquaries discovered under pavement of church apse, Canavar Tepe, Bulgaria, c. mid-4th/mid-5th century, gold and gems, garnets, 6.1 × 4.7 × 3.8; silver, 9.3 × 5.6 × 11 cm; marble, 22.4 × 15.5 × 15.6 cm, Varna Archaeological Museum, Bulgaria.

Another early Christian example, in Varna Archaeological Museum, again excavated from its undisturbed ‘burial’ in an altar, is a set of three nested pieces, again with the most precious gold and gemmed box in the centre, encased in a silver box, finally enclosed in a marble sarcophagus-shaped exterior, each layer wrapped in silk when nested and buried (illus. 24).

These early reliquaries have been characterized as following a ‘consistent spatial and material grammar of embedding, interring, concealing, and controlling access’, and were only ‘briefly but spectacularly visible’.²² They were often buried in the altar, but also may have lain below it and, in a few documented cases, in an ingenious arrangement: the relics were ‘accessible’ to the faithful but not visible – they were located in proximity to the altar and accessible through a fenestella (little window)-like opening at the exterior of the church, through which devotees could pour oil over them and retrieve the newly sacral oil as a relic-like substance. Similarly, in Rome from as early as at least the sixth century, the grave of St Peter was accessible through a fenestella and one could carry away its blessings via brandea – that is, tiny cloths that were lowered into the tomb to touch the grave.

In contrast, one might recall the example of the basilica and remains of Demetrios of Thessaloniki, in which the location of the relics is entirely uncertain but an icon of the saint is ensconced in a ciborium in the nave and oil is collected in the crypt as a ‘relic’ of the saint. The reliquaries that carry this oil (many from the tenth century) take the approach of nested containers, perhaps in this instance to amplify the prestige of a secondary relic. Small reliquaries of Demetrios were popular in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople and were owned by both aristocrats and emperors, surviving primarily in the form of pendants and small boxes. Like the relics of Famen Si, they were renowned for healing miracles, but unlike the entombment of those relics and other early Christian examples, the Demetrios reliquaries could be transported and opened. Indeed, they seem to have urged the participation of the owner who was called upon to manipulate and move the parts of the reliquary – opening little doors, or in one case, sliding the ‘coffin’ with the ‘relics’ of the saint in and out of its place in the miniature ‘ciborium’.²³

In these cases in which we perhaps better understand how the relics functioned vis-à-vis their audiences, we can see that, like the Buddhist examples, the relics serve first and foremost as a foundation for the religious institution but that, in some fashion, they continue to be accessible and to provide comfort – they even sometimes have the capacity to leave the shrine of the saint to carry the prestige of the institution to other places.

The examples above, in which the relics are, in a sense, embedded in buildings, bring up the question of architectural ‘nesting’ and recall a famous story, not from the early Christian East but now from the early medieval West of Europe. This story brings us back to issues of royal collecting, but in this case by a woman. Radegund, a sixth-century Merovingian queen, who in a gesture of extravagant piety (and rebellion against her husband) retired to a monastery she founded in Poitiers, ‘with great devotion [began] to collect relics of all the saints. At her request, a venerable priest named Magnus brought her relics of Lord Andrew and many others which she placed above the altar.’ Praying before these tokens, including the Apostolic relic of Andrew, she had a vision of a ‘resplendent man’, in whose presence she was told that even relics she had gathered and lost as a young girl were miraculously now once more present in her collection. As confirmed by this heavenly messenger, Radegund’s collecting project was divinely blessed and eternal. Indeed her biographer, the nun Baudonivia, argues that Radegund’s devotion and prayers drew relics to her:

After she had entered into the monastery, she assembled a great multitude of saints through her most faithful prayers . . . as many came freely to her as gifts as came in response to her pleas. In their company, she gave herself up to chanting hymns and psalms continuously in ceaseless meditation. At last news came to her that the holy limbs of Lord Mammas the Martyr rested at Jerusalem.

She manages to acquire these relics of Mammas, extending the ‘geography’ of her collection towards the East. Bishop Gregory of Tours, Radegund’s friend and protector, further testifies to her preoccupation with the Holy Land, writing that she ‘repeatedly sent servants to Jerusalem and throughout the entire region of the East’. Finally, Baudonivia recounts:

Thus, like Saint Helena [Constantine’s mother who found the buried relic of the True Cross], imbued with wisdom, full of the fear of God, glorious with good works, she eagerly sought to salute the wood where the ransom of the world [Christ] was hung for our salvation that we might be snatched from the power of the devil. When she found it, she clapped both hands.

Radegund’s success was indeed reason for celebration. She had, in fact, petitioned the Byzantine emperor and empress to grant her a relic of the True Cross and had had to navigate the hostilities of a competitive bishop in order to receive it. Bishop Fortunatus, Radegund’s friend and supporter, complimented the empress Sophia for complying with Radegund’s request, thereby ‘scattering salvation’ to the West from the ‘shimmering axis of the East’.²⁴

Radegund presumably received the relic already protected by a reliquary. She further honoured it by enclosing it in a larger casket along with other relics, and in turn this arca was placed in an oratory. This story shows us something of how embedding is often elaborated. A relic travels in a reliquary of some sort, is honoured by its recipient with another reliquary container and is surrounded by ‘companions’ – other relics. As the relic enters into the social structure it has encountered, it is thus enshrined and then placed in an appropriate space, in this case an oratory chapel.

Radegund collected like a queen in that she was able to petition her colleague the empress for the precious relic of the True Cross, but she received like a nun and a woman, ecstatically welcoming the relic as if it were Christ himself. As a bride receives her Lord, she welcomed the relic into her chamber. In contrast, a later scandalous story involves a rebellious nun of the monastery removing the cross from its ‘chamber’, waving it about in a threatening manner and loudly claiming its political power – to her decided detriment rather than benefit. The story demonstrates that enclosure was a process that was both devotional and necessary to the relic’s power, continuous with making the relic part of a social structure that functioned properly. Unfortunately, the relic and reliquary that survive today in Poitiers cannot be the original, so there is very little material testimony to support this complex story. For an understanding of what Western medieval reliquaries looked like and how they used form as a strategy, we must turn to other examples.

Shaped Reliquaries

Unlike Radegund or the wayward nun from her monastery, male ecclesiastics who had control of relics could use them to amplify their spiritual power, or ‘extend their reach’, in either case, often intending to dazzle onlookers, to arouse their devotion and to intensify their religious experience with the sight of beautiful objects. In the fourth century, Paulinus of Nola confessed that he ‘saved’ some relics out of the altar in order to have them available for his own devotions in times of need. By the eleventh century, Abbot Gauzlin used the innovative form of an arm-shaped reliquary to ‘strengthen . . . [the crowd] by a benediction made by the relics’.²⁵ After dedicating altars to Michael, Gregory and Martin, Abbot Berthold of Weingarten in the thirteenth century decided to use an ‘excess’ of relics to make the gilded silver head reliquary of Martin ‘in order to encourage the faith and piety [of the people]’.²⁶ Such unexpected and innovative uses and forms speak to the desire to make relics and reliquaries spectacular and exciting for their audiences, especially through the use of meaningful shapes.

In early medieval Ireland, the dispersal of holy material was essential to Christianization. St Columcille travelled, founding churches and leaving behind both disciples and ‘treasured objects’. Reliquaries of unusual shapes such as bells and staffs were used as ‘performative extensions of the holy body’ by abbots and missionaries.²⁷ It is true that bells were of great utility for travelling Irish missionaries – used to ring out canonical hours of prayer – and croziers served as marks of status and authority, but when such objects were encased in precious metal as reliquaries they became something entirely different. The bell no longer rings when enshrined but still speaks to the activity of the saint, the ability to ‘awaken’ the spirit. The crozier might hold relics in the ‘drop’ of the head, placing sacred matter in the abbot or bishop’s hands and exercising the potential to be pushed ‘in the face’ of the sinful Christian who might be chastised by the shepherd’s hook (illus. 25).

25 Crozier of Clonmacnoise, c. 1100 and later additions (figure of bishop on drop), wood wrapped in sheet bronze with inlaid silver and niello, 96.5 × 15.9 × 4.6 cm, National Museum of Ireland, Dublin.

The eleventh-century Clonmacnoise crozier made at the monastery in County Offaly is not only covered with a beautiful protective knot ornament signifying the aura of power of the object, but also carries a fierce face overgrown with plant material and a full figure of the saint holding the crozier on the drop (added later in the Middle Ages), ‘making the body of the founder saint visible and active’.²⁸ These Irish reliquaries dispersed by Columcille and others are objects that are instrumental in spreading culture and ‘civilization’. Unlike many shaped reliquaries, they literally take the shape of the thing they contain.

In the more Romanized area of Europe, just at the turn of the millennium, Archbishop Egbert of Trier founded metalworking workshops in order to produce lavish reliquaries that served as spectacular props for the liturgy. One of the relics involved was reputed to be the very staff of St Peter, which had worked a miracle in raising a dead man in the hands of an early sainted bishop of Trier. Although the same relic was said to be in Cologne, and Egbert did not even claim to have the entire staff, he was able, with a glorious and long metal cover (taller than a man), to make the staff appear not only complete but truly magnificent, covered with gems and enamel and inscriptions naming the Apostles as well as the bishops of Trier.

A second project was perhaps even more spectacular and complex. The portable altar of St Andrew’s sandal not only participates in the concepts of enclosure and enshrinement, but also addresses a wide range of other powers and possibilities of the reliquary (illus. 26). The self-proclaimed ‘altar consecrated to Andrew’ contains, according to its inscription: the Nail of the Lord, the sandal of Andrew, the beard of Peter, links from his chains and ‘other holy relics’.²⁹ Through these relics, Egbert, who is named as patron, has claimed association to the Apostles, now to both Peter and Andrew, patrons of Rome and Constantinople. He then goes further through other aspects of the ornamentation of the altar to make claims about the reliquary’s power. First and foremost, the portable object is associated with the Ark of the Covenant via a shared quality of portability. This is clearly asserted through the inclusion of the lion’s heads with rings that make up the feet of the altar.

26 Workshop of Archbishop Egbert, altar of St Andrew, 977–93, silver, gold, gems, enamel, spolia gems and brooch, Justinianic coin, with multiple relics including holy nail in its own reliquary, 45 × 22 cm, Trier Cathedral, Germany.

In his Regula pastoralis (591), Pope Gregory the Great implicitly argued that processions create a unity for the Church and that carrying the Ark constitutes carrying its lessons out among the people:

What else is symbolized by the precious Ark of the Covenant but the Holy Church? Its four rings are the four Gospels. Staves are set into these rings that it may be borne by teachers, ‘for to carry the Ark with staves is to bring Holy Church through preaching to the untutored minds of unbelievers.’ These staves are overlain with gold and then carried by priests, ‘that when the sound of their preaching goes forth to others, they may themselves shine in the splendor of their way of life.’³⁰

In addition to the rings, Egbert adorned the reliquary with the images of the Evangelical beasts to reinforce this sense of his altar. Surely he meant to ‘shine in the splendor of their [the Apostle’s] way of life’, because presumably he would have carried the staff of Peter reliquary and followed behind this altar reliquary in processions, creating a vision in which he quite literally ‘followed in the footsteps’ of the Apostles. Again Gregory wrote that the priest should ‘meditate unceasingly on the lives of those elders. The priest then walks blamelessly, when he is ever contemplating the examples of the fathers who preceded him, when without interruption he regards the footsteps of the Saints.’³¹ On the top of this altar is a golden foot, enclosed in a gemmed version of the sandal relic that the altar contains. As the Gospels remind us in Romans 10:15, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those [the Apostles] who bring good news of good things!’

27 Inner compartment of the Staurothek (True Cross reliquary) of Limburg an der Lahn, Byzantine, c. 948–59, gold, enamel and gems, 48 cm × 35 cm × 6 cm, Limburg Cathedral, Germany.

Before we leave our discussion of this remarkable object we should also note its use, or rather reuse, of materials – that is, the lavish use of spolia. The employment of spolia on reliquaries is a recurrent and privileged means of claiming power. Material objects that are already associated with royal and imperial power are reused in order to appropriate that power to the reliquary. On one end of the Trier Andrew reliquary is a Frankish fibula with a gold coin at its centre imprinted with a bust portrait of the emperor Justinian. The combination of the two objects makes a double claim to royal support. Similarly, the use of large and precious antique gems also associates the reliquary with royal prestige – ownership of such gems was almost exclusively regal or, in the case of a church, testament to a royal or imperial gift.

Egbert’s altar is an early example of the manipulation of reliquary forms for liturgical drama and public spectacle, but no reliquary can outdo the complexity of form of Staurotheken – that is, cross reliquaries from the Byzantine East. These are not only nested and enclosed within elaborate forms but, as in the case of the Limburg Staurothek and others like it, are multipart ‘machines’ that can be disassembled, reassembled and explored (like the Demetrios reliquaries mentioned above), all pursuant to the cause of asserting the power of the relic and the devotee’s privilege of access.³²

The Byzantine cross reliquary in the cathedral treasury of Limburg an der Lahn is one of the most sumptuous and spectacular works of art surviving from the Byzantine world and contains a relic of the True Cross – the most coveted of all relics – as well as other prestigious sacred tokens (illus. 27). The gift of the crusader Heinrich von Ulmen to the Augustinian cloister of St Nicholas in Stuben, where his sister was prioress, the reliquary takes the form of a sliding lid tablet made in two different parts at two different times: the cross itself was made by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos and his son Romanus between 945 and 959; the tablet was remade with ten additional relics between 963 and 985 by the courtier Basil the Proedros.

The sliding lid reliquary type already existed (see illus. 4), but the Limburg cross exhibits a twist. When one slides the lid out of place, inside one sees a series of reliquary compartments with small doors and a removable cross, slotted into place. The primary relic, the large wooden cross, itself enclosing a number of embedded slivers of the True Cross, is in turn encased in precious materials. The surrounding compartments, guarded by cloisonné enamel images of seraphim, hold prestigious Passion relics, most likely from the famous Constantinopolitan Palace chapel, the Pharos. Their inclusion in this portable reliquary allows them to act outside their usual sphere of influence in the Byzantine emperor’s palace. As a mobile representation of imperial power, this reliquary may have been used on military campaigns but, undoubtedly, given the ring on the top, could also have been carried in processions. The front of the reliquary represents the saints and angels of the court of Heaven surrounding an enthroned figure of Christ. The back exhibits a gemmed cross on steps signifying the fecund power of the ‘living’ cross. An inscription reads:

God stretched out his hands upon the wood, gushing forth through it the energies of life. Constantine and Romanos the emperors with a frame [Gr. synthesis] of radiant stones and pearls have displayed it full of wonder. Upon it Christ formerly smashed the gates of Hell, giving new life to the dead; And the crowned ones who have now adorned it crush with it the temerities of the barbarians.³³

Clearly the cross could, in the right hands, work as a weapon, but in discussing this inscription the translator draws attention to the ‘frame of radiant stones and pearls’. The Greek word for frame, synthesis, suggests a transformative process for the relic that transcends mere encirclement. This cross portion of the cross reliquary and its inscription insists on imperial powers, the control of relics, the ‘eternal victory’ so important to Byzantine imperial prestige, and finally, the imperial power to make and create.

This last concept, the power of synthesis, takes the reliquary beyond ornamentation. The Limburg is not only a reproductive ‘portrait’ of the True Cross relic, a large piece of which was controlled by the emperors, but also reflects a literal ‘making’ of the cross that occurred in Byzantine ceremony, when three separate parts, kept in the palace, had to be actually ‘tied’ together. Although the arms of the Limburg cross do not literally come apart, one sees a reflection in the ceremonial tying ritual and its precious ‘ligature’ in the (pseudo) pearls at the intersection of the arms of the cross. In other words, we are again presented with a Byzantine reliquary that the devotee was meant to open and manipulate, only now the manipulation carries the added charge of reflecting holy ritual. This reliquary was admired and copied after it arrived in Germany and it is not unusual to find cross reliquaries from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with similar removable crosses.

In contrast to this proclamation of imperial might and power of creation, a second inscription on the outer, secondary box of the Limburg cross, added in the later tenth century by a court official named Basil, takes a much more humble approach.

He did not have beauty (Is. 53:2), the one who was hanged on the wood [of the cross] (Deut. 21:22) although Christ surpassed [all] in beauty, (Ps. 44:2), in dying he lost his form (Is. 53:2), but still he beautified my face distorted by sin God though he was, he suffered in a human body, eminently venerating him, the proedros Basil beautified the container of the wood.³⁴

Not only has the proedros Basil ‘beautified’ the relic, he claims that in turn it has beautified him. Through contemplating Christ’s sacrifice, his loss ‘of form’, the devotee in turn is re-formed without sin into a product of spiritual beauty. In other words, the beauty of the art object shapes and parallels acts of relic devotion. One could imagine a sort of ‘infectious cycle’ of beauty – beauty lost, given as grace, returned to continue the cycle.

If these crosses are reliquary-machines that use their many moving parts to invite a complex set of interactions via manipulation, another sort of shape, the head reliquary, focuses instead on emotional and interior reaction and interaction. Each head reliquary forges its own particular relationship to its community. We have discussed how Foi was celebrated by the monks of Conques and, in similar fashion, Candidus was a very important person at Saint-Maurice d’Agaune (illus. 28).³⁵ Throughout the Middle Ages, Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, a monastery sited in the Swiss Alps, was an important stopover on the voyage to Rome. The monastery was dedicated to Maurice and his ‘Theban legions’ (supposedly 6,666 in number), early converts to Christianity who, as Roman soldiers, were martyred for their faith. With a cult originating as early as the fifth century, Maurice had the good fortune to become one of the primary saints celebrated by kings (and to become the subject of the first documented head reliquary, made by a king of Burgundy, unfortunately no longer surviving).

In particular, Maurice received special favour from the Ottonian emperors and their heirs: in 926, Henry I collected Maurice’s lance, sword and spurs, which became part of the regalia of the Holy Roman Empire, and in 961 Otto I purportedly acquired the body of the saint and some of his companions and set up a shrine at Regensburg for ‘the salvation of the homeland’.³⁶ From the thirteenth century, remarkably, Maurice is often depicted, in acknowledgment of his Theban origin, as a black man. (Centuries later, Charles IV, another Holy Roman Emperor, once again showed imperial acquisitiveness and collected relics of Maurice at Agaune, see Chapter Three.) Maurice, in effect, was the soldier-saint par excellence, even named as patron saint of several chivalric orders, including the Order of the Golden Fleece.

Candidus was Maurice’s brother in arms, a captain and standard-bearer of the legion. As a valiant companion of the soldier-patron of the empire, Candidus was a key figure at Agaune and became a model for the local counts of Savoy, especially in their pursuit of military glory in the Crusades. In 1148, Amadeus III, count of Savoy and lay abbot of the monastery, died before reaching the Holy Land. He had borrowed gold from the abbey to finance his participation in the Second Crusade, and the donation of the head reliquary represents the return of the ‘pledge’ by Amadeus’s son, Humbert III. (This is not the only instance in which a gold covering of a head reliquary was used to finance a soldier for the Crusades and was then replaced after the Crusader returned.)

28 Atelier of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, head reliquary of St Candidus, c. 1165 and later repairs, silver, gilded silver, gems, wooden core, 57.6 × 23.4 × 22.4 cm, Abbey of Saint-Maurice d’Augane, Switzerland.

Crusaders’ families typically benefited for generations from the prestige of participation in the Crusades, and such benefits are often concretized and memorialized in the form of relic gifts with specific ceremonies, inscriptions and prayers commemorating the contributions. The gift made to the abbey by Amadeus’s son Humbert consists of a very beautiful head composed of silver and copper sheets over a precisely carved wooden core; some portions are gilded. The eyes, like those of Foi, are striking, and worked in niello. The bust, which stops just below the neck, is elevated through placement on a podium of sorts bearing a depiction in relief of the martyr’s death. From the evidence of the authentics or relic labels inside, the largest percentage of the assortment of relics placed in the head alongside the large piece of a skull are Holy Land relics, most apparently collected in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Also deposited in the reliquary is the only indication of the commemoration of the patron – a coin of Amadeus III. The relics may have been collected by Amadeus’s fellows or his family and contributed to the project in his honour.

Rather than Amadeus’s family, however, the monks must have chosen the inscription, as it makes no mention of the count, referring instead to the saint’s martyrdom and the simultaneous rising of the soul to heaven, drawing a parallel between the martyr’s death, subsequent rise to ‘the stars’ and Christ’s sacrifice, through its final line, ‘for death life is given’, that insists on the basic truths of any martyr’s death. The open form of the reliquary base may indicate that it was used to shelter the Eucharistic elements on the altar like a ciborium, further drawing a parallel between Christ’s sacrifice, the martyr’s sacrifice and the sacrifice of the Mass.

Candidus is clearly positioned as a powerful intercessor, but he is also a ‘friend’ or confidante as is the case for many head reliquaries. Although he lacks the hands and arms of many early personified reliquaries (see illus. 19), his eyes are kind and receptive of prayers. He is also, however, stalwart. In his ‘protection’ of the sacred substances of relics and Mass, he serves as a valiant defender and protector of the Church, a fitting role for a martyr who gave his life for his faith, as his fellow soldiers and even the ‘enemy’ attest in the relief on the front of the reliquary – they all point in wonder at the miracle of the ascension of his soul.

Adding a commemoration of a leader and soldier in the Crusades to its head reliquary functionality, the head of Candidus incarnates the presence of the saint. He is both ‘judge and witness’ to the prayers of the faithful; his image produces ‘an active, reciprocal relationship’ with his audience, evoking a person, a face, an individual, and implicating viewers in a shared social relation. Above all, the eyes, differentiated from the material of the face, draw and hold the viewer’s attention, eliciting the prayers and promising to forward them to God, binding the devotee to a ‘cosmic order’.³⁷

A unique group of head reliquaries – once again representing saints not famous for their individuality but for their collective faith and martyrdom – further expands our understanding of the potential of this reliquary type. In 1155, work on the church of St Ursula in Cologne uncovered the remains of a Roman cemetery. Misunderstandings of an inscription where the number eleven was read as 11,000 led to the pious conclusion that bones discovered in the burials (both male and female) were to be understood as the remains of the legendary group of 11,000 virgins who accompanied the British princess Ursula and her fiancé on a pilgrimage to Rome via the Rhine. Her piety was said to be so remarkable that on her return voyage she was accompanied by the pope and other ecclesiastics. Unfortunately, on that return journey, she and her party encountered the Huns. As is typical for a virgin saint, she was a great beauty. When she refused the Hunnish king’s offer of marriage, she and all of her companions were slaughtered and buried on the spot. Although she is less celebrated today because of the ahistorical nature of the story, Ursula was a very important saint in the late Middle Ages, as her cult was spread widely through the dispersal of the many relics. (In 1493, Christopher Columbus named the Virgin Islands in her honour as he sailed past.) This legend and these ‘circumstances’ allowed the church of St Ursula and the city of Cologne an embarrassment of relic riches.

29 Cologne artist, head reliquaries of companions of Ursula, mid-13th– 14th century, polychromed wood, varying sizes, church of St Ursula, Cologne, Germany.

In response to the many relics, beginning in the thirteenth century and well into the fifteenth, head reliquaries were produced in Cologne in the hundreds. Perhaps in an economizing mode, the heads were made of polychrome wood rather than the usual metal of earlier head reliquaries, but the happy result was the lively end product (illus. 29). Adding to the animation of the busts, the figures gesture (pray) and often smile. Each figure, whether limited to a bust or inclusive of the full torso (illus. 30), results in an image of a beautiful young girl with long, loose blonde hair, and often a white complexion and pink cheeks. Each reliquary held a skull inside the head and, frequently, a second relic was included in a chest cavity (therefore not entirely visible). Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these reliquaries is that the large numbers of examples in the city of Cologne allowed for their use in vivid processions in the later Middle Ages, during which the busts were carried by the daughters of the wealthy burghers of the town, a very effective way to create an alliance between the saints and the Catholic faithful who would, one presumes, have identified with the two classes of maidens – mortal and saintly.³⁸

Even more remarkable, given the luxury of so many relic remains, forms of display had the potential to multiply. At the main altar of the church we see the typical arrangement of the high Middle Ages, with shrines displayed behind the altar on a sort of elevated table (here three shrines), but this is supplemented with two bust reliquaries and even relics embedded in the walls behind grilles (illus. 30). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a fashion for working directly with bones (see Chapter Four) led the sisters of St Ursula to build the Golden Chamber as a sort of sacristy in which myriad relic busts were stored, and in which ‘extra’ bones of saints were used to spell out prayers of intercession on the upper walls of the chamber.

In this last example, we have drifted well past matters of the first millennium, but perhaps the example shows how, in many ways, the celebration of the cult of saints was seamless and continuous in certain parts of Europe – although Chapter Four will recount rupture and change in other parts.

In this chapter we have discussed head reliquaries and a foot shape on a reliquary, have briefly mentioned arm reliquaries and purse reliquaries (which also often took the shape of metal versions of ‘purses’, closed up tight with wooden cores to seal in relic fragments, but nevertheless believed to be capable of dispensing the bounty of the Church’s ‘heavenly treasure’). Whether body parts or not, the many manifestations of different sorts of portable reliquaries testify to a need for the saints to act in the world. As fulfilling relic doctrine, saints are present both on earth and in heaven, and their presence in these imaginatively shaped containers is palpable. A metaphor used by St Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:12 speaks of saints as members of the Church, quite literally, as part of a ‘body’ of the Church of which Christ is the head. As active limbs that can implement God’s bidding on earth after the Resurrection, whether arm reliquary or not, these are lively relics indeed.

This small selection of reliquaries from centuries of production during the early Middle Ages has, one hopes, provided some idea of the riches produced in honour of the saints in this era. As the faith congregations required further stimulation, however, even richer and more lavish forms were found, and the late Middle Ages became an era of unprecedented creativity in the making of ever more elaborate reliquaries and relic displays. These are the subject of our next chapter.

30 Altar and shrine of St Ursula, 13th–14th century, Cologne, Germany.

3

Reliquaries of the Late Medieval and Renaissance

IN THE LATER Middle Ages, relics became ever more powerful tools of political and spiritual import. Although Christian relic doctrine itself changed very little, the precious scarcity of relics of medieval Europe was altered forever by a flood of relics from the East, and relic collecting became important for both religious and ‘secular’ institutions, and even for individuals. Relics were employed as defence from the plague, as loot in war and conflict, as focus for pious personal devotion and as a means of consolidating royal and civic political power. The varieties of their use are too numerous even to summarize; instead we will explore a few representative and remarkable instances of relic display and manipulation.

The period from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries is a creative one for relic cult and reliquary design; however, aesthetic advances in the practice of housing relics do not neatly correspond with the humanist concerns of the Renaissance usually considered central to the era.

In Renaissance Florence, miracles and other signs of faith were not lacking, but tended to centre on paintings rather than reliquaries. Furthermore, two divergent literary trends in humanist circles – a genre of satires of miracles, and quasi ‘scholarly’ treatises that attempted to document and fortify relic cults and their origins – reveal a Church pushed to defend its positions rather than to engage in innovative relic display.¹ One remarkable exception occurs, however, in a modification of the now familiar type – the head reliquary.

Some might nominate the gemmed and gilded silver head reliquary of St Anthony of Padua as worthy of such distinction (Giuliano da Firenze, 1434–6). However, despite its very distinctive strategy of preserving the ‘incorrupt’ tongue and jaw and therefore representing Anthony as the ‘mouthpiece’ of the Lord, the reliquary is only formally innovative in that the faceplate (now lost) could be lifted up to allow devotees to look inside. Instead, it is the Florentine sculptor Donatello, with his restrained gilded bronze bust of St Rossore (illus. 31), who redefines the type of the head reliquary for the Renaissance. Rather than act as intermediary and intercessor with wide ‘staring’ eyes, as do many head reliquaries, the remarkably ‘lifelike’ and ‘portrait-like’ characterization of the saint models a moment of profound inner contemplation. When Rossore, a third-century soldier saint, was converted while reading a passage in the Psalms, suddenly his ‘mind was opened’,² and Donatello depicts him in that moment, with eyes lowered and brow furrowed. Unlike the usual treatment of head reliquaries, the eyes are not differentiated by material or even engraved detail. Response to this reliquary requires a very particular kind of reflective and empathetic devotion; not prayer but ‘soul searching’, not supplication but ‘interior conversion’ on the part of the viewer.

Although I will suggest that a meditative approach is also required by many late medieval reliquaries, correlating to the rise in private devotion of this era, any further substantial innovation in the contemplative ‘humanist mode’ will await the period just before and after the Council of Trent (see illus. 56, 75). Instead, in examining ‘late medieval’ reliquaries of the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, we will focus on one trend – a developing interest in ‘micro’ architecture, a passion shared by both northern and southern reliquary makers. In doing so, we will consider how such reliquaries ‘invite’ us to view them, both in terms of the creation of sacred space and in provoking meditation. In the second part of the chapter we will see a further exploration of architecture, via examination of actual buildings used to display relics and to serve complex political and cultural ends.

31 Donatello, Saint Rossore, c. 1425, gilt bronze, 56 × 60.5 × 37 cm, Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa, Italy.

In its articulation of ‘aspiration’, in its soaring, open, light-filled spaces, the Gothic is an architectural system perfectly suited to the recreation of the sacred spaces of the Heavenly Jerusalem and the display of ‘fragments’ of the divine, that is, collections of relics. The scalable power of the relic is appropriately reflected in these two extremes of architecture – micro and macro – as each presents its own possibility for the experience of sacred space. Whether focusing and guiding the attention of the devotee with wondrous miniature buildings and elaborate ‘scenic’ reliquaries, or allowing the devotee to enter a marvellous simulation of heaven (in the magic enclosure of a chapel or the miraculous spaces of a cathedral), Gothic architecture possesses unique potential to amplify and explore the experience of relics.

‘Those who have a Taste for Building’ (Quodvultdeus)³

As we have seen, the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle serve as structural templates for reliquaries and as fundamental prototypes for all Christian sacred containers, even, according to the thirteenth-century liturgical commentator Durandus of Mende (Guillaume Durand), the model for any container for the Eucharist. It should come as no surprise that in reliquaries of the later Middle Ages and early Renaissance, sacred architectural order, measure, its material realization and indeed an expanded conception of sacred space should emerge as the heart of relic display. Medieval exegetes took the biblical directives for the construction of Ark and Tabernacle as instruction for spiritual exercise, seeing in the doubled significance of ‘edification’ a directive for both building and moral improvement. Thus, as we think of how structures of reliquaries intersect with the architecture of full-scale buildings, we should be reminded that both also intersect with spiritual exercises, especially those of ‘private devotion’. With earlier medieval reliquaries, we explored the scalability of relic power as expressed through nesting. That strategy continues here through an approach to architecture based on biblical precedent – the Tabernacle enclosing the Ark, the Temple replacing the Tabernacle and both as the site of the divine.

In this I am referring, of course, to the Old Testament Tabernacle, but contemporary tabernacles – that is, display pieces for the host, often called monstrances – are of interest as well. In the late medieval period, lines were blurred between the sacred matter of relics and the sacred matter of the Corpus Christi (the Eucharistic wafer or host as the body of Christ). The host was already used as a ‘relic’ in consecrating altars as early as the fourth century, and with the advent and growth of the Corpus Christi feast and veneration after the thirteenth century, there is little significant theological differentiation among various sorts of sacred matter. In 1365 the Carmelite Friars of Siena even called the host the ‘chief and lord of all the other relics’.⁴

From the early Middle Ages, reliquaries were inspired by ecclesiastical architecture; shrines and monstrances of the later Middle Ages became even more elaborately and precisely architectural (see illus. 1). Labelled ‘micro-architecture’, they have been thought to be generated through procedures of architectural design (using the so-called ‘mason’s secrets’). It has even been claimed that they were used to elaborate and test architectural designs in quasi-experimental fashion in order to realize both architectural aspirations and fantasies. By no means denying such creativity to the reliquary designer, I would, however, suggest a quite different understanding of these forms. Rather than serve as a proving ground for architectural innovation, the reliquary shared an aesthetic with monumental architecture in order to advance a set of complex ideas about sacred space – especially ideas concerning the location of sacred space or, perhaps more specifically, its relocation and renewal.

The relocation of the sacred, especially the relocation of the Holy Land to Europe via architectural copies of the Holy Sepulchre, was an ongoing and persistent project of medieval building. An alternative approach to accomplishing the same goal, more prevalent in the late Middle Ages, was to create a simulacrum of the Heavenly Jerusalem through the new architecture of the Gothic, and to sanctify it through the presence of the Holy Land or Apostolic relics. An added value of this approach is that when features of this Gothic architecture became recognizable as local – that is, identifiable as a regional or national style – they help to effectively relocate the sacred, arguing that ‘the holy’ has taken up residence ‘here, now’, in France, in Italy, in Bohemia. Such regionally marked, demonstrative, even tendentious sacral architectural styles, displayed in the coinciding forms of reliquaries and local ecclesiastical architecture, occurs in examples from Florence, Paris, Orvieto and especially Prague.⁵

The correspondences between Florence’s most famous architectural feature – the Dome of the cathedral – and its precious reliquary of the Apostle Philip’s arm (now in the treasury) have already been noted.⁶ In particular the details at the base of the reliquary ‘dome’ correspond to features of the lantern of the Duomo.

Such architectural correspondences occurred at an earlier moment in Paris when the French Crusader king, Louis IX, built the Sainte-Chapelle to house relics from the Holy Land, especially the Crown of Thorns and, in so doing, made claim to a distinctive French and Parisian style of architecture which he also used in his reliquaries. Unfortunately, most of Louis’ sacral treasure disappeared during the French revolution, but some evidence survives. Among the many reliquaries produced under Louis, the Thorn reliquary from Saint-Pierre de Lille (known only from an eighteenth-century drawing, illus. 32) stands out for having a number of elements that reiterate the architecture of the Sainte-Chapelle. The form of the buttressing, the high, elaborately crocketed spire, the double arched windows topped with fleurs-de-lis and the parapet pierced with quatrefoils along the roofline all recall the royal chapel (illus. 33). Even one of the most powerful aspects of the relic presentation at the Sainte-Chapelle, the conceit of the nesting reliquary writ large – as seen in the display of reliquaries within the Grande Chasse (see illus. 44) and within the ‘architectural’ reliquary of the Sainte-Chapelle itself – was also copied in this lost piece. We can see the thorn is presented in a miniature architectural shrine within another ‘church’, the whole succinctly recalling the prestigious site of the Crown of Thorns.⁷

32 Thorn reliquary, possibly 13th century, Saint-Pierre de Lille (no longer extant), reproduced from Aubin Louis Millin, Antiquités nationales; ou, Recueil de monuments . . . (1790).

An even more intriguing case can be made concerning the Reliquary of the Corporal (1337), a beautiful shrine in gold and transparent enamel for a relic moved by Pope Urban IV to Orvieto, his home town. In that example, architectural details that correlate to the designs of the cathedral – which were not yet completed – ‘represent’ an architectural civic identity still in its planning stages.⁸ In that the frame of the reliquary is so clearly based on Orvietan architecture, it makes an argument that the miraculous corporal (a cloth used during the Mass, this one stained with blood from a miraculously bleeding host), properly belongs in Orvieto, rather than in nearby Bolsena, where the miracle took place.

33 Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, exterior north, 1239–48, built by Louis IX.

34 Tabernacle, St Vitus Cathedral, Prague, c. 1375, gilded iron, h. 208 cm.

A last example, a host tabernacle from St Vitus Cathedral in Prague, again uses elements of the distinctive local architecture in striking fashion (illus. 34). The tabernacle reiterates the broad windows and ornate tracery of its cathedral as well as the detailing of the spires and their decorative crockets, a micro reflection of its macro environment (illus. 35). As we will see, the emperor Charles IV aggressively collected and relocated relics to his new imperial capital and, in a massive programme of reliquary manufacture that includes this Tabernacle, he marked the ‘sacred territory’ of his new acquisitions with the distinctive architecture of his cathedral. Furthermore, the emperor commissioned reliquaries as gifts for the Palatine Chapel at Aachen and used the same distinctive architectural elements, thereby transporting the densely significant forms to another location where Charles claimed dominion as emperor.

35 Peter Parler and others, St Vitus Cathedral, Prague, exterior, 1344–99 to 19th century.

In each of these cases, the citation of architectural form is the bearer of meaning. Architectural features in reliquaries have more to say than ‘Church’: they say which church and why, and they make important claims to particular and local varieties of spatial sanctity. Such citations surely continue into the Renaissance in Florence, as noted above in the case of the Duomo, and in the many citations of Bramante’s Tempietto in the form of a tabernacle or ciborium, a form that we will see becomes especially significant in Spain. Thus the architectural design of reliquaries beginning with the late medieval period actively justified and normalized the massive relic relocation projects that characterized the era.

Architectural Reliquaries and Meditational Ductus

In addition to marking space as holy and heavenly, architecture can communicate instructions for reflection and meditation. This notion has roots that go deep into Jewish and Christian practices of the contemplation of the very act of building, through the construction of the Temple. Supplementing the building plans in the text of Exodus, the visionary text of Ezekiel exhorts (43:10–11):

Thou son of man, show the temple to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities: and let them measure the pattern, and blush from all they have done. Show them the plan of the house, and of its fabric, its exits and entrances, and its whole description, and all of its precepts, and the rest of its ordering, and all its laws, and write [them] before their sight so that they may store away all its descriptions and precepts, and fashion them.

This text introduces many possibilities vis-à-vis the study of architecture – measuring, mentally entering and exiting, understanding order, perhaps even remaking – but most importantly, the text sets such architectural studies within the moral context of a confession of sin in the face of divine perfection:

In Ezekiel, the measuring of the Temple is an act of contrition and return . . . the construction measurements . . . given on the mountain by God to Moses [constitute] the central act of covenant . . . in the Tabernacle, [and] later . . . the Temple built by Solomon . . . [and] In its final avatar, as the Heavenly City of John.⁹

The potential of the biblical text for Christian thought is immense. In the context of the textual directive ‘to measure the fabric [of the Temple] means to think carefully upon the life of the just’,¹⁰ the Temple represents both a covenant and a set of nested spaces and ideas, a cognitive map that functions at the personal, liturgical, but also the civic level, in the latter case to ‘reconcile an entire community with God’. One can describe the process with a particular word derived from rhetoric – a ductus, a word that directs us to the concept of flow, the ‘movement within and through a work’s various parts’ . . . but also ‘the conduct of a thinking mind on its way through a composition’. In other words, movement, both abstract and physical, becomes a key aspect of architectural reception.

For the most part, diagrams illustrating exegeses of this text (by twelfth-century scholars Hugh and Richard of Saint Victor and Adam of Dryburgh) are static, but the ‘place of the Tabernacle’ in exegetical tradition was not. It ‘requir[ed] movement through and within its structure, as though within a material building’.¹¹ Some diagrams accommodate that need for movement, encouraging a sort of walking about in the mind, but more significantly, such use of architecture to guide meditation relies on the importance to medieval thought of memory systems, systems using architectural spaces to create an armature for structured memory.

It should come as no surprise that in a 1523 publication of the Ars memorativa, a certain learned Laurent Fries from Alsace created an itinerary through Strasbourg Cathedral, especially its altars, the choir screen and two staircases, each serving as memory loci.¹² Reliquaries, of course, provide the distinct possibility of such a mental itinerary on a smaller scale; architectural reliquaries even call out for a sort of mental peregrination, or exploration – creating a ductus that leads us through both a physical and imaginary landscape where relics can be venerated in turn.

It should be recognized that architectural reliquaries represent a mixing of object types. Reliquaries, tabernacles and monstrances share forms, and even ex-votos overlap with these categories in terms of design. A large number of votive offerings made at shrines represented buildings, and even whole cities. Most of these do not survive, but documented examples included a votive offering ‘model city’ from 1247 Parma that was credited with saving the city from destruction by Frederick II; a fifteenth-century votive city given by Louis XI to Saint-Denis representing his grant to the abbey of the city of La Guerche; votive model cities from Bourges and Amiens (the latter once hung in the cathedral of Amiens); and many city images that were donated to both the Virgin of Loreto (eighteen by 1530 and many others in succeeding centuries, including one of Fermo weighing 8 kg/18 lb) and to the Virgin of Liesse. A seventeenth-century votive offering from Gemona del Friuli is a rare survivor of this class of objects; it includes models of two churches, the city walls and a town hall. It was a plea for salvation from the plague – and shows St Roch and St George standing on the roof of the hall (reminiscent perhaps of Michael defending Rome from the plague atop the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome).¹³

But such images of cities in metalwork were not always simply votive offerings. The example surviving in Soissons, from the end of the sixteenth century (dated by details of the construction of the church of St Leger completed in 1567–96, gilded copper with silver, illus. 36),¹⁴ has previously been identified as a votive offering, but is now recognized as a reliquary made to house relics rescued after an attack on the city by Huguenots. The relics are enumerated in an inventory of 1770 and a letter preserved in the city archives notes that they were placed in the church towers of the model. Although eight churches are depicted, there are no civic buildings.

36 Reliquary of the city of Soissons (Trésor de la cathédrale Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais), end of 16th century, gilded copper, moulded and plate, wood, silver and gems, 34 × 75 × 44 cm, Musée Municipal de Soissons, France.

The same eight churches are featured on a surviving Renaissance map of Soissons, which shows that the architecture of the model was generally accurate, especially in terms of the orientation and general position of the buildings. One notable change from reality was that, in the reliquary, the miniature cathedral was given a second tall tower, never actually constructed. The model cathedral is further emphasized by its movable doors and silver added on its roof and facade.

How was the viewer to navigate this strange but wonderful object? Following our discussion above considering meditation upon the Temple, and as suggested by the map, an imaginative visit to each of the sacred locations within the city, with a pause for prayer and contrition at each, would have been appropriate. ‘Going in and out’ and ‘measuring the spaces’ might have been part of the practice. It was not unusual at this time for a city to serve as a double for Jerusalem in prayers,¹⁵ and a visual assessment of the beauty of the city would also not have been without merit. The verse from Psalms, ‘Lord I have loved the beauty of thy house’ (Psalms 26:8) was not only taken as a directive to decorate the house of the Lord but also a command, as Augustine noted, to wonder at the ‘admirable tabernacle’. A kind of aestheticism as devotion informed architectural reliquary design.¹⁶

As one wandered within this architectural field, presented with a metaphorical bouquet of beautiful flowers in the shape of the houses of the saints, one was allowed free rein within the constraints of the walls, presumably on a sort of itinerary culminating in the cathedral, the only building supplied both with doors as well as a cabochon rock crystal and, presumably, stocked with visible relics. In contemplating this most ornate of buildings, one concluded the itinerary with thoughts of salvation – the city reliquary was once embellished with a large image of Mary apparently attached to the roof of the abbey of Notre Dame (which seems to have had an inscription with an enumeration of the relics).

So should this object be classed as an ex-voto or a reliquary? I would suggest it was both, and that perhaps some of the lost comparative examples functioned as both as well.

The tabernacle, again from the town of St Gemona in Friuli, made by Nicolò Lionello in 1435 (illus. 37), takes a different approach to the presentation of sacred space but even more emphatically invites the viewer to wander or ‘walk about’ using their imagination.¹⁷ In this case, the upper part of a tower monstrance is covered with what might be called tabernacolini, to borrow a term from the Renaissance art historian Giorgio Vasari. In the introduction to his 1550 Lives of the Artists, the Italian railed against such constructions, although there he is speaking of what he called ‘German’ buildings of stone:

37 Nicolò Lionello, tabernacle, Gemona del Friuli Cathedral, Italy, 1435, silver gilt and enamel, 61.8 × 17.3 cm.

And so for the facades and all their ornament they made a damnation of tabernacolini, one above the other, with so many pyramids and spikes and leaves that they could not possibly be supported often they put these things one over the other, coming to such a height that the tip of the portal touched the roof.¹⁸

Instead of Vasari’s cursed tabernacolini, the little structures on the monstrance are intended as a force for good. One’s eye is overwhelmed, as Vasari says, but one is also intrigued to climb the hill and the tiny stairs, moving in and out of the little spaces that are akin to monastic cells dotting a hillside, some still with minuscule figures – possibly hermits? – populating their spaces. As Augustine writes in his sermon on Psalm 41 (here much condensed, and shifting from first to third, to second person as in the original but serving as our guide to the itinerary):

‘I will enter into the place of the Tabernacle’ . . . I will first blunder about outside . . . ‘For I will enter into the place of the admirable Tabernacle, even to the house of God’ . . . and now I look with wonder at many things in the Tabernacle. Faithful men [saints] are the Tabernacle of God on earth . . . having heard a sort of interior music . . . removing himself [the Psalmist] from all the noise of body and blood, he made his way up to the house of God. For thus he remembers his way and his ductus, as though we had said to him, you are gazing upon the Tabernacle in this world; how have you come to the hidden place of God’s house.¹⁹

The verbs here are ‘walk’, ‘gaze upon’, ‘look’, ‘go’ and ‘ascend’. But more than suggestive of random movement, the passage replaces wandering with purposeful walking, noise with harmony. Furthermore, glancing about is ultimately superseded by a meditative gaze.

Augustine’s commentary on the Psalms, a foundational text for the Christian tradition, encourages an approach to architectural reliquaries. In looking upon Lionello’s monstrance, we might linger upon the details of the tabernacolini or the tiny stairs, preparing ourselves for the viewing of the host through the rock crystal (the lunula or holder for the host is just visible behind the crystal). Augustine insisted that audiences choose their own way in practising ‘architectural’ meditation. The possibilities presented by this marvellous piece are not an anti-classical confusion (pace Vasari) but an invitation to wander, wonder and find one’s way.

Although late medieval reliquaries present many other wondrous and imaginative visions, architecture remains prominent even in the most complex creations – the joyaux of the French court (and also the custodia of the Spanish where King Philip II was known to practise such mental wandering and climbing in response to a model of Jerusalem).

Although a majority of viewers may not have had the opportunity to linger in the intimate presence of reliquaries and monstrances, the private patrons who commissioned the Paris masterpieces of gold, gems and enamel, the joyaux so fashionable around 1400, intended them for close looking. Christine de Pizan tells of the French king, Charles V, retreating after his afternoon nap to be with ‘most privy friends taking delight in pleasant things, examining joyaux or other rich works . . . in order that the cares of too great occupation should not impair the feeling of his health’. In his study, he took the counsel of specialists on the matter: ‘he had those appraise who were skilled in knowledge of such things [cognoisseurs de telz choses] of whom there were some in his household’, and had a fuller ‘knowledge of such things’.²⁰ It should be emphasized that Charles occupied himself in this way to improve his well-being and that the etymology of the French word for these objects, joyaux, derives from joy (Lat. gaudium, or gaudere, rejoice).

38 Unknown court goldsmith, Paris, Holy Thorn reliquary, made for Jean de Berry, c. 1397, gold and ronde-bosse enamel, sapphires, pearls, rubies and rock crystal, 30.5 × 15 (max. w.) × 13 (base w.) × 7 cm, British Museum, London.

Although Charles died in 1380 and thus would never have seen the small reliquary of the Thorn (now at the British Museum, illus. 38) made around 1400 for his brother Jean, Duc de Berry (himself a connoisseur of such things), we can be certain that Charles had the opportunity to encounter objects very like it. We can imagine the viewer standing before the central figure of the judging Christ, meditating on the gorgeously presented thorn of the Christ’s Crown that occupies the space between God and the viewer, imaginatively joining the Apostles, praying along with the courtly saints and angels, celebrating the joy of the resurrection as it is depicted with triumphantly trumpeting angels – in effect, taking up residence inside the sacred space of the garden walls of the paradise of the Heavenly Jerusalem that support the vision.

Or we may turn to a joyaux made for Charles’ son Charles VI, given to him as an étrenne, a New Year’s gift, by his wife Isabeau de Baviere in 1405 (illus. 39, see also illus. 2). It was soon in the possession of Isabeau’s brother and travelled to Ingolstadt and was finally given as an ex-voto in 1509 to the pilgrimage church of Mary at Altötting where it remains today, holding a relic of the Mantel of the Virgin.²¹ The architectural features of this piece are essential in creating a sense of sacred space. One must imagine the king joining his tiny simulacrum, imaginatively inserting himself into this space before the Virgin Mary. First he descends from the little horse, the goldenes Rössl that gives its name to the piece, and, while the squire holds the horse for him, he passes from the lower church-like space and climbs the stairs to the Virgin’s bower.²²

Stairs as a means of ascent occur as a frequent trope in meditation and in these architectural fantasies. In On Christian Doctrine, Augustine specifies the steps one must ascend to find God – the first is fear of God, the second piety, the third knowledge, the fourth strength, the fifth mercy and on the sixth step the devotee ‘cleanses that eye by which God may be seen’ insofar as it is possible in the world. Finally, the seventh step is wisdom. Augustine cautions, however: ‘in this world we make our pilgrimage, although we have our conversation in heaven’.²³

39 Unknown court goldsmith, Paris, Goldenes Rössl, made for Isabeau de Bavière as a gift for Charles VI, 1404, gold, ronde-bosse enamel, pearls, sapphires and rubies, h. 62 cm, Wallfahrstmuseum, Altötting, Bavaria, Germany.

Charles, in the form of his tiny enamel doppelgänger, has already climbed the many steps to the first stage, but also completed the ascent of the seven that give access to the upper platform. He now may have his conversation, kneeling on an exquisite cushion before an altar-like lectern. The Virgin herself resides in a slightly separate space, enclosed by the most minimal of walls – a gesture towards the trope of the virgin as an enclosed garden – here carpeted with emerald-green grass. As a polite guest, Charles brings a gift, a crowned helmet presented by his companion, a soldier courtier at the Virgin’s left. Charles reads/speaks/prays from a silver book of devotion open before him. Mary responds with her hand resting on her own silver book, supported on a wonderfully minute tabernacle/lectern with exquisite gothic ‘micro’ architectural details (see illus. 2, partially visible, lower right). Within Mary’s enclosure are the sacrificial lamb and the chalice of the Eucharist; however, the space is transformed from something formal and ecclesiastical, from the holy of holies, attended by angels/cherubim and populated by the sacrificial body of Christ, to the space within ‘the admirable tabernacle’, the private space achieved by the ductus and personal choices of meditation. The Virgin herself is in an informal mode; her cousin’s child John the Baptist brings the lamb almost as a pet. Baby John the Evangelist joins in offering flowers and the cup as if at a tea party. And behind John, little St Catherine reaches for the ring the baby Jesus hands to her (and given that Charles and Isabeau had a four-year-old daughter Catherine at the time it all seems very like a family gathering). Lucky for Charles, as immortalized in this ex-voto, he will never descend from this heavenly bliss to where the little pony patiently waits.

Such an ex-voto, where the votive function is combined with that of the reliquary, blurs distinctions that are further obscured in late Renaissance and Baroque environments. Counter to our modern desire to categorize and name, the mission of these artworks seems to be multivalent as artists sought maximum drama in the realization of a simulacrum of Paradise. Relics become part of the supporting cast for the Corpus Christi and ex-votos are testimony to the venerability and glory of any given individual church.

Thus architecture in reliquaries and monstrances is neither merely decorative nor only representative of experiments in ‘microarchitecture’; rather, it is constructed of details that claim spiritual space for the here and now, for this city, for this place. It may serve as practice for the architect, for the artisan, for the theologian, but also for any penitent ready to ‘build’. It is the architecture of the biblical past, the architecture of the Gothic mason and builder, but also, as we will see in Chapter Four, it will be the new architecture of the humanist. It is a plan and an order that structures devotion; a beauty that shows the glory of God; a window, a door, a portal, an atrium, an oculus that can lead to the divine.

Architecture and Architectural Reliquaries for Relic Collections (the Court of Heaven)

If Gothic architectural and scenic reliquaries create a space for veneration that imaginatively expands the power of the tiny relic fragments they display, it is no surprise that, writ large, some of the same forms are put into play to house the great relic collections that came to be accumulated during the course of the late Middle Ages. Gothic architecture is eminently scalable, and allows the expansion of the ‘space’ of the relic to monumental, glorious proportions. Here we turn from a look at individual reliquaries to a consideration of the great relic collections of the late Middle Ages in Europe, housed in some of the most beautiful architectural environments that could be imagined, by supremely talented architects, each one aspiring to a recreation of the Heavenly Jerusalem.

Constantinople

To understand the wave of medieval relic collecting that is the motivation for these structures, however, we must first step back to an earlier moment and examine the precedent set by the renowned collections in the capital of the Eastern Christian empire, Constantinople.

Throughout much of the Middle Ages, that city was considered the ultimate treasure deposit of material sanctity. Beginning with Constantine himself, celebrated as the first Christian emperor and founder of the city, rulers stocked it with saints’ relics from every corner of the empire. With only a few local saints at the start (three by one count), what began as the tiny town of Byzantion on the strategically significant peninsula between Europe and Asia, through a series of acquisitions of ever more significant relics, was turned into an incomparable Christian capital.

The first major cache of relics was deposited in a monumental porphyry column in the new centre of the city, the Forum of Constantine, which was also the site of the city’s dedication in 330. At the apex of the column, Constantine placed a golden statue of Apollo (which was frequently mistaken for a portrait of the emperor himself and was later replaced with a cross) and at its base, he buried the relics. These are reputed in legend to have ranged from a bronze image of Pallas Athena, the ‘Palladium’ said to be the guarantor of the safety of the city of Rome, to a fragment of the True Cross, given to the emperor by his mother Helena.

Later, substantial Christian relic importations were implemented in concert with the emperor’s more grandiose building schemes, especially that of the church of the Holy Apostles. For this church, in which it has been said that the emperor intended to be buried as the ‘thirteenth Apostle’, Constantius, his son, presumably following his father’s plan, imported the bodies of the Apostles Timothy, Andrew and Luke between 356 and 357. Paulinus of Nola approved, calling these relics ‘towers’ in the defence of the city.²⁴

In contrast to this theme of relics as protection of the city, a somewhat different motivation was presented by Robert the Monk. Chronicling the First Crusade in the early twelfth century, he asserted that the relics of Constantinople were brought to the city from across Asia and Africa for their own protection (presumably from Islamic depredation). We will see the same theme of relic collection as protection of relics during the Counter-Reformation, but this can only be a belated justification in the case of imperial Constantinople. Clearly pursuing an aggressive programme of relic acquisition, the emperors began by ‘requesting’ bodies in order to build a centre of power, a request few churches and monasteries could resist. Significant acquisitions by successive emperors included the arms of John the Baptist and Stephen, and many, many Marian relics.

Although some of the most famous relics were kept in the monasteries of the capital, the superlative collections resided in Hagia Sophia – the ‘cathedral’ of Constantinople – and in the chapels of the imperial palace, especially that of the Virgin of the Pharos. Our best lists of the relics come from pilgrim accounts, but in a self-promoting speech about the ‘Palace Revolution of John Komnenos’ in 1200, the skeuophylax or sacristan of the Pharos, Nicolas Mesarites, describes his own vigorous defence of the Pharos chapel during a short-lived uprising. Mesarites lists ten precious relics, grandiloquently comparing them to the Ten Commandments, in effect likening the chapel and its collection of relics to the Ark of the Covenant and the Sancta Sanctorum, the holy of holies of the Bible.²⁵

His list focuses on Passion relics, beginning with the Crown of Thorns, green and ‘immortal’ through contact with the head of Christ, which he argues refutes disbelieving Jews through its miracle of preservation. Next is the nail that is ‘free of rust’ due to the purity of Christ’s flesh, and relics three to five testify to the incarnation and deeds of Christ. Other relics are the lance, the purple cloak of mockery and the stone from the tomb of Christ, which Mesarites compares to the second stone of Jacob and calls a cornerstone. Finally Mesarites concludes that, in addition to these relics as ‘commandments’ in the chapel, one has ‘the lawgiver himself before one’s eyes’ in the form of two acheiropoieta (images made miraculously ‘without hands’, that is, without the intervention of an artist): a cloth and a tile imprinted with Christ’s face. Mesarites calls the space of the chapel the ‘second Sinai, a new Bethlehem, a second Jordan, a new Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethany, Galilee, Tiberias’.²⁶ He concludes, directly addressing the viewer, with a narrative weaving the relics together into an evocation of Christ’s life and Passion, imagining the events of the Gospel recurring in the chapel itself. Travellers’ accounts mention even more relics in the chapel, filling out the list of Passion relics, and also telling of saints ‘without number’.

In contrast to the relics of the palace, the relics in Hagia Sophia were more publicly displayed, and at least on some occasions available for devotion outside the treasury. They include, again, many dominical relics including the swaddling clothes, the gold of the Magi and relics that duplicate those in the palace such as the True Cross and blood of Christ. The treasury also contained many relics of saints and objects such as the writing stool of St John. Votive crowns given by the emperors, including one from Emperor Constantine, hung in profusion over the great altar of the church. Other unique relics at Hagia Sophia included the gilded cross made to the ‘measure’ of Christ by the entrance of the treasury, a miraculous icon of Christ, a stone from Jacob’s well on which Christ sat, three doors made from wood from Noah’s ark, and the gilt silver cross made by Constantine to match the visionary cross of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

A significant number of relics in the palace are related to Christ; others are Old Testament relics – the horn that anointed David, the rod of Moses and the trumpet Joshua blew at Jericho. Rather than participate in a liturgy or pray before invisible enclosed sacred substance, as is so often the case with Western relics, these relics (although certainly not without reliquaries) were on prominent display. As ‘commandments’, their sight demanded action, devotion and imaginative response. Perhaps, as prompted by these objects, the visitor was to act in the manner of the early Jerusalem pilgrims and vividly imagine the biblical and hagiographic stories that were suggested by relics. The experience that was once unique to the Holy Land was recreated and relocated in the Byzantine capital.

Of these holy relics and sacred environments, the renown of which made Constantinople so impressive, only the base of the column survives – the Holy Apostles church was replaced by the Faith Mosque in the fifteenth century, and the relics of the Pharos and Hagia Sophia were dispersed for the most part after the Crusader Sack of 1204, with the remainder disappearing with the Turkish conquest. Nevertheless, the memory of these collections in Constantinople plays an important role in the Western re-imagining of relic collections after the Crusades. The massive imperial acquisition of relics succeded in transforming Constantinople into the ‘new Jerusalem’. For aspiring relic collectors the city provided an enduring model of the potential of constructed sacred space, activated by means of relocated relics.

Thus, one of the outcomes of the Fourth Crusade, the capture and looting of Constantinople and the subsequent redistribution of relics from East to West, was a new, focused politicization of the act of collecting relics, as well as a concentration on relics associated with Christ and the Passion. Indeed, an escalating competition of relics and relic collections was decisively set into motion.

In the following pages, we will briefly discuss the Lateran chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum chapel in Rome, the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, and spend a bit more time on the collection outside Prague at Karlštejn, forged by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV.

Passion Relics

Relics of Christ should, by all logic, be exceedingly rare, given that Christ’s body ascended whole, leaving nothing behind.²⁷ However, objects that touched Christ and Mary and participated in their stories could help recreate those stories in the imagination – which is, after all, the purpose of devotional meditation and, as we have seen, the function of many relics. Of course, other relics were said to have been ‘shed’ in some sense from Christ’s body, the most important being: the umbilical cord from the birth; the holy foreskin, removed during the Circumcision; and blood shed during the Passion. There is also, of course, the blood that has appeared on various hosts during Eucharistic miracles (theologically denied proper relic status).²⁸ As to relics associated with the Virgin, there was an abundance of cloths, hair and milk. All of these relics have proved controversial, in particular the foreskin, but that has not diminished interest in them even today – not long ago Slate magazine published a rather sensational article on that sacred body part.²⁹

The Passion relics, even if some were already considered uniquely important in the early Middle Ages, became an even more compelling focus of attention in the later Middle Ages as instruments for private devotion. In an array that recalls the heraldic arms of knights or kings, symbolic images are isolated and gathered in the so-called arma Christi. But here the word ‘arms’ can also mean weapon, and many of these symbols represent the weapons used to torment Christ, preserved as relics and paradoxically converted to Christ’s own ‘weapons’ of faith. Ultimately, however, in another transformation, they become objects of great comfort to devout Christians. Because they not only came into contact with Christ’s body and were often held to be stained with Christ’s blood, the nails, the cross, the Crown of Thorns, the lance and the various holy cloths all vividly attest to his suffering.

Devotions to the Passion often considered the arma Christi individually in a multi-part prayer that proceeded one by one through a list of relics, each labelled and identified. Byzantine artists seem to have paved the way for such devotions with ‘tablet’ reliquaries that displayed relic arrays clearly and that came to the West during and after the Crusades (see illus. 27). One such Eastern reliquary appropriated by the French royal family was called the ‘Tutor’ of Philip Augustus, a title that implies that the now lost tablet reliquary acted almost like a primer, and that each relic was like a letter in the assemblage that came together to form words, sentences, thoughts and finally completed ideas and prayers (which may give us some idea of the intended mental structure of these devotions which were also common to many manuscript illuminations of the arma Christi).

The reliquaries the French king Charles V made for his brothers around 1360–70, one of which survives in Florence, the Libretto (little book), follow this same approach and therefore also attest to the king’s own piety. Such devotions remained popular even after the Middle Ages. In the sixteenth century, Philip II of Spain was said to pore over reliquaries, ‘learning them’ in a way that recalls just such a primer.

These sorts of assembled reliquaries, whether Byzantine or newly made Western versions, were sometimes dubbed a ‘New Jerusalem’, again speaking to the effectiveness of the relocation of Passion relics. Following directly from a Crusade-inspired interest in the Holy Land, this approach to relics and their display and veneration testifies to a desire for a renewed experience of the life of Christ in the late Middle Ages and prepares the ground for the collections we will discuss.

The Sancta Sanctorum and Rome

In the eleventh century, the Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae praised the private chapel of the popes in the Lateran Palace as the most important sacred space in Rome; by the thirteenth century the chapel was called the Sancta Sanctorum in emulation of the biblical Temple (illus. 40).³⁰ The reference may have been to the Ark-like cedar chest, constructed by Pope Leo III, that rested under the altar, but soon the appellation was extended to the entire chapel. Relic lists in the Descriptio, a pilgrim’s guide, noted many elements purportedly from the Holy Land and included others that filled out the narrative of Christ’s life and the Passion with touching physical specificity: bread as well as thirteen lentils from the Last Supper; bits of Passion relics such as the sponge, the lance and the True Cross, as well as a series of stones ‘of Mary where she stopped [the Kathisma, see illus. 6], of the Jordan where the Lord sat when he was baptized, of Bethlehem, of the Mount of Olives where the Lord prayed to his father, of where the angel sat at the Sepulchre, of the column where Christ was whipped’, and ‘of the Sepulchre’, and finally ‘of the wood of the crib’ (not listed is the ‘loot’ from the Temple: Aaron’s rod, the seven-branched candlestick, the altar of incense, the jar of manna and the shew-bread table which were often also said to be in the altar).

40 View of the altar with the Acheropita, Sancta Sanctorum, Lateran Palace, Rome.

A pilgrim thinking of these relics makes what could be called a mental Holy Land itinerary. Indeed, some of the stones described might be the very ones now in the little box that was retrieved from the altar and which originally came into being as a souvenir or blessing from the Holy Land (see illus. 4). But perhaps the most important and renowned relic in the chapel was the image of the Saviour, said to be painted by Luke, the Acheropita (a distortion of the Greek word acheiropoieton, given this appellation because the icon was reputed to have been finished by an angel). Only the golden reliquary of the True Cross, which was said in the eleventh century to hold a relic of the foreskin, had equal status among the Lateran treasures.

The icon was considered to be the true face of Christ and it was the focus of a series of rituals centred in the private (and tiny) chapel but which also moved out into the city of Rome through elaborate processions in which the pope participated. In one of these processions, held on the night before the Feast of the Assumption,³¹ Christ, personified by the icon, went to ‘meet his mother’ in the form of a Marian icon, the Salus Populi Romani, in Santa Maria Maggiore. The feet of the icon were washed at Sta Francesca Romana (formerly Sta Maria Nova), where the ‘knee’ gushed forth miraculous oil while psalms were chanted and crowds genuflected. In processions, the pope did not carry the icon but did carry the famous golden reliquary cross with the foreskin so that both of these potent objects were ‘visible’ to the public, albeit contained in reliquaries of sorts (the icon was covered in gold, silver and enamel, leaving only the face – now repainted – visible). Indeed, actually seeing these relics was perilous: one legend reported by Gerald of Wales tells of a pope who attempted to scrutinize the image of Christ and was struck blind in consequence.³²

It was, however, the possession of the Acheropita that inspired the boast in the title of the Descriptio: ‘the most important sanctuary of the Lord of holy Rome’. Nevertheless, beginning in the eleventh century, the Lateran felt compelled to respond to competition from across Rome as St Peter’s began to be asserted as an equally important repository of treasure. In addition to the incomparable body of the Apostle, St Peter’s had acquired, perhaps as early as the tenth century, what was destined to become one of the most famous of the Passion relics and the primary destination of pilgrims to Rome, the Veronica (illus. 41).

From the perspective of an outsider, the twelfth-century chronicler Gerald of Wales saw the two icons as a sort of complementary pair, calling them the Uronica and the Veronica while expressing the opinion that the acrimonious competition between them should be resolved. Nevertheless, an active competition carried forward. In 1208 Pope Innocent III even established an annual procession on the Feast of the Wedding of Cana that paralleled the famous procession of the Acheropita. In his sermon on the occasion, Innocent talks of Mary ‘finding’ her son in this event, but also of the encounter of the viewers and the image as a ‘spiritual wedding between the human soul and Divine Grace’.³³ The Poor Clare Margherita Colonna visited St Peter’s on account of ‘her immense desire to see the image that makes present he for whom she constantly burned with desire’ and, as the sister of a cardinal, was able to gain access to the rarely seen relic.³⁴ This, however, was certainly an exception to the rule, at least until the procession was instituted, after which many people ‘saw’ the relic. But what, we must ask, did they see?

41 Master of the Munich Veronica (15th century), St Veronica with the Shroud of Christ, oil on wood, 48.2 × 78.1 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany.

In a private audience in 1191, the first time the cloth was clearly described as having a ‘face’, Pope Celestin III showed the Veronica as well as the relic heads of Peter and Paul to Philip Augustus, the king of France who was just returning from Crusade. It was also Celestin who had the cloth installed in a ciborium (a typical way to protect and ‘display’ relics in Rome, something like a large tabernacle). The relic was celebrated with as many as ten lamps burning before it. Canons and supporters of the Vatican wanted to assert that the Veronica was not only a ‘true image’ of the face of Christ, but a Passion relic that revealed suffering and could make a significant spiritual impact on the viewer. If so, these features are more evident in the many copies and versions rather than in the physical nature of the cloth itself (which is now said to be tucked away high in one of the piers of St Peter’s).

The original relic of the Veronica was ‘copied’ and disseminated widely, with features decidedly more recognizable in these copies than in the original. Remarkably, the copies show an extremely wide variation in details, and this variation is revealing. One of the earliest pictures of the Veronica, by the English chronicler Matthew Paris, exhibited a bust-length, strictly frontal image with a halo. Most replicas, however, focus on just the face against a white cloth or even ‘encased’ in a metal frame. These versions overlap in details with replicas of the Acheropita, not surprising in that that image was also barely visible through most of its existence.

Saint Veronica, as the enabling agent of the relic, joins other women, along with Mary, who are linked to important cloth relics. Significantly, she also came to be associated with the Gospel story of the bleeding woman, a primary scriptural demonstration of the means by which matter might work as a channel of the divine (Mark 5:21–43). The bleeding woman had faith that if she touched the hem of Christ’s robe she would be healed. The story turns on the comments of Christ, who felt the woman’s miraculous touch as distinctively separate from the jostling of the crowd. As with all interactions with relics, it is most important that the devotee have faith, but the story also demonstrates the transmissive power of material stuff, and that fabric, specifically through its suppleness, thinness, even translucency, can function as a second skin. As above, with the seamless robe, the Veronica relic is conceptually associated with skin.

In a painting by the Master of Saint Veronica from about 1420 we see the fully elaborated iconography (see illus. 41). Here the viewer is implicated in a social relation with Veronica herself as she solemnly meditates, holding up the cloth for us to see. Her sadness emphasizes the image in its status as relic – that is, testimony to the Passion of Christ in the past, even if it also bestows on the object a ‘real presence’. As is typical, the holy face is isolated on the cloth, entirely frontal and darkened – with blood, with age, with mystery. New elements that did not appear in earlier images of the veil include a suffering expression and the Crown of Thorns that pierces the skin of the ‘image’ and forces out rivulets of blood, again emphasizing the human suffering. Now the stains of ‘sweat’ that made the legendary image on the cloth are therefore joined by stains of blood. The halo is a lacy fantasy that surrounds the head, indicating the divine aura, even protruding from the bottom of the forked beard.

Such pictorial elaborations are indicative of a profound shift that occurs between the early fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, traced to the interaction of the image with indulgences, especially those promulgated by Innocent III (which were attached to these images although the pope did not require that one say the prayer before an image). During the Jubilee year of 1350, a spurious bull of Clement VI promised the Jubilee indulgence for all sins only if the pilgrim saw the relic of the Veronica. The ‘vernicle’ or pilgrim badge representing the Veronica eventually became a mark of the pilgrimage to Rome; it would appear that by means of St Veronica’s flourishing cult, St Peter’s took the lead in the Roman competition.

Relics and Crusaders, Saint Louis and the Sainte-Chapelle

We began this section on relic collections with a discussion of the relics in Constantinople, the Christian capital of the Empire. They became the envy of the Christian world and later, with the Sack of 1204, the source of relics for collections across Europe. However, before the Fourth Crusade, Constantinople was already a fount of relics, although rather than a flood the dispersal was a controlled and minimal ‘trickle’. Before the Crusades, the True Cross can be characterized as the most desired of all Byzantine imperial gifts, valued even over precious materials or treasures of consummate workmanship. As such, it represented tremendous political power.³⁵ That is, specifically, after Emperor Heraclius won it back from the Persians in the seventh century, Byzantine emperors controlled the largest portion of the relic of the True Cross (although a portion was said to remain in Jerusalem). The Cross, of course, was the motivating symbol of the Crusades, worn by every crusader on his cloak, and after the Fourth Crusade, relics of the cross came pouring into Europe.

42 Sainte-Chapelle interior, Paris, 1238–9, built by Louis IX.

The story of the Crusades can indeed be told as the story of a series of relics found, given and stolen, and shrines appropriated. The crusaders justified their mission, claiming that they sought to protect the sacred matter and places of the Holy Land from the spoliation of the infidels. Once they captured Jerusalem, they restructured Holy Land shrines including the Holy Sepulchre and the Shrine of the Ascension (see illus. 8).³⁶ Major turning points in the course of war were attributed to relics – for example, the disaster of the capture of the True Cross, or the events of the Siege of Antioch centring on the discovery and subsequent disastrous capture of the Holy Lance. Most importantly for the history of relics in Western Europe, Crusaders returning with relics from the East were able to bring prestige and glory to their lineage, usually through donations to and association with foundations or cathedrals.³⁷

Although we recognize that the Crusaders were following the Byzantine model of creating power through the use of relics, they seem to have conceptualized their actions as modelled on a different imperial power, one closer to their hearts and heritage, that is, the empire-building strategies of Charlemagne in the early Middle Ages.³⁸ A famous window at Chartres Cathedral represents the Carolingian emperor donating a thorn and a nail from the Crucifixion, which Charlemagne himself had purportedly received from the Patriarch of Jerusalem, according to the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, a twelfth-century versified romance. Indeed, this legend seems to have amplified interest in the Crown of Thorns, a relic of little importance in Byzantium before the twelfth century, when Crusaders began to return with relics of the Crown of Thorns along with splinters of the True Cross and lots of pebbles or stone relics, and the desirability of the Crown relic soared.

It was in this cultural climate that Baldwin II, ruler in Byzantium, finding himself in dire need of funds, wrote to his cousin King Louis IX of France about the Crown. Was it Blanche of Castile, Louis’s shrewd and pious mother, or Archbishop Cornut, the writer of the account of the reception of the Crown in France, who urged Louis to acquire the Crown as he prepared to depart for Crusade? In 1237, once the relic was redeemed from the Venetians who had taken it in pawn from Baldwin, plans were set in place to build an astonishing palace chapel in the French capital that would house the incomparable relic – indeed a precious building with enormous stained-glass windows that is often called a reliquary ‘turned inside out’ (illus. 42).

Although no expense was spared in the construction of the building and it became one of the wonders of its age, its cost, at 40,000 gold livres, was dwarfed by the 135,000 livres needed to redeem the relic. (Let us remember, Louis was not ‘buying’ relics but rescuing them, as a favour to Baldwin, a Crusader king and relative.) What did the Capetian king get for his investment? Louis, later St Louis, in acquiring the Crown, became not just the conservator of one of the Passion relics; he became the guardian of one of the most powerful of them all. The Crown was believed to be miraculous through Christ’s blood, ‘always green’ and visibly whole. Indeed, the complete circle of the Crown attested that no matter how many thorns were removed, the French king would always remain in possession of the object in its entirety, which in turn gave him the exclusive right to dispense relics, an idea propagated by the Crown’s iconography (see illus. 44).

Louis dispensed thorns with great ceremony and pomp.³⁹ If possible, the precious gift of each thorn was conveyed by a trusted and spiritually distinguished messenger, Franciscans and Dominicans by preference. The messenger conveyed, along with the relic, one other item which assured its proper reception: a letter of donation from Louis, emphasizing the prestige of the gift that was one tiny part of the whole Crown but a great treasure nonetheless, and insisting that the relic be venerated properly, that is, through both physical and liturgical celebration. In response, in the wake of the gifts, chapels were built and liturgies written. Surviving inventories make much of the thorns, often noting Louis as the source of the relic and even recording the letters. Most remarkable are the precious surviving original reliquaries.

43 Unknown court artist, Paris, reliquary of the Thorn, before 1262, gold, gilded silver, rock crystal and gems, 21 × 9.5 cm, Abbey of Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, Switzerland.

Saint-Maurice d’Agaune, a renowned monastery that was the recipient of many royal, even imperial gifts (see Chapter Two, illus. 28), possesses a beautiful gold, gilded silver, crystal and gemmed example, as well as the original letter of donation (illus. 43).⁴⁰ It was delivered by Abbot Gerold of Saint-Maurice in Paris at Louis’ behest and, remarkably, it is almost identical in all but a few details to another reliquary of the thorn given by Louis to San Francesco in Assisi, apparently delivered to Assisi by St Bonaventure himself.

In both reliquaries, the thorn is held in a precisely cut ovoid of rock crystal drilled with a central cylindrical void to present the thorn both visibly and safely. The stone is so very clear (representing new African sources of crystal that were superior to European ones) that at first glance it would seem to disappear. This is a tremendous difference from crystals on earlier reliquaries, which presented relics under magnification but also behind imperfections and cloudiness (see illus. 12). The clarity of the thorn reliquaries suggests, in fact, that Louis was making a point of the exact nature of his gift: one thorn from the Crown. As the reliquary of the whole Crown in the Sainte-Chapelle was lost during the French Revolution, it is uncertain if it showed the circlet clearly, but its enormous crown shape certainly asserted the undeniable presence and wholeness of the relic.

44 The ostensorium of relics in Sainte-Chapelle, 19th-century copy of the so-called ‘Pontifical of Poitiers’, originally painted for the Duke of Bedford (1389–1435), 1837.

Furthermore, Louis did not acquire only the Crown of Thorns for his treasury. As the reliquary presentation in the Sainte-Chapelle emphasizes (see the platform in illus. 42 and the Grande Chasse in illus. 44), Louis had also acquired portions of the True Cross, the Holy Lance, the vinegar-soaked sponge, the purple cloth, relics of the Virgin, the Mandylion (an acheiropoieton), and a bit of the stone of the Holy Sepulchre, among many other treasures.

The Grande Chasse, at the eastern end of the Sainte-Chapelle, exhibited a full set of the Passion relics in a permanent display. The magnificent church-shaped reliquary cost 100,000 livres, due to the cost of the lavish materials used to make it, and stood on top of an elevated platform behind the altar. The platform was accessible from both lateral sides via two spiral staircases and must have been of a generous size as there are records of relic showings in which the fortunate viewer had room to kneel on the platform to pray.

In order to access the relics, however, the Chasse first had to be unlocked. There were six locks, and the keys were the exclusive property of the king. Multiple texts note instances when the king himself opened them. The platform had some sort of mechanism that allowed the shrine to revolve and, although its normal face resembled the profile of a church with a crucifix attached, on days when the relics were exposed to the faithful the entire shrine was turned to reveal a cupboard-like arrangement within which the relics were fixed in more or less permanent positions (although room was made for a bust reliquary of Louis after his death and sanctification). Some representations show curtains, others do not, but they were probably part of the display and used to dramatic effect. Given that the chapel was royal and private, scholars have questioned who might have been able to see the relics, but evidence of vendors who sold snacks and souvenirs in the courtyard outside clearly indicate that the crowds arrived.

Although the Grande Chasse contained a permanent display of the Passion relics encircling the Crown of Thorns and attesting to the prestige of the French crown, other relics further adding to the great and holy lustre of the chapel were housed elsewhere. Later inventories counted almost a thousand items, many of a more local significance, such as the relics of early French bishops that attested to the glory of France herself as a producer of sanctity. The collection allowed a full set of services of every sort of saint and feast to occur in the chapel.

Because the Sainte-Chapelle was indeed a testimony to the glory of France, its architecture epitomized opus francigenum, the new Gothic style that, though it was spreading across Europe in countless cathedrals, was most particularized to Louis and this moment. Much of the colour of medieval architecture (primarily in the form of paint) has been lost over the centuries, but few churches could have been as gloriously and fully decorated as was the Sainte-Chapelle, where every surface was purported to have been painted, gilded, even encrusted with statuary and ‘gems’.⁴¹ And of course, the voids are filled with some of the most exquisite, soaring stained-glass windows of the Middle Ages.

The sculptures attached to the piers represent the Apostles, the ‘enamel’ medallions (actually painted) tell the passions of martyrs, and the windows include the stories of the Old Testament kings. One remarkable window details the history of the relic of the Crown of Thorns along with its progression across France and reception by Louis and his family, Queen Blanche and Archbishop Cornut. Indeed, Louis’ possession of the Crown connects his line to that of the Old Testament kings, specifically David and Solomon (and the reliquary of the Crown is likened to the shape of the royal crown).

The Crown, ultimately, revealed itself to be the perfect subject for devotion. Louis’ own veneration of the relic was worthy of a saint, involving tears and long sessions of prayer and meditation. As the subject of veneration by other devotees, the Crown relic had the potential not only to evoke stories of the mocking of Christ and the Crucifixion, but also to literally manifest the materials of Christ’s torture. Pain is not easily imagined without an instrument by which it could be inflicted – a knife, a needle or a sharp thorn.⁴² In imagining Christ’s torture, the devotee turns the torture upon him- or herself and thereby accepts the consequences of sin and the hope of redemption. In the first decades of the fifteenth century Thomas à Kempis, in his devotional text the Meditations on the Life of Christ, wrote:

Prick at last the hardness of my heart, and with the sharpest thorn on Thy head pierce its very centre; that all in my blood that is hurtful, mingled with the evils of the flesh, may pour forth from the wound and the great spur of Thy sacred love remain fixed therein . . . where once was the thorn of envy [will grow] the lily of chastity.⁴³

In taking up a particular devotion to the Crown, some worshippers even received its ‘marks’, following the example of St Rita of Cascia, who may have been the first to receive such a wound. When Rita asked to suffer like her Lord, her legend reports, a thorn from a sculpture of Christ crucified fell and left a wound in Rita’s forehead that never healed. Although during her life the wound smelled of putrefying flesh, at her death her body took on the scent of roses. The miraculous mark on Rita’s body was made after her interaction with an artwork, and although relic thorns gained tremendous prestige as elite ecclesiastical and diplomatic gifts (see illus. 32, 38, 43), in monasteries and private devotional spaces the Crown became something even more than a relic. As a vision that lodged in the devotional imagination after being provoked by the sight of menacing spines or flowing gore, the Crown became the ultimate symbol of Christ’s suffering, as well as in some sense a frame for Christ’s face that allows its close and pious examination.

In sum, Louis’ Sainte-Chapelle was a remarkable achievement in the creation of holy space and display of relics. It celebrated what became one of the most renowned relics of Christendom and through a series of ever more glorious levels of presentation – from reliquary, to Grande Chasse, to platform and finally the chapel itself – put the ensemble forward as an evocation of heavenly space and an incomparably powerful recreation of the Temple and a direct link to the divine. As a result, it launched a devotion to the relic of the Crown of Thorns that has remarkable potency even today.

Charles IV, Prague and Karlštejn

One of the special guests privileged to visit the Sainte-Chapelle and see its relics was a young Bohemian prince who never forgot the power and splendour of the relics and their setting. When he had an opportunity, he recreated the effect in a unique ensemble of his own (illus. 45).

45 Bohemian artist, the Man of Sorrows, 1347–49, gilded silver, silver, champlevé enamel and glass paste (imitation ruby), 29.5 × 21.3 (w. at wings) × 12.7 cm, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD. Commissioned by John Volek, Bishop of Olomouc, for Charles IV; once held a thorn relic behind the crystal.

As a young man of seventeen, in 1333 Charles IV returned from his youth in Paris to a ruined Bohemia.⁴⁴ Under occupation in 1279–80, the country’s churches had been plundered, and during the rule of his father, John of Luxembourg, treasuries had been largely ignored or worse, drained of ready funds. Charles set out to create a new beginning. The collection and disposition of relics and the making of reliquaries became a primary tool of nation building as well as a means of self-definition for the young ruler. We should understand his actions as the ideational conduit between the relic strategies of the Holy Roman Empire, especially in Aachen and Cologne (see illus. 12),⁴⁵ those of Louis IX, the Capetians and the Valois, and the later actions of the Wittelsbachs and Habsburgs (to be discussed in the next chapter). Charles followed Louis’ lead not in one project but many, especially in glorifying his capital of Prague, around which he built walls that multiplied its size by an order of four, and inside of which he endowed churches and monasteries, showering them with many, many relics. Raised as the human repository of the ambitions of many of his relatives, Charles fulfilled them perhaps beyond any reasonable expectation. His aspirational relic collection reflects his political and spiritual goals and represents a peak of medieval relic collecting.

As Charles began his meteoric rise to power, one of his first moves was to persuade the pope, his former tutor, to free the bishopric of Prague from the control of Mainz and to raise its status from bishopric to arch-bishopric, a task accomplished in 1344. A second important move was to found a university in 1348, the only one in Central Europe. These acts established Prague as a centre of learning and spirituality; Charles went on to make it a centre of art.

After finally becoming king of Bohemia in 1346 at his father’s death, Charles was elected king of the Romans in 1347, a position that has been characterized as that of ‘anti-king’ because of the ensuing and continual struggles with the other claimant for the throne, Ludwig the Bavarian (who acrimoniously contended with both the pope and Charles’s family, the Luxembourgs). With the help of the pope, and calling on his own great political acumen, Charles was at last crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome in 1355 and even had his son crowned as his successor in 1376. As Holy Roman Emperor, to spin a variant of the old joke: Charles was surely not Roman, but he could make a claim to being holier than most and worked hard to be an emperor. In rebuilding his country and especially the Bohemian capital, the most eastern of the great European cities, Charles focused on the early lessons of his mother, reinforced and aggrandized by what he had seen in France.

He rebuilt St Vitus in Prague as a combination of Saint-Denis, Reims and the Sainte-Chapelle – that is, as royal burial church, coronation church and reliquary treasury.⁴⁶ His efforts, with the help of the brilliant architect Peter Parler, produced one of the most theatrical of cathedrals in a city organized around processional axes and spectacular views. The hill of the palace and cathedral provides a breathtaking vantage point from which to survey the city, but at the same time also rises above that very city as a looming presence. From the New Town, the cathedral and palace seem an almost celestial destination accessible by means of the then new and glorious Charles Bridge crossing the Moldau River.

The architecture of St Vitus confounds description (see illus. 35, 75). A wholly new conception of light and airy soaring Gothic space with spectacular and innovative vaults, it is nevertheless grounded upon the purposeful retention of venerable sanctity and tradition – that is, it surrounds and protects the ‘oldness’ of the sombre and dark chapel that is the burial spot of the martyr St Wenceslaus (and the precise location of a succession of churches built in his honour, illus. 46).

As ancestor of the king and early nobility of the dynasty, Duke Wenceslaus was celebrated above all others as the Bohemian saint par excellence. Charles, in effect, paired him with his newly acquired patron, the Burgundian king Sigismund (from the opposite extreme of his empire and enshrined in a chapel across the nave of the cathedral), as holy royal forbears. Charles himself was eventually buried in the centre of the nave between them.

46 Peter Parler, wall painting, with hardstone insets, gold pastiglia and other materials, 1372–6, St Wenceslaus Chapel, St Vitus Cathedral, Prague.

While the cathedral was not yet complete (the foundation stone was laid by Charles in 1344 but building continued even after Parler’s death in 1399), Charles took advantage of its spatial potential and staged his own coronation, following the new ordo (coronation liturgy) that he had helped to write, and making use of the new and gorgeous ‘Wenceslaus’ crown that he had commissioned. The crown has now become part of the national regalia, but origin-ally, after its first use in the coronation ceremony, was intended for deposit in the cathedral as an ornament for and donation to the golden reliquary bust of Wenceslaus commissioned by the emperor.

Although our primary goal here is a discussion of Charles’s relic display in the Chapel of the Holy Cross in his castle of Karlštejn (illus. 47), 30 km southwest of Prague and consecrated in 1365 (the castle itself was completed in 1372), the emperor’s projects were so interrelated and complex that they must be discussed together in order to understand anything of their contemporary significance. Thus, although the Wenceslaus Chapel in the cathedral was not consecrated until 1367, the two chapels at Karlštejn and Prague were conceived, constructed and decorated in tandem, reinforcing one another’s meaning both symbolically and spiritually.

47 Chapel of the Holy Cross, 1360–64, wall painting with hardstone insets, gold pastiglia and other materials, Karlštejn Castle, Czech Republic.

Perhaps the most striking consonance between the two projects was the gold and precious gems or, to apply modern precision, we’ll call them the semi-precious stones and gilded pastiglia, that were used to clothe the walls of the chapels. The same stone is used on the shrine of Wenceslaus and in another palace chapel built by Charles in Tangermünde in Brandenburg. Without doubt the use of the stone evokes associations with the Heavenly Jerusalem and its portals of precious stones, as described in Revelation. A contemporary Czech life of Catherine describes her mystical marriage as taking place in such a room, with a floor of

beryl, the walls of diamonds set in gold, [with] many tiny windows . . . in which gleamed precious stones instead of glass: hyacinths and rubies, turquoise, sardonyx, balas rubies in ivory, jasper, chalcedony, chrysolite, amethyst, pearls, [all] exquisitely worked.⁴⁷

Such descriptions are a feature of mythic royal rooms in medieval literature. Otherworldly effects are achieved at Karlštejn by the rich colours of the inlaid wall revetment and, in fact, the original windows did have translucent inlaid stones rather than glass. Of particular significance for contemporary viewers was that the wall revetment stones were of Bohemian – that is, local – origin, so that while the reference is to heaven, there is no doubt of the ‘localization’ of the sanctifying effect.

Charles was obviously so enamoured with the extraordinary and enclosing effect of such stone cladding that he used it in all his most important projects. Indeed, at Karlštejn he covered over recently finished frescoes with an encrustation of the stones in the so-called Catherine Chapel (actually more properly called the Chapel of the Most Glorious Passion and its Signs, but also the Oratory of Charles IV, see illus. 49). The effect has reminded one scholar of an incident recorded concerning Charles’s grandfather. Apparently, frightened of thunderstorms, he had an altar-shaped retreat constructed. When storms threatened, he would place relics on the upper surface and crawl inside, calling for the intercession of the saints.

Both the Catherine Chapel and the Holy Cross Chapel recall such a womb-like and magical retreat. Indeed both are not only filled with relics but also encrusted with health-giving gems – in the Holy Cross Chapel gems hang from the grille, and an ancient cameo of Medusa adorns the boss of the vault of the Catherine Chapel.⁴⁸ Now, however, rather than a retreat for a fearful soul, these chapels are the expression of Charles’s visions of a glorious, elevated, yet also private and salvific space.

The creation of such holy space – often, again, likened to a reliquary turned inside out – required a degree of artistic mastery not readily available in the workshops of Bohemia. Charles summoned some of the greatest talents of his age to work for him: architects Matthias from Arras and Peter Parler from Schwäbisch Gmünd, and painters Nicholas Wurmser from Strasbourg and Master Theodoric from Prague. The team also included many silver- and goldsmiths and even a court stone polisher, Johann, all summoned to realize the emperor’s desire to display the relics he collected in the finest manner possible. Charles collected voraciously, while also selectively and with purpose. He acquired hundreds of relics and, though he redistributed most of these to the churches and monasteries he founded, it is thought that 60 per cent of the relics still in St Vitus are due to his donations. It was almost as if he considered that his position as emperor allowed him to declare a sort of ‘eminent domain’ in terms of relics he thought could be employed more effectively in another location. He opened altars and coffins that had not been disturbed in centuries, arriving with large groups of ecclesiastical worthies and pressuring timid monks or canons for a gift of their relics. Despite the horrified protests of the monks of St Gall, he collected part of the skull and half the body of Othmar, making use of a saw in the process. Clearly he understood the Church’s doctrine on relics – even the tiniest fragment could stand for the undiminished power of the saint – but nevertheless he had a certain affection for whole bodies or at least their skulls. (Under his patronage Prague Cathedral had an unprecedented number of head reliquaries.)

The story of his acquisition of the body of St Sigismund as recounted by Jean d’Orville in La Chronique de Savoie, whether accurate or not, is telling. Charles became interested in the king and martyr Sigismund when he encountered the relics at the monastery of Einsiedeln in 1364 and took away part of a skull along with the arm of St Maurice. Then, in 1365, after Charles revived an ancient custom, not practised since Emperor Barbarossa in 1178, of being crowned as king of Burgundy in Arles as successor of the sixth-century Sigismund, he travelled to Agaune to visit the primary relics. The ancient monastery had been dedicated by Sigismund himself, to the saint and martyr soldier, Maurice, the commander of the Theban Legion (the warrior saints who were so important to German princes, as we have seen). In the sixth century, after his martyrdom, Sigismund’s body and those of his sons had been returned to Agaune and purportedly caused miracles.

Jean d’Orville’s chronicle claims that when the emperor arrived, the canons at Saint-Maurice did not know the location of the king’s body. A determined Charles revealed an old manuscript he had been studying that not only told the life of the saint but also specified his precise burial spot. The entourage swept into the chapel and, by torchlight, determined a spot on the wall to break through – and the martyr was found. Charles took the skull (the canon’s letter of authentication attests that he also got half the body) but when he then asked for the relics of Maurice, the monks finally found their courage, protested and were able to persuade him to accept a ‘contact’ relic, an axe, instead.

Charles was careful to characterize his actions at Agaune not as theft, but as a furta sacra, the oxymoronic term for holy theft, claiming that the canons at Agaune were not taking proper care of the Sigismund relic, as evidenced by his assertion that they did not know where the body of Sigismund lay. Being able to make this claim was important, as it put Charles’s actions in the category of ‘rescue’ rather than ‘theft’. After pursuing this strategy, however, Charles’s decision to leave behind a portion of the relics in a lavish reliquary was a judicious final move.⁴⁹ Such exchanges and subsequent promotion of cult veneration justified Charles’s frequent ‘eminent domain’ claims. Further justification could be found in a letter Charles addressed to the pope, in which he asserted that many of the relics he took were originally given to institutions by his predecessors as emperor, particularly by his patron saint Charlemagne. As a result, Charles argued, he was simply reclaiming the relics.

A great light shone down on the city upon the arrival of the relics of St Sigismund in Prague and a book was written in 1366 that collected the stories of other miracles caused by the relics. We have already noted that Sigismund came to reside in a pendant chapel to that of Wenceslaus in the cathedral, and Charles even had another gold head reliquary made for Sigismund, to pair him more precisely with the older Bohemian royal martyr.

Although many saints’ stories are written as if it were the case, this account should put to rest any idea that the acquisition of relics was fortuitous or opportunistic. Instead, in the case of Charles’s acquisition of the relics of Sigismund, we see a very different picture: the purposeful forging of structures of power; the consolidation and expansion of legend; the polishing of the lustre of long traditions of veneration, and the culminating creation of spectacular artworks that present and glorify newly acquired relics. It is not surprising that the Czech people responded with alacrity to Sigismund’s presence and that a cult developed that overshadowed the veneration of the native royal saint Wenceslaus.

We can reconstruct a similar purposeful and astutely political approach to the creation of an artwork – a reliquary cross with Passion relics that Charles created in 1353–5 for Karlštejn and which he fully intended to have become a national treasure, bringing glory to his people and to his own position as emperor. Indeed, with this project, one can’t help but ask if, in his emulation of Louis IX, he was not aspiring to equivalent recognition – that is, hoping to become a dynastic saint like Louis, or Charles’s own ancestor Wenceslaus. We may presume he did not achieve such recognition because of his son’s lack of success as a ruler and the Hussite uprisings that obviated such an outcome – canonization proceedings took a significant investment in both time and money.

Charles’s Bohemian reliquary cross, although no longer extant, is clearly represented in three pictures at Karlštejn (for two of the three, see illus. 48, 49).⁵⁰ Two are in the small tower, one in the Mary Chapel (illus. 48) and the other in the so-called Catherine Chapel (over the door as one departs the chapel). The third is located in a damaged fresco on the stairs leading up to the Chapel of the Holy Cross in the high tower. All show a massive cross with gemmed quadrilobes at the cross ends and a fifth quadrilobe at the juncture of the arms (the images were all once gilded with added ornament and ‘gems’, probably of glass).

This cross should be contrasted (and in illus. 47 one can see both, if barely) to a very different cross on another wall of the Mary Chapel, made of the Bohemian gemstone encrustations and framed in gilded pastiglia banding. That cross, with its massive ‘stepped’ support and crux gemmata form, should be thought of as recalling the Cross on Golgotha in the Holy Land, whose erection is now attributed to the efforts of Emperor Theodosius, but in the Middle Ages was thought to have been placed on the site of the Crucifixion by Emperor Constantine himself.

Remarkably, this Karlštejn cross is in a dynamic relationship with a narrative scene above it – the cross of Golgotha, which reminds viewers of the place of Christ’s death, here gives way to his resurrection above. The scenes are united in their use of inset stones and gold pastiglia framing, as well as by a long inscription in Latin that begins: In hoc sepulchrum . . ., ‘In this sepulchre . . .’, and continues on to list a series of Holy Land relics – what must have been tiny pebbles and splinters embedded in the wall

of the stone of the sepulchre of the Lord . . . of the crib of the Lord, from the place of the Last supper, from the place where Thomas touched him . . . from the place where the virgin died, from the place of the Ascension . . .

This ‘gemmed’ cross therefore is not only a depiction of the Golgotha cross but also is united to a fully realized reliquary, in effect itself a ‘holy sepulchre’, a pilgrim’s cross containing relics that physically and metaphorically unite Bohemia to the Holy Land through the relics under the stone of the tomb, in the very wall of the chapel.

48 Nicholas Wurmser of Strasbourg(?), Crux gemmata, 1357–8, wall painting with hardstone insets and pastiglia, Chapel of Our Lady, Karlštejn Castle, Czech Republic.

Perhaps Charles’s gold reliquary cross, as a crux gemmata, made in devotion by an emperor, is meant to echo this ‘Constantinian’ cross. Both show prominent cross ends and prominent green stones (any others are mostly missing). Charles must have also intended another reference – that is, to the great reliquary cross of the Holy Roman Empire, today in Vienna. It too is made of wood covered with gold, includes interior compartments for relics, has prominent cross ends with central gems surrounded by other gems, and contains a large relic of the True Cross that looks very like the one Charles holds in the fresco.

Despite all Charles’s efforts to elevate his gold reliquary cross to the highest sacred status, it does not survive. He himself melted it down and made a new one of pure gold in c. 1370 to accommodate yet another relic of the True Cross, a gift in 1360 from the Byzantine emperor. The cross that survives in the cathedral of St Vitus has lily-formed terminals in a French manner and reveals its relics through windows and capsules – three separate relics of the True Cross including the Byzantine gift and a large piece that was a gift from the French; two thorns, again a gift from the French; as well as relics of the sponge, a gift from Duke Alois Gonzaga of Mantua, and a holy nail. With the ornamentation of this even more magnificent new cross, which includes exquisite sapphires, pearls and imperial cameos, of both ancient and Byzantine provenance, Charles clearly intended to supersede his original statement. Now he is emperor, displaying relic gifts from many royal and imperial sources. As king of kings, he is no longer building a great reliquary collection; it – and he – have clearly arrived.

Nevertheless, in order fully to understand Charles’s intentions for the use and display of his imperial cross – and why it was so important to him – we must return to the ‘portraits’ of the first gold cross at Karlštejn. The first representation of the reliquary seems to be in the frescoes on the wall that flanks the entrance to the Catherine Chapel. There, in a much-remarked series, we see three active and highly symbolic exchanges (illus. 49). In the first, Charles is dressed in gold shoes and a delightful, lavish green-lined cloak covered with images of parrots(!). Crowned with the imperial crown, which includes, underneath, a bishop’s mitre with lappets, he is seen accepting a large piece of the True Cross and two long thorns from the French king (dressed much more simply in blue). This has been variously argued as representing Jean II or Charles V as Dauphin. In the second scene, again, Charles, now in ermine-lined red, accepts an unidentified gift from a king in green (who some have suggested is the Byzantine emperor, or the king of Hungary or Cyprus). In the third and final scene, Charles has moved decisively from under the arches and into a vaulted chapel (perhaps having first ‘climbed’ the lavish steps below, which can be read as a reference to Solomon’s palace of the Song of Songs with its ‘lattices’ on windows through which one might peer: Song of Songs 2:8–9). The priest-king Charles now steps up onto the altar space, bending humbly in order to place the relic of the True Cross into the larger Relic Cross. Dressed in gilded brocades, the most elaborate of Charles’s costumes yet, the emperor reverentially grasps the elaborately defined foot of the cross stand, which is ornamented with flying buttresses and pinnacles in a clear reference to the Prague style of Gothic architecture (as above, see illus. 35). The depiction of the emperor about to place the relic into the cross indicates Charles’s assumption here of quasi-priestly roles, especially confirmed by the episcopal pretensions of his crown.

49 Nicholas Wurmser of Strasbourg, Charles Receiving Relic of the Passion and Placing them in the Cross, before 1357, wall painting, Chapel of Our Lady, southern wall, Karlštejn Castle, Czech Republic.

The precision of these depictions and their indication of Charles’s direct role in these proceedings do not seem to be fiction. After commissioning this cross, Charles proceeded to appeal to the pope to allow a seven-year and seven-quarantine indulgence in 1357 (equal to the lavish Aachen indulgences for the Virgin’s camisa, or for the regalia of the Holy Roman Empire), when it was displayed in the newly built civic spaces of New Town along with the regalia. The emperor was also involved in writing the liturgy for that ceremony. Such literally hands-on involvement bespeaks Charles’s belief in the power of relics, but also his belief in the power of relics’ ability to arouse devotion, incite action and bind groups together. With his reliquary cross, he intended to forge a new identity for Bohemia that demonstrated the honour due to him (and, he hoped, his lineage) as Holy Roman Emperor. He could not legally lay claim to the imperial relics and regalia – they were always only on loan to the elected emperor – but he could create a collection of relics that rivalled their glory.

If we now again look to the details of the representation of Charles and Anna of Świdnica, his third wife, above the door of the Catherine Chapel (illus. 50), we are struck by the queen’s beauty, the king’s expression of devout eagerness, and the way in which the imperial pair hold the cross. Their hands elevate the precious object, almost caress it, but also take a precise position that becomes a flesh and blood reiteration of the beautiful cross stand, their hands mimicking the architectural structures so apparent in the two other mural portraits of this cross. It has been suggested that in this image, Charles and Anna recreate the homage of Constantine and Helena to the True Cross, but I would suggest that they are not only a reincarnation of sorts of that saintly imperial pair, they are also the incarnation of imperial dignity (Charles now in gold robe with the imperial eagles), and of Prague and Bohemia itself as ‘support’ for the exaltation of this most holy Bohemian cross.

The cross was, in fact, originally intended to be kept in the Catherine Chapel – that is, until the Chapel of the Holy Cross in the high tower could be completed. Consecrated in 1365, the latter emerged as a tour de force display of both the emulation of old ideas and the introduction of new ones. In the seemingly impregnable heavy-walled fortress at the top of the high tower, protected by four doors and nineteen locks, accessible only to the privileged few, Charles sponsored what has to be recognized as one of the most beautiful and compelling of relic ensembles, one that likely represented for Charles the culmination of his expression of devotion to the saints, the Passion of Christ, the Empire and its heritage and rule.

50 Nicholas Wurmser of Strasbourg, Charles IV and Anna of ēwidnica, mural above the entrance portal, Oratory of Charles IV, c. 1360, wall painting, added hardstone inserts and gold pastiglia, Karlštejn Castle, Czech Republic.

As many have noted, the Holy Cross Chapel recalls visions of the Heavenly Jerusalem, but a Heavenly Jerusalem inflected by contemporary political and spiritual exigencies. Rows of saints are represented, the most impressive painted by the king’s artist Theodoric, who created figures that appear fully round, weighty and present. Their gestures and glances create a forceful network of psychological power within the relatively small but glorious chapel. Saints featured include the Apostles, martyrs, confessors, knights, monks, nuns and virgins, with prophets and angels supporting and commenting at the margins. Each holy person was characterized individually by means of hairstyle and colour, costume, attribute and gesture. Each image was made the more potent with the inclusion of a relic wrapped in gold foil in the lower frame of the image (now removed except for KA 3721, which survived in the upper frame).⁵¹ Many figures overlap the frames that enclose them, seeming to begin to protrude into the space of the chapel. Each looks out from his or her niche with large, liquid and beseeching eyes.

51 Master Theodoric, St George, 1360–64, paint and gold on panel, 115 × 90 cm approx., Chapel of the Holy Cross, Karlštejn Castle, Czech Republic.

Given the particularization of the images and their distinctive sense of personality, it is all the more ironic that most are now unidentifiable. Theodoric seems not to have wanted to disturb the spatial illusion he created by using text labels, and presumably the saints were once identified with authentics that were visible behind the crystal relic covers. Of course, habitués of the palace knew their identity. One of the knights that can still be identified with certainty is St George (illus. 51). His image was lavishly embellished with added elements of gilded tin, and pastiglia details of brooch, halo, the rim of the shield and the belt. Frequent restorations of the panels (as early as c. 1600) have damaged the fine finish and modelling of figures such as this one, but George still emerges as a sympathetic and lively figure. The motif of the shield wrapping around the body and receding into space gives the figure a vital quality of presence, as if he were about to speak.

52 Master Theodoric, upper centre: Crucifixion and Man of Sorrows with Angels and Saints, 1360–64, paint and gold on panel, with lower centre: inserted triptych by Tomaso da Modena, Virgin with SS Wenceslas and Palmatius, c. 1355, tempera on wood, Chapel of the Holy Cross, Karlštejn Castle, Czech Republic.

In contrast, other figures such as St Ludmila are relatively unadorned and painted only in shades of white and blue which, however, masterfully create three-dimensional folds of cloth that so successfully define these figures. Both Ludmila and George are located behind the grille that divides the chapel into two zones; that is, they are closer to the altar. If we turn to the images that dominate the space before the grille, instead of Apostles, bishops and martyrs we find the doctors of the Church, holy knights and, in particular, a series of sainted emperors. These rulers hold orbs of power and heraldic shields (attached to the images, but mostly of later reconstruction, illus. 47). They make an impressive array of Charles’s forbears: he specifically traced his lineage to Charlemagne and we have seen he emulated Constantine and venerated St Louis.

Finally, if we attend to the paintings around the altar, we see a striking ensemble. Above the altar and the grilled cupboard that was used to hold and secure the Bohemian reliquary cross and the imperial regalia, is a series of devotional images, surrounded by the icons of the Evangelists and St Anne (illus. 52). Just as Charles focused his piety on relics of the Passion, so these images trace Christ’s incarnation, culminating in the Crucifixion above. The lowest triptych is, in fact, an inserted panel that was painted by the Italian artist Tomaso da Modena in tempera rather than the oil of the other panels, and was imported from Treviso (1355–9). It depicts the Madonna and Child with saints Wenceslaus and Palmatius. Above this image of Christ’s childhood is a beautiful and tragic figure of Christ as the ‘Man of Sorrows’, displaying three actively, profusely bleeding wounds.

The painting doubles as a representation of the Entombment as the Three Marys approach from Christ’s left, bringing jars of ointment. A large rectangular depression in the purple simulated stone of the sarcophagus is reminiscent of the ‘tomb’ with relics from the resurrection image in the Mary Chapel discussed earlier (see illus. 48). Perhaps following that precedent, this tomb also held Holy Land relics. Above, the cycle culminates in an image of the Crucifixion with Mary and John mourning, now revealing all five wounds.

The large dark mark that is clearly visible in the centre of Christ’s chest in that mural is not, however, one of the wounds, unless we think of it as a wound to the painting. In this spot in the fabric of the painting were embedded two small splinters of the True Cross. Similarly, a bit of the sponge was embedded next to Christ’s side wound, and a bit of a thorn was inserted into the halo in such a manner that it touched (or ‘pierced’) Christ’s head. Presumably, this use of relics was almost invisible to the uninformed viewer, as they were originally covered in paint and held tight within the surface. Only the later destructive removal of the relics has made the repositories so visible. But these were the relics that were most precious to Charles, the very ones he celebrated in the Bohemian Reliquary Cross and envisioned as the focus and motivation to his personal piety.

There is no doubt that Charles succeeded beyond measure in his project of sanctifying Prague and Bohemia. His Prague realized a ‘golden age’, the period always remembered as the apex of the glory of the Church in Bohemia. Crowds at annual relic showings were huge and the completed cathedral is one of the most magnificent in Europe. But even if our attention is drawn to the city, to the bridge, to the church architecture, to Theodoric’s paintings, to the beauty of the goldsmiths’ work, Charles’s own attention never waivered from his precious relics. He gave them to his church and to his city, embedded them in walls and in crosses, but always held them close to his heart. In his chapel, it must be admitted, he created his own private Jerusalem.

4

The Reliquary After Trent: The Affective, the Collective

AT FIRST GLANCE, Matthias Gerung’s print of 1546 for a German translation of Sebastian Meyer’s Apocalypse and Satirical Allegories on the Church (illus. 53) recalls medieval representations of the celebration of the Mass – it is organized into two pictorial registers, below a cleric ‘celebrating’, and above a ‘heavenly mass’ paralleling the earthly events.

Closer examination of the woodcut, however, reveals a very different picture. Instead of assisting with a Mass, a pair of demonic figures wearing cardinal’s hats, flames licking their taloned feet, are selling indulgences laden with papal seals. Behind them the pope himself, crowned with his tiara, protectively withholds a covered ciborium, a devil’s head protruding Alien-like from his chest; he is seated at a table rather than celebrating at an altar, and the actual altar, on which is placed an elaborate reliquary-like monstrance, has been relegated to the back of the print, ignored by the elaborately and immodestly dressed congregation who push forward eagerly to buy their way out of sin.

In the upper register, in striking contrast, the Protestant faithful celebrate as part of a primitive church, without ornamental or demonic elements. Children are baptized, congregants hear sermons and freely receive both the host and the wine, and a priest even leaves the church and ministers to a man in the street outside. The condemnation of the excess of Catholic practices is lively and pointed: Catholics are accused of being in league with the devil in an Apocalyptic vision that holds pure religious devotion as the only means of escape from a wicked world.

53 Matthias Gerung, Apocalypse and Satirical Allegories on the Church, 1546, woodcut, 23.3 × 16.2 cm. Commissioned by Count Palatine Ottheinrich (Otto-Henry) as illustrations to Sebastian Meyer’s polemical commentary on the Apocalypse (first published in Latin in Zurich, 1539), translated into German by Laurentius Agricola in 1544, never completed.

Given the remarkable power that came to be centred on relics and relic collections in the late Middle Ages, Protestant reformers found a ready target for censure. Critiques of the abuse of relics and the Eucharist, especially the offence of payment for indulgences, poured forth. Attacks were met with counter attacks. Accusations of corruption were vigorously rebuffed by the Church at the Council of Trent (1545–63) and ‘a new language of contest, strife and victory’ emerged in the discussion of the Eucharist at the Council, which issued this ruling:

And it is necessary that the victorious truth should triumph in this manner over lies and heresy, so that its enemies should lose courage and be broken by the sight of so great a splendour and such joy of the universal church, or rather, affected by shame and confused, let them come to their senses.¹

The mission was clear, the call to arms delivered. The fight, however, was not to be won with conventional weapons. It was a battle for the ‘senses’; the enemy was to be defeated by ‘the sight of so great a splendour’ and joy in the universal Church.

Furthermore, the Church agreed that an effort to strengthen faith could not begin with any challenge to the validity of relics, which had been venerated by the faithful from time immemorial. Instead of addressing Luther’s specific charges concerning relics, the Council simply insisted upon ‘authoritative approval before ostentation’ of relics. Remarkably, such approval allowing the showing of relics might be based on a startling range of justifications: miracles, visions, previous veneration, even the existence of customary pilgrimages and fairs – not the sort of testimony that would be satisfactory in today’s courts. The Bollandistes, who sponsored a much more evidence-based project arguing for the validity of saints (and eventually, famously, debunked St Christopher), did not appear on the scene until 1643.

Jesuits were generally leaders in the Catholic defence, and one of their number, Jean Ferrand, wrote a response in 1647, Disquisitio reliquaria, in which he takes on perhaps the most difficult objection raised by the Protestants – that is, with so many duplications among venerated relics, which, if any, were genuine? In astonishing fashion, Ferrand argues that relics such as the True Cross, the thorns and Luke’s portrait of the Madonna were so ‘necessary to the devotion of the Church’ that a divine and miraculous multiplication had occurred that enabled access for the faithful.² Other less important multiples might be the product of human error, but the great traditions of the Church were not to be derided or ignored.

Ultimately, such arguments could not stand, and reform and enlightenment succeeded in labelling much of relic veneration as superstitious behaviour. This may explain why post-Tridentine collections, the most spectacular of all reliquary ensembles, are the least known today. In this great last age of relic collection, cultural ambivalence may account for what amounted to wild swings of the pendulum, in the making and unmaking of collections, in alternately magnificent displays or secretive protection from theft and from view. If, however, princely glory required the assemblage of a Wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities), such collections included not only scientific specimens, books and art, but also relics and reliquaries. Indeed, relics often served as the foundational underpinnings of such repositories, and can often be characterized as the most beloved of components. We will first discuss collections in the age of Reform, then move to notable post-Tridentine relic displays in the militantly Catholic regions of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Bavaria and Bohemia. As we will see, Rome plays a lesser role in setting trends than might be expected.

Relic Collections of the Reformation Era

With newly reformed Protestant churches discarding unwanted relics, massive amounts of sacred material was put into motion in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Even as relics continued to be given as gifts, others, despite long-standing sanctions reaffirmed by Trent, were sold with the proviso that by such sale they were rescued from heretics. Some were even subject to looting – for example, the Wittelsbach riches, including reliquaries, were transferred from Munich to Sweden by a victorious Gustavus Adolphus during the Thirty Years War, despite the fact that the general was fighting for the Protestants.

With renowned imperial collectors like Maximilian I and later Rudolph II of Prague setting the pace, collecting ever larger numbers of relics became what can only be deemed a rivalry in which even princes and nobility could take part. Albrecht, son of the elector of Brandenburg, archbishop and eventually cardinal, assembled more than 8,000 relics at Halle in a complex of buildings he wished to found as a university. Prince Frederick the Wise, the elector of Saxony, endowed the palace chapel of Wittenberg with a collection that eventually numbered over 19,000 relics and was also associated with a university. Ironically, although most of those relics were dispersed and the reliquaries almost entirely destroyed, one piece does survive in Veste Coburg. A beautifully cut glass, once used as a reliquary, was given to Luther and used by him for its original function – drinking. It is now preserved as a ‘relic’ of the reformer. Given that Wittenberg is the very church upon which Luther posted the 95 theses, and that the city in some sense represents the epicentre of religious change, a closer look is in order.

Wittenberg’s relic wealth began as a ducal family collection. In 1353, with papal permission, Rudolph I founded a chapel and chapter of canons in order to celebrate a thorn relic given to him by Philip VI of France, a continuation of the tradition of such gifts of thorns by French kings. The thorn was only the first of a flood of gifts, diplomatic exchanges and bequests that, with the support of a series of documents signifying papal approval, swelled the collection to enormous size under Frederick the Wise.

The relic treasures were put on annual public display on the second Sunday after Easter as a sort of pious and spectacular showing and source of ‘grace’ for the community. Indeed, the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder, an artist who would later be central in the creation of a new iconography of Protestant art, was responsible in 1508 for creating a pamphlet (published in 1509 in two successive editions) filled with woodcuts that celebrated the relics of Wittenberg and their potential viewing and veneration at such a showing.

54 . . . Das wirdig hailthumb das do rastet auff dem hailigenn Perg ze Andechs in obern payern, broadside on the relics at Kloster Andechs, Bavaria, 1496, 26.5 × 75 cm, woodcut with hand colouring, British Museum, London.

The Cranach pamphlet itself is a remarkable, albeit modest document. It depicts fewer reliquaries than the Heiltumsbuch in Aschaffenburg (Ms 14), which included 350 watercolours, produced in 1526 for Albrecht, generally called the Hallesche Heiltum,³ but reveals much more about practice and audience reception of the relics than does the renowned and singular manuscript. Both Heiltumsbucher can be characterized as illustrated inventories, but the Wittenberg pamphlet was available for purchase by devotees and is therefore in many ways similar to the large single-sheet woodcuts that showed the contents of treasuries, or even the woodcut Andachtsbilder (devotional images) that were sold at shrines to pilgrims (as at Andechs, illus. 54).⁴

The series of images in the Wittenberg Heiltumsbuch must have served as a sort of guidebook for viewers of the reliquaries, which were arranged in Gängen, or ‘passages’, culminating with the most spectacular and holy examples of Passion relics. Few copies of the paper edition survive, although the presentation copies that were printed on vellum persist in greater numbers. Remarkably, the evidence of the woodcuts makes it clear that one could not see the relics in most of these reliquaries – the illustrations in and of themselves were doing the devotional heavy lifting. And indeed, many represent appealing figures, for example those of the virgin martyrs of the ‘erst gang’ were made more charming, active and fantastically detailed in the transition from surviving preparatory sketches to woodcut: Margaret bursts forth from the back of a defeated and grisly dragon in the woodcut (illus. 55), but in the sketch (surviving in the Weimar Archive sketchbook ThHStAW Reg. O213 fol. 32r.), a staid figure of a crowned Margaret holds a diminutive dragon.

In addition, on each of the pages of the booklet, the relics are meticulously listed and each entry ends with an accounting of the total number of relic particles therein contained – 34 in the case of Margaret, including a tooth. The woodcuts together form a fascinating document that attests to the devotional practice of viewing such relics/reliquaries; clearly the viewer was encouraged to let the saint ‘come alive’ in his or her imagination but also to enumerate and consider each individual relic in a process that promised to be good for the soul.

Such accounting was profitable because the devotee earned an indulgence with a visit to this ‘Sainte-Chapelle’, dedicated to All the Saints. According to a Papal brief, a total number of days of remission from purgatory were granted, calculated via the number of particles venerated. The pamphlet lists altogether 5,005 – the arithmetic problem alone is stupefying, in an era of widespread implementation of double-entry bookkeeping, one that must have seemed worth its while. Notwithstanding its popular success, our contemplation of the worth of this project is ultimately brought up short by the reminder that this is the very church that inspired Luther’s protests.

Remarkably, Frederick continued in his support of Luther, and indeed, the devout elector’s protection was the reason that the reformer was allowed to speak at the Diet of Worms without punishment or execution. It is important to recall that Luther’s initial furore was aroused by the selling of indulgences and the hated popular notion, ‘As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.’⁵ Luther maintained that only God granted forgiveness, and that it was given freely. One might imagine, then, that in continuing to support Luther, Frederick would have dispersed his collection of relics post-haste. He did not. The collection remained in place at Wittenberg until after his death, when the silver was melted down to raise money for a war. Despite a modern sense of cognitive dissonance, it must be admitted that reformist zeal and reliquary veneration could coexist, at least for a time.

55 Lucas Cranach the Elder, ‘Margaret Reliquary’, from Dye Zaigung des hochlobwirdigen Hailigthumbs der Stifft-Kirchen aller Hailigen zu Wittenburg (1508), woodcut, 19 × 14 cm.

Part of the reason for Frederick’s amassing of relics must have been that such assemblages were central to the perceived piety and nobility of the collector. Wittenberg was not just a public or ecclesiastical collection, it was also a testament to Frederick’s character and the prestige of the electorate. Frederick and his brother and heir, John the Steadfast, are depicted in an etching on the frontispiece of the pamphlet (an interesting variation in medium and an innovation by Cranach), and the introduction to the text of the book lists many of the royal, noble and ecclesiastical donors, beginning with Philip VI and the thorn. But the collection also served Frederick’s personal devotions as well. The chapel was the family burial place and Frederick further commissioned Cranach in 1510 to paint an altarpiece dedicated to the Virgin that included portraits of himself and John, clearly relying on the frontispiece. These portraits, on the wings of the triptych, show each of the brothers presented to the Virgin by a patron saint.

Certainly not by accident, Frederick’s patron, St Bartholomew, is well represented in the relic collection. The knife that Bartholomew holds as an attribute in the altarpiece copies one that is extant in the relic collection, and the Apostle Bartholomew, renowned for surviving a torture of being flayed alive (he was later crucified upside down), is represented by a silver figural reliquary depicting the saint holding his flayed skin. Finally, and most impressively, Frederick owned a monstrance reliquary of Bartholomew that held 45 relic particles, and also displayed a relic purported to be ‘all the skin of his face’, presented in a way that is reminiscent of the Veronica image of Christ’s face (illus. 56 and see illus. 41).

One cannot imagine a more vivid devotional experience for the pious elector than to have been able to gaze at this relic/image, which Cranach’s workshop has depicted with eyes that were capable of looking back. A second image, an engraving by Cranach marked prominently with the elector’s coat of arms, imagines Frederick praying to a living St Bartholomew next to the relic of the skin. Presumably, Frederick approved and encouraged the dissemination of his pious image via the new graphic ‘mass’ media in both the Heiltumsbuch and this and other prints.

56 Lucas Cranach the Elder, ‘Reliquary of Bartholomew’s Face’, from Dye Zaigung des hochlobwirdigen Hailigthumbs der Stifft-Kirchen aller Hailigen zu Wittenburg (1508), woodcut, 19 × 14 cm.

Even if, in the last years of his life, public display of the relics had ceased, one imagines that Frederick would have been reluctant to give up this testimony and access to his protector and patron Bartholomew. Only after Frederick’s death in the 1540s or ’50s did Wittenberg become a Protestant stronghold. Again, ironically, the Cranach workshop reused some of the woodcuts from the pamphlet in Protestant projects, including a Eucharistic monstrance image adapted as an illustration for the title page of the publication of a sermon by Luther, ‘Ein Sermon von dem hochwürdigen Sakrament des heiligen wahren Leichnams Christi’ (A Sermon Concerning the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy and Authentic Body of Christ).

Other collectors eagerly picked up the standard that the House of Wettin had dropped. Particularly active as collectors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the Catholic princes of Bohemia, Spain and Portugal. Again, they were interested in many things besides relics – books, paintings, lavish burial sites and gorgeous architectural settings for their collections – but relics and reliquaries retained a status as the most treasured objects in these assemblages. Hugh Trevor-Roper expressed dismay that the Gonzaga, when under financial stress, would sell paintings in preference to letting go of their relics, lamenting, ‘they were not self-respecting princes [but] disreputable ex-cardinals whose ruling passion was not for works of art but for mistresses, relics, food and drink, and, above all, dwarfs and parrots’.⁶ A more historical assessment would reveal that relics were the very basis of these collections constructed to exhibit the piety, learning and taste of rulers and, as I have argued in the case of Frederick, may have been the objects closest to the princely affection.

On another note, one might speculate a love of parrots may have similarly exhibited learned interest – that is, interest in the New World. Indigenous practices of feather art imported from colonies were quickly put into service to the Church, creating high-status gifts, and even ornament for relics surviving as part of European collections.

Relics After Trent

So, if we admit that relics are not just for show, despite their often very showy display, how are we to understand their post-Tridentine reception? To start, we should not assume that the deluge of relic-acquisitions and reliquary-making that occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not motivated by sincere devotion. Sforza Pallavicino, the seventeenth-century Jesuit friend of Bernini, maintained that, although it only served to point in the correct direction, art is an essential pathway to the divine. In Spain, St John of the Cross summed up the post-Tridentine position this way:

The use of images has been ordained by the Church for two principal ends – namely, that we may reverence the saints in them, and that the will may be moved and devotion to the saints awakened by them. When they serve this purpose they are beneficial and the use of them is necessary: and therefore we must choose those that are most true and lifelike, and that most move the will to devotion.⁷

Although John emphasized the ‘true’ and the ‘lifelike’ in art, allegory as well as aesthetic qualities such as variety and beauty were also important. The intention was to simulate Paradise, a destination, however, that is always out of reach. It was the viewer’s obligation to pursue the goal in his or her spiritual meditation.

If this ‘system’ of the Baroque can be characterized as recursive or folded, where truth is intimated but hidden, in which we are invited to savour the gorgeous surfaces, the intricacies, the artistic gifts to the spirit,⁸ as we will see, reliquaries are a privileged means to the pious ends. They maintain the contemplative gaze through their materials and beauty; they display the truth (the relic) but also hide it.

The Reforms of Trent did however lead to important changes in the practice of the cult of relics and its arts. If once again the depiction of the Court of Heaven in Paradise was the primary goal, now the cult of saints was subordinated to the Eucharist, which was proclaimed to be the primary witness and realization of the sacrifice and blessed presence of Christ. (See a quite literal example at Andechs, illus. 54 above, where reliquaries are arranged around a central monstrance containing miraculous hosts.) Bishops were even known to have rearranged churches to take emphasis away from long-venerated local saints’ bodies and to turn the ceremonial and spatial focus towards the universal and the sacramental in the form of the host.⁹ Although, by theological definition, Christ’s blood, bloodied miraculous hosts and the host itself were separate things, when surrounded by other relics, any of these could sufficiently and spectacularly stand for Christ himself.¹⁰

Innovations in reliquary-making flourish in this period in the guise of innovation in both media and form. A flood of fine metal-work, especially elegant silver figural reliquaries (as evidenced by the reliquaries of Wittenberg, see illus. 55), testifies to the rich production of German and eastern European silver mines, and the obelisk, appearing across Europe in many different media, stands out as a newly popular form (see illus. 58).

Just as in earlier periods of reliquary-making, particular forms could have allegorical or metaphorical meaning; at this moment, the obelisk seems to satisfy the need to express something essential about relics. Already in the eleventh century, Thiofrid of Echternach had described the pyramid, whose shape consisted of four aspirational edges, as leading the mind heavenwards. The obelisk of the Renaissance and Baroque period is even more elegantly and ‘precipitously’ aspirational. Like the flame of a candle it resembles, it leads the mind directly to God. The monumental Vatican obelisk in Rome was even ‘venerated . . . as a sort of relic, a silent witness to the slaughter of Christian martyrs in the circus of Nero and an object that had soaked up the blood of the Apostle Peter himself’.¹¹ As an ancient pagan object converted to Christian ends in Rome by Pope Julius II, it not only served to represent post-Tridentine triumphalism but also appealed to the archaeological interests arising in the sixteenth century and later.

But, although triumphalist Rome may have popularized the obelisk form, rather than innovation in shape, post-Tridentine and Baroque reliquaries are most distinguished not by their singular form but by their appearance in spectacular ensembles. In communion, the many voices of the saints and their accumulated testimonies to holiness ‘sing together’ to celebrate the divine and transport the viewer to Paradise.

Jesuits were particularly instrumental in finding inventive ways to celebrate orthodox religion, and large numbers of relics and sacred materials often feature in their innovative spectacles. Among such displays, the 40 Hours celebration, the renewal of pilgrimage (especially in Germany), the elaboration of the triumphalist Corpus Christi celebration, and the display of relic collections, especially in Spain and Portugal, are particularly striking examples.¹² Even if the lost collection of Wittenberg has been instructive as to issues of devotion, we must look to surviving ensembles to understand the full physical magnificence of post-medieval reliquary display.

Although relics continued to be carried in procession and made up a major component of the 40 Hours devotions, in general in Rome reliquaries are not found in permanent configurations of public display. Instead, they were in some sense withheld from view while other artworks – most often paintings or sculptures – were offered instead. One can find this approach exemplified in the works of Michelangelo (see illus. 9); in the magnificent set of paintings depicting the miracles of the True Cross in Venice in the Grand Hall of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista by Carpaccio, Bellini, Perugino and others; as well as in Bernini’s famous sculptural ensembles in St Peter’s.

Each of these stands as an impressive example of the manner in which the power of relics was amplified by a magnificent sculptural or narrative presence, while the relics or reliquaries themselves remained out of sight. It has been suggested, indeed, that the occlusion of the sacred may have served to magnify the power of the Catholic hierarchy, while at the same time managing spaces and excluding groups such as women who were perceived as uncontrolled, perhaps uncontrollable, in their impassioned reception of the holy.¹³ However, if Rome as a centre of ecclesiastical authority turned away from much of public reliquary display, other Italian locations such as Naples revelled in it and perhaps even allowed it as a means of access to power for women.

Spain and the Escorial

Before we discuss the later Baroque displays in Naples, we turn to one of the most influential of late Renaissance reliquary exhibits – the Escorial – an ensemble that perfectly melds royal ambition and post-Tridentine devotion to both the Eucharist and the saints. Indeed Philip II, the Spanish monarch and patron of the Hieronomite monastery dedicated to Lawrence (also the site of the royal chapel), had the distinction of being the only king to attend meetings of the Council of Trent, and was the first to accept the decrees. He began the building of the Escorial precisely when the Council ended in 1563,¹⁴ as if directly inspired by it.

Believing the Spanish to be a chosen people, Philip’s dearest ambition was to remake Spain as the most Christian of countries and Spain itself as the centre of a Catholic empire that extended to England and Belgium. He intended the Escorial to be the heart of this new spiritual (and political) body. There can be no doubt that in Philip’s Spain, as in Germany, the political and the spiritual travelled hand in hand. The Escorial was founded by the king to provide an environment of continual veneration of the host and to house Philip II’s extraordinary collection of relics, books and art. Monks were to pray in laus perennis, without ceasing, while the life-size gilded bronze figures of the royal family joined them in this prayer, the statues depicted kneeling and gazing towards the host Tabernacle or, as the Spanish called it, the custodia, visible on the altar from all points in the church (illus. 57). The host in turn was surrounded with gorgeous ecclesiastical ornamentation: an enormous retable replete with painting and sculpture, and a large reliquary cupboard at either side of the altar. Federico Zuccaro, an Italian painter who worked at the Escorial, knew very well that the custodia in the altar retable quoted the renowned Roman building, the Tempietto, writing that it was ‘similar to that of Bramante at San Pietro in Montorio’.¹⁵ This direct visual citation clarifies the overt symbolism of the Escorial. The complex was meant to evoke the ideal proportions and measurements of the Temple in the Heavenly Jerusalem, and this miniature ‘temple’ structure situates the host in the centre of a space of contemplation.

Thus, as is consistently the case in the creation of such sacred spaces, the architectural tabernacle on the altar at the Escorial makes a double reference, pointing both to the distant sacred (Rome and Jerusalem) and the local (Spain) and this latter reference is reflected in its manufacture. The custodia was designed by the basilica’s Spanish architect, Juan de Herrera, and although executed by the Milanese Jacopo da Trezzo, it was made in red and green jasper, rock crystal, gold, silver and gems, with an inscription that emphasizes that the materials were indigenous to Spain.

The dedication ceremony of the Escorial as documented in contemporary sources was extraordinary, in part borrowing from the post-Tridentine celebration of the 40 Hours devotion to the Sacrament. This ritualized devotion consisted of forty hours of continuous prayer, and churches, especially in Rome, created special effects of ornament for the event, including special temporary structures as well as relics and lights clustered around the host. Similarly, at the dedication of the Escorial, reliquaries crowded the altars and more than 5,000 lamps were lit. The lighting was so dramatic, in fact – with lamps placed in even the very high windows like great ‘necklaces’ of gold – that the church was visible from a distance, again for the lucky spectators a vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem.¹⁶ Sigüenza, the monk chronicler of the Escorial elaborates on the effect on the interior:

The light and burning splendour of the custodia with its appearance of a flaming brazier reflects in the eyes and pierces the soul . . . it introduces a great marvel in the spirit because one has the impression of entering into a never-seen glory . . . without doubt there is no heart so hard or shut away from God that [in the presence of this experience] does not soften and dissolve into tears of spiritual sweetness . . . reverence mixed with joy raises hearts to divine praise of God’s glory.¹⁷

57 Juan de Herrera (architect) and other artists, main altar and surround, Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo, El Escorial, Madrid, 1579–85, precious marbles and jasper, gilded bronze, oil on wood and other materials, 26 × 14 m.

As at Karlštejn, great crosses were embedded in the walls with candles in front of them. Sigüenza links them in number (twelve) to the Apostles and in nature to Christ, calling them portals.¹⁸

Although the dedication ceremony was memorable and emphasized the riches of relics in the monastery, again, except on special feast days, the relics were not customarily visible. For the treasure to be seen, the large paintings covering the cupboards had to be opened (illus. 58). However, the cupboards, it should be noted, were also accessible from the back, to the monks and to the king, who would sometimes visit them during the evening – the royal bedroom was linked to the space by a corridor behind the right-hand cupboard.

Philip loved his relics. Making use of pontifical letters of permission and agents across Europe, he collected over 7,000. Sigüenza gloated that many came from Germany, having made their way in secret through Protestant strongholds where sometimes, surely by the working of divine providence, miracles occurred that marked their power. In one instance, a crowd of as many as 3,000 Calvinists unknowingly ‘escorted’ the relics across the city of Frankfurt as if in procession, and they then passed through Germany without incident, despite the violent intentions of ‘heretic dogs’. When the four ‘large boxes’ arrived in Spain, they were processed around the city of Madrid and displayed in front of the palace with the host in the centre and six male skulls to one side, six female to the other and the king presiding from a window above. Elaborate ceremonies marked their arrival and their addition to the already ‘precious jewels’ in the Escorial. Philip was especially interested in St Lawrence, the early Christian, Spanish dedicatee of his monastery and patron of Peace, and he made an attempt to ‘reassemble’ the body by collecting all the relics he could find.

58 Relic cabinet (on north side of main altar), El Escorial, Madrid, 1579–85, precious marbles and jasper, gilded bronze, gilded wood and other materials; painting: Federico Zuccaro, Annunciation, 1585–8, oil on panel, 488 × 289 cm.

His agents also collected ancient books, and royal bodies (for interment at this new royal burial site), but above all the king cherished his relics and he was willing to pay princely sums to ‘save’ relics from the hands of heretics (that is, Protestants). He is said to have ‘known’ each and every one of his relic treasures and to have spent time contemplating them, arranging and rearranging them, even washing them and of course kissing them. When sick, he used them like ‘prescriptions’, specific relics for specific ailments. He especially prized his relic of the Magdalene and those of saintly kings such as Constantine and Charlemagne. As an educated man, however, Philip took the Tridentine position that even if some of his relics were false, if properly venerated, the veneration could do only good for the soul. As he was dying, he was surrounded by the favourites from his precious collection and his daughter used them in a novel way to attempt to prolong his life: when he drifted into unconsciousness, she shouted, as if to an intruder, ‘Don’t touch the relics!’, in order to rouse him to a defensive alertness.

The Escorial surely stands out as an extraordinary example of the weaving together of sacred space, relics, sacramental devotion and extraordinary ornament in the form of painting, sculpture, pietre dure, silver and gold, all in support of a heavenly vision. Moreover, it should be recognized that this heavenly vision is meant to have a literal aspect. Sigüenza commented that the building takes the form of the Heavenly Jerusalem, while also referring to Noah’s Ark and the Desert Tabernacle. In striving to create a national history and to be leader of a national Church, Philip espoused ideas of Spain as a New Jerusalem and went so far as to send scholars to Jerusalem to study its divine geography. He also carefully studied a model of Jerusalem that was made for him, using the practice as a spiritual exercise (again the spiritual exercise of ‘measuring the Temple’).

Across Spain, and especially in Castile and Galicia, the Escorial served as a spiritual, educational and architectural model. In Monforte de Lemos, the Cardinal D. Rodrigo of Castro, Archbishop of Seville and son of the countess of Lemos, built the ‘Escorial of Galicia’ with a facade almost as impressive and massive as its model, completed in 1619 by the architect Simón de Monasterio. The compound echoes the grand architecture of the Escorial, similarly containing a school, a library, a chapel and picture gallery, a monumental stone stair, a family burial place, and of course a relic collection, embedded in the retable of the westernmost chapel in the north aisle.

Similarly, at Celanova, the monastery of San Rosendo was rebuilt by Jesuits in the image of the Escorial with a cloister and a school in a somewhat softened version of the Escorial’s architectural style, all constructed in a lighter stone but with similar mouldings, corners, pilasters, dome and, again, even a monumental staircase. At Celanova, another collection of relics was embedded in the primary altarpiece.

In the many Escorial-inspired designs in Spain, while the collection of relics was important, it was clearly subordinate to a unified vision – indeed, subordinate to the Eucharist. One should note additionally that, aligned to Philip’s ambitions for Spain, these ensembles, these institutions are monuments to the future, to education and learning, rather than testimony to a ‘superstitious’ past.

São Roque, Lisbon

The most impressive use of relics and reliquaries reflecting the cultural influence of the Escorial emerges, however, not in Spain but in Portugal, at the church of São Roque in Lisbon. During the time Philip reigned as king of both Spain and Portugal, he visited Lisbon frequently and was involved in significant building projects, even taking some part in the building of São Roque, although he was not the first king to involve himself in that church’s fortunes.

During a plague period, the Portuguese king Manuel I had solicited a relic of St Roch from Venice for his city of Lisbon. Following the recognition of its healing power and the construction of a hermitage for its veneration near the plague cemetery at the top of one of Lisbon’s hills, the Jesuits, just beginning their mission in Portugal, obtained the newly desirable site for their first church in 1553. The church was designed by Afonso Álvares, master of works for King João III, and then completed by the Italian Filippo Terzi, under Philip II. In terms of São Roque’s relic treasure, however, the donor was not Philip, but D. João (or Juan) de Borja (1533–1606), who in his capacity as Philip’s ambassador to the court of Rudolf II in Prague was the recipient of many relic-gifts from his associates there.

Juan was the descendant of a pope, and the son of a Jesuit saint. His father, the Duke Francisco de Borja, had been converted to a life as a Jesuit by the sudden death of the Empress Isabella of Spain, and gone on to serve as that order’s third superior general. Francisco numbered among his many accomplishments the founding of the Jesuit mission of education and the transformation of the Lucan icon, the Salus Populi Romani (see Chapter Three), into a Jesuit image that was copied around the world. He even preached in São Roque in 1553 when the Jesuits took possession. Thus Juan, who had originally thought to give his treasure to the Escorial, in the end followed in his father’s footsteps and donated his very rich collection of relics to the new Jesuit foundation in Lisbon in 1588.

Although the gift was Juan’s, Philip’s concurrent activities cannot be ignored. At the time, Philip was in Lisbon, preparing the Armada for his attempt to conquer England – part of his Europe-wide campaign for Catholicism – and such a gift must have seemed auspicious. The ceremony of donation was lavish. Twelve litters were filled with reliquaries, at least five hundred people took part in the procession, and spectators numbered in the thousands, coming from all over the country for the occasion. The procession involved multiple stops with performances of stories and poems written for the ceremony; the participants threaded their way through multiple triumphal arches along the route. The crowd was enthusiastic, reaching out to touch the reliquaries, especially with rosaries, thinking to ‘catch’ a saintly blessing. All in all, the ceremony took an entire day, and crowds continued to visit the church to view the relics for a week. The pope granted São Roque four Jubilee indulgences a year in recognition of the potential of its relic treasures.

The artistic response matched the ceremonies in its exuberance. Over the next two centuries, each of the chapels was ornamented in turn, one more lavishly than the last, drawing upon royal donations and other riches derived from Portugal’s increasing colonial wealth. The relic collection came to be embedded in, or perhaps one might say encrusted upon, the very walls of the chapels. Most of the chapels are seventeenth century, although perhaps the most spectacular and renowned chapel, that of John the Baptist, was created and fully constructed in Rome in 1742–50 under the patronage of King João V by the artists Nicola Salvi and Luigi Vanvitelli, and then blessed by Pope Benedict XIV, only to be disassembled and shipped to Lisbon to be reassembled. Its walls and floors are laden with semi-precious encrustations of lapis lazuli, malachite and micromosaics, but not, in this case, with relics.

The largest display of the relics from the donation is housed in the gender-separated relic cabinets at either side of the altar (illus. 59, 60), recalling perhaps the relic display Philip organized in Madrid, mentioned above, and also that at the Escorial. Originally covered by canvases and doors like those at the Escorial, the cabinets today have nineteenth-century glazing. The dedications of these altars were, on the left, ‘All Saints’ and, on the right, the ‘11,000 Virgins’ (of Cologne). There were regular feasts for veneration at the altars during the ‘Jubilees’ mentioned above, as well as on other occasions, and on various feast days, relics were removed to be displayed on other altars in the church. But in the remaining chapels in the church, many of the relics were perpetually visible. They literally found places in the walls, in columns and in portable reliquaries tucked into niches or situated on altars.

59 Primary altar and Holy Martyrs altar (female), 16th–18th century, glass added to relic cabinet 1898, Igreja de São Roque, Lisbon.

60 Holy Martyrs altar (male), 16th–18th century, glass added to relic cabinet 1898, reliquaries: primarily polychrome, gilded wood, Igreja de São Roque, Lisbon.

The placement of relics in walls had precedents in churches in the Middle Ages, especially in Constantinople, Rome and Cologne (see illus. 30), but at São Roque the walls of the church are quite literally built with the saints (illus. 61). The Chapel of Our Lady of Doctrine, for example, was dedicated by the Congregation of the Oficiais Mecânicos in 1634 during the time of King Pedro II of the House of Braganza, who re-established sovereignty over Portugal and reclaimed its wealth as a colonial power. Pedro and his wife Sofia of the Palatinate had already demonstrated their devotion to the Jesuit order by sponsoring ornament for the tomb of St Francis Xavier in distant Goa. In a time-honoured queenly gesture, Sofia even made textiles with her own hands. No expense was spared for the chapel in Lisbon – it is enclosed with an ebony balustrade (a clear demonstration of colonial wealth), its walls are lined with relics in compartments, while a glass sarcophagus glows beneath the altar.

Similarly, the Chapel of Our Lady of Piety (illus. 61), founded in 1686 by Martim Gonçalves da Câmara (and providing the place of his burial), was decorated with a gilded retablo between 1707 and 1716 by the Confraternity of Our Lady of Piety, incorporating an older statue of the Pietà. Again, under the altar, a glass sarcophagus contains a sculpture, this one representing Our Lady of the Good Death. Statues of Longinus (with his spear) and Veronica on the side walls welcome devotees to the chapel and ‘cabinets’ of reliquaries are integrated into the sculptural ornament.

The two glass sarcophagi positioned under the altars in these chapels, unlike many similar examples in Rome (compare to St Robert Bellarmine in San Ignazio), do not display relic bodies but, following Spanish artistic tradition, hold polychrome sculptures. In the Chapel of Our Lady of Doctrine, the sculpture is a striking image of the suffering Christ of a type made famous by the Spanish sculptor Gregorio Fernández (illus. 62).¹⁹

61 Chapel of Our Lady of Piety, 1686–1716 and 19th-century additions, sculpted and gilded wood and other materials, Igreja de São Roque, Lisbon.

62 Gregorio Fernández, Cristo yacente of El Pardo, 1627, polychrome wood, ivory, glass, cork and cornamenta (bull’s horns), 183 × 73 cm, originally in the Casa Profesa de la Compañía de Jesús, Madrid, now in Museo Nacional de Escultura, Valladolid, Spain.

This sculptural type clearly makes reference to the host as the Corpus Christi. One of a series of such sculptures, from Aránzazu, was placed in a similar glass sarcophagus, which was termed a tabernaculo in the contract (1629).²⁰ Another in Lerma (1609), among the earliest by the Fernández shop, held a vial of Christ’s blood donated to the monastery by the queen, Margaret of Austria. The vial of blood is secured with a gold plaque inscribed ‘Sangre de Christo’. In a reliquary-like manner, the vivid polychromy of this type of sculpture draws attention to Christ’s side wound in its status as a visual testimony, while recalling the related Passion narrative of the cure and conversion of Longinus through the blood. ‘Fernández did not produce the perfect likeness of a dead corpse, but that of a spiritual or pneumatic body that would continue to pour blood and water in front of the eyes of the convert’; that is a miraculous body, ‘an exception to the rules of nature’.²¹ Evidence suggests that these statues were at times removed from their altars, that they served in liturgies that re-enacted the entombment and Easter resurrection and therefore we must understand them within such ‘tabernacula’ as equivalent to the host and close in meaning to relics.

At São Roque the devotion to the Eucharist is completed with a chapel dedicated exclusively to the Sacrament, rounding out a spectacle of relics and devotion that is clearly supported by colonial riches of extraordinary extent, and survives as one of the most lavish and extensive relic displays of the Catholic world.

The Sacristy of Alcobaça

Not far from Lisbon, another reliquary collection makes similar claims to devotion to the Sacrament. The Cistercian and royal monastery of Alcobaça, founded in 1153, was endowed with many relics during its long history, and the monastery added to its capacity for display of its treasures through the construction of a lavish reliquary chapel under Abbot Constantino de Sampaio (1669–72, illus. 63, 64).²² Although there is no direct evidence that King Pedro II endowed the chapel, it should be noted that royal interest in the abbey was strong; in addition to earlier royal burials at Alcobaça, a series of royal portrait busts were created for the monastery at this time.

Although a ‘New Sacristy’ had been constructed to accommodate the monastery’s treasures under King Manuel I (unfortunately, because of a fire only one doorway remains of the Manueline structures), the chapel represents yet another addition, extending from the far end of the functional Sacristy space. To effectively display the prestigious collection of relics, the abbot added an octagonal room, taller than it is wide, the walls of which are literally clothed in reliquaries. Nestled into an elaborate wooden architectural framework of columns and niches, a few pre-existent wooden polychrome head reliquaries were supplemented with almost one hundred figural, bust and arm reliquaries in polychrome terra-cotta (illus. 65, 66).

63 New Sacristy, 1669–72, Alcobaça Monastery, Portugal.

64 New Sacristy (vault), 1669–72, Alcobaça Monastery, Portugal.

65 New Sacristy (detail), reliquary of St Sebastian: polychrome terracotta, glass (now missing: wooden arrows?), Alcobaça Monastery, Portugal.

Construction in terracotta, a relatively unusual medium for large-scale sculpture, made use of local technique and local craftsmen, probably from a succession of workshops. The largest figures, the seven full-figure sculptures, each weighing many hundreds of kilograms, were sliced into transverse rounds after construction to facilitate drying, firing and transport. There were also 82 busts fabricated, including the original seven in polychrome wood, and fourteen arms. Today only 68 busts and ten arms remain in the altarpiece; a few more are in storage. In addition to the ornamentation of the reliquary chapel, the workshops produced a large multi-figure group in a chapel in the church and the series of royal portraits mentioned above. Given the humidity of this locale, terracotta seems to have been a sagacious choice. Wood may not have lasted and the polychrome ceramic creates a lively effect that has survived for centuries. Once more, that effect is the simulation of heaven on earth centred on an altar – but here one experiences a benevolent heaven populated by attentive saints under a masonry dome with an oculus that dramatically illuminates the space and vividly recalls a more famous Pantheon (see illus. 64).

66 New Sacristy (detail), 1669–72, reliquaries: polychrome terracotta, glass, varying sizes, Alcobaça Monastery, Portugal.

In addition to the serried ranks of shaped reliquaries, the space is further studded with relics behind tiny glass windows embedded into attached columns and other of the architectural details. Although, given the presence of the altar, this could be seen as a 360-degree gilded wooden retablo, it is also a glorified, oversize reliquary cupboard from which, as the broken fingers on many of the arm reliquaries attest, the reliquaries could be removed for liturgical use and processions. The polychromy of the figures amplifies the sense of their presence, and the individualism of their portrait characterizations – varieties of age, dress and station – adds to the effect. Indeed, rather than look upon these images from a distance, one sees these figures as the saints themselves. Most look down upon the spectator or meditate, but just enough twist and turn, towards one another, or in gentle decorous torment, that the effect is not at all repetitive. While in this chapel we are in their space, immersed in their aura, their beatific world. The environment is remarkably hospitable, creating a certain reluctance in the spectator to leave the presence of these amiable residents of the court of heaven.

Spanish Custodias

The manner in which many of the post-Tridentine relic displays insistently centre on the Mass, the altar and the host is consonant with a practice we have already seen in earlier eras, where host receptacles themselves overlapped in purpose and form with reliquaries. This sort of overlap is amplified in the custodias of Spain, initiated with the glory of the custodia of the Escorial, and literally reaching ever greater heights in a series of custodia created for Spanish cathedrals – the Toledo custodia is almost 3 metres (10 ft) tall (see illus. 67, 68; see also illus. 56).

The portable tabernacle from Valladolid made specifically for the Corpus Christi celebration is a good example of such an elaborate custodia. Juan de Arfe, its maker, was responsible for some of the richest such objects in Spain – those in Seville, Avila and Valladolid – and was a member of a renowned German family of goldsmiths. Not just an artisan, in the year he made the Valladolid custodia – 1587 – Juan also wrote a book of architectural theory, Varia commensuración para la esculptura y arquitectura. He also carried the banner of the Brotherhood of St Eloi, the sainted goldsmith, in the Corpus Christi procession in 1593 in Burgos.²³

Juan’s custodia is a sophisticated example of sacred architecture consisting of four storeys which alternate circular and polygonal plans, and Ionic and Corinthian orders. The lower (multi-platformed) pedestal, upon which the golden monstrance is displayed, includes a figural group of Adam and Eve and thirty episodes from the Old Testament in relief, all prefiguring the Eucharist. The second level again includes reliefs, now depicting the life of Christ, and a figural representation of the Assumption of the Virgin. The third and fourth levels have obelisks, small figures and suspended elements, including bells that would have enlivened the object when it was carried.

The arches of the first level are decorated with emblems. One impresa, inspired from the Corpus Christi liturgical hymn Lauda Sion Salvatorem, once attributed to Thomas Aquinas, includes the sun reflected in a mirror, and branches with the words QUOD NON VIDES. It may be related to emblems used by the Medici, CANDOR ILLESUS (purity unharmed), referring to love but also to purification and the fire created by putting a lens or crystal in the sun. Clearly, the emblem here refers to light and vision, but also references sparkling silver.

67 Juan de Arfe, custodia of Valladolid Cathedral, 1587–90, silver, gilded silver and gems, 161 × 64 cm, Museo Diocesano y Catedralico de Valladolid, Spain.

The presentation of the custodia surrounded by lights and by candles, reflected in the glowing gold and gems of the monstrance, which holds the host, fulfils the description of the Escorial display by Sigüenza, cited above. Juan himself writes in a treatise he published on his Seville custodia: ‘The custodia is a rich temple . . . representing the triumph of Christ’ and the holy of holies, and Bezalel is the ‘true artificer chosen by God for his perfection, both artisan and intellect’.²⁴ Of course here Juan compliments himself as parallel to Bezalel but also clearly links the tabernacle to the Ark and the Temple.

The Valladolid custodia self-reflexively demonstrates its own meaning. The area around the host in this ‘temple’ is populated with viewers, the small silver figures identifiable as the saints who were granted the grace of visions of the divine during life, and now thereby serving as models for viewers in this life. Following the lead of these devotional figures, we gaze into the sparkling brilliance that is at the centre of the custodia, having purified our souls by acknowledging our sinful state (along with Adam and Eve), and perhaps ‘measuring the tabernacle’ as an act of contrition.

Such exquisite objects were the focal points of the Corpus Christi processions, the most important feast of the year in Spain (as well as other countries across Europe), and an event of such consequence that secular and ecclesiastical authorities had to cooperate. The feast was thus a source of civic pride and unity. In Seville, where another custodia by Juan de Arfe was used in the procession (illus. 68), the celebration of the feast grew in importance and complexity until, in the seventeenth century, it lasted an entire week rather than the prescribed day. The processions on the feast day were the highlight of the spectacle. The order of the participants was carefully orchestrated: in 1454 twelve choirboys led the procession with torches, followed by four men dressed as prophets, then a boys’ choir with many among them dressed as angels, two portable organs, all the relics of the cathedral borne on litters, and floats known as Roca with mechanized tableaux (with ropes and pulleys!) depicting groups such as Christ and the Virgin, various saints and the Evangelists. Finally the host in the custodia was processed, borne on a carriage designed to represent the Ark of the Covenant. The procession concluded with Church dignitaries, followed by the city council and finally the nobility.

68 Jenaro Pérez Villaamil, The Corpus Christi Procession Inside Seville Cathedral, 1835, oil on canvas, 100 × 72 cm.

By the sixteenth century, sources mention that among the participants of the procession were figures dressed as dragons, the tarasca, representing the devil, other monstrous figures, heroes and villains, and people who danced. Singers and instrumentalists were paid by the city ‘in order that on the day of Corpus Christi, from the time that the Custodia exits from the cathedral until it returns, there will be no absence of music in the procession’.²⁵ As a finale, plays were performed in the town square for which there were prizes for the best performance. The ceremony was so large that provision for street cleaning and awnings for spectators were necessary.

Thirty crosses, one from each parish, were included in the sixteenth-century procession, as were representatives of the confraternities. The custodia itself was placed on a litter, on a cloth shot with silver, and with an honour guard of twenty-four priests. The litter was carried on the shoulders of a chosen cofradia, who

were so cleansed and purified physically and spiritually as is required to carry such majesty on one’s shoulders, and they carry it so evenly that it does not even seem that they are moving, due to the pause and gravity with which they bear it.

A painting from 1835 by Jenaro Pérez Villaamil, now in the Fundación Banco Santander in Madrid, depicts the procession as it concluded in the mysterious darkness of the cathedral, the custodia glowing in all its silver glory, matched only by the clergy in their magnificent robes; the boy dancers, like ‘angels’, perform the seises (see illus. 68). The altar is bedecked with a silver ‘throne’ and many candles, some proffered by cherubs, and surrounded by a tapestry canopy of honour edged with gold; it awaits the host, which is in the process of being transferred. Too numerous to count are the banners, flags, candles and spectators of every walk of life crowding into the cathedral, some falling to their knees in awe – including a pilgrim, a noble woman and a gorgeously vested ecclesiastic. The custodia glitters for a reason – it is a perforated temple, built to contain the sacred and life-giving host that has just spread its beneficence, protection and healing power throughout the city and is now praised by the dancers who chant ‘brightness of light eternal . . . inaccessible light! . . . fire of love ineffable!’ as the setting sun flooding in through the doors illuminates its brilliance.²⁶ Rome protested against excesses, but Seville refused to give up this ecstatic and elaborate ceremony.

Virtuosos of the Sacred: ‘Minor Art’ and Naples

In so many of the relic ceremonies and ensembles thus far discussed, we have dwelled quite persistently in the realm of the so-called ‘minor arts’ – we have looked at ephemera, at ceramics, figural and ornamental carved wood, metalwork, marble work, as well as many other ‘crafts’. Very little of this superlatively beautiful material, consigned to the designation of ‘decorative arts’, has captured the sustained attention of art historians; nevertheless it is essential to the history of reliquaries.

In another divergence from art history as usual, but following the lead of a history of reliquaries, the city that is perhaps the centre of the fine arts in this period, and certainly a centre of theory and art criticism – Rome – has been largely ignored in this account. Such an omission may be justified with the observation that the Eternal City was not as rich in overt or permanent relic displays as more distant capitals; at the same time, the material on so-called peripheries has proved surprisingly rewarding.

Although not so far from Rome, perhaps Naples is just such a peripheral site. Under Spanish dominion in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, it grew to be the second largest city in Europe after Paris and was host to many renowned artists. Nevertheless, the lack of an art academy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, along with a simultaneous cross-breeding and creative interchange of the arts, allowed a virtuoso magnificence in the making of reliquaries in Naples that placed such ‘minor arts’ at the top rather than the bottom of the hierarchy of the arts. Even anonymous artisans could find their places in such a situation. Women, for instance, worked as embroiderers of the spectacular fabrics that rivalled silverwork in the production of sumptuous surfaces.²⁷ Such exertions towards mastery by pious craftsmen brought materiality to an apex in this age of unparalleled artisanal splendour in relic display.

One stunning instance of such gorgeous materiality, the Tesoro, or Treasury, of San Gennaro, is located in the south transept of the cathedral of Naples (illus. 69). The Tesoro makes use of precious substances that resonate with the local cult of the saint who is uniquely associated with materials and properties – blood, fire, water and metal – and through an affinity of such matter was seen as protection from the eruptions of Vesuvius. Begun in the early 1600s by Francesco Grimaldi, the chapel includes the work of many artists, among them José de Ribera, responsible for St Januarius at the Furnace (1646, at the lower left of illus. 69). The altarpieces are painted on giant sheets of copper and the chapel is filled with sculpture, much of it in the form of silver reliquary busts depicting the many patron saints of the city. Finally, the chapel includes the renowned bronze cancello, or gate.

Upon the gate a twinned Januarius (evocative of his namesake the God Janus who, two-faced, looks both ways at the New Year) ‘erupts’ towards us from the exterior and the interior: he is thus present in the Tesoro but also in heaven, both approving of the interior of his glorious chapel and blessing us as we leave – a boundary guard, marking the crossing point from heaven to earth. This gate can be seen as active, even transformative – when closed it seems to expand outwards as if pushing towards heaven, but simultaneously it also pushes inwards, in a gesture of welcome. The materials speak to the saint’s essence:

69 Treasury Chapel of San Gennaro, interior view from above looking towards the main altar, 1608 and 1770, Naples, Italy.

shapeshifting bronze is a good analogical material for the blood of San Gennaro: from something solid to something liquid and back again . . . the gate extends the division itself and works to stage the chapel as a chamber of transformation.²⁸

That is, in this gate one also sees an evocation of the famous medieval head reliquary of Januarius made in 1304 for Charles II of Naples, and in that evocation one is reminded of the ceremony in which the blood relic of the saint (in a second capsule-like reliquary) is brought out on the feast day to interact with his ‘head’ in this very chapel. The ‘usual miracle’ is to be hoped for: that is, that the blood should liquefy and provide intercession for the city, the phenomenon of boiling as equivalence to fervent prayer. Perhaps the changing and miraculous substance might control ‘poorly behaved matter’, the lava, the plague and other perils of the city. It is matched by the brilliant, refined and glorious matter of the chapel.²⁹

Waldsassen

Although Spain, Portugal and Italy were central to post-Tridentine Catholic defence against Reformation attacks, we cannot overlook the importance of Bavaria and Bohemia, especially as territory that was contested and in part reclaimed from Protestant domination. Again, as in other ardently Catholic centres, architects, painters, sculptors, metalworkers and artists of all kinds worked together to create heavenly spaces to display relic treasures.

In decided contrast to the hiddenness and subsequent epiphanic revelation of earlier medieval reliquaries, at the Baroque Cistercian monastery of Waldsassen, today a papal basilica, the saints and their relics emerge in plain view (see illus. 70–73; also see illus. 3).³⁰

Within a gorgeous environment conceived by the Bohemian architect Georg Dientzenhofer, of the famous family of architects working from Prague, and completed by Abraham Leuthner in 1685–1704, the relics take their place as the foundation of the glory of the church. They are displayed in the clearest of glass, as the very foundation of the edifice that rises on the saints’ insouciantly reclined and lavishly enrobed backs. As bejewelled and bedecked, carefully posed courtiers, skeletal remains perform in what can only be called the Court of Paradise. Rising above them is every sort of artistic device – large canvases representing saintly action, heroic sculptures boldly ‘supporting’ soaring architecture, effusions of lavishly sculpted stucco vegetation, domes, elliptical voids and windows that pierce the skin of the enclosure allowing in sacred, illuminating, diffuse light (illus. 70, 72).

If one is fortunate enough to stand in this space while the organ roars, one knows one occupies a numinous space, an alternative realm. One might be tempted to say that the effect is without surface, as the skeletons without their skin, but in truth surface dominates, shiny and magnificent, in the gold, the silver, the stucco, or even the spectacular clothing of the saints themselves. Each layer is filled with ornament and variety, and tempts the eye with illusionism; only the faces of the skeletons themselves seem to offer access to a pensive and dark interior.

The Gesamtkunstwerk culminates in the main altar where the mirrored sphere at its centre (illus. 71) seems to represents God’s eye, which reflects the church with golden benevolence. (When this spherical tabernacle is opened, the visible edges look like nothing so much as eyelids!) The reflection in the orb ‘holds’ the whole of the ‘reality’ of this artful Paradise but also returns a view of an alternative space that beckons and intersects with our own (reminiscent of the purpose of the mirror in the secret centre of a Shinto shrine). In some sense, the sphere becomes the reliquary we discussed above, the reliquary that holds itself aloof but also both revealed and ‘concealed parts of space . . . often . . . revelatory . . . which serves to generate consciousness . . . by virtue . . . of the interplay of reflections and mirages within [space]’.³¹ The relics serve to construct space but the effect is one created by the entire church as reliquary, the Ark or, in its lavish effects, a multiplication of ‘arks’ in the Temple.

Although its effect is wonderfully unified, Waldsassen was built in stages, due in some part to the prolonged process of acquisition of relics and their installation from 1688 to 1766. The magnificent mirror-like globe of the tabernacle is, in fact, the oldest part of this decorative ensemble. It was executed in 1690 by Carl Stilp, the first work of a local sculptor.

The Holy Bodies (heilige Leib), or Roman martyrs, at Waldsassen are a very special sort of relic that came into being in the Baroque period, perfectly realizing a theatrical expression and love of materials of the era (illus. 72). Of all relics these might be the most ‘material’ themselves, for they are whole bodies, completely visible, completely accessible, in a sense ready to converse with the devotee. It is not uncommon for an entire well-preserved corpse to reside below the altar in a Baroque church, but these are a variant to that practice; the bodies were imported to Bavaria in their hundreds from a newly opened cemetery on the Via Salaria Nova in Rome. They were unearthed there in 1578, when the Jordani cemetery was opened and began to virtually spew forth bodies of persons assumed to be martyrs. Each body was found with a tiny vial supposed to testify as martyr’s blood; a great popular devotion arose in response to the discovery.

70 Georg Dientzenhofer and Abraham Leuthner, interior, Cistercian Abbey of Waldsassen, 1685–1704, now Waldsassen Basilica, Bavaria, Germany.

71 Carl Stilp, tabernacle and main altar, 1690, Waldsassen Basilica, Bavaria, Germany.

72 Johann Michael Hautmann, apostle altar, 1751, north aisle, Waldsassen Basilica, Bavaria, Germany.

73 Adalbert Eder and others, remains of St Maximus (detail), 1734–66, bones, glass, silver, gems, paper and other materials, Waldsassen Basilica, Bavaria, Germany (see illus. 3).

The Church of Rome was not initially enthusiastic about the anonymous ‘martyrs’, but as their cult grew it took responsibility for ‘christening’ them with names revealed in visions, as well as promoting them. They were feted with processions, triumphal arches, lavish litters and jubilee columns, becoming the devotional centre of a giddy material and spiritual celebration of triumph, ready and able to repopulate the churches of the re-catholicized areas of Germany. If in the earlier Middle Ages each saint required a vita and clerical approval, these saints seemed to flourish as a group rather than individually, seen together as the ‘Roman catacomb saints’ whose bodies were whole and entire.

In response to their presence and their insistent corporeality, they were celebrated by being adorned, often by women, in time-consuming acts of devotional ornamentation that were wildly multi-media, involving metalwork and gemwork, but also sewing, embroidery and papier roulé. Many examples of these ornamented, articulated skeletons survive, such as the famous figures in Wil in Switzerland, and another in Rott-am-Inn. At Waldsassen the saints are dressed in the most sumptuous costumes imaginable (illus. 73), and although there is no lack of crowns and lavish goblets, these costumes are not court costumes. In their details, they are revealed as military garb, making the saints milites Christi, soldiers of Christ, fighting Protestant heresy. Furthermore, in some sense these outfits are not clothes but encrustations. Their costumes are constructed of many materials – gold, silver, gems, pearls and silk, but also paper, board and coloured glass – and made in an intricate, time-consuming assemblage of techniques that has been given the name of Klosterarbeiten (also see illus. 3, 90). Such work was typically done by women, and is comparable to the artisanal achievements noted above from Naples and with a long history in women’s work, especially in textiles. The first of the saints to be installed at Waldsassen, St Deodatus, was made in just this fashion, ornamented by Frau Magdalena Sinnerin in 1721. (Not a nun, she was paid more than 456 Gulden for her efforts.) The remainder of the saints at Waldsassen, however, were clothed and posed by Adalbert Eder, a lay brother and apothecary of the monastery, who set about the time-consuming task as devotional work – that is, ‘prayer with the hands’, or as I would like to call it, aesthetic prayer – just one effort in the multi-part symphony of the arts that makes Waldsassen such a successful evocation of Paradise (illus. 74).³²

74 Adalbert Eder and others, saints Vitalinus and Gratianus (north transept altar, saints on either side of tabernacle picturing the Ark of the Covenant), 1734–66, mixed media including bones, glass, silver, gems, paper and other materials, Waldsassen Basilica, Bavaria, Germany.

Silver in Prague; Bones in Sedlec

Although reliquaries have always been made of materials that captured and reflected light, in the Baroque age, as at the Escorial, as at São Roque and as at Waldsassen, light and vision is primary: it could be realized by sets of chandeliers, of candles and candleholders of all sorts, and also by the play and manipulation of exterior light through windows and domes and screens, even by theatrical lighting. Statues could be taken outside the church yet still surrounded by ‘luminous crowning[s] of stars and clouds’.³³ This might seem to be a medieval aesthetic, but when whole shrines were covered in silver, the effect went far beyond that achieved by the subtle glow of materials like mosaics. Although the virtually floor to ceiling metal revetment of the chapel of St Nicholas in Bari has been disassembled,³⁴ perhaps the ensemble dominating the ambulatory of the Cathedral of St Vitus in Prague celebrating St John Nepomuk can be used to recall such an effect (illus. 75).

75 Fischer von Erlach, Tomb and Shrine of St John Nepomuk, silver, 1729, St Vitus Cathedral, Prague.

It was designed in 1736 by Fischer von Erlach who, not content just to construct the saint’s shrine in glittering silver, also literally joined the force of the gaze with the power of illumination by suspending a witnessing crowd of silver cherubs and angels who draw back long curtains of sumptuous fabric, creating a crowning tent-like ciborium. The architect further lit the ensemble using enormous silver candlesticks ready to accommodate veritable columns of fire and supplemented all this with giant clusters of hanging silver lamps. The resulting creation of a focus of devotion plays upon pre-existing elements of the space, for example the presence of an architect’s self-portrait (see illus. 75, left, rear) who, attached to his handiwork, the supporting arch of a 1493 royal oratory, turns to pray towards the saint and extends a red glass oil lamp. Modern-day tourists serve as witnesses as well, drawn in by the spectacle.³⁵

Fischer von Erlach had to work with a predetermined location where the saint was originally buried, replacing two earlier shrines at this same spot. This final effort was commissioned by Emperor Charles VI, and reportedly used over 1,500 kg of silver. On the lower section, narrative scenes remind us of the saint’s life – he was famously martyred by being pushed off the Charles Bridge on the orders of Emperor Wenceslaus IV (a dispute over the confirmation of an abbot, later said to be a dispute over the inviolability of Confession). The sarcophagus itself is supported by angels and virtues, with benches below to accommodate those who wish to venerate the saint. Although in its design the shrine relies on Italian wall tombs, here, set free of the wall, the ensemble spins into space, soaring upwards and dominating the geography of the ambulatory. (So much so that today visitors have to pass in single file.)

I compare this fanfare of silver with a symphony of bones – a very different but perhaps even more powerful substance that insists on its own materiality.³⁶ The city of Kutná Hora traces its origin to the first Cistercian monastery in Bohemia, Sedlec, founded in 1142 as a dependency of Waldsassen. Today’s chapel, located near the All Saints cemetery, contains the bones of between 40,000 and 70,000 people. This is not a collection of the relics of saints, but the bones of Christians hoping for salvation, many of whom died in war or the plague and wished to be buried here because the abbot of the monastery had travelled to the Holy Land under the orders of Ottokar II of Bohemia (c. 1233–1278) and returned with earth from Golgotha, which he sprinkled on the cemetery.

76 Sedlec Ossuary (interior), former Cistercian Monastery of Sedlec, c. 1400, 1703–10, 1870 (bone decoration by František Rint), Kutná Hora, Czech Republic.

This is not an unusual scheme for the relocation of the holy. The same strategy was employed by Helena to sacralize the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome. But Sedlec is distinguished by having become the most desirable burial place in central Europe. The chapel itself was built c. 1400 with a lower storey to accommodate the bones, which were organized into mounds. It was rebuilt in 1703–10 by Jan Santini Aichel, and in 1870, after the secularization of the monastery, František Rint organized the bones into a kind of sculpture, leaving four of the mountainous mounds as the corners of the ossuary (illus. 76).

The completion of the skeletal ornamentation is therefore of a rather late date, but represents the continuation of earlier history at the site. Furthermore, such ossuaries and their ornaments are a distinctly post-Tridentine phenomenon. In Evora in Portugal, the Capela dos Ossos was built in the sixteenth century by a Franciscan who wanted to create a memento mori. An inscription at the entrance reads: ‘We the bones that are here, await yours.’ The ossuary of Fontanelle, Naples, has an even more intriguing story: there the skeletons, like those of Waldsassen, became saints through interaction and hope. However, rather than clerical blessings, these bodies were ‘sanctified’ by the devotions of the faithful.

Masses of anonymous corpses were buried in the cave at Fontanelle, especially after the plague of 1656. Ecclesiastical recognition came from Father Gaetano Barbati, who in 1872 organized and cleaned the crypt and began the ‘paying of respect’ to the dead. Townspeople eagerly joined in, began to adopt skeletons and skulls, care for them and decorate them; subsequently the lay people had dream visions about the identity of the corpses. This allowed the faithful to interact in a very intimate way with the ‘captain’, the bride, the monk and others. The cult was suppressed as fetishistic in 1969, but the site is open again to tourism and today such ‘bone art’ is attracting widespread interest.

The Chapel of the Shroud, Turin

From a nineteenth-century culmination of the exploration of bones as representation, bones as persons, even bones as decoration, we return to a less macabre ensemble of relics that is reminiscent of the royal aspirations to power of the late Middle Ages. With the Chapel of the Shroud in Turin by Guarino Guarini (1668–94, illus. 77, 78), we take up once more the story of the acquisition of Passion relics by rulers and turn to one of the finest buildings ever created to house such relics.

Not ‘the isolated architectural tour de force it appears’, the Turin chapel functioned as an extraordinary ‘instrument for political identity formation and for state building for the Savoy [dynasty]’, showcasing ‘the only relic in Europe that still commands international attention’.³⁷ Such a combination of aspiration to uniqueness and desire for artistic achievement, with an objective of political, especially royal, promotion, has been the aim of many of the reliquary ensembles we have examined. Motivations such as these have been a consistent engine of creativity in the service of reliquary display and production. Because of his genius, and the significant gestures at differentiation in his design, Guarini’s extraordinary results do argue for success; the chapel does indeed strike the viewer as ‘unique’.

The Savoy considered the Shroud to be the greatest of all the Passion relics because, as an almost ‘narrative’ relic, it showed the effects of all the Passion relics and remained unequivocally whole, unlike the multiply splintered and disseminated True Cross and Crown of Thorns. Supposedly won in an unnamed battle, the Shroud first appears in records as a 1356 gift to the church at Lirey by a crusader knight, Geoffrey de Charny. The bishop of Troyes attempted to suppress a flourishing cult and pilgrimage, and the Shroud left Lirey under threat of war. After some wandering it was finally acquired by the Duke of Savoy; undoubtedly money changed hands.

Like his relic-collecting ancestor Louis IX, Louis of Savoy, inspired by Crusade-era relic prestige and his nominal claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, saw an opportunity and invested in it. He acquired papal certification and indulgences, and the relic was at first frequently offered up to view. This process was eminently successful, winning prestige for the relic and funds for the Savoy, even necessitating the building of a special chapel. In that chapel, located to the east of the main altar of San Giovanni, the cathedral of Turin, the duke continued to maintain control over the relic’s exhibition as he held at least one of the keys that allowed the relic grate to be opened for access. After the building of the monumental reliquary chapel, however, the relic was displayed much less frequently. The reason may be that the dynasty achieved royal status in 1697, three years after Guarini completed construction.

The relic Shroud was strongly identified with its material, an identity that allowed it a remarkable flexibility of use and symbolism. For example, it seems to have served as a military standard. Charny, who first won the cloth in battle, may have in a sense fulfilled this significance as he was one of the bearers of the oriflamme (the famous French battle standard associated with the Abbey of Saint-Denis). By the eighteenth century, the Holy Shroud was depicted in prints as the Duke of Savoy’s own battle standard, paralleling other famous relic standards, such as Constantine’s cross.³⁸ In its status as a potentially enveloping cloth, the Shroud was also symbolically conceived as a royal mantle that could wrap kings as it had Christ. Finally, commemorative prints affirmed the material nature of the relic, not only by depicting the Shroud hanging as a banner in ritual display, but by printing ‘souvenir’ images on silk.

77 Guarino Guarini, dome of the Chapel of the Holy Shroud, interior, 1668–94, Cathedral of St John the Baptist, Turin, Italy.

78 Guarino Guarini, engraving of elevation, Chapel of the Holy Shroud, Cathedral of St John the Baptist, Turin, Italy.

An example of such a print by Antonio Tempesta (1613), now in the British Museum, depicts the press of the crowds, the excitement of the nobility and the dignity of an ecclesiastical honour guard of seven bishops who hold up the oversize relic (the duke and duchess stand just behind them, illus. 79). Tempesta’s print also shows another ritual that magnifies the effect of the presence of the relic. Devotees throw the special Passion rosaries, so-called corone di Christo, at the Shroud, hoping to transfer its power to their personal and private implements of devotion, and attendants at the ends of the platform drop the rosaries back into the outstretched arms rising from the crowds. What is perhaps most intriguing is how the image highlights the holy relic quite literally by leaving the miraculous image in reserve in the chiaroscuro effect produced by using both woodblock and engraving printing techniques on the silk, a wonderful manipulation of the possibilities of print ‘technology’.

79 Antonio Tempesta, The Annual Display of the Holy Shroud in Turin on 4 May, after 1593, etching and woodcut printed on silk, 42.6 × 62 cm, British Museum, London.

The figure of Christ, so difficult to see on the actual object, in this print seems almost to glow. As Alfonso Paleotti wrote in 1599,

The celestial splendor which flashes from the most holy effigy of Christ imprinted on the Shroud is redolent of, not human, but divine artifice. Some kind of hidden energy shines out of the sheet and fills those who look upon it with heartfelt stupefaction . . . wounding the heart of the beholder with the dagger of remorse, dissolves him in tears . . . a certain radiance in the Shroud is a thing divine.³⁹

Elsewhere the marks on the sheet are compared to the light of the stars. The Tempesta print, perhaps purchased within sight of this event (and combined with a Passion rosary), itself is very close to a tertiary relic, reproducing the effect and emotion of the sight of the relic.

The Shroud may have possessed such wonderful visual possibilities precisely because of its size and again its ‘flexibility’. Although it had a reliquary – a rather small one as the object was usually rolled up – it is almost as if it did not need one, and indeed, a simulacrum of the relic was typically on public display while the relic itself lay locked within the shrine. During its ostentations, once unfurled, the relic itself could serve as a banner with its ‘narrative image’. As a sizeable piece of cloth (437 cm × 111 cm/14 ft 4 in. × 3 ft 8 in.) that ‘took part’ in the Passion, it could be featured in iconographic renderings of the Passion being used to lower the body into the grave, cradling the body during the Pietà, or as a means for angels to transport the body after the death on the cross. As a full-size image of the body of Christ, one could interact with it as St Carlo Borromeo did, in veneration, kissing the ‘wounds’ that had purportedly been created by contact with Christ’s wounds. Members of the court were also allowed this devotion. Finally, it could be stitched, as Anne Marie d’Orléans, the Savoyard duchess, did in order to repair it, in a particularly gendered form of veneration.

The Shroud required many supporting hands during an ostentation, thereby uniting the clergy and encompassing the aristocracy in a common devotional endeavour (as in illus. 79). During the first major celebration of its arrival in Turin, it took part in the 40 Hours devotion and upstaged the Eucharist, effectively presented as an alternative body of Christ, whole and entire and celebrated with hourly sermons. In fact, this particular Eucharistic celebration of the 40 Hours was extended by 24 extra hours to accommodate the thousands of pilgrims crossing the alpine valleys to see the relic, and more sermons were added. Two were delivered by Borromeo, emphasizing proper post-Tridentine doctrine, as the duke, a proper Christian prince, commanded.

Although Guarini’s chapel surely deserves praise for its originality, many of its elements must be recognized as reliant on longstanding traditions of relic display, albeit amplified and made more theatrical. The strategy of creating a separate and sacred space to the east of the body of the cathedral was used in many reliquary chapels, notably the Corona of Thomas Becket at Canterbury. The view of the reliquary above and behind the main altar was a standard display technique as well, used both at the Sainte-Chapelle with its Grande Chasse, and in the display at St Ursula in Cologne (see illus. 29, 30). The circular shape of the relic/mortuary chapel was also not unusual (again, compare to the Corona), and in this case, probably recalls the Holy Sepulchre. (The royal aspirations of such a copy are echoed in a contemporary rumour, contending that the Medici had plans to capture the Holy Sepulchre, and to disassemble and reassemble it in their mortuary in San Lorenzo in Florence.) As the chapel for the Shroud of Christ, references to the Holy Sepulchre and burial are appropriate, but as the location of a salvific relic, the stunning manipulation of light is also fitting. Nevertheless, even if these elements are familiar, in its completed form, Guarini’s ensemble was considered ‘miraculous’.

Guarini raised the dome high, in part to allow unobstructed light into the many pierced elements of the vaulting (see illus. 78). Of course, the entire floor of the chapel is also raised to connect to the piano nobile of the ducal palace with access via an eastern door, and to allow the reliquary to rise well above the level of the cathedral altar. Pilgrims had to climb a set of dark stairs, and turn to finally step into the light of the chapel (as if climbing a tower; think of Karlštejn).

Guarini intended, in the architect’s own words, ‘to stupefy the intellect and stun the viewer’. Much of his architecture is illusionistic rather than structural, making use of reiterated triangles, prospectively diminishing geometric forms and elements stacked heavenwards to emphasize, and generally supercharge, the space. Of course, here as well, he is following the lead and inspiration of others: Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, and perhaps even the Roman Pantheon; but Guarini’s result makes the effect new. Contemporaries raved, with one calling it a reliquary in itself because of its preciousness and striking design, and others critiquing it as bizarre and a ‘terror’, but all registering its ability to provoke emotions.⁴⁰

Ultimately, it was a functional design, presented as beautiful and astonishing precisely in order to do reverence to the relic and to present it in its proper place within a larger relic display. In addition to the Shroud, the chapel contained relics of the Crown of Thorns and the True Cross, but also a finger of Catherine, relics of Maurice, Lazarus, Carlo Borromeo, Mary Magdalene, the virgin Deodata and others.⁴¹ The bronze gilded capitals, highlighted against polished black marble, emphasized the special treasures of the collection with images of the Passion relics: the nails, the Crown of Thorns and the tablet inscribed INRI. These pictorial details literally ‘support’ the relic that, in effect, binds them together, and devotional exercises to be practised in the chapel took the devotee systematically through the Passion stories.

The chapel was originally intended to include frescoes of the Passion that were not realized, but devotional engravings do survive that depict how the Shroud was thought to function as a sort of ‘map’ of Passion devotion. Such prints show the image of the body of Christ with a series of keyed letters linked to Passion narratives. They further surround the central image of the Shroud with the arma Christi, or even supplement it with a frame of Passion rosary prayers, explicitly designating these prayers as an ‘offering’ for the relic.⁴² Clearly the Shroud was presented not only as an object that was part of the Passion, but also as the ultimate sign of Christ’s sufferings and the summation of the Passion – therefore the most prestigious relic of all.

The Savoy dynasty, first as dukes, then, as they claimed, as kings of Jerusalem and Cyprus, were charged with the care of what they perceived as the greatest, most integral and most precious of relics. They worked hard to make it elusive. Once it was enclosed in Guarini’s chapel, as noted, it was rarely shown (48 ostentions in the seventeenth century, five in the eighteenth). In public ostentions by 1686, it never left the palace; that is, the Savoyards rebuilt the palatial buildings allowing access via elevated halls to an ostention platform between the Piazzetta Reale and the Piazza Castello, allowing the relic to be shown without ever descending to the streets. The court could occupy this grandiose ‘high ground’, wealthy citizens could purchase space on elevated bleachers, but hoi polloi created a near chaos of joy in the streets. The ritual was played out as entirely under the control of the duke/king and his master of ceremonies, from access via keys, to the very ordering of each ostention, masterfully manipulating the public’s desire to see this precious relic. This degree of control allowed the Savoyard dynasty to turn the Shroud into their ‘icon of authority’, and they used it as an excuse to create a superbly ordered city – not the usual outcome of the enthusiasms of pilgrimage, but then these devotees have been characterized as ‘subject-pilgrims’.⁴³

As a result of tight Savoyard control, the Shroud has maintained its prestige throughout the centuries. In the ostention of 1842, not only was the glory of the relic recaptured after French suppression, but its support of the Savoy dynasty was re-established. In an echo of early plans in the era before Guarino Guarini’s chapel, the addition in 1850 of a series of dynastic tomb monuments placed in niches that had up to then housed ex-votos transformed the chapel from a shrine into a mausoleum.

Once the new processes of photography revealed that the Shroud is essentially a ‘negative’, the transition from royal to popular relic was complete. The relic became the definitive possession of the papacy in 1983 and, beginning with the ostention of 1978, the Shroud itself was spotlit and immobile as visitors streamed past in silence, a complete change from the circumstances of earlier viewings. The setting promoted ‘optimum visibility’ and a scientific attitude; there were 3,333,000 visitors. In 1997 the chapel tragically burned just as a restoration was completed, the wooden scaffolding feeding the flames. Today, one hopes that the chapel will be restored. Meanwhile, a scenographic painting above the altar of the cathedral recreates something of Guarini’s original effect and showings of the Shroud itself have continued – in 1998, 2000, 2010 and 2015. The Shroud even has its own logo, booking website and catchphrase – ‘The Greatest Love’ (visits are free). Somehow all this is both a tragic and yet fitting transformation of the most spectacular of relic presentations of the post-Tridentine era.

5

Relics Destroyed, Relics Returned, Relics Reinvented: The French Revolution, Napoleon, Celebrity, the Photograph

AFTER THE RELIGIOUS UPHEAVAL of the Reformation and the coming of a new Enlightenment emphasis on scientific thought and reason, for many people, relics lost their power. They were branded as superstitious and objects of derision. Notwithstanding such widespread intellectual disdain, within the still powerful Catholic faith, relics were never rejected and the faithful continued to find them fascinating and worthy of veneration. Furthermore, regardless of faith positions, ‘reliquary strategies’ – that is, means and modes of presentation and performance that had been generated by centuries of artistic and cult production – continued to have prestige and indisputable power. During the modern period, these strategies lay behind the formation of a cult of celebrity and its wide-ranging material expression so important in our contemporary world.

It has been suggested that the concept of ‘celebrity’ was invented in the Napoleonic era, around the person of Napoleon as well as other important figures such as Keats and Byron, Voltaire and Mozart.¹ I would argue that, just at this moment, the western European instinct to create and venerate relics was transferred from the sole domain of religious veneration to include secular obsession with the events and emerging celebrities of the era. In order to understand this cultural transformation of relic to treasured memory object, of saint’s legend to biopic, we’ll look at the relic-ing surrounding the Revolution and Napoleon himself – that is, in France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although similar trajectories could surely be traced in England and elsewhere, for example with the celebrity of Napoleon’s nemesis the Duke of Waterloo, or that of Bonnie Prince Charlie whose life can be understood as more like that of a Catholic saint, strongly associated as it was with the divine right of kings. A consideration of revolutionary mementos and the objects in Napoleon’s orbit provides a particularly vivid and well-documented example.

The French Revolution is usually considered to have been virulently anti-religious and destructive of all things having to do with the practice of Catholicism. However, given that the revolutionaries themselves were raised in the environment of Catholic spectacle and ceremony, it should come as no surprise that very soon after the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, ‘patriots’ envisioned certain material and ceremonial possibilities within what could only be called a relic-mode. Later that same year, the parochial church of Saint-André-des-Arts distributed blessed bread with the image of the Bastille stamped on it. And remarkably, a self-proclaimed patriot, Pierre-François Palloy, having secured the right to demolish the building that had been stormed and besieged by the revolutionaries, began a business in what has been termed the production of ‘souvenirs’.² Like the distribution of the blessed bread, however, this project represents the exploitation of a culture forged in the consumption, experience and understanding of the material sacred, especially relics and reliquaries. Indeed, Palloy argued that he was preserving ‘sacred’ memory.

None of the stones of the Bastille were wasted; they were used to build the bridge of ‘Concord’, but also, in a more complex aspect of the project, to manufacture and preserve the memory of the now absent and long-detested monument (illus. 80). As if marketing the stones, Palloy orchestrated a remarkable series of events that commemorated not the Bastille itself, but its destruction, and in that destruction the foundation of Liberty: in other words these events celebrated the absence of the Bastille.

80 Unknown artist, model of the Bastille, 1789–90, stone, 37 × 95 × 98 cm, Musée Carnavalet, Paris.

The first spectacle is reminiscent of Old Testament narratives of origin, and a second more ambitious initiative was more clearly modelled on New Testament principles of mission. On 23 February 1790, Palloy organized a civic procession involving 750 workers, followed by drummers, soldiers and heroes from the Bastille battle terminating at the Hôtel de Ville. ‘In triumph’, the procession transported ‘a model of the Bastille, carved from a stone of the demolition and well and perfectly executed . . . they received the acclaim of the crowds’.³ At the Hôtel, Palloy delivered a speech and introduced the artisan that had made his model, a man not otherwise known but in contemporary reports named Dax. (Not inconsequentially, Dax is a name originating from a town in southwest France that was founded by the Romans; in other words, it is not Christian.) Dax proclaimed that he was a ‘stonecutter, but the liberty that you have rebirthed is propagated in me and has given me the idea of making this little monument . . . encouraged by the divine fire of his [Palloy’s] patriotism’.

After this speech recalling the humility and divine inspiration of artisans of the Middle Ages, or even the biblical Bezalel, who was chosen to build the Temple, Dax’s work was consecrated. The Parisian municipal architect praised the virtues of labour:

every blow of the hammer, made by these brave workers, is an homage to liberty, and breaks a link in the chain of our slavery; the Bastille has disappeared; already the astonished eye searches for the place where it was, but its name will be immortal.

He then demanded that the terrible name be forwarded in history, passed from mother to child, harboured in the breast, so that it might serve always as a spur to action if liberty is threatened. The Bastille thus is characterized, in some sense, as the anti-Temple, preserved in memory, never to be rebuilt, but an inspiration to faith.

If this ceremony recalls the Old Testament, a second spectacle employing the relic-stones-turned-models follows a New Testament narrative line. Palloy won permission from the Legislature in 1792 to send out a group of hand-picked orators he called ‘Apostles of Liberty’ to take the models and their accompanying explanatory materials to the 83 departments of France, to spread the word to the provinces. Along with his models, he sent out plans of the Bastille, fully annotated, and also included ‘implements’ of his now sacred anti-Temple – tiny metal cannons and grilles for the windows. As with the remains of saints or other sacred persons, these stones of the Bastille, now models of the fortress, stood for an absence but also for an ever-present power that could be invoked at will. Many of the French provinces still exhibit these ‘stones’ of remembrance in their departmental museums.

It cannot be disputed that much of the story of the French Revolution is one of forces opposed to religion; relics and reliquaries as well as other forms of medieval and Renaissance art were destroyed or dispersed in massive numbers, subject to the rage of the people stirred up by the political party known as the Jacobins, as well as by the more practical need of the young government for funds.⁴ The Jacobins specifically targeted artwork perceived as ‘signs’ of power. Their discourse acknowledged the beauty of art, but detected danger in its ability to propagate an ideology of the ruling class, whether that power consisted of ‘Rome’ or monarchy, or the two acting together as the French monarchy and the Catholic Church had done so well. As a result, the revolutionaries despised coats of arms and other symbols on seals, buttons and coins as much as they did more monumental expressions of power.

In quick succession, in November 1789, the Estates-General declared that all clerical benefices and goods were at the disposition of the State, and by the end of the month, all works of gold and silver of the royal chapel, the Sainte-Chapelle, were inventoried in order to be turned over to the new government. Some of the relics and other objects went to Saint-Denis, the gems to the Cabinet des Médailles, the books to the Bibliothèque nationale. In similar fashion, art was ‘liberated’ from churches and chateaux for the benefit of the people of France. Some objects were spared destruction for their historical significance (authentics of relics from Saint-Denis) or their beauty (the church of Notre Dame itself). In a somewhat ironic result, the chaos and destruction of the revolutionary state by necessity gave birth to the public museum, a new institution entrusted with the care of State treasures. As Jacques-Louis David argued, ‘Let us not forget that the culture of art is one more weapon we can use to awe our enemies.’⁵

By 1794 Church lands had been nationalized and many churches closed, their clergy scattered, and by 1795 Church and State were separated by law. However, in what might also be considered an unexpected consequence of the promise of revolution, many of the common people, especially in the provinces, and especially during the years of 1794–5, argued that their new liberated status should allow freedom of religion, and petitioned for those rights – Robespierre had in fact unsuccessfully urged this approach in 1793. Incidents in which townspeople broke the locks on church doors in order to chant the Psalms caused some local governments to concede such rights, despite pressure to do otherwise. The political rhetoric of the time does not easily break into neat categories of revolutionary atheists versus the counter-revolutionary devout. (And of course, one treasury that survives, that of Sainte-Foi of Conques, was saved because it was hidden by devout townspeople; see illus. 19.)

It is not surprising that a ruler as shrewd as Napoleon Bonaparte recognized this complexity. He argued: ‘In every country, religion is useful to the Government, and those who govern ought to avail themselves of it to influence mankind. I was a Mahometan in Egypt; I am a Catholic in France.’⁶ One of the soon-to-be emperor’s key actions was to reconcile with the pope in the Concordat of 1801, restoring Catholicism as the national religion of France and bringing back the pomp and ceremony of the Church – even if some revolutionaries showed their disrespect by snacking on biscuits and talking during the solemn Te Deum that celebrated the act.

Notwithstanding his reconciliation, Napoleon intended to dominate the Church rather than to be dominated. Even after he obliged the pope to come to France for the imperial coronation, he subverted the carefully planned and staged ceremony by famously placing the crown on his head with his own hands.

Just as the revolutionaries had displaced the ceremonies of the Church with revolutionary feasts and processions that took advantage of familiar ecclesiastical forms and practices, so Napoleon used his knowledge of history, and the possibilities of the spectacle of power, to manipulate customary rites and reliquary strategies to his own advantage. He visited Aachen to reverence the relics of Charlemagne, and on that trip, as if it were a bit of jewellery rather than a powerful reliquary that once hung around the emperor’s neck in his grave, he had his wife Josephine presented with the famous Talisman of Charlemagne. She was also offered a piece of the arm of the Carolingian emperor saint, but replied that she already had a strong arm upon which to lean. From Charlemagne’s palace chapel, Napoleon carted off the imperial regalia and also a selection of the porphyry columns from the building for use at the Louvre. (After 1815, the Prussians demanded them back.) When he conquered Italy, Napoleon even contemplated taking the relic of the Turin Shroud, but was satisfied with despoiling Guarini’s chapel and sealing the door to the palace, transferring control over the great relic from the Savoyard dynasty to the Church and exiling the king.⁷

Napoleon was especially interested in regalia. Like Emperor Charles IV, he understood that such objects brought legitimacy in the eyes of the people. He had both a sceptre and a copy of the Main de Justice made for ceremonial use. The crown for his coronation was newly manufactured but covered with ancient cameos, recalling a Roman heritage of rulership. The crown also carried the inscription, ‘the crown of Charlemagne’, but substituted palmettes for traditional royal fleur-de-lis ornament (see the upper frame of illus. 87). He had himself crowned king of the Romans in Milan using a replica of the famous Iron Crown of Lombardy, an ancient (actually Carolingian) reliquary crown held at the cathedral treasury of Monza (said to contain one of the nails of the Crucifixion).⁸ He used a copy of the Iron Crown because he was not sure he could pry the original loose to bring it to Milan and, furthermore, because the crown was too small to fit, he merely touched it to his head during the ceremony. Nevertheless, a print was circulated that showed him wearing it, and after founding an order of the Iron Crown, he wore the order’s medal thereafter (again see illus. 87).

Finally of course, there was one more relic-crown for Napoleon to appropriate. That was the crown that had already served French political interests so well – the Crown of Thorns. The famous relic-crown was held at the French royal chapel of the Sainte-Chapelle (see illus. 42). The revolutionaries, as above, had mostly melted down the treasury for the fortune in gold that its reliquaries provided, although the Crown itself was saved and held as the people’s treasure (its thirteenth-century reliquary was destroyed). Napoleon returned the relic to the Church in 1806, to the chapter and canons of Notre Dame, and seems to have sponsored a beautiful empire-style reliquary that still survives in the cathedral, although it no longer holds the relic (illus. 81). The canons approved of and had to pay for the reliquary, and it was produced very quickly but not entirely to their specifications.

The result assumes the appearance of a secular piece of silver-work. On a triangular base that holds a long inscription narrating the itinerary of the relic (which additionally was accompanied by a procès-verbal citing two witnesses who testified that this relic is indeed the one that originally left the Sainte-Chapelle), a spherical container for the relic is supported by three angels wearing empire-waisted dresses and fashionable hairstyles emulating the antique, looking very much like Napoleonic figures of Victory or Fame (as on the famous coronation nef, or again see illus. 87). The sphere was a motif that frequently occurred on Napoleonic secular images, and was certainly not the clear crystal container for the relic that was requested by the canons of the Chapter; its use undoubtedly refers to French imperial ambitions as well as being a gesture towards cosmic significance.

81 Jean-Charles Cahier, reliquary of the Crown of Thorns, 1806, gilded copper, 97.5 × 56.5 cm, Notre Dame, Paris.

The Christian imagery on the reliquary is small and difficult to see (for example, the sacred heart is lost at the centre of a Napoleonic sunburst). Only a few elements identify the reliquary as Christian: the female figure with chalice holding onto the cross at the summit (not Ecclesia but Faith); the lion of Judah (which Napoleon once supported as a symbolic representation of France); and the inscription that declaims that the reliquary is the ‘RESTITUTION’ of the Crown of Thorns, presumably to its rightful owners ‘the French’. Of particular interest, perhaps before he returned the relic to Notre Dame, Napoleon assumed the privilege of the French monarch to distribute thorns, as he must have reserved at least the one he gave to Cardinal Spina(!) at the time of the Concordat in thanks for his cooperation.⁹

Napoleon thus demonstrated once again that he was just as capable of putting religious relics and reliquaries to use in shoring up his legitimacy as any French king. Where he surpassed them was in his participation, and that of his followers and descendants, in a transformation of the cult of relics into the beginnings of the modern cult of celebrity, initiating an eighteenth-century trend. It is often remarked that preservation of celebrity-owned objects is similar to the cult of relics, but in Napoleon’s time the boundaries were demonstrably fluid – a newly found freedom to approach, even touch, the once sacrosanct relics of the Catholic Church may have emboldened men to create startling variations of personal relics and memorial objects.

Perhaps the most fascinating is an object owned by Vivant Denon, Napoleon’s first director of the Louvre museum. An acquisitive aesthete, Denon pursued beauty and art wherever he travelled, including trips to Egypt, Italy, Germany – wherever Napoleon conquered. Denon created his own personal collection of relics, reusing a fifteenth-century medieval reliquary to house them (Musée Bertrand de Châteauroux, illus. 82). Removing the original relics from the reliquary’s series of compartments, now covered in glass, Denon inserted labelled relics of medieval persons of interest on one side: bones of the Spanish hero El Cid and his lover Chimène, bones of Abelard and Héloïse, hairs of Inês de Castro (lover, later queen, of Pedro (Peter I) of Portugal, buried at Alcobaça) and of Agnès Sorel, mistress of King Charles VII of France. Perhaps the particular interest in illicit love evinced by this collection can be correlated with Denon’s production of erotic literature and engravings, but at any rate it corresponds to the medieval use of relics in what one might call ‘imaginative’ devotion.

In compartments on the other side of the object, we find ‘relics’ of contemporary celebrities: a bit of the moustache of Henri IV (a ‘good’ French king who was found incorrupt at his exhumation at Saint-Denis), linen of Turenne (the Marshal of France, respected by the revolutionaries, removed from Saint-Denis, reburied in the Jardin des Plantes, and then finally reburied by Napoleon in Les Invalides), bones of the literary heroes Molière and Fontaine, a piece of a tooth of Voltaire and hairs of General Desaix.

These relics represent a roster of heroic bodies that reveals a rather shocking trend during the Revolution: the ready exhumation, minute examination and relocation of even the revered dead. Although a series of engravings depict Denon respectfully burying the remains of El Cid, gone unmentioned is that the French first rather unceremoniously exhumed him during the Spanish war, as they did Inês de Castro, and Héloïse and Abelard, whose bones were then transferred from the Paraclete to the Père Lachaise cemetery. Similarly, all the graves of French royalty were opened and despoiled at Saint-Denis, although, out of respect, the revolutionaries defended that of Turenne. Also opened were the graves of Molière and Fontaine at Saint-Joseph, and the body of Voltaire was transferred to the Pantheon. These ‘corpse-centred enterprises’ could be readily compared to relic translations – moving bodies to places where they would receive proper respect – but they also evince, on the negative side, in certain cases, a ‘symbolic execution . . . of a convicted elite’.¹⁰ A special attention to but also sometimes disregard for the dead seems to have been part of the Revolutionary fervour.

82 Vivant Denon, reliquary, repurposed 15th-century reliquary with gilded brass, glass, h. 45.7 cm, Musée-Hôtel Bertrand, province of Berry, France.

At any rate, it would seem that Denon collected his relics on his travels and during the execution of his duties and assembled them along with mementoes of his leader and friend Napoleon in his reliquary-memory object. That is, in narrow compartments on the short sides of the reliquary are displayed a large and dramatic signature of Napoleon, part of the bloody shirt from the time of his death, a lock of his hair, and a leaf from a willow he used to sit under at Sainte-Hélène. Finally, the interior of the reliquary was also stuffed with other various mementoes and pieces of paper. Rather than a simple collection of souvenirs, this object appropriates the functions of religious reliquaries and organizes the souvenirs into a ‘showing’ that presumably was structured to provoke thought, imagination and, in the case of Napoleon, reverence; truly a memento of many dimensions.

These Napoleonic souvenirs, indeed, return us to what must be understood as the premier body of the era. Even as Napoleon brilliantly explored larger reliquary strategies in service to his claims for legitimacy, he and his descendants applied the same strategies to his own person and the newfound cause of his celebrity. It could be claimed that more ‘relics’ survive of Napoleon than any other modern figure. Napoleon himself was accustomed to disseminating locks of his hair during his life and in his will he specifies that his hair be cut and made into bracelets ‘with little gold clasps’ for each of his relatives, and a bigger one for his son and heir. He also specifies that none of his personal effects be sold and directs that some of them be given to close friends and relatives; in particular that his gold dressing case, used on the morning of various victorious battles (to prepare his body!), be preserved: ‘it is my wish that it be precious in the eyes of my son’.¹¹ Surprisingly, his corpse also participated in customs having to do with royal bodies – at his post-mortem his heart was removed and put in a silver vessel, as was royal custom. (And apparently, surreptitiously, his private parts were also excised; they recently sold to a New Jersey urologist for a handsome sum.) Napoleon even had plans to be buried in a dynastic mausoleum at Saint-Denis, although these plans did not come to fruition.

There is no doubt that Napoleon as man and myth was celebrated after his death with a kind of cult, fostered in no small way by his family. Prints circulated that designated him as soldier and saint, or depicted him as a martyr to English violence. During his life he likened himself to various classical gods, specifically Jupiter, but it would seem, in a deeply Catholic France of the nineteenth century, patterns of relic-making were more powerful than Greek and Roman myths. (Even Napoleon himself professed his catholicity at the end of his life.) What is most impressive in this circulation of relics and body parts is that there seems to be a transference from sacred to secular of not just the impulse to make relics of these bits and pieces, but also of the idea that these bits and pieces could be instructive, that a secular leader could be the proper object of meditation, as revelatory of the virtue and truth of a man as a sacred relic was revelatory of the workings of the divine. In this period the corpses of kings and of Napoleon (exhumed or recently dead) were studied minutely, a kind of physiognomy of the dead.

Clothing takes an astonishing place in such a system, far outstripping any status as commodity, perhaps because, as Walter Benjamin noted, it was the commodity ‘closest to the skin’. One complication was its resale (and thus the ready assumption of a new identity) but, as we have seen, Napoleon attempted to negate this issue by forbidding the resale of any of his effects. In Household Words, the magazine edited by Charles Dickens, George Augustus Sala recorded his thoughts about the exhibit of Napoleon’s clothes in the Musée des Souverains, galleries installed in the Louvre by Napoleon III in 1852:

the famous redingote gris – the gray great coat . . . I don’t think, intrinsically, it would fetch more than half a dozen shillings . . . yet here it is beyond price and purchase. It has held the body of the man whose name is blazoned on the ceiling; whose initial, pregnant with will and power, N, is on wall and escutcheon . . . This common coat of coarse gray duffel hangs in the midst of velvet and silk, gold and silver embroidery, stern, calm and impassable, and throws all their theatrical glories into shadow [see illus. 84].¹²

Never mind that viewers complained that Napoleon’s camp bed did not belong in this same display in the Louvre; here his coat, also marked as common and everyday, participated in the theatre of dress and fashion, but rose above transience or exchange. Just as a relic is marked by a reversal of nature through the miraculous, this coat superseded fashion. It was ‘calm and impassable’, the precise words used by Emmanuel de Las Cases, in his Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, the most popular memoir written concerning Napoleon.¹³ The coat took on Napoleon’s character and the viewer purportedly could see that in gazing upon it.

83 Charles Bouvier, after Charles Auguste, Baron de Steuben, Les Huit époques de Napoléon, par un peintre d’histoire, 1857, etching, 27 × 35 cm.

For a man who employed crowns so effectively, perhaps it is no surprise that Napoleon’s hats survive as prominent relics and as such the subject of painter Charles de Steuben’s recounting of Napoleon’s life through his headgear in Les Huit époques de Napoléon (1826, at Malmaison, here an engraving of that painting: illus. 83). The hats take on an anthropomorphic air, and fittingly ‘Waterloo’ is knocked awry. The Waterloo hat itself survives in Berlin, and another example was displayed prominently among other articles of clothing on display as ‘relics’ in a case near Napoleon’s tomb at the Invalides.

84 Napoleon’s hat and greatcoat, Château de Fontainebleau, near Paris.

Many other somewhat less expressive relics of Napoleon are presented in reliquary-like frames with labelling authentics (many in private hands). Arguably, even certain of the portraits qualify as relics, especially those created for intimate use by friends – that is, portrait miniatures. Portrait miniatures have frequently been compared to relics by observers who remark on the intimate way in which one would hold and look at such things, creating a sort of ‘intimate vision’, a gaze that possesses the viewer, drawing him or her into a place apart (ultimately very similar to what Paulinus of Nola described in looking at a tiny relic of the True Cross in the fourth century).¹⁴

In his treatise on the limning of miniatures, the English painter Nicholas Hilliard (c. 1547–1619) argued that he enriched his works with silver and gold and even adorned his product with polished gems of the greatest value, ennobling them so that they seemed the ‘thinge itselfe, even the work of god and not of man’.¹⁵ The miniature seems to exist in a space of its own, ‘insists on its own mimetic privilege’, and attempts to double its original. As the minuteness of its reality draws the viewer in, it is outside of time and point of view and creates a set of specified social relations and intimacies. Because of Hilliard’s mastery – using a brush with a single hair to paint on the skin-like surface of ivory or parchment and employing only the finest pigments – his paintings seem miraculous, they do not reveal brushstrokes. The result is secret, as Hilliard claims, defended from the gaze of the other, reaching out to ‘protect’ the viewer. In his artist’s manual, Hilliard also insisted upon strict corporal discipline in the painter, an immaculate studio free of dust, and concluded by asserting that the maker should not sign his product. The final product mimics the acheiropoieton, the image ‘made without hands’, a miraculous image out of time and above art, and yet with a marvellous and ‘effective’ likeness.

85 Unknown English artist, Eye Miniature, c. 1790– 1810, watercolour on ivory set with two diamond ‘tears’, in frame set with pearls, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

One sort of miniature that is only a partial portrait intensifies these effects. Called eye miniatures, because they usually depict a single eye with perhaps just a profile of a nose, an eyebrow and/or sometimes a lock of hair, they represent a relatively short-lived fashion at the turn of the century. All are very expressive; some ‘cry’ in the form of attached crystals or diamonds (illus. 85). These are tiny personal pieces of jewellery, probably not worn openly, that capture just a fragment of the body of the beloved. Given as gifts, as numerous inscriptions attest, they performed the social ‘game of looking’, but specifically, like letters, participated in a structure of address. Those with tears generally represented not the living, but instead a beloved person now departed, as performative dialogic objects that follow the structures of elegiac literature, both eliciting and delivering the ‘gift of tears’. In some sense, they allowed the dead to act, to look, to be in present time.¹⁶

Napoleon and his circle do not seem to have participated in this French fashion, but Josephine’s granddaughter did own a beautiful example of a bracelet fashioned with her mother’s hair and fastened with a clasp made of an eye miniature now in Stockholm. There are, however, many portrait miniatures of the emperor and, indeed, many copies of a particular one painted by Jean-Baptiste Isabey, examples of which are in the Walters Art Museum, and The Wallace Collection in London (illus. 86, 87). This portrait likeness takes special care with the depiction of Napoleon’s large liquid eyes and the texture of the skin and hair, producing the jewel-like effects aspired to by Hilliard. Napoleon, however, is not portrayed looking at the viewer as is the case in most such miniature portraits; he instead looks off to the side in a gaze that seems almost to waver between the intimate and the distant, as if his eyes have just turned away, perhaps to attend to a threat on the horizon.

Isabey was commissioned to do many paintings for the emperor and empress, and arranged the ceremonies of their coronations; indeed he was responsible for all the ceremonies and entertainments in the Tuileries, at Saint-Cloud and Malmaison, in his duties as Dessinateur du Cabinet de l’Empereur, des Cérémonies et des Relations Extérieures. In 1805 he was appointed premier peintre to Josephine.

This miniature which Isabey painted of Napoleon includes the depiction of a medal of the Order of the Iron Crown which Napoleon founded in 1805 – perhaps the original portrait was commissioned at that time by Napoleon himself as a gift for his wife or a treasured associate. What is remarkable is that, despite the fact that each miniature in itself would have had an ability to maintain the sense of a palpable and personal connection with the emperor, all of the many copies of this miniature, many apparently by Isabey himself, could not have been made for Josephine – they are too numerous even to have been made for the immediate family – and thus one can only conclude that these ‘intimate’ objects were made for a much wider audience.

If we look, however, to the example in the Walters Art Museum to think about the reception of the object, we see that it has been framed in such a way that its function has been abruptly shifted away from some of the primary functions of the miniature – that is, it is no longer optimal for holding in the hand, or close to the body and eyes. Instead it is placed in an elaborate, reused older frame (1808). The assemblage with the frame promotes the image as that of the emperor surrounded by symbols of victory, the Charlemagne crown, sceptre and Main de Justice above, Merovingian ‘bees’ at the side and an eagle below. The miniature has become a treasure or relic of Napoleon – perhaps it signifies a special relationship the owner had with the emperor. Nevertheless, the miniature continues to draw upon conventions of contemporary social practice, but also combines them with processes of veneration familiar from a long Catholic tradition. The end result has a magnetic presence even if it is not to be touched, even if it does not return our gaze; it nonetheless captures our eyes and ‘fascinates’ us.

Although, surely, only the very privileged and wealthy would have had such a miniature of the emperor, it was not only the elite of society who participated in these trends that we have seen in the ‘relics’ of Napoleon. As scholars have noted, all miniatures could function in the manner of relics, and many people owned them and relied on them to make connections with their loved ones. Natalie Herzen wrote in a letter to her husband in 1837:

Looking at your letters, at your portrait, thinking of my letters, of my bracelet [undoubtedly a hair bracelet], I have wished I could skip a hundred years and see what their fate would be. The things which have been for us holy relics, which have healed us, body and soul, with which we have talked . . . what will they be when we are gone? Will their virtue, their soul, remain in them? . . . will they tell the story of us, of our sufferings, of our love, will they win the reward of a single tear?¹⁷

86 Jean-Baptiste Isabey, Napoleon Bonaparte, 1812, frame 1808, watercolour on ivory, miniature h. 4.8 cm, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD.

It is said that the art of miniature painting died with the advent of the photograph, only two years after these words were written. But one could equally argue that the photograph carried the uses of the miniature forward into a new technology, a technology that was available literally to all levels of society. Or, if we admit that miniatures had something of a relic function, perhaps the reason the photograph supplants them is that it did the same job so very well.

Photographs take over all the qualities that we have discussed in miniatures; they are described as like acheiropoieta, their very manufacture almost miraculous as it is grounded in the working of light.¹⁸ They are made of a precious material, silver, encased in gilded protective boxes, and can only be seen from the ‘proper’ angle, by the privileged viewer (because of the nature of early photographic plates). Moreover, they slot themselves into the place of the miniature in the social structures we have discussed; even better, they carry the ‘touch’ of the sitter.

As Roland Barthes argued in Camera Lucida, ‘The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent. From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me.’¹⁹ Contemporaries to photography’s invention also recognized its indexical power. In 1843, Elizabeth Barrett described it as ‘the very sanctification of portraits’ in that ‘it is not merely the likeness which is precious in such cases – but the association, and the sense of nearness involved in the thing, the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed for ever!’²⁰ Perhaps the endless reproduction of photographs in the modern world has diminished this miraculous sense of presence, but the photograph remains to be exploited for its indexical and relic-like quality. One wonders what Napoleon would have done with the marvellous new medium if he had lived a few decades longer?

87 Jean-Baptiste Isabey, Napoleon Bonaparte, c. 1805, gouache on ivory, 5.5 × 3.8 cm, The Wallace Collection, London.

6

The Reliquary Effect: Contemporary Artists and Strategies of the Relic

IN TRACING THE CONTINUING AFTERLIFE of the ‘relic’ in contemporary art, our attention will shift from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century objects that look and function very much like relics and reliquaries to artworks that instead enshrine material per se and that explore the possibilities of agency and the signification of ‘things’ for audiences. These works often lack anything that can be identified as a ‘relic’, relying instead on strategies of relic presentation, what I have called the ‘reliquary effect’.

Although presented here in more or less chronological fashion, this artistic production once again does not follow a developmental arc. The artists under discussion emerge from a society still steeped in relic use and work with or against this habitus to think through their art and practice. Given the admittedly tendentious nature of my thesis, I will follow a somewhat different course from that of earlier chapters, making a more exhaustive argument using the work of only three artists, with minimal additional citations of other artists involved in such a ‘project’. Discussing the work with this limited approach will better serve our purposes, avoiding the trap of considering only the superficial aspects of reliquary form, but allowing an exploration of how the ‘reliquary effect’ furthers serious artistic investigation.

Of our three principle examples, Joseph Beuys is the least specific in his references to relics, but remains a touchstone for artists of the twentieth century and for the emergence of German art from what Theodor Adorno characterized as its post-Second World War inability to make ‘poetry’.¹ His ‘student’ Anselm Kiefer is more literal in his references to relic-like things that he has appropriated from a wide range of sources. A third proponent of reliquary strategies, The American artist Paul Thek calls his work ‘reliquaries’ but such a title begs the question of their rigorously manufactured contents.

Beuys and Kiefer are German and Thek lived much of his life as an expatriate, primarily in Italy, creating some of his most influential work for German galleries. Artists using reliquary strategies, however, are not all German, nor are they all Catholic. Beuys, Thek and Kiefer were raised as Catholics and Thek pursued his interaction with the Church, at least sporadically, throughout his life, but none of the works to which we will attend are religious in a conventional sense.

It has been claimed, however, that contemporary Catholic artists often produced a sort of ‘crypto-religious’ art – for example, Andy Warhol attended Mass each Sunday and painted a series of the Last Supper. It may be that ‘art as religion’, or the ‘spirituality’ of art, especially in a Buddhist mode, has been discussed with profit in contemporary criticism, but art produced within Christianity, or any organized religion for that matter, has been treated with suspicion or even disdain by modern critics and historians. (Thek’s Catholicism is barely mentioned in the recent Guggenheim catalogue.) Fortunately, we will avoid this particular peril, as religious art is not our subject here. Instead we are concerned with practices of presentation that have long been associated with religious relics but that have been transferred to the realm of art. These practices of presentation consist of: enshrinement and assemblage; display through ceremony or ritual in performance; and hyper-awareness regarding materials, whether precious or worthless.

We will see that relic strategies enable artists to elucidate a series of issues: the ‘problem’ of the body, the instantiation of issues of personal and national history and, perhaps most significantly, the processing of memories of war and genocide. As artists pursue a need to materialize and memorialize at the supra-personal level, the ‘rhetoric’ of reliquaries proves to be a powerful tool in socially engaged discourses of contemporary art.

Show Your Wound, Joseph Beuys

Two consistently appealing qualities of the relic/reliquary for contemporary artists are the form’s insistence on viewer participation and its essential engagement with materiality. As an early adopter of performance art, Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) hoped to redefine and ‘extend’ the meaning of art for its audiences, disrupting strategies of the aesthetic or the representational.² Instead of beauty, Beuys focused on physical material: ‘the purpose of philosophy is to arrive at materialism. In other words, to move towards death: matter. In order to be able to say anything about life, one has to understand death: the methodology of reduction.’³ Or, as he added, he aspired to the ‘transformation of substance [material]’ and wished, like the hare, to dig ‘himself into Materia (earth)’.⁴

Beuys’s investment in the capacities of both audiences and materials was a decisive and powerful move that resonated for his fellow artists – and has continued to resonate and develop in practices such as relational art (or relational aesthetics) and philosophical approaches such as speculative realism: ‘an object is in itself an infinite recess, unknowable and inaccessible by any other thing’, but ‘two objects can interact through the mediation of a “sensual vicar” [i.e. the artist]’.⁵ Beuys’s life and oeuvre must be examined from a broad perspective in order to begin to understand his use of materials and the way they come to have meaning in his work, as well as the legacy of that work in the contemporary field.

From his earliest work, his active myth-making sensibility imbued Beuys’s art with personal and, he contended, universal meaning. In the first entry in his ‘curriculum vitae’ he ‘denotes his birth’ as an exhibited object/part of his body: ‘1921 Kleve. Exhibition of a wound drawn together with plaster.’⁶ This entry is a vivid demonstration of ‘his belief that trauma is the prerequisite for moral and social health by positioning “the wound” as a natural state and art as a tool for healing’,⁷ as well as a testament to the power of the object.

As opposed to Beuys’s myths about his life, the biographical data are somewhat more prosaic. Although born in 1921 in Krefeld, Germany, Joseph Beuys’s family moved to Kleve, a region that was ethnically Dutch and religiously Catholic. He joined the Nazi youth and during the Second World War was conscripted into the German army, training as a fighter pilot and gunner. During a wartime bombing raid, his plane crashed and he was seriously injured – the central trauma of his life. After the war, feeling the need to recreate himself both spiritually and physically, he rejected his early training as a scientist and physician and chose to study art.

Beuys was and is a controversial figure, and not only because of his one-time Nazi affiliation. Asserting that ‘Every man is an artist’, Beuys held that art encompassed politics, nature and the creation/recreation of the nature of man himself. Through an association with artists of the international Fluxus movement, in particular Nam June Paik, Beuys became an early practitioner of ‘happenings’, or performance art, or, as he called them, ‘actions’. Because he insisted on discussion and audience participation, some of his actions led to strong, even violent reactions. Often referred to as a philosopher or shaman, he was renowned as a charismatic teacher but is sometimes accused of being a charlatan.⁸ At the time of his Guggenheim retrospective in 1980, the critic Benjamin Buchloh questioned the validity of the myths upon which Beuys based his practice and assessed his art negatively. Buchloh’s much-reprinted essay slowed acceptance of Beuys’s work in the U.S., although it has always been avidly admired in Europe.

Another barrier to Beuys’s early critical acceptance was his lack of irony (and his famous antagonism to Dada and Duchamp), combined with his investment in the spiritual nature of art. Even his primary biographer Caroline Tisdall admitted to having an anti-religious prejudice in a recent interview:

In all my earlier writings, I must confess I rather suppressed the Christian angle. Fundamental to his work was the transformation of material and I think you almost have to be brought up a Catholic to use that as a creative principle.⁹

It is, indeed, Beuys’s ‘transformative’ use of materials and his ‘immersion’ in them that makes him central to our concerns. These include the most infamous of materials he employed – felt and fat – as well as materials we have seen in previous discussions in this book – gold and the cross – and finally a few that fall somewhere in between – iron and honey. One might object that the cross does not qualify as a material, but because Beuys consistently rejects an iconographical approach and sees materials as active rather than static, when he uses a cross-object, it is more than the conventional ‘sign’.

Felt and especially fat are constituted as substances of great power in a story that Beuys forges as his own re-creation myth (much like a saint’s story): a recovery that he casts as a transition from chaos into form. In the plane crash that he described as a central part of his Second World War experience, Beuys came down in the Crimea, between the Russian and German lines, and was rescued by non-combatant native Tatars. His purposefully impressionistic story is vague but describes vivid sense impressions:

I only regained consciousness completely after twelve days or so . . . So the memories I have of that time are images that penetrated my consciousness . . . I must have shot through the windscreen as it flew back at the same speed as the plane hit the ground and that saved me . . . Then I was completely buried in the snow. That’s how the Tatars found me a few days later. I remember voices saying ‘voda’ (water), then the felt of their tents and the dense and pungent smell of cheese, fat, and milk. They covered my body with fat to help it regenerate warmth and wrapped it in felt as an insulator to keep the warmth in.¹⁰

The story, the most central evidence of Beuys’s myth-making activities, is foundational for his artistic practice.

It is a beginning for Beuys, not of a palette of colours or a set of symbols, but of a sensory world of purposefully non-art materials which involve smell, sound and touch and, even more importantly, the operation or potential of these materials to bring about transformation. Rather than disintegrate into the ‘chaos’ of the war and its world, Beuys was reconstituted by the most primitive and basic of materials which come to represent for him warmth and nourishment, energy and change, as well as literal and spiritual salvation.

Beuys’s use of some of these materials is purposefully shocking. In many works, including Fat Chair (Fettstuhl) of 1977, the artist prized the ability of fat to provoke reactions in his audience, including disgust (illus. 88). Buchloh’s critique of this piece referred to the ‘suggestive and associative quality of anality’ and its ‘infantile’ nature, but Beuys argued that ‘the chair represents a kind of human anatomy, the area of digestive and excretive warmth processes, sexual organs and interesting chemical change . . . [a] chaotic character’.¹¹ The chair presents both a smooth upper surface like skin and a side view that reveals the interior, ‘a cross section cut through the nature of fat’.

In other artworks, Beuys chooses fat for its nutritive value which is ‘basic to life’; fat is both from life and potentially sustaining to life. With this sort of material, ‘he manifested content, rather than symbolized it’.¹² In differentiating himself from the aesthetic refinement of the minimalists, to whom he was compared, Beuys argued that ‘[I use] materials that are not beautiful and are also quite poor; but they have nothing to do with emptiness’.

Fat Chair has been compared to a readymade, but Beuys also resisted that association, asserting that the qualities of the fat, its heat and warmth, make the work less of an elite art object as ‘defined’ by an ‘artist’¹³ and more of an event, akin to the human body’s changes. Of course, fat also refers to the potential ‘rendering’ of a human body that would serve to destroy it (potentially a reference to the Holocaust). This is one of the many elements through which Beuys begins to ‘homeopathically’ process his culpability as a German.¹⁴

88 Joseph Beuys, poster showing Fat Chair (Fettstuhl), 1984, print on paper, 89.7 × 64.5 cm.

Although the Tatar story supplies a rich environmental context for Beuys’s choice of fat as a medium, Beuys’s interest in fat may also be motivated by early experimentation with beeswax. He was particularly intrigued by the changeable nature of wax and fat – sometimes liquid, sometimes solid – as well as with its heat and movement and its ability to fill a void. (One work, Unschlitt, or Tallow, 1977, moulded 18,000 kg (20 tons) of fat to the shape of a ‘marginal’ architectural space near Münster University. Beuys claimed both that the fat ‘will never cool’ and also that ‘it will never warm again’. After three months the fat was cut into pieces and transported to the museum.¹⁵)

Beuys claimed after the war that the healing of his body initiated ‘a relationship between the chaos I had experienced and a sculptural metaphor’, drawing a direct line (without interim mediation) to his artistic practice and concluding that: ‘Chaos can have a healing character, coupled with an idea of open movement that channels the heat of chaotic energy into order or form.’¹⁶ As materials transformed Beuys, so he ultimately revealed them as transformative in his art.

Although most commentators on Beuys’s artwork focus on the two humble materials of felt and fat, they ignore another set of materials that are equally important and equally embedded in Beuys’s ‘origins’ and myth-making practice. Beuys was interested in honey as an energy source produced by bees (along with their wax), whose ‘society’ he admired; he was specifically inspired by theories of the Austrian esoteric philosopher Rudolf Steiner. He used felt and fat, iron, honey and gold in a seminal performance, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (Wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erklärt, 1965, at the Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf), which included the application of some of these materials to his body, especially his head and foot:

Gold and honey indicate a transformation of the head, and therefore, the brain and our understanding of thought, consciousness and all the other levels necessary to explain pictures to a hare: the warm stool insulated with felt and the iron sole with the magnet. I had to walk on this sole when I carried the hare round from picture to picture, so along with the strange limp came the clank of iron on the hard stone floor – that was all that broke the silence, since my explanations were mute.¹⁷

Beuys pursued this idea that the application of honey to his head and face was a means of generating energy in a number of other works, such as Honey Pump at the Workplace (Honigpumpe, 1977, Documenta 6, Kassel). Similarly, in the performance with the hare, he used the alchemical material gold on his head in order to enliven thought and lined his foot with iron to enact an elemental contact of iron with the earth or stone. If one further parses a hierarchy of the body, one sees that Beuys links felt with the trunk, or ‘seat’ in this case, as he does fat. As with iron and honey, felt and fat can be active or activated (the hare represents many other ideas too dense to explore here).¹⁸ Materials may represent a different ‘mode of perception’:

Beuys’s art questioned the belief that we can adequately understand . . . our world through normal modes of perception . . . organs of knowing . . . different from ordinary logical, analytical thinking must be employed to apprehend the forces at work in material substances.¹⁹

Always in considering Beuys’s work, we must try to understand the ‘processes’ of the materials that Beuys sought to explore.

Similarly, in Beuys’s art, the cross operates as an organizing principle rather than a sign, persisting throughout his career both as a material object and as a directional pointer. An early commission for a cross for a grave in 1953 caused him to see the cross as ‘an indicator, a fulcrum, a meeting point’,²⁰ where the spiritual was instantiated by the material. Furthermore he saw the cross in nature, calling queen bees, of which he made many early drawings and sculptures – ‘moving crosses’. One of his primary materials in his later work, Braunkreuz (literally, brown cross), is an opaque brown paint that evokes various associations to dried blood, to the red cross, to the Rosicrucians, even to Nazi brown shirts.²¹

In many of his key performances, crosses and cross movements are of signal importance. Of the Infiltration Homogen for Grand Piano, The Greatest Contemporary Composer is the Thalidomide Child (1966), now in the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the artist stated that the ‘red cross [on the felt piano cover] signif[ies] emergency, the danger that threatens us if we stay silent and are unable to carry out the next step in evolution’.²² In his Eurasia: 34th Movement of the Siberian Symphony (1966), Beuys began with the ‘Division of the Crosses’, in which he pushed two small crosses across the floor to a blackboard, then drew a cross on the blackboard, then erased half of that cross, referring to the divisions created by ‘institutionalized . . . Christianity’. His crosses can represent the earth and the T-globe of medieval conception, or the spirit of inquiry of science, or even an ‘element’.²³

Beuys made many series of postcards and a large number carry the stamp of a red cross (a kind of signature that he applied to any work he considered essential to his ‘overall conceptual project’, known as the Hauptstrom [Mainstream] stamp). Alternately, he sometimes applied half a felt cross to works. Above all, to Beuys, it was the material expression of the cross that carried power. Its two joined elements expressed the goal of Beuys’s art – that is, ‘the reconstitution of a shattered originary whole’.²⁴ (One cannot help but be reminded of the medieval role and importance of the relic of the True Cross as organizational, directive, part of nature and elemental.)²⁵

In contrast to these changing and active pieces, one ubiquitous and renowned multiple, Beuys’s Sled, would seem to exist in a static state which emphasizes an aggregation of materials, almost like a readymade (and reminiscent of spolia) assembled from a hardware store – felt blanket, disk of fat, sled with iron runners and flashlight (illus. 89). Beuys’s commentary on the Sled, however, once more points us away from seeing his work as a still collection of objects and towards seeing it as an embodiment of action and purpose. The Sled is one piece of a larger installation, The Pack (Das Rudel, 1969), which includes a Volkswagen minibus. Twenty-four sleds spill out of the rear of the vehicle like a pack of eager dogs, and Beuys designates each as an ‘emergency object’, writing: ‘The most direct type of movement over the Earth is the sliding of the iron runners of sleds’ (also compare to his performance with the Hare), and,

Every sled carries its survival kit: the flashlight represents a sense of directional orientation, then there is the felt, to protect oneself, and fat, which is the food. Like ‘Vakuum↔Masse’, on a purely formal level this is a filled sculpture, rare in art but common in life.²⁶

Each part of the Sled shares in an overall purpose: the flashlight, a sort of headlamp that moves the piece forward into a beam of light; the felt, not only a warming blanket but ‘protection’; the fat, nourishment, which should therefore disappear (and indeed is the most unstable part of the piece, a problem for collectors and museums). A cross is marked in Braunkreuz on the front sled runner. The whole is a ‘vehicle’ for discovery and salvation, one of the words Beuys uses to describe the true purpose of art.

The reference to a ‘filled sculpture’ is somewhat enigmatic but the comparison to Vacuum↔Mass (Vakuum↔Masse, 1968), made for Art Intermedia in Cologne, may clarify the terminology. The latter piece was a cross-shaped iron chest filled with 100 kg of fat and 100 bicycle pumps, sealed shut with an iron lid. The container then churned with continuous change and movement, both chemical and conceptual (pumps are a frequent ingredient in Beuys’s installations), at odds with the iron’s suggestion of stability and the lid’s implication of finality.²⁷

Very like a reliquary, Vakuum↔Masse, with its combination of sealed container and dynamic, contained power, makes for a striking image. Even more provocative and similarly concerned with the working of enclosed energy and enshrinement is another, earlier work, the open Rubberized Box (Gummierte Kiste, 1957), an ‘insulated space’ to which energy can be ‘directed . . . [and] lead to a new levels of awareness’.²⁸

The nature of the materials on the Sled comes into question. The neat roll of protective felt and the disc of fat on each sled of Das Rudel (The Pack) would seem to refer directly to Beuys’s rescue from the Crimean. But just as the fat can take many different forms, and this was certainly not the raw animal fat that was supposedly slathered on Beuys’s body, the felt is not the felt of the Tatars. This felt, rather than a blanket for warming, is part of a process of intellectual change: ‘Not even physical warmth is meant. Actually I meant a completely different kind of warmth, namely spiritual or evolutionary warmth or the beginning of an evolution.’

89 Joseph Beuys, The Pack, poster showing installation, Neue Galerie, Staatliche Museen Kassel, 1992, print on paper, 83 × 59 cm.

In the installation, which was arranged by Beuys himself at Kassel (see illus. 89), one can see, in addition to Das Rudel, the famous Felt Suit, a multiple produced in 1970, hanging high behind The Pack, as if the artist himself were hovering there. The man-shaped suit must represent Beuys, but one wonders exactly how, as photographs of Beuys never show him dressed in a suit – even though it was not unusual for artists to wear suits in the 1950s. Rather he appears in two personally iconic sorts of uniform, one a fisherman’s vest with many pockets, the other a large fur-collared coat and a characteristic dress felt hat. The Felt Suit, then, does not stand in for Beuys’s own clothes, but rather operates as documentation or a sort of relic. Used as a prop for the performance, Action the Dead Mouse/Isolation Unit of 1970 (protesting the war in Vietnam), Beuys did wear it. It was then frequently displayed alone in its status as a multiple.

The Felt Suit both suggests the artist’s body and also seems to refer to the body’s absence. In the performance, the suit swaddled and constrained movement because the sleeves and legs are too long. Furthermore, the felt does not represent the usual material of the man’s suit, thus rejecting identification with the uniform of the businessman of the twentieth century. Finally, in exhibition, variations occur in the way the Felt Suit hangs, which tends to enliven it even if it is separated from its original context. (Maurizio Cattelan reiterates the piece in We are the Revolution, 2000, in which he represents a mannequin of himself wearing a felt suit.) One scholar compared the Felt Suit to the grey suits worn by camp inmates of the Second World War.²⁹

What about its ‘felt-ness’? Does this (or any felt that Beuys uses) refer to the Tatar material? Only in the most general way, as the felt of the Felt Suit is not the irregular and sometimes colourful felt, common to nomadic tribes that the Tatars would have used. This is an even, grey felt evoking modern clothing, but thicker and less pliant than most modern fabric. Felt in general is a primitive and very much a ‘handmade’ product, although rather than being associated with a distinctive substance, its identity lies in the process by which it is created. ‘Felting’ involves friction, moisture and even beating or stamping. Wool, even waste wool, because of the structure of its fibres, is especially good for its production, but felt can be made from many materials, including artificial ones.

Origin stories for this valuable and useful material occur in legends. In a story about St Christopher, the patron of travellers and a very popular figure in Germany, the saint is said to have avoided blisters by packing his shoes with wool, which turned to felt socks by the end of his arduous journey. In just this way, Beuys associates felt with process, with wrapping and with journeying (compare with Coyote, 1974). The felt used in How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare is reported to be made from the fur of hares, but usually Beuys’s materials lists are laconic on the subject. The hair of Holocaust victims was at times made into felt during the Second World War. Finally, because felt is the end product of a tangling of fibres in the presence of pressure, the fabric can be likened to human or societal networks, even those of the modern world. In his Fond series, Beuys piles up monumental rectangular stacks of felt, topped with copper to simulate hulking grey, but soft batteries that create or store energy as collective units. In the display at Dia:Beacon, the piles retain a smell, animal or body-like. Finally, and most emblematically, Beuys created a ‘healing’ Art Pill (1963) from a small round of felt.³⁰

In sum, the Sled as ‘vehicle’ becomes processional, the means of change. Each of the materials of the ‘survival kit’ has its role in a very intimately personal, but also multiplied and universal meaning of materials. The Sled allows salvation, a form that pulls forward out of chaos, not by means of symbolism but, ultimately, through a deep and serious involvement with the material world.

One more element stands out in the exhibition of work Beuys arranged in the Kassel Museum (but cut off in illus. 89). A series of cases lines one wall to the side of The Pack that, like similar cases in the Tate Gallery in London, Beuys designed to exhibit materials from his performances. As vitrines, they seem well suited to preserve the ephemera of ‘actions’, especially given that the ubiquitous fat, from art objects such as Fat Corners, or Fat Battery, would collect dust and degrade if not kept in a vitrine. Beuys’s use of the cases has been called ‘theatrical’ as well as ‘precious and microcosmic’; they have been compared to an intense and transformative concentration on ugly things with dull colours.³¹ Buchloh critiqued similar display cases in the Guggenheim exhibition, complaining of art ‘pompously framed in chthonic iron, and weathered, withering relics and vestiges of past activities . . . enshrined in . . . glass and wood cases’.³² Others have argued, however, that the unexplained combination of things evokes curiosity and constant re-evaluation, perhaps ‘Hermeneutic undecidability’ – they engender in the viewer the creation not of a fixed memory point, but of a provocation to make meaning and a confrontation with materials.³³

During a 1969 Artforum interview, Beuys seems to side with his critics, elaborating on his principle ‘teaching is my greatest work of art’ by adding,

the rest is the waste product, a demonstration. If you want to express yourself you must present something tangible. But after a while this has only the function of a historic document. Objects aren’t very important any more. I want to get to the origin of matter, to the thought behind it.³⁴

Like Buddha, Christ and Muhammad, Beuys the charismatic leader on one hand rejects objects, but nevertheless values matter as origin. His followers and his legacy depend upon the powerful and transformative materials left behind, and even if like the congealed and desiccated fat, they have ceased to act, they still represent ‘the thought behind it’. Like reliquaries for the modern world, the clear cases testify to actions and yet prevent devotees in the Museum as Church from touching and taking souvenirs of this man who inspired either violent rejection or unquestioning loyalty throughout his life – the artist as Christ figure, ‘often crucified’.³⁵

Art is Liturgy, Paul Thek

It happens more often that the symbols choose me, than that I choose the symbols. Art is liturgy, and if the audience reacts to the holy character of the symbols, then I hope I have achieved my goal, at least at that moment.³⁶

Although unfortunately too much of the physical material is lost, Paul Thek’s well-preserved and well-known Technological Reliquaries series, his lost Tomb of 1967 (now documented with new photographs), and his 1968 installation in Essen (also documented photographically) clearly exhibit the reliquary strategies and concern with materials that dominate his art. Thek (1933–1988) was not a religious artist but he was a deeply conflicted religious man. One indication of the depth of his involvement with Christianity is his chosen name. Thek’s birth name was George Joseph, but in 1955 he changed his name to Paul, in admiration of the visionary Christian writer and Apostle of the early Church, who had himself changed his name from Saul after a vision and conversion.

Thek knew and admired Beuys’s work, and met him at Documenta 4 in 1968, but the younger American artist found the German’s work ultimately too ‘ponderous’ and ‘nasty’, and complained of his lack of a sense of humour and polish. Indeed, their differences are striking: Beuys had redefined the art world to include all of society, and explained his work endlessly in lectures, modelling himself as an authoritative healer, a shaman. In contrast, Thek allowed himself to be referred to as a hippie, and called himself the Pied Piper (an anti-leader, with whimsy); he treasured the intellectual discussion of art, although he claimed to be ‘against interpretation’; he despised the art world, yet he wanted to be ‘IN not OUT’, and perhaps most significantly, much of his work is ironic but nevertheless grapples with the meaning and processing of the intransigent stuff of the body.

Notwithstanding these striking differences between the two men, one commentator remarked that Beuys and Thek did not become friends because they were too alike. Certainly both had a kind of charisma and both found inspiration in the imagery and aesthetics of their Catholic upbringing, finding rich yet imprecisely defined meaning in materials.

Thek began to produce his ‘meat pieces’ in 1964 (see illus. 91). He acknowledged inspiration from Jasper Johns’s use of wax as a medium on canvases and Larry Bell’s precise minimalist boxes, but what Thek produced was altogether different – wax simulacra enclosed in and enshrined by Plexiglas. Although wax has a long history as an art medium, it has never gained general acceptance. It is a ‘material [that] has provided the privileged metaphor of the work of memory, and even of sensorial operations in general’, but at the same time has an ‘excessive resemblance’ to flesh.³⁷ Such resemblance may explain its popularity in reliquaries of the seventeenth century (illus. 90, St Valerianus, Vienna) and its use in creating uncanny lifelike portraits such as the ones on display at wax museums – most famously, Madame Tussauds.

Of course, wax’s ability to simulate flesh was precisely the quality that attracted Thek. In an environment in which real meat had been used in performances – and wax and plastic ‘meat’ was presented at ‘The American Supermarket’ (Paul Bianchini Gallery, New York, 1964), which also sold commodity pieces by Andy Warhol – Thek produced laboriously handmade models of wax ‘meat’ that so meticulously reproduced the surface, visual texture and colours of real meat, fat and skin that one might almost expect the end result to rot. The enclosure in Plexiglas cases also literally set Thek’s ‘masterpieces’ apart from touch and at a certain psychological distance. Thek himself characterized the meat pieces as ‘gripping’; their shock value did the work of drawing attention, and they were the first work to bring the young artist to the attention of the press and critics.

Of this series, in retrospect, Thek focused on an absence of meaning, on materials and on issues of viewing:

They’re agnostic. They lead nowhere, except perhaps to a kind of freedom. The dissonance of the two surfaces, glass and wax, pleases me: one is clear and shiny and hard, the other is soft and slimy . . . At first the physical vulnerability of the wax necessitated the cases; now the cases have grown to need the wax. The cases are calm; their precision is like numbers, reasonable. I don’t know if the cases hold out the viewer or hold in the wax-flesh. Maybe it’s the same thing. It’s almost impossible to tell what’s inside unless the viewer has his nose to the glass. They’re ambiguous; they can’t be seen all at once.

Very much like medieval reliquaries, there is a clear interdependence for Thek between container and contained, and a certain productive confusion about the separation of their respective roles. The cases provide order and a border-like frame. They surely function as an alternative ‘skin’, just as did the silver surfaces of body-part reliquaries – not, however, the ‘glorious’ skin of the resurrection of the medieval pieces, but a geometrically precise skin of a post-Enlightenment sort – a boundary that intends to confine flesh and define human substances, creating an ambiguity that recalls the multivalent meanings of substances in Beuys’s work.

In this focus on materials and their intrinsic but slippery qualities, Thek digs deep into his exploitation of dissonance. The result allows the expression of emotion and the creation of an audience reaction (without specific meaning), an affective quality that differentiated his art from current trends such as minimalism. His work with wax, glass and steel activates not only vision but also touch (hard, soft, slimy). In later work such as Tomb, he will add smell, and in Station of the Cross (Cherry Chapel), 1972, sound.

In addition to wax and steel, Thek includes one other significant material in the ‘meat pieces’: hair. As Walter Benjamin noted, hair is unsettling, neither and yet both dead and alive.³⁸ To a query about whether hair was a fetish for him, Thek, answering indirectly, replied, ‘There is something I find very moving in hair, an extremely beautiful-ugly quality, very akin to nausea . . . hair is . . . like antennae . . . bristling, receptive’. Thek often used matted hair on his meat pieces, one aspect among others that surely invokes a reaction of disgust in the viewer, and also amplifies the tactile quality of the pieces. But when an interviewer mentioned that some people feel nauseous while viewing his pieces, Thek replied, ‘that disappoints me’, and, ‘It should be a revitalization.’

90 Hans Krumper (design), reliquary of St Valerianus, early 17th century, Munich, wax, fabric, pearls, hardwood overlaid with ebony, gold enamel and bronze gilt, 36 × 22.5 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum (Kaiserliche Schatzkammer), Vienna.

Thek’s comment about the antennae-like quality of hair is at the core of the ‘revitalizing’ qualities of these pieces. Small, individual hairs reach out from the surface of the ‘meat’, and although it must be admitted that this ‘movement’ is contained within the vitrine and does not reach the viewer’s space, it begins to activate the piece. Undoubtedly, this is Thek’s own hair – and thus the first of a series of significant references in his work to his own body. As an index to his body, the hair becomes his investment in the piece, as well as the centre of ‘action’ (bristling, receptive). Other works in the series, for example, Untitled (Four Tube Meat Piece), 1964, have more emphatic but mechanistic ‘antennae’, medical-seeming tubes that protrude from the piece and then even break the boundary of the vitrine, providing a more emphatic ‘access’ to the contents of the case.

91 Paul Thek, Birthday Cake, 1964, from the series Technological Reliquaries, wax, hair, candles, stainless steel, paint and glass, 48.2 × 62.2 × 62.2 cm, private collection.

In Birthday Cake (1964, illus. 91), other levels of reference and material are added to the basic elements of the series. First, the vitrine is not a neutral rectangle as in earlier examples but takes the shape of a pyramid. Second, the meat is built up into three layers, each successive level stepped back and smaller than the last. Third, Thek has whimsically added candles to the ‘layers’, giving the piece its common name and thereby invoking a nauseating image of the eating of raw flesh. Finally, the piece has an alternative name noted by the artist: Josef Albers Homage to the Square.

These variant features in Birthday Cake offer insights about the series that tend to contradict Thek’s assertion that the meat pieces ‘lead nowhere’. In other discussions of the series, he admitted that the pieces were meaningful, particularly in terms of process: ‘I choose this subject matter because it violates my sensibilities, but that’s not the same as shock. I work with it to detach myself from it . . . it’s not sex, it’s flesh, something in a spasm.’ In an interview on another occasion he claimed, ‘Very clearly I saw this meat on a wall, almost crucified, hanging on a wall like a painting.’ The meat pieces are thus in some sense activated (in spasm) and assimilated to the tortured and crucified body of Christ. Indeed, many commentators, including Thek’s friend Anne Wilson, have compared the flesh to the body of martyrs. Thek objected that ‘the flesh is not mutilated. It is rigidly and orderly cut.’ Careful cutting would seem to correspond to the homage to Albers and his rectangles, especially in terms of the stacked rectangles of Birthday Cake, which also counter the notion of any torture excepting perhaps sadism. Still, according to Thek the ‘spasm’ is inherent, and the reference seems to be to torture, even if calculated and precise.

Birthday Cake, however, unlike the other meat pieces, does not hang on a wall. Rather than spasm, its pyramid shape suggests stability. Thek, who had a lifelong interest in Egyptian art and archaeology – indeed, at his death he was wrapped by his caretaker like a mummy, and ‘sealed’ with a rosary on his chest – was fascinated with pyramids and used the shape in a number of his installations, including a stepped pyramid for his later and most famous piece, Tomb. The reference to the stepped pyramid in Birthday Cake thus reorients our understanding, bringing in the question of entombment and death, even if, unlike the pyramid Thek built for Tomb, the meat pyramid is one the viewer cannot enter.

Despite its primary associations with ancient archaeology, Thek considered the pyramid to have Christian meaning: ‘[the pyramid has] a special fascination for me . . . [it is] the ideal cathedral . . . to me a pyramid is never finished . . . the only finished pyramid is the one with the eye of God’.

Thek often sketched birthday cakes and a 1974 version takes the shape of a pyramid, accompanied by a shaped poem:³⁹

Does one have a RELATIONSHIP with

GOD?

[sketch of pyramid cake with a candle glowing on top]

Take +

Eat!

The I at the

top of the

pyrami

d

Rather than an innocent or childish sweet, this cake is likened to the Sacrament of the Eucharist – that is, the body of Christ, through the language of the Mass, ‘Take + Eat’. Although it post-dates the meat piece by a decade, clearly the drawing ties the pyramid imagery into Christian meanings.

Such associations already existed in the early Middle Ages. We may recall that in c. 1050 Thiofrid of Echternach described a pyramid-shaped reliquary in which the four sides of the base represented virtues that allowed man to climb towards God, moving from the carnal to the spiritual. Furthermore, from any given side, the pyramid presented a triangle, indicating the mystery of the Trinity, an essential doctrine of the Christian faith. Finally the unification of form in the point at the apex represented the indivisibility and unity of the Church of God.⁴⁰ In other words, the shape of a pyramidal reliquary as a whole reiterates lessons and truths of the Church but also, in its rising sides, duplicates the reaction it is meant to inspire – its very presence and shape is meant to raise the mind of the devout viewer towards the apex and God. Similarly, we have seen that obelisk-shaped reliquaries used in the Baroque era, especially those culminating in a flame (candle), signify an intended spiritual ascent.

Thek presumably was unaware of these medieval ideas, but his notation of the ‘I at the top of the pyramid’ seems to align with the imagery he cited of the ‘eye’ on the pyramid (a masonic image that occurs on the reverse of a U.S. dollar bill), implying similar sorts of ascent and unity at the apex. The implied rising of the smoke of the candles might remind us that a martyr’s ‘birthday’ (dies natalis) is in fact the day of his or her death, the day the flesh becomes the flesh of sacrifice – Christ, a saint or Thek himself – on the ‘altar’ of the cake. The candles, more assertive ‘antennae’ than the filaments of hair, beg to be lit and to activate the interior of this reliquary. In descriptions of medieval visions, relics give off light and glow – this one should be imagined as doing so as well.

The meat pieces were retrospectively gathered into a series called the Technological Reliquaries after a few similar pieces were included in Thek’s Tomb installation at New York’s Stable Gallery in 1967. In that installation, inside the environment of a stepped pyramid, Thek placed the ‘corpus’, a moulded replication of his body, exposed in death. Significantly, Thek showed himself as a martyred artist (compare to the Byzantine Iconoclast monk, Lazarus), in that the fingers of the right hand were chopped off and hung on a wall in a pouch nearby and, in a work that was almost entirely a monochromatic pink, one sees the red of blood and the white of bone in the mutilated hand. Significantly, among other paraphernalia in this installation, Thek included a series of body parts displayed in vitrines. As Thek noted, he had excessive amounts of this material, resulting from early experiments of casting his body. In other words, once again, something of Thek’s own body occupies the reliquaries.

92 Paul Thek, Warrior’s Leg, 1966–7, from the series Technological Reliquaries, wax, metal, leather, paint and Plexiglas, 66.5 × 36 × 21 cm, Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Warrior’s Leg (1966–7, illus. 92) is one of the most striking of these new ‘technological’ reliquaries. Cut off below the knee, with fleshy bloody ‘meat’ protruding from the top, a realistically coloured wax leg is girded in what looks like a sort of armour – a leather ‘greave’ protecting the shin and attached to an antique-inspired sandal covering the foot. Anne Wilson calls this

his brilliant metaphoric aesthetic shift from the classical fragment to the dismembered leg and arm of the Gladiator, from stone to wax, from the Christian martyr to the human loss of the Vietnam War. That the classical figure should be cast from his own body produced a further layer of meaning that supported a framework of ideas and created an autobiography of fragments.⁴¹

The classical and Vietnam references can be supplemented with a comparison to the Apostolic reliquary from Trier with its realistically depicted foot (see illus. 26). Other pieces in the series recall medieval hand and arm reliquaries, although casts of shoes, teeth and death-mask-like objects fall outside such reference.

The nature of these objects as fragments (autobiographical or not) should be highlighted:

The fragment is not only a rhetorical figure, it also makes its rhetorical nature immediately obvious. Its effect is based on its being grasped as a segment or piece cut out of a larger whole. The fragment is consequently proof. In its structure is inscribed the memory of something more comprehensive (possibly not at all representable). In the here and now, within the limitations of a given situation, it can function as symptom of this (absent, excluded) other.⁴²

These sentiments are those of a contemporary art critic but could readily be those of a medieval historian writing of relics, especially insofar as they serve as complexly referential memory objects.

All the meat pieces participate in this discourse of the fragmentary, but in their function as memorials, an identifiable body is at issue: these reliquaries of course in some sense contain Thek’s body. But rather than reconstituting or restoring memory,

Within the rhetoric of the body, the abject may have been the most telling category at that time, because it – in contrast to totalizing or fragmenting conceptions – is never bound up with the confirmation of identity, but rather with the threat of its dissolution.

And,

it [is] plausible that the impulse behind their production is to be sought in the mastering of fears . . . the apotropaic capacity of the mimetic . . . wants to banish terror though emulation . . . threats transform themselves into representation.⁴³

In part, this analysis is based on Thek’s own comments. In a letter to Susan Sontag he wrote, ‘Occasionally there is a horror of my skin, an unpleasant surface, a loathing & a frustrated violence.’⁴⁴ Describing his process in an interview, Thek averred that he would ‘look closely at something that is disturbing and detach myself from it’.

There is no doubt that as a bisexual raised in an unhappy Catholic household by a non-attentive alcoholic mother, Thek had a certain fraught relationship with his body. But, he argued:

For me it was absolutely obvious, inside the glittery swanky cases – the ‘Modern Art’ materials that were all the rage at the time . . . was something very unpleasant, very frightening and looking absolutely real. It seemed to me that nobody noticed the fact that I was dealing with a frightening subject with absolute patience and control so that it became serene. Nobody noticed that I was working with the hottest subject known to man – the human body – and doing it in a totally controlled way which, I thought, was the required distancing . . .

This distancing of which Thek speaks is crucial. This is, however, the distance of ‘representation’, not a physical or literal distance. Again, as quoted above, Thek said of the meat pieces: ‘It’s almost impossible to tell what’s inside unless the viewer has his nose to the glass. They’re ambiguous; they can’t be seen all at once.’ He is referring here to the vitrine’s sides, which, though made of Plexiglas, do not provide in all instances a clear view of the vitrine’s content. Some of the Plexiglas is tinted yellow, and most often it has yellow lines that obscure the vision of the viewer. As Thek describes a process of creation that counters fear and horror, the viewer is put in a position of negotiating his or her own ‘point of view’.

This point of view is of paramount importance to Thek. In late exhibits, he hung paintings low on the wall and supplied them with low chairs. He included a prie-dieu in his 1972 Station of the Cross. In these attempts to manipulate and control the way in which his works are seen, he queried their visibility and the meaning of sight, forcing the viewer to make looking a conscious process.

Ultimately, however, Thek focused upon the emotional response to these pieces. After the ‘horror’, they lead to ‘freedom’:

I hope the work has the innocence of those Baroque crypts in Sicily; their initial effect is so stunning you fall back for a moment and then it’s exhilarating . . . [a body presented in a] windowed coffin . . . and [touching a fragment] I felt strangely relieved and free. It delighted me that bodies could be used to decorate a room, like flowers. We accept our thing-ness intellectually, but the emotional acceptance of it can be a joy.

In these comments, Thek is referring to a trip in 1963 to the Palermo catacombs (ossuaries) with his friend Peter Hujar. This visit, as well as his experience of elaborate celebrations of saints’ feast days in Italy, profoundly affected many aspects of his art.

While living in Rome, Thek was asked by the Galerie M. E. Thelen in Essen, Germany, to mount an installation. Thek entitled it A Procession in Honor of Aesthetic Progress: Objects to Theoretically Wear, Carry, Pull or Wave (1968). Thek arrived two days before his opening with his work packed in cases and travelling with him on the train. Unfortunately, much of the work was damaged in transit and then held in customs, bringing the opening of the exhibition very much into question. Thek arranged the work that had survived under bright lights and pushed the rest behind ropes and lit it with softer pink tints (illus. 93). At the opening, he spontaneously announced to one critic that the installation was to be a ‘work in progress’ with multiple openings, changing over the course of the exhibition. He was to be seen working on the installation as part of the process. The reception of this concept was enthusiastic and the exhibition was very much a success. Thek took up this approach to much of his work thereafter, and even began working with others in his later installations, notably at Amsterdam, Stockholm, Philadelphia and Munich. This approach to artistic process may be one of the most important and influential aspects of his art career.

Meanwhile, there is no doubt that the Essen installation mounted in this process-focused way was inspired by Italian Catholic feast day performances. In a letter of 1 July 1968 to Hujar, Thek wrote, ‘I want to do a crazy show, — a procession — and do all the things that people carry and wear in a procession — like jewelry and masks and shrines etc — and it could be a joy to do’, although, he also said, processions were ‘a pun on process art’.

93 Paul Thek, A Procession in Honor of Aesthetic Progress: Objects to Theoretically Wear, Carry, Pull or Wave, installation view, 1968, Galerie M. E. Thelen, Essen, Germany.

Of the material that he shipped to Essen, most of the large pieces were made to interact with the human body. Although the Head pieces were destroyed in shipping, their glass shattered, most of the other works survived, the largest of which was an elaborate sedan chair, for which Thek made ‘a two-headed baby’, speculating later: ‘I wonder why. — It goes in a porcamadonna and then theoretical Germans will carry it on their 8 shoulders. — I really wonder why.’⁴⁵ (Here ‘porcamadonna’ – an obscenity – must be one of Thek’s ‘mis-hearings’, elsewhere he says portamadonna.)

From the perspective of reliquary strategy, the Head pieces are the most interesting, even startling, elements of the intended installation. As the photos taken before Thek left Rome show, they were to be ‘worn’ by inserting one’s head into a hole at the bottom so that the head was enclosed in the glass, framed box. Two semi-circular shoulder supports (similar to those on the chairs) would then rest on the shoulders. In effect, the wearer would him/herself become the relic. Perhaps this was meant for the ‘theoretical Germans’ or, as indicated by his previous practice and the photographs, Thek may have again been thinking of his own body. Although there are no photos of the chairs in procession, given that each has shoulder supports jutting up from the seat and a hole in the seat itself, one would have to assume they were worn like the headpieces but topsy-turvy, an implication that is either scandalous or merely amusing.

As with Tomb and the Technological Reliquaries, the Procession centres on Thek’s ‘processing’ of his body, coming to terms with its substance, its flesh and desires, its joy and its eventual mortality. Although Tomb was perhaps his most exhibited piece, he grew tired of showing it, and commented, ‘imagine having to bury yourself over and over’. Even with the many puns and jokes, these installations were not ultimately light-hearted endeavours for the artist. For Thek his art was REAL:

I was amused with the idea of meat under Plexiglas because I thought it made fun of the scene where the game seemed to be ‘how cool can you be’ and ‘how refined’. Nobody ever mentioned anything that seemed real. The world was falling apart, anyone could see it. I was a wreck . . . the city was a wreck; and I’d go to a gallery and there would be a lot of fancy people looking at a lot of stuff that didn’t say anything about anything to anyone.

Like Beuys, Thek took materiality seriously. He worked with unconventional materials and staged them in a theatrical manner that drew upon strategies of representation he had found exciting and compelling in European Catholic churches (as well as the one of his boyhood). By presenting his own limbs (or generic flesh) as preserved and ornamented fragments, enframed in vitrines and yet difficult to see, he confronted his fears and addressed the horror and ‘thingness’ of the body.

By distancing the ‘meat’, processing it and enshrining it, he controlled it within precisely geometric shapes. The aspirational pyramid may have offered hope of transcending mortality, whether on the altar of sacrificed flesh or via the tomb and the ornamented (and mutilated) alter-body. Thek remarked that ‘all theologies have something in common: a life-long journey, ascension, fusion or union’, and admitted, ‘I’m a renegade Christian still looking for the Transcendental Experience.’ Such a transcendental experience might come through the prayers (and drawings and jokes) with which he filled his notebooks, or through art. But like medieval art and reliquaries, such transcendental art is only a machine to lift the consciousness via the imperfect mechanism of sight: ‘my eyes pierce me and burn’. For each step forward there is a step back. Or even more fundamentally, as he wrote in a notebook, ‘Ideas are ‘MACHINES FOR LIVING’ + hence destructive of life.’⁴⁶

Beuys and Thek have had an outsize but, until recently, under-appreciated influence on contemporary art, especially in terms of ideas concerning performance, use of materials and installation. Matthew Barney admitted that Beuys was a primary inspiration,⁴⁷ as have Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy. Perhaps the ‘reliquary effect’ has thus far gone unremarked, but it is a powerful part of their work.

Other Reliquaries?

A more specific notion of the value of the ‘reliquary’ occurs in contemporary art but to decidedly less powerful effect. Fluxus artists, a group that Beuys worked with (although he denied being one of their number), had some interest in the form. George Maciunas designed a Fluxus piece, produced in a series by Geoffrey Hendricks variously titled and dated (1970–76), that is in effect an anti-reliquary, containing the ‘sweat of Satan’, shit from Last Supper, and other ‘relics’, and was produced with machine-like precision as a multiple. Similarly, Piero Manzoni’s work of 1961, Merda d’artista, featured canned shit sold for the market price of gold. Surely all this is more scatological and infantile that Beuys’s fat? (Although the reference to the artist’s body in Manzoni’s work and in another, a balloon entitled The Artist’s Breath, 1960, recalls Thek.)

The Fluxus reliquary may be called a reliquary because it gestures towards a notion of the ordering of the world through assembled, categorized and framed collections of material objects. Joseph Cornell’s boxes make stronger claims on this power of assemblage and enclosure, but I would argue that many artists that use the title ‘reliquary’ do so only with the ironic intention of the Fluxus piece. A confidence in the ability of material to both serve as memory object and retain a potential for spiritual order may be a stronger motivation for the use of reliquary strategies than such superficial and ironic references.

In contrast to superficial references to reliquaries and reliquary strategies, land art and site work calls up powerful reminiscence of the sacral landscapes discussed in the Introduction. In some instances, artists transported material from one location to exhibit elsewhere in order to join two ‘places’, as was so often done with soil from the Holy Land. Robert Smithson wrote of his earthworks in ‘A Provisional Theory of Non-Sites’ that ‘The Non-Site (an indoor earthwork) is a three dimensional logical picture that is abstract, yet it represents an actual site in N.J. (The Pine Barrens Plains)’ (1968).⁴⁸ Smithson also describes a trip to the landscape location as an ersatz metaphorical pilgrimage.

Similarly, Michelle Stuart has made large abstract drawings of landscape using ‘frottage’, or rubbing techniques, as well as materials from the site itself (#28 Moray Hill, 1974).⁴⁹ In a statement that is evocative of the sort of multiples we have seen with the relic of the Veronica or Buddha’s footprint (see illus. 7, 41), she observed, ‘We imprint and are imprints of all that came before’, although, unlike those multiples, Stuart wants to implicate matter as intrinsic to the process.⁵⁰

The ‘consecration’ of non-art material as practised by Beuys is again a strategy that brings powerful meaning to contemporary artists’ work. In The Holy Virgin Mary (1996), Chris Ofili used elephant dung, in part because of his story of an ‘epiphany’ in Zimbabwe in which he discovered its ‘sacral’ quality. (Although it should be noted that African artists use it as a material, especially as a colorant.)⁵¹ While some argue that Ofili is exploring the degradations of racism, others maintain that in Ofili’s Madonna, as in Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ (1987), the use of unacceptable materials in Christian representations engages in a long-standing discourse of the incarnation as reversal of expectations that rightly challenges ideas of beauty and religion-as-comfort.⁵²

Both works are undeniably beautiful but in very unconventional ways. Serrano photographs light penetrating amber fluid in a fashion reminiscent of light and gems on medieval reliquaries. Ofili encases and ornaments dung-as-Virgin’s-breast, making it reliquary-like as well. A small but telling detail of his work consists of the way that Ofili elevates his paintings on elephant dung-ball pedestals, entering the paintings into the world of objects (like cult objects), both connecting them to and removing them from the earth as reliquary feet do in the Middle Ages (where one sees metal lions instead of the dung of elephants, see illus. 26).

Reliquary strategies have been a powerful means for artists to examine and critique the modern art market and its system of values, certainly in Manzoni’s work but also more recently in that of Eva and Franco Mattes, who use the discursive language of relics in Stolen Pieces, 1995–7 (first revealed 2010), in which they display ‘relics’ of famous artworks, chipped off, broken or stolen from galleries and museums. Whether or not the artists’ story is true (they do supply one video document), the horror of desecration of ‘masterpieces’ that it invokes is reminiscent of the medieval story of St Hugh biting the relic bone of Mary Magdalene. Like that story, a medieval parable of appallingly inappropriate behaviour, which paradoxically stands as an act of reverence on the part of a divinely inspired holy man, the Matteses’ critique of the art world unexpectedly reinforces the status of art. In the same way that a relic fragment magnifies the importance of a saint, in Stolen Pieces the conceptual artworks are ‘broken’ but thereby renewed and enlivened; from their moribund state as objects in an exhibition they are returned to an original ‘liveliness’.

But perhaps the most powerful use of the ‘reliquary effect’ is its employment by artists who make memorials to the fallen, the often unidentified dead. Installations created between 1992 and 2004 by the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo are titled Atrabiliarios, translatable as either The Defiant or Melancholic. The units of the installations consist of single or paired worn shoes, usually those of women, reverently enshrined in wall niches that are very like the niches of a columbarium cemetery (illus. 94). Rather than placed behind labelled plaques, however, the shoes are purposefully difficult to see – appearing behind thick, blurry screens made of a skinlike substance that are ‘sewn’ into the wall with irregular stitches of surgical thread. The artist collected the shoes as memory pieces, often from the families of people who had disappeared through violence originating in politics or the drug trade in Colombia. These shoes, single or in pairs, attest to loss and memory and the difficult of mourning those who have ‘disappeared’; they are uniquely personal, eloquently imprinted and shaped by lost bodies.

94 Doris Salcedo, Atrabiliarios, 1992–2004, detail of wall installation with drywall, shoes, paint, wood, animal fibre and surgical thread, 43 niches and 40 boxes, overall dimensions variable, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The French artist Christian Boltanski’s series of altar-like works often titled Monument, produced from the late 1970s into the ’90s, also commemorates senseless death. In these haunting pieces Boltanski uses anonymous blurry black and white photographs of (presumably) lost children of the Holocaust. The dark spaces of the display of such an ‘archive’, where candle-like electrical bulbs provide dim illumination between photos set out in geometric arrays, adds to the sacral sense of memorialization. The crudely wired and connected cords of the bare bulbs and minimalist ‘framing’ creates an aura of desolation.

Part of the American Dario Robleto’s artistic practice is similarly to gather and use authentic materials in order to memorialize mourning – the alternate state of mind that is such an indefinable and overwhelming emotion. He often uses artisanal techniques reminiscent of a widow’s customary actions, such as embroidery or sewing, to create pieces that in some sense re-enact experience, as in Gardens of Empire (2006), whose materials list includes: ‘homemade paper (pulp-made letters to their brides from soldiers who did not return from various wars, ink retrieved from letters, cotton), fabric and thread from soldiers’ uniforms from various wars, hair flowers braided by war widows, coloured paper, silk, ribbon, cartes de visite, passion flower, motherwort, bugleweed, poplar, ash.’

Another piece is itself reminiscent of a reliquary box shape, although it lies open to display its contents: A Sadness Silence Can’t Touch (2005). In this instance, materials include: ‘casts of Civil War-era “pain bullets” (bullets used by soldiers to bite on during surgery) made from dissolved audiotape recordings of poets’ voices, lace and fabric from mourning dresses, ink dyed yellow-heart and ash, nickel, silver, milk paint, typeset.’ And recordings: Walt Whitman, ‘America’; Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’; Siegfried Sassoon, ‘Died of Wounds’; T. S. Eliot, ‘The Waste Land’; Robert Graves, ‘In Procession’; Dylan Thomas, ‘A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London’; David Jones, ‘In Parenthesis’.⁵³

All three of these artists, Salcedo, Boltanski and Robleto, use strategies that activate the power of the indexical. In each case, he or she shows that personal memories are elusive or irrelevant but collective memory can be constructed and become all the more powerful. The installations, rather than remaining tied to a specific historical memory or moment, seek perhaps to initiate a searching analysis of the viewer’s own memories, and to push for societal processing of the horrors of war and even genocide – each calls upon the human spirit. Beuys’s work may have initially pointed in this direction, but it functioned metaphorically, philosophically or perhaps in terms of ‘homeopathy’, as one critic suggested. These works are more direct.

It is the third artist of our primary focal group who brings many of these threads together in a concerted effort not only to memorialize but also to ‘process’ German guilt vis-à-vis the Holocaust.

Next Year in Jerusalem, Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945) is in some sense a student of Beuys, although he has rejected Beuys’s dictum, ‘Every man is an artist.’ Furthermore, he ultimately turned away from more public event-based art and turned towards paintings, constructions and objects or vitrines that look like nothing so much as monumental reliquaries.

In his 2010 show Next Year in Jerusalem, a multi-part installation at the Gagosian Gallery in New York, Kiefer’s art clearly implicated the Judaeo-Christian tradition, gathered up and filtered through the artist’s personal vision. Its evocation of alchemy, Kabbalah and other mystic elements, however, destabilized the presentation of any fixed belief system. Rather than reassuring, the whole is devastating. As Simon Schama argued in The Guardian in January 2007, this art is not ‘fun’; Kiefer ‘does the big embarrassing stuff’, in particular querying how to remember and/or memorialize the Holocaust. Although Kiefer himself was born after the Second World War, he takes on its consequences as a German inheritance.

The painting Iron Path (Eisensteig), 1986 (not in the Gagosian exhibit but similar in approach to many of the paintings included), is representative of the artist’s strategies. Kiefer implicates the viewer in the perspective of relentlessly converging tracks of a railway, inscribed upon a heavily worked impasto landscape, the paint thickened with straw. The imagery recalls actions of the Holocaust and its technologies of death. Additionally, by means of a dense material ‘sedimentation’ (the artist’s term), layering a lead ‘rock’, a pair of iron climbing shoes and some gold leaf pasted on the surface ‘above the horizon’, Kiefer makes references to temporal presence, resistant earth, as well as alchemical principles and spiritual aspiration.⁵⁴

Although paintings line the walls, in the massive installation Next Year in Jerusalem, Kiefer for the most part abandons the spaces of perspective and turns instead to a display that interrogates the power of things. Elements and themes that have long engaged Kiefer’s attention – lead books, empty yet standing or floating clothing, thorns, model warships and planes – are gathered together and ‘put under glass’ to be encountered and examined. The viewer ‘in a performance piece of the artist’s devising’ engages in a simulacrum of pilgrimage, seeking meaning inside a space that the critic Roberta Smith called a ‘museum of devastation’ (New York Times, 18 October 2010). In her essay in the exhibition catalogue, Marina Warner calls the objects ‘anti-monuments’, and notes that they verge on the ironic, yet wonders if they ‘take on the character of certain fundamental ritual speech acts: naming, lament, apotropeia, propitiation? . . . Can it be efficacious in this way?’⁵⁵

There is no doubt that the pieces in this assemblage borrow the structures of ritual and the theatricality of the Catholic Church and, to some degree, its iconography. The materials are (mostly) familiar to us, the objects ‘speak’. In the installation photograph (illus. 95) on the left we can see, from front to back, as titled by the inscriptions on their glass: Valentinus; Jeremiah; Baruch; Die Sefiroth and Das rote Meer, and on the wall a painting, Wundtau Regnet. The titles of the works in the vitrines refer, sequentially, to: an esoteric Christian mystic represented in a ladder-like configuration of buckets; two chairs on two tipping surfaces over a pile of deteriorating burned books; the diagram of the ten attributes/emanations of Kabbalah suspended over a wedding dress pierced with shards of glass, and three chairs on a single tilting surface tipping into a large, battered, bathtub-like object. All are literally grounded in cracked earth, but the last seems to indicate the perilous status of all three faith traditions that warily circle the waters of the Mediterranean. If in Jewish mystical Kabbalah, as Kiefer emphasizes, every letter has a meaning, so every element of this iconography of spiritual meaning must be examined in turn. Like a collection of relics and reliquaries that gives support to a central depiction/relic/host/presence of God, these ancillary vitrines might be thought to encircle the large steel shed that is the ‘heart of darkness’ of the exhibit (at the right of illus. 95).⁵⁶

The massive box measures 3.42 × 5.03 × 10.56 m (11 × 16¾× 35 ft) and its doors are partially open to reveal a set of photographs on lead (lead attached to burlap), hung inside as if in a crowded closet. Although installation photographs rather misleadingly indicate that one can see the imagery on these stacked sheets clearly, such was not the case. The 76 ‘colossal’ sheets reproduce photographs from Kiefer’s earlier piece, Occupations (1969–70). In these photographs made during his student days, originally conceived for presentation in small books, the artist photographed himself in myriad different locations performing a Nazi salute. There were accusations of neo-Nazism, but Kiefer’s work was meant to ‘conjure a portrait of a dangerous German creator who constructs himself through symbolic actions and artefacts’,⁵⁷ and in some sense to allow Kiefer to explore an artist/creator identity despite the German shame of the Holocaust.

With these ur-images secured within the bunker/cattle car/processing plant at the centre of the exhibit, forming a ‘battery-like stack’ of lead (again reminiscent of Beuys),⁵⁸ this object supplies the dark and forceful centre of the process that is the exhibit. As a holy-of-holies anti-monument to which one is denied access, it conjures biblical power. That man, rather than God and his Ark, appears at the potent centre is of signal importance – especially given that this is a man who poses, questions and doubts at the same moment that he constructs and directs (making the Nazi salute).

If, as Kiefer claimed, he is a ‘boundary-crosser’, the boundary he is drawing is that of the horizon, where earth meets sky, memory meets oblivion and creator meets created. The tension that is established in the exhibit, a tension that moved some reviewers to feel uncomfortable, and may have been the reason that more than one ‘protest’ took place in the gallery space, translates into a sense of unease, of precarious and threatened balance, of glass barriers/glass shattered. The vitrines are too tall and too tightly positioned. The dust, ashes and dirt and unrelenting palette of grey, black and brown, with touches of sepulchral white, sets a mood of despair. Only with effort is the viewer susceptible to the hope expressed in the title of the exhibit – can the ash can be purifying, expiatory?⁵⁹

Above all, Kiefer’s imagery of decay and loss centres on an oppressive materiality: dead sunflowers, ghostlike dresses and coats stiffened and dirtied, thickets of thorn and bracken obstructing access, and burned books fallen and discarded. Degraded but nonetheless insistently present, matter may be the only connection to other states and places – the means of access or border crossing. Kiefer’s use of both the miniature and the gigantic conveys the power of images and materials to condense and traverse microcosms and macrocosms of space (similar to reliquaries). Kiefer insists, ‘I think in images’, but also by ‘descending into history, of descending into ourselves, into our innermost being’ through poetry, the Bible, mysticism and the contemplation of the material world. Kiefer seeks to negotiate passage to ‘Jerusalem’.

By ending with Kiefer’s compelling juxtapositions, I hope to demonstrate that the ‘reliquary effect’ retains its power to move and make. Although Kiefer retreats from performance, he has been justly accused of theatricality and a coercion of the viewer in this display.⁶⁰ Kiefer’s vitrines put themselves forward as neutral enclosures, but as we have observed over and over again in the course of this discussion, the enclosure acts, organizes and intervenes. Spirit and matter might interpenetrate momentarily, but there is no stability in the result. These glass boxes hold us at a distance, deny access, force our steps in a circuitous route and often obscure rather than reveal. They loom over our heads in a threatening manner and the relics inside seem expendable, replaceable, at times unspecific and unidentifiable. If these relics are memory objects, their meaning lies as much in their material and the materials surrounding them as in their identity.

In taking on the role of creator of a ‘neo-Jerusalem’ – but surely not heavenly – Kiefer implicates himself as artist/sinner/Nazi and challenges the viewer’s status as well, insisting on self-examination. He works to activate memory and ‘keeps the Holocaust alive by evoking comparisons between the actions of the German perpetrator in the death camps and his own contemporary act of [art making]’.⁶¹ In the tradition of relic/objects that have come before them, Kiefer’s works have the potential to move people to action, to political dissent, to controversy, to discussion. As is the case with so many other contemporary artists, Kiefer’s relic strategies operate powerfully within an artistic practice that seeks to make sense of a problematic physical world – to force meaning from mute matter and material, to catch and hold memories, to make political statements, to ease pain.

95 Anselm Kiefer, Next Year in Jerusalem, installation view, Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2011, multimedia, paintings, vitrines; central element: lead, steel, photographic materials.

Conclusion

THE ACT OF enclosure vividly conveys both perceived value as well as the desire to preserve, protect or memorialize. Before the invention of clear glass in the fourteenth century, relics might be displayed as precious and powerful behind a ‘window’ of rock crystal, itself precious. Today, in striking contrast, glass allows the indiscriminate use of the vitrine or display case, and our modern society might even be termed a ‘vitrine culture’: museums of course are filled with glass cases, paintings are presented behind glass, shopping without display windows would be dull, and we go so far as to view our perishable food in glass-fronted refrigerators or freezers in supermarkets. Performers and artists have even been known to use glass enclosures to take their work into public spaces in the provocative display and containment of living bodies. Such ubiquitous, often unexamined behaviour might originate in a desire to control material substances; alternatively it allows the viewer to bask in the ‘presence’ of things. Given that display is not always about seeing clearly, what are the issues at hand?¹ Is every container, every circumscribed and marked space, in some sense a reliquary? Surely that goes too far.

The artist and writer Edmund de Waal has spent some time thinking about the vitrine. In discussing his family inheritance of a group of over two hundred netsuke, the tiny and whimsical Japanese carved masterpieces in wood or ivory, he considers their enclosure and display to be intrinsic to their worth. These objects once secured a Japanese man’s purse to his belt, but as time passed, they found a new life as Parisian collectibles representing a passion for Japonisme and were purchased by de Waal’s ancestor. De Waal writes:

Netsuke cannot knock around your salon or your study unprotected. They get lost or dropped, dusty, chipped. They need a place to rest, preferably in company . . . The vitrines exist so that you can see objects, but not touch them; they frame things, suspend them, tantalise through distance.²

In considering tiny precious objects in a vitrine, de Waal praises the possibility of opening the doors and taking out examples, examining them, rearranging them, telling stories with them, discussing them, but finally returning them to their green velvet habitat for security and safekeeping – all reminiscent of the way a medieval treasury or the Cabinet of Curiosity might have been used, but now staged with clear glass.

In a more academic treatment of the issue, one scholar explicitly compares vitrines to reliquaries, but signals that the vitrines represent an epistemic change, a ‘liberating disenchantment of religious vision in scientific and consumerist forms of display’, and marks yet another episteme in the ‘the empty container of dehumanized commodity’ that is representative of contemporary art.³ Whether this is precisely correct or not, if so many artists of our time and times past take up reliquary strategies, perhaps we should recognize enshrinement as an essential marker of meaning and enduring value.

This book has discussed relics from many cultures (and thereby noted that material concerns are central to every society). In such treatment, however, I have not espoused a universal urge to relicing, the making of things into relics. Rather I would like to assert that, insofar as matter tends towards over-determined meaning in cultural environments, reliquary strategies are a means of creating, communicating and perhaps even delimiting value. It is common and meaningful to call significant matter or objects relics, and the use of reliquaries and concomitant rituals are culturally shared practices, entailing not only enshrinement, but also preservation (memory marking) and enlivenment through ritual and story. Reliquaries hold memory, condense and focus story and ritual, and therefore seem to be intrinsically powerful, creating at the least a certain mute strength and presence.

A recent story from Russia reveals both the power but also, at the same time, the fragility of reliquary strategies.⁴ Relics of Saints Euthymios and Euphrosynia were the precious treasure of the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church of Suzdal. In consequence of the Russian Revolution, relics were gathered from many sanctuaries, catalogued and stored as possessions of the State. They were condemned as representative of religious superstition, but also seen as too powerful to be left in churches or destroyed. After the collapse of the Soviet regime, such relics (and attendant icons) were reclaimed by their congregations, and the Russian Orthodox Church subsequently regained its place as a powerful actor in Soviet politics (especially under Vladimir Putin).

The Church in Suzdal, however, was once allied to the Resistance and was considered schismatic by the powerful Moscow Patriarchate. It is speculated this may be the reason that the State once again intervened, attempting to confiscate the church’s relics. Meeting resistance from the congregation, bailiffs took the extraordinary step of sealing the reliquary with ‘crime scene’ tape, placing the saints ‘under arrest’. The case came to court and the legal team supporting the Church’s rights mounted a surprising defence: they argued that the case had to rely on the proper terminology for the remains in the reliquary, now doubly sealed by both Church and State (and remaining unknown to all as they had never been seen, the Church arguing that the State did not have the ‘skills’ to see them). The State claimed a right to the material as cultural heritage. The Church countered that only if the material was identified as relics could it be cultural heritage but, as relics, could never belong to the State which did not admit to such a status (or participate in the belief that supported it). On the other hand, if the State persisted in labelling the confiscated material as human bodies, their actions were equally illegitimate because the State could not legally own bodies (slavery was invoked). The status of the relics was effectively suspended by these arguments between ‘things’ and people.

In the end, unfortunately, recourse to intellectual arguments may have proved too clever; acknowledging legal authority in any way may have defeated the cause of the Church as the final ruling inexplicably but, not surprisingly, went against them. Ultimately, an inarticulate but fervent prayer may have been more powerful and effective in demonstrating the power of faith and claiming the relics as foundational. This story once again demonstrates that despite the imperilled status of relics in the modern world, they persist and they continue to have power.

For further proof, one can simply look to a long cultural history that supports such persistence – a history investigated in this book, a history that finds parallels across Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and the modern world. Indeed, the oldest of the relics and reliquaries discussed here are Buddhist, not Christian.

The first surviving Buddhist examples are from Gandhara, a province that perhaps not coincidentally was strongly influenced by Roman art and custom. Perhaps this evidence should prompt us to seek shared origins for relic practice in the ancient world, in hero cults and pantheism?⁵ However, in addition to shared relic practice, we have seen distinctive variations that separate cultures more than join them. Although Buddhism, Christianity and Islam share many cultural norms and even material goods (an Islamic glass vessel is preserved in the ninth-century treasury at Famen Si), many practices set the religions apart. But one scholar has suggested that even Judaism takes up material practices in response to Christianity. Perhaps that is the prism though which we should interpret the evidence – a long history of the exploitation and contestation of the material world.

When we turn to look more closely at some examples, and here I look at the reliquary practices across Africa, differences may be more obvious than similarities. A closer look is merited. Relic practices are widespread in Africa, common throughout the continent. Rather than shared community experience, however, African cults consist of ancestor worship and are primarily expressed as family burial processes. Many relics are private, owned by individuals and are kept in homes, remaining secret and hidden from the community (illus. 96).⁶ The reliquaries are, however, often visible and are ambitious multimedia assemblages with many aspects of ornamentation. Insofar as nineteenth- and early twentieth-century examples have survived, they seem to have been composed of a large container, often a basket, which housed a collection of human remains. In an exceptionally well-preserved Kota example in Paris, the container is ornamented with an exuberant ‘skirt’ of twisted and worked leather which may reference rituals of animal offerings to the ancestors. Above, an intricately surfaced Guardian figure protects the container.

In certain regions of Africa, Guardian figures take the form of ideally proportioned and powerfully constructed simulacra of human bodies, but in this Kotu example, the ‘body’ follows a different type – it is emphatically abstract, consisting of an openwork lozenge (not legs as this structure is sometimes taken to be), surmounted by a mask-like face typically inscribed with a cross. Both the cross and lozenge are cosmic forms that facilitate travel in the afterlife while ‘reflective qualities of the surfaces evoke the body of water that serves as the fluid boundary between these two realms of existence’.⁷ These reflective surfaces are metal overlays added to the wood of the figure. Metal was a powerful material in sub-Saharan Africa, and smiths were privy to mystic powers and esoteric knowledge. These Kotu Guardians typically received ornamentation only on the face, sometimes only on the front of the face, but the use of multiple metals was common and no two faces are the same. In this example, the emphatic eyebrows draw attention to both the large eyes and a strong nose shape, and the head retains its original halo of feathers. Red colours are repeated in the face and in the feathers and may refer to blood with associations of both vitality and sacrifice.

96 Kotu peoples, Mindumu group, Gabon, basket reliquary with guardian figure, 19th century, wood, iron, copper, lead, zinc, feathers, fibre, leather, bone and skin, h. 58 cm, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris.

In African reliquaries the bones of ancestors are brought together after elaborate rituals of preparation of the body (although the Paris example has the bones of only one man). The relics of a lineage were conceived of as being more powerful when grouped together, but contents were changeable. Over time, some of the ancestors might lose power, and the reliquaries would have to be ‘fortified’ with fresh power in the form of more recent ancestors. (Arguably, this happens in the Christian Middle Ages with saints waxing and waning in influence and power, but I have never heard of a saint being retired except by the scholars, the Bollandistes.) Given that they resided in homes, such reliquaries interacted in daily life, particularly by way of dreams. The relics could convey power to members of the lineage and even to objects that were placed in front of them. Such focus on benefits for a lineage might be compared to Roman practices with lares or household gods, as well as to the private manipulation of Christian relics, but has less in common with Christian community-oriented practices.

In the Mediterranean, we saw shared practice and sometimes practices that were purposefully differentiated from a competing culture. The Muslim disdain of body parts, all the while accepting hair and nail parings as relics, is one such differentiation from the Christian acceptance of bone relics and bodily dismemberment. Although there are superficial similarities between African reliquaries and Christian examples – large eyes on heads, mixed media, hidden relics, the significance of metals – African practices of preserving and celebrating relics, and making reliquaries, in general do not seem to overlap significantly with Mediterranean practice. Rather than drawing a negative conclusion from these observations, however, I would contend that this lack of correlation is of significant interest – it may point to the possibility of a discernable differentiation between shared cultures versus shared human tendencies for ‘relic-ing’. It encourages comparative studies under certain circumstances – to find parallels that are historical and not just formal or superficial – and points to the need for a more anthropological understanding of the power of material in other instances and across all human societies.

Although in post-Reformation and post-Enlightenment societies – the modern world – the faith that sustained reliquary practice has disappeared for many adherents, in many environments, especially the Catholic Church, cult structures have remained strong, maintaining a powerful system of communication that has been refined and reinforced over centuries of use. Many observers, even when not themselves devout, recognize the power of such a language of objects and forms. It is precisely within these circumstances that I have defined what I am calling a ‘reliquary effect’ – that is, multiply expressive elements of enclosing, enshrining, mixing interior and exterior, playing hide and seek, denying uniqueness in favour of replication and community, and focusing on the potential of matter. In this sense, something can work like a reliquary without being a reliquary. As we have seen, a reliquary effect sustains objects within celebrity culture and contemporary art making.

Notwithstanding such arguments, one further question persists. What is the status of the modern Christian reliquary? There is admittedly much that is derivative, but there are also some wonderful modernist interpretations of the reliquary tradition. Monstrance starburst-like objects in Germany and shining and simplified chasse forms in churches in France and Belgium show a reverence for tradition. Dom Martin (1889–1965), a metal-worker who expressed his faith by joining a monastery, the Abbey of Keizersberg in Leuven, made innovative reliquaries and liturgical service objects by exploring a range of materials from horn to lapis lazuli with stunning effect in exquisite art deco pieces.⁸ Nevertheless, if we seek innovative form that is worthy of the term modernist, there could be no better example than the restructured shrine for the Merovingian saint in the Collegiate Church of St Gertrude in Nivelles (illus. 97).

A reliquary must by necessity be a memory object, capturing and reflecting the prayers, needs and history of a shrine, a saint, a town. Indeed, this book began with a description and picture of the original thirteenth-century shrine from Nivelles (see illus. 1), a beautiful Gothic fantasy cathedral populated with courtly and gracious figures, both saints as well as other inhabitants of a paradisiacal realm, turning gently to speak to one another in a magical space of sacra converzatione. Each is framed by the gorgeous arches and the rose windows of the shrine. On the roof, the story of the primary saint, Gertrude, was told in narrative scenes, something a number of similar shrines, especially German ones, were prone to do. Gertrude herself, gracious abbess, stood at the ‘crossing’ of the micro-cathedral, held crozier and book and was backed by a starry field, surrounded by gems and spolia enamels (most likely from a yet earlier shrine of the tenth century), and greeted by angels. Seraphim stood guard at the upper edge of the shrine, as did the Holy Spirit who held a crown in his dove’s beak. The rose window was ‘lit’ by transparent enamels. All this beauty was the pride of the town of Nivelles, but unfortunately did not survive the Second World War. Destroyed in German bombing raids on 14 May 1940, only scraps of the shrine were recovered.

97 Félix Roulin, reliquary of St Gertrude, 1982, silver, reused enamels and other spolia, l. c. 180 cm, Collegiate Church of St Gertrude, Nivelles, Belgium.

However, in what I would term a brilliant realization of a contemporary shrine, and also a culmination of centuries of tradition, bits of old ornament and casts of other recovered remnants were embedded by the sculptor Félix Roulin in 1982, again as spolia, in the new sleek form that stands in the church today. The use of spolia is a break, a ‘visible seam’ that marks an awareness of the history of the object and its remaking.⁹ In the Nivelles chasse, the ancient forms of figures and ornament seem as if trapped, struggling to break free from a miasma of silver, or, alternately (simultaneously?), as if form was coming to realization in a Terminator-like emergence from a pool of quicksilver. The profile of the shrine recalls the overall shape of the original shrine-cathedral, but now limns that shape in a series of modernist curves that evoke the space rather than define it, recalling the interior space of the cathedral rather than the exterior – the soar, not the structure.

One sees the function of the shrine made apparent. The staves by which the shrine is carried delimit the second storey and assertively protrude out from the front and rear edges, as if the shrine were ready to be taken up in procession, declaring itself to be not a thing that rests, but a thing that moves. Finding its place in the modern world while memorializing its precious past, this wonderfully effective shrine is a locus of the holy, a stimulus for prayer and ritual, and a memory cache for its people, recalling both Gertrude and her previous shrines and marking the suffering and losses of the war.

But, finally, it is not in a ‘reliquary’ that we find the end point for our discussion but in a contemporary shrine, one truly expressive of our era – Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Decisively taking up the ideas of material and monumental commemoration and turning them into process (completed 1982, illus. 98), the memorial represents a lithic environment like other stone ‘monuments’ I discussed in the first chapter, but also teaches and shapes behaviour just as all great and successful reliquaries or shrines do. The black stone of the memorial was specially chosen for the possibility of a mirror-like finish. As one looks at it, it looks back, as if the past were projected into the present. Only the engraved names of the dead disrupt the surface. An abstraction that simultaneously invokes the body, it was called ‘a black gash of shame’ in its controversial early moments; with its completion and subsequent popularity, the metaphor shifted to a ‘wound that was healing’.¹⁰

98 Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982, 75.21 × 3.1 m tapering to 20 cm, Constitution Gardens adjacent to the National Mall, Washington, dc.

Families of the commemorated dead have responded to the persuasions of the shrine en masse: they stop and take rubbings of the name of their beloved and leave mementos (ex-votos?) as they depart (gathered by the National Park Service as a sort of archive). The space has come to be perceived as a ‘shrine’ and vandalism has been minimal and perceived as ‘desecration’. Repairs and additions to the names (originally 58,191) do not disturb a perceived unity and wholeness. Indeed, further evidence of the power of the wall is apparent in the copies it has generated: a site that has its ‘non-sites’ in the form of at least four travelling versions of the wall as well as other more permanent iterations.

Any viewer becomes quiet in the presence of the sombre dark stone with so many names, aware in entering the space of the monument that he or she is descending as the wall looms larger, now overhead, and the number of names – corresponding to the deaths caused by the war and peaking in 1975 – come to their apex. The viewer, pausing, enclosed, looking, then ascending once more, becomes finally aware of a larger context – the Washington ‘Mall’ with its many memorial pieces, the ascending obelisk of the Washington Monument – all speaking to the history of a nation, but none as powerful as this sacred space manipulating the forms that have such a very long history.

The body and the notion of human presence are, and always have been, a powerful means to create a ‘community’ of viewership, playing upon our intrinsic instincts for empathy and identification. Using psychological tools including revulsion, as well as attraction, enclosure and the power of materials, artists from the medieval to the contemporary have induced a sense of wonder in our relation with the material object. This sense of wonder endows these objects with significance out of proportion to any intrinsic worth. This is surely testimony to the ‘reliquary effect’, shaping our response to the material world we inhabit.

References

Introduction: The Eternal Relic

1  Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York, 2010), p. 298.

2  Francesca Sbardella, ‘La Fabrique des reliques. Manipulations et production de sacré dans la clôture’, Conserveries mémorielles, XIV (2013), www.cm.revues.org.

3  Patricia Fister, ‘Creating Devotional Art with Body Fragments: The Buddhist Nun Bunchi and Her Father, Emperor Gomizuno-o’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, XXVII (2000), p. 222.

4  The term was coined by Suzanne Preston Blier at ‘Matter for Debate: A Workshop on Relics and Related Devotional Objects’, at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, July 2010.

5  Helen Hills, ‘Beyond Mere Containment: The Neapolitan Treasury Chapel of San Gennaro and the Matter of Materials’, California Italian Studies, III/1 (2012), www.escholarship.org.

6  Cesare Poppi, ‘Sigma! The Pilgrims Progress and the Logic of Secrecy’, in Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals, ed. M. H. Nooter (New York, 1993), pp. 197–203, esp. p. 201; Jaś Elsner, ‘Relic, Icon, and Architecture: The Material Articulation of the Holy in East Christian Art’, in Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond, ed. C. Hahn and H. Klein (Washington, DC, 2015), pp. 13–40.

7  As Stephanie Wittich has done is describing the Treasures of Heaven exhibition: ‘Marketing the Middle Ages: Museums and the Medievalisms of Online Consumption’, in Museums, Marginality and the Mainstream, ed. J. Barbeau (Canada, 2012), pp. 130–40, http://issuu.com/myuglysweater/docs/mmm, citing Giorgio Agamben, ‘Nudity’, in Nudities, trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella (Stanford, CA, 2011), pp. 69, 79.

8  Scholars have argued that the link between erotic and divine love was a commonplace in the Middle Ages. See Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others (London, 2005).

9  Cennino Cennini, Il libro dell’arte, ed. Daniel V. Thompson Jr (New Haven, CT, 1933), Italian pp. 107–8, trans. pp. 112–14.

1 Relics and Reliquaries: Matter, Meaning, Multiplication

1  Julia Smith, ‘Relics: An Evolving Tradition in Latin Christianity’, in Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond, ed. C. Hahn and H. Klein (Washington, DC, 2015), pp. 41–60. For other matter in this chapter and the book as a whole, the author relies upon: Martina Bagnoli et al., eds, Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe (London, 2010); Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York, 2011); Seeta Chaganti, The Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary: Enshrinement, Inscription, Performance (New York, 2008); Finbarr B. Flood, ‘Bodies and Becoming: Mimesis, Mediation and the Ingestion of the Sacred in Christianity and Islam’, in Sensational Religion: Sensory Cultures in Material Practice, ed. S. Promey (New Haven, CT, 2014), pp. 459–93; Patrick Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, 1978); Joseph W. Meri, ‘Relics of Piety’, Past and Present, supplement (2010), pp. 97–120; Karen Overbey, Sacral Geographies: Saints, Shrines and Territory in Medieval Ireland (Turnhout, 2012); Henk van Os, The Way to Heaven: Relic Veneration in the Middle Ages (Amsterdam, 2000). Readers might also wish to consult Charles Freeman, Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe (New Haven, CT, 2011); or Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, NJ, 2013). For an extensive bibliography see Cynthia Hahn, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–circa 1204 (University Park, PA, 2012).

2  Georges Didi-Huberman and Thomas Repensek define the term admirably in discussing bloodstains on the Shroud of Turin: ‘The Index of the Absent Wound (Monograph on a Stain)’, October, XXIX, (1984), pp. 63–81.

3  Catherine McCormack, ‘Filthy Feet in Seicento Rome: Dirt as Relic and Text’, Dandelion: Postgraduate Arts Journal and Research Network, IV, (2013), p. 3.

4  Jaś Elsner, ‘Relic, Icon, and Architecture: The Material Articulation of the Holy in East Christian Art’, in Saints and Sacred Matter, ed. Hahn and Klein, pp. 13–40.

5  Michele C. Ferrari, ed., Thiofridi Abbatis Epternacensis. Flores Epytaphii Sanctorum. Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis (Turnhout, 1996), pp. xxiii, xxvii, 1; and Ferrari, ‘Gold und Asche: Reliquie und Reliquiare als Medien in Thiofrid von Echternachs Flores epytaphii sanctorum’, in Reliquiare im Mittelalter, ed. B. Reudenbach and G. Toussaint (Berlin, 2005), pp. 61–74. On the secret centre see Elsner, ‘Relic, Icon, and Architecture’.

6  The phrase seems to originate in Horace’s poems and is very common in reliquary descriptions. Q. Horatius Flaccus (Horace), Carmina, ed. Paul Shorey and Gordon Lang (Pittsburgh, PA, 1960), 3.24, www.perseus.tufts.edu; also commentary by Porphyrio.

7  Jeffrey Cohen, ‘Stories of Stone’, Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies, 1 (2010), pp. 56–63.

8  Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford, 1991, trans. of 1974 edn), p. 30.

9  Gerhart B. Ladner, ‘The Symbolism of the Mediaeval Corner Stone in the Mediaeval West’, Mediaeval Studies, 4 (1942), pp. 43–60; Peter Low, ‘“As a Stone Into a Building”: Metaphor and Materiality in the Main Portal at Vézelay’, Word and Image, XXII/3 (2006), pp. 260–67.

10  Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, ‘Eckstein’, Speculum, 14 (1939), pp. 66–72, p. 70, also the comments in the remainder of this paragraph.

11  See Alexander Nagel’s discussion of site and non-site in Medieval Modern: Art Out of Time (New York, 2012), pp. 97–132.

12  In the Futurist exhibition in Rome in 1932–4, Mostra della rivoluzione fascista, a stone that killed a Fascist was exhibited in a vitrine and surrounded by other explanatory, potentially cult material: Dino Alfieri and Luigi Freddi, Mostra della rivoluzione fascista (1932–1934) (Rome, 1933).

13  The site was known in ancient literature but only discovered in 1992. See ‘Kathisma – Place of Rest on the Way to Bethlehem’, www.travelujah.com, 23 January 2013; and Eugenio Alliata ‘The Kathisma: The Place of Rest for the Virgin,’ in The ‘Holy Land’ (Summer 1998), www.christusrex.org.

14  See ‘Les Empreintes de pied du Bouddha’, http://magiedubouddha.com/p_thai-puta1.php.com, for many images.

15  Flood, ‘Bodies and Becoming’, pp. 470–72.

16  Andrea Worm, ‘Steine und Fuβspuren Christi auf dem Ölberg: zu zwei ungewöhnlichen Motiven bei Darstellungen der Himmelfahrt Christi’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 66 (2003), pp. 297–320, who also discusses the miniatures depicting the stone.

17  Cecilia Gaposchkin, ‘From Pilgrimage to Crusade: The Liturgy of Departure, 1095–1300’, Speculum, 88 (2013), pp. 44–91, p. 71.

18  William E. Wallace, ‘Michelangelo’s Risen Christ’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 28 (1997), pp. 1251–80; Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York, 2010), p. 243.

19  Bynum, Christian Materiality.

20  David Germano and Kevin Trainor, Embodying the Dharma: Buddhist Relic Veneration in Asia (Albany, NY, 2004), and verbal communication with Germano.

21  Joan Carroll Cruz, The Incorruptibles: A Study of the Incorruption of the Bodies of Various Catholic Saints and Beati (Rockford, IL, 1977), p. 55; and throughout on this topic.

22  Paulinus of Nola, The Poems of St. Paulinus of Nola, ed. P. G. Walsh (New York, 1975), Poem 21, p. 192.

23  Ibid., Poem 18, p. 120.

24  Ibid., Poem 28, pp. 301–2.

25  Cruz, The Incorruptibles, p. 42.

26  Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York, 1993), pp. 8, 16.

27  For further elaboration of the use of such emotions, see Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘Wonder’, American Historical Review, 102 (1997), pp. 1–26; and Susanne Mrozik, ‘Astonishment: A Study of an Ethically Valorised Emotion in Buddhist Narrative Literature’, Religion, 36 (2006), pp. 91–106.

28  Elisabeth Revel-Neher, L’Arche d’Alliance dans l’art juif et chrétien du second au dixième siècles: le signe de la rencontre (Paris, 1984), p. 34.

29  To be explored further in Chapter Three.

30  David Appleby, ‘Rudolf, Abbot Hrabanus, and the Ark of the Covenant Reliquary’, American Benedictine Review, 46 (1995), pp. 419–43.

31  De administratione, XXXIV, trans. David Burr, ‘Suger of St. Denis and Bernard of Clairvaux on Architecture’, at www.history.vt.edu. See also Erwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger: On the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art Treasures (Princeton, NJ, 1979).

32  Jeffrey Hamburger, The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland circa 1300 (New Haven, CT, 1990), pp. 140 and n. 156, cited after his transcription from BL Ms Add 39843, fol. 45r.

33  Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst (Gütersloh, 1966), vol. V, p. 298.

34  Flood, ‘Bodies and Becoming’, p. 469.

35  Brannon Wheeler, Mecca and Eden: Ritual, Relics, and Territory in Islam (Chicago, IL, 2006), p. 81.

36  Paulinus, Poems, Poem 27, p. 29.

2 Objects of Infinite Power: Relics in the Early Middle Ages

1  Scholars of importance for the material in this chapter include Arnold Angenendt, Heilige und Reliquien: Die Geschichte ihres Kultes vom frühen Christentum bis zur Gegenwart (Munich, 1994); Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, IL, 1981); Patrick Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, 1978); Thomas Head, Hagiography and the Cult of the Saints: The Diocese of Orléans (Cambridge, 1990); Nicole Herrmann-Mascard, Les Reliques des saints: Formation coutumière d’un droit (Paris, 1975); Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, AD 300–900 (Cambridge, 2001); Julia M. H. Smith, ‘Portable Christianity: Relics in the Medieval West (c. 700–1200)’, Proceedings of the British Academy, CLXXXI (2012) pp. 143–67; and by the same author: ‘Rulers and Relics c. 750–c. 950: Treasure on Earth, Treasure in Heaven’, Past and Present, supplement (2010), pp. 73–96; and ‘Relics: An Evolving Tradition in Latin Christianity’, in Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond, ed. C. Hahn and H. Klein (Washington, DC, 2015), pp. 41–60. For the promotion of cults and the collecting of relics, see Cynthia Hahn, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–circa 1204 (University Park, PA, 2012), especially on the subject of shaped reliquaries and treasuries.

2  Peter Brown coined the term ‘impresario’ for these promoters of saints’ lives, in The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, IL, 1981), but for this material also see: Alan Thacker, ‘Rome of the Martyrs, Saints, Cult and Relics, Fourth to Seventh Centuries’, in Roma Felix: Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome, ed. E. O. Carragain and C. Neuman de Vegvar (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 13–49; Holger Klein, ‘Constantine, Helena, and the Early Cult of the True Cross in Constantinople’, in Byzance et les reliques du Christ, ed. J. Durand and B. Flusin (Paris, 2004), pp. 31–59; and John Wortley, Studies on the Cult of Relics in Byzantium up to 1204 (Aldershot, 2009). For Saint-Riquier see Susan A. Rabe, Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier: The Symbolic Vision of Angilbert (Philadelphia, PA, 1995); and Carol Heitz, ‘Architecture et liturgie processionnelle à l’époque préromane’, Revue de l’Art, XXIV (1974), pp. 30–47. For Charlemagne see Amy Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, NY, 1995). For classical precedents see Jaś Elsner, ‘Relic, Icon, and Architecture: The Material Articulation of the Holy in East Christian Art’, in Saints and Sacred Matter, ed. Hahn and Klein, pp. 13–40.

3  Karen Overbey, Sacral Geographies: Saints, Shrines and Territory in Medieval Ireland (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 66, 82.

4  Smith, ‘Portable Christianity’, and McCormick, Origins of the European Economy.

5  Geary, Furta Sacra; Einhard, ‘The Translation and Miracles of the Saints Marcellinus and Peter’, Carolingian Civilization: A Reader, ed. P. E. Dutton (Peterborough, Ontario, 1993), pp. 210–11.

6  Patrick Geary, ‘Humiliation of Saints’, in Saints and their Cults, ed. S. Wilson (Cambridge, 1983), p. 126.

7  See Pamela Sheingorn, ed., The Book of Sainte Foy (Philadelphia, PA, 1995), for quotes, pp. 120–24, 77, 162; also, Kathleen M. Ashley and Wim N. M. Hüsken, eds, Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Amsterdam, 2001), p. 55; and Beate Fricke, Fallen Idols, Risen Saints: Sainte Foy of Conques and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art (Turnhout, 2015).

8  Cynthia Hahn, ‘Visio Dei: Changes in Medieval Visuality’, in Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw, ed. R. Nelson (New York, 2000), pp. 169–96.

9  Overbey, Sacral Geographies, pp. 4, 10.

10  Helen Hills, ‘Beyond Mere Containment: The Neapolitan Treasury Chapel of San Gennaro and the Matter of Materials’, California Italian Studies, III (2012), http://escholarship.org.

11  Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York, 2010), p. 183.

12  Kilian Walsh, ed., Sermon 28, ‘The Blackness and Beauty of the Bridegroom and the Bride’, in The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, III: On the Song of Songs II (Kalamazoo, MI, 1976), pp. 88–101, esp. IV, 9–10, pp. 95–6.

13  Finbarr B. Flood, ‘Bodies and Becoming: Mimesis, Mediation and the Ingestion of the Sacred in Christianity and Islam’, in Sensational Religion: Sensory Cultures in Material Practice, ed. S. Promey (New Haven, CT, 2014), pp. 459–93, 482.

14  Discussed in chapters Three and Four.

15  Kathryn M. Rudy and Barbara Baert, Weaving, Veiling, and Dressing: Textiles and their Metaphors in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2007); see ‘Marian Relics’, 8 February 2011, Textile Relics Research Guide, http://sites.tufts.edu/textilerelics; and Gia Toussaint, Kreuz und Knochen. Reliquien zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge (Berlin, 2001).

16  For this material see Robert H. Sharf, ‘The Buddha’s Finger Bones at Famen Si and the Art of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism’, Art Bulletin, LXLIII (2011), pp. 38–59; Robert H. Sharf, ‘On the Allure of Buddhist Relics’, Representations, LXVI (1999), pp. 75–99; David Germano and Kevin Trainor, Embodying the Dharma: Buddhist Relic Veneration in Asia (Albany, NY, 2005); Fusae Kanda, ‘Behind the Sensationalism: Images of a Decaying Corpse in Japanese Buddhist Art’, Art Bulletin, LXXXVII (2004), pp. 24–49; Michele Matteini, ‘On the “True Body” of Huineng: The Matter of the Miracle’, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, LV/LVI (2009), pp. 42–60; Gregory Schopen, ‘Relic’, in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. M. C. Taylor (Chicago, IL, 1998); Andy Rotman, ‘The Erotics of Practice: Objects and Agency in Buddhist Avadāna Literature’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, LXXI (2003), pp. 555–78; Tan Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400 (Honolulu, HI, 2003); Juhyung Rhi, ‘Images, Relics, and Jewels: The Assimilation of Images in the Buddhist Relic Cult of Gandhāra: Or Vice Versa’, Artibus Asiae, LXV (2005), pp. 169–211; Eugene Y. Wang, ‘Of the True Body: The Buddha’s Relics and Corporeal Transformation in Tang Imperial Culture’, in Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture, ed. Wu Hung and K. T. Mino (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 79–118, 377–87.

17  Depicted on Gandharan reliefs of the second century: Wladimir Zwalf, Buddhism: Art and Faith (London, 1985), p. 28.

18  Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade, p. 56. Sen argues that Esoteric Buddhist texts allow ‘relics’ to be manufactured from precious materials if bodily relics are not available.

19  Sharf, ‘The Buddha’s Finger Bones’, p. 46.

20  Ibid., pp. 44, 46, 47, 54.

21  John Kieschnick, The Eminent Monk: Buddhist Ideals in Medieval Chinese Hagiography (Honolulu, HI, 1997), p. 44; also Kevin Trainor, ‘In the Eye of the Beholder: Nonattachment and the Body in Subha’s Verse (Therigatha 71)’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, LXI (1993), pp. 57–79.

22  Ann Marie Yasin, ‘Sacred Installations: The Material Conditions of Relic Collections in Late Antique Churches’, in Saints and Sacred Matter, ed. Hahn and Klein, pp. 133–52.

23  Helen Evans and William Wixom, eds, Glory of Byzantium, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1997); Robin Cormack, Writing in Gold: Byzantine Society and its Icons (London, 1985).

24  Baudoniva, Vita Radegundis, B. Krusch, MGH SRM, vol. II (Hanover, 1888), quotes at 2.13 and 2.16; trans. Joanne McNamara et al. as Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham, NC, 1992), pp. 60–105, quotes at pp. 94, 95, 97. Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM, vol. I (Hanover, 1885), pp. 484–561; trans. R. van Dam as Gregory of Tours: Glory of the Martyrs (Philadelphia, PA, 1989), cap. V, p. 22. See also Holger Klein, ‘Eastern Objects and Western Desires: Relics and Reliquaries between Byzantium and the West’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, LVIII (2004), pp. 283–314.

25  Andrew of Fleury, ‘Vita Gauzlini abbatis Floriacensis monasterii’, in Vie de Gauzlin, abbé de Fleury, ed. and trans. R.-H. Bautier and G. Labory (Paris, 1969), pp. 60–63.

26  Annals between 1217 and 1232: Birgitta Falk, ‘Bildnisreliquiare. Zur Entstehung und Entwicklung der metallenen Kopf- Büstenund Halbdigurenreliquiare im Mittelalter’, Aachener Kunstblätter, LIX (1991), pp. 99–238, esp. 206.

27  Overbey, Sacral Geographies, pp. 11–12.

28  Ibid.

29  Franz J. Ronig, ed., Egbert Erzbischof von Trier 977–993: Gedenkschrift der Diözese Trier zum 1000 Todestag (Trier, 1993), p. 36 for inscription; see also Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen, ‘Spolie und Umfeld in Egberts Trier’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, l (1987), pp. 305–36.

30  Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care, trans. Henry Davis (New York, 1950), pp. 87–8 (II.11).

31  Ibid., pp. 4–54 (II.2–4).

32  Holger Klein, Byzanz, der Westen, und das Wahre Kreuz: Der Geschichte einer Reliquie und ihrer künstlerischen Fassung im Byzanz und im Abendland (Wiesbaden, 2004), esp. at p. 244; Bissera V. Pentcheva, ‘Containers of Power: Eunuchs and Reliquaries in Byzantium’, RES Anthropology and Aesthetics, LI (2007), pp. 108–20; Nancy P. Sevçenko, ‘The Limburg Staurothek and its Relics’, in Θυμιαμα στη μνήμη της Λασκαρίνας Μπούρα/Thymiama stē mnēmē tēs Laskarias Boura,, ed. R. Andreade, P. L. Bokotopoulos, C. Mango and J.-P. Sodini (Athens, 1994), pp. 289–94; Jannic Durand, ‘La relique impériale de la Vraie Croix d’après de “Typicon” de Sainte-Sophie et la relique de la Vraie Croix du trésor de Notre-Dame de Paris’, in Byzance et les reliques du Christ: XXe Congrès International des Études Byzantines, 19–25 août 2001; Table ronde Les reliques de la Passion/Centre de Recherche d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, ed. J. Durand and B. Flusin (Paris, 2004), p. 35, as in fig. 1: the Menologium of Basil II in the Vatican Library, ms. gr. 1613.

33  Pentcheva, ‘Containers of Power’, p. 111.

34  Ibid., p. 114.

35  For Candidus, see the very thorough study by Rudolf Schnyder, ‘Das Kopfreliquiar des heiligen Candidus in St-Maurice’, Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte, XXIV (1964), pp. 65–127; also Daniel Thurre, L’atelier roman d’orfèverie de l’Abbaye de Saint-Maurice (Sierre, 1992), pp. 205–25; Falk, ‘Bildnisreliquiare’, pp. 198–200; Smith, ‘Portable Christianity’, pp. 165–6; Elisabeth Antoine-König and Diane Antille, ‘Le Trésor de l’abbaye de Saint-Maurice d’Agaune’, exh. cat., Musée du Louvre, Paris (2014), pp. 86–8. On head reliquaries more generally see Barbara D. Boehm, ‘Medieval Head Reliquaries of the Massif Central’, PhD thesis, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU (New York, 1990).

36  David A. Warner, trans. and ed., Ottonian Germany: The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg (Manchester, 2001), p. 104.

37  For a further discussion of head reliquaries, and these quotations, see Hahn, Strange Beauty, chap 7.

38  Joan A. Holladay, ‘Relics, Reliquaries, and Religious Women: Visualizing the Holy Virgins of Cologne’, Studies in Iconography, XVIII (1997), pp. 67–118.

3 Reliquaries of the Late Medieval and Renaissance

1  Megan Holmes, ‘Miraculous Images in Renaissance Florence’, Art History, XXXIV (2011), pp. 433–65, esp. p. 453; Megan Holmes, The Miraculous Image in Renaissance Florence (New Haven, CT, 2013). For the publication of cults and many other comments on ‘relics’, especially in the form of architecture, see Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York, 2010), esp. p. 204. Also, essays in Scott B. Montgomery and Sally J. Cornelison, eds, Images, Relics, and Devotional Practices in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Tempe, AZ, 2006).

2  Anita Moskowitz, ‘Donatello’s Reliquary Bust of Saint Rossore’, The Art Bulletin, VI (1981), pp. 41–8, esp. p. 44; Jeanette Kohl, ‘No One in Particular: Donatello’s San Rossore’, in Inventing Faces: Rhetorics of Portraiture Between Renaissance and Modernism, ed. Mona Koerte et al. (Berlin and Munich, 2013), pp. 15–28; Keith Christiansen and Stefan Weppelmann, The Renaissance Portrait: From Donatello to Bellini, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (New York, 2011), pp. 65, 86 and passim. For the ‘reality effect’ as used in St Rossore and in the famous medallions of the portrait of Christ, see Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, p. 253. For Anthony see Louise Bourdua, ‘Displaying the Bodily Remains of Saint Anthony of Padua’, in Bild und Körper im Mittelalter, ed. K. Marek, R. Preisinger, M. Rimmele and K. Kärcher (Munich, 2006), pp. 243–55; Francesco Lucchini, ‘Face, Counterface, Counterfeit: The Lost Silver Visage of the Reliquary of St Anthony’s Jawbone’, in Meaning in Motion: The Semantics of Movement in Medieval Art, ed. N. M. Zchomelidse and G. Freni (Princeton, NJ, 2011), pp. 35–62.

3  For the following discussion I rely on Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge, 1998), quotes at pp. 18, 233; Paul Crossley, ‘“Ductus” and “Memoria”: Chartres Cathedral and the Workings of Rhetoric’, in Rhetoric Beyond Words: Delight and Persuasion in the Arts of the Middle Ages, ed. M. Carruthers (Cambridge, 2010); L. Donkin and H. Vorholt, eds, Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West (Oxford, 2011); Aden Kumler, Translating Truth: Ambitious Images and Religious Knowledge in Late Medieval France and England (New Haven, CT, 2011); Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance; Alexander Nagel, The Controversy of Renaissance Art (Chicago, IL, 2011); Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991); Bernard McGinn, ‘From Admirable Tabernacle to the House of God: Some Theological Reflections on Medieval Architectural Integration’, in Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings, ed. V. C. Raguin, K. Brush and P. Draper (Toronto, 1995), pp. 41–56; Achim Timmermann, Real Presence: Sacrament Houses and the Body of Christ, c. 1270–1600 (Turnhout, 2009); Christiania Whitehead, Castles of the Mind: A Study of Medieval Architectural Allegory (Cardiff, 2003).

4  Nagel, Controversy, p. 203; G.J.C. Snoek, Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist: A Process of Mutual Interaction (Leiden, 1995).

5  For this material: François Bucher, ‘Micro-Architecture as the Idea of Gothic Theory and Style’, Gesta, XV (1976), pp. 71–90; Richard Krautheimer, ‘Introduction to an “Iconography of Medieval Architecture”’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, V (1942), pp. 1–33; Robert Ousterhout, ‘The Temple, the Sepulchre, and the Martyrion of the Savior’, Gesta, XXIX, (1990), pp. 44–53; and also Alexei Lidov, ed., Hierotopy: Creation of Sacred Spaces in Byzantium and Medieval Russia (Moscow, 2006).

6  Sally J. Cornelison, ‘Art Imitates Architecture: The Saint Philip Reliquary in Renaissance Florence’, The Art Bulletin, LXXXVI (2004), pp. 642–58.

7  Aubin L. Millin, Antiquités nationales, ou, Recueil de monumens: pour servir à l’histoire générale et particulière de l’empire françois, tels que tombeaux, inscriptions, statues, vitraux, fresques, etc: tirés des abbayes, monastères, châteaux, et autres lieux devenus domaines nationaux (Paris, 1790), vol. V, pl. 8, p. 74, section 32; Pierre Dor, Les Reliquaires de la Passion en France du ve au XVe siècle (Amiens, 1999), p. 227.

8  I thank David Boffa for sharing this insight.

9  Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 232.

10  Carruthers, quoting Hrabanus Maurus, Craft of Thought, p. 232.

11  Quotes are from Carruthers, Craft of Thought, pp. 232, 233, 77, 252.

12  Crossley, ‘“Ductus” and “Memoria”’, p. 240.

13  S. Tavano and G. Bergamini, Patriarchi: Quindici secoli di civiltá fra l’Adriatico e l’Europa Centrale (Ginevra-Milano, 2000), p. XX; R. W. Lightbown, ‘Ex-votos in Gold and Silver: A Forgotten Art’, Burlington Magazine, CXXI/915 (1979), pp. 353–9, esp. 355.

14  It has been suggested that it was made to hold relics after the sack of the city in 1567, but it seems more likely to be a symbol of civic unity in recovery: Bernard Ancien, ‘Le Plan reliquaire de la cathédrale de Soissons’, Mémoires de la Fédération des sociétés d’histoire et d’archéologie de l’Aisne, XV (1969), pp. 102–5; C. Riboulleau and M. Plouvier, ‘Reliquaire: modèle réduit de la ville de Soissons, dit “plan-reliquaire de la ville de Soissons”’, Enquête thématique régionale (le gothique en Picardie) (c) Région Picardie – Inventaire général (2004), retrieved 2 July 2014 from http://inventaire.picardie.fr; Roland Recht, Jacques Le Goff et al., Les Bâtisseurs des cathédrales gothiques, exh. cat., Musées de la ville de Strasbourg (1989), p. 430.

15  Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, p. 147.

16  McGinn, ‘Admirable Tabernacle’.

17  I would draw attention to a similar fifteenth-century example from Germany in Berlin’s Kunstgewerbemuseum, #K4159.

18  Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti archititetti, pittori, et scultori Italiani, da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri (Firenze, 1550), Architectura, chap. 3, p. 67.

19  Carruthers’s translation, Craft of Thought, p. 252, although I substitute McGinn’s use of ‘admirable’ for ‘wonderful’: ‘Admirable Tabernacle’.

20  S. Solente, ed., Le livre des faits et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V (Paris, 1936), vol. I, pp. 46–7.

21  Reinhold Baumstark, ed., Das Goldene Rössl: ein Meisterwerk der Pariser Hofkunst um 1400 (Munich, 1995), in Willibald Sauerlander’s essay, pp. 92–3, also p. 58; Éva Kovács, L’Âge d’or de l’orfèvrerie Parisienne au temps des princes de Valois (Dijon, 2004).

22  As Philip II of Spain was said to have done in contemplating the model of Jerusalem prepared for him, which he studied as he imaginatively explored the spaces during spiritual meditation. See Guy Lazure, ‘Perceptions of the Temple, Projections of the Divine. Royal Patronage, Biblical Scholarship and Jesuit Imagery in Spain, 1580–1620’, Calamus Renascens: Revista de humanismo y tradición clásica, I (2000), pp. 155–88, esp. pp. 163, 184: ‘it was through “contemplacion de los edificios” that one could eventually attain a higher level of understanding of the Scriptures’. See Chapter Four.

23  Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, cited by Carruthers, Craft of Thought, p. 80.

24  Cyril Mango, ‘Constantine’s Mausoleum and the Translation of Relics’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, LXXXIII (1990), pp. 51–62, esp. 53. Most of this material relies on John Wortley’s work on Byzantine relics, collected by Ashgate: Studies on the Cult of Relics in Byzantium up to 1204 (Burlington, VT, 2009). Also Iole Kalavrezou, ‘Helping Hands for the Empire: Imperial Ceremonies and the Cult of Relics at the Byzantine Court’, in Byzantine Court Culture from 829–1204, ed. H. Maguire (Washington DC, 1997), pp. 53–79; and see material cited in Chapter Two.

25  Alexander Kazhdan and Simon Franklin, Studies on Byzantine Literature of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Cambridge, 1984), p. 240. See also Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago, IL, 1994), pp. 526–7; George Majeska, ‘Russian Pilgrims in Constantinople’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, LVI (2002), pp. 93–108, esp. 95. For crowns over the altar, see M. Ehrhard, ‘Le Livre du pèlerin d’Antoine de Novgorod’, Romania, LVIII (1932), pp. 44–65, esp. 52.

26  Franz Grabler, Die Kreuzfahrer Erobern Konstantinopel (Graz, 1958), p. 290.

27  As indeed did Mary. She shed more mundane bits of her body – hair and milk – and there are many cloths associated with her, as at Chartres and Aachen. See Tufts University site on Textile Relics: ‘Marian Relics’, at http://sites.tufts.edu/textilerelics, 8 February 2011.

28  Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia, PA, 2007).

29  David Farley, ‘Fore Shame’, Slate (19 December 2006), www.slate.com, accessed 10 July 2013.

30  Chiara Mercuri, ‘S. Lorenzo in Palatio a Roma e la Sainte-Chapelle a Parigi: due depositi di reliquie a confronto’, in La tesaurizzazione delle reliquie, ed. S. B. Gajano (Rome, 2005), pp. 65–72; H. Grisar, Die römische Kapelle Sancta Sanctorum und ihr Schatz (Freiburg-im-Bresgau, 1908); Herbert L. Kessler, Rome 1300: On the Path of the Pilgrim (New Haven, CT, 2000).

31  Ernst Kitzinger, ‘A Virgin’s Face: Antiquarianism in Twelfth-century Art’, Art Bulletin, 62 (1980), pp. 6–19; Gerhard Wolf, Salus Populi Romani. Die Geschichte römischer Kultbilder im Mittelalter (Weinheim, 1990); Kessler, Rome 1300.

32  Brenda Bolton, ‘Advertise the Message: Images in Rome at the Turn of the Twelfth Century’, in Church and the Arts: Papers Read at the 1990 Summer Meeting and the 1991 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. D. Wood (Oxford, 1995), pp. 117–30, esp. 117. On the Veronica see also Jean-Marie Sansterre, ‘Variation d’une légende et genèse d’un culte entre la Jérusalem des origines, Rome et l’Occident: quelques jalons de l’histoire de Véronique et de la Veronica jusqu’à la fin du XIIIe siècle’, in Passages: Déplacements des hommes, circulation des textes et identités dans l’Occident médiéval, Actes du Colloque de Bordeaux (2 et 3 février 2007), ed. J. Ducos and P. Henriet (Toulouse, 2013), pp. 215–29; Gerhard Wolf, ‘From Mandylion to Veronica: Picturing the “Disembodied” Face and Disseminating the True Image of the Christ in the Latin West’, in The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation: Papers from a Colloquium Held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, and the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1996, ed. H. Kessler and G. Wolf (Bologna, 1998), pp. 153–79; Flora Lewis, ‘Rewarding Devotion: Indulgences and the Promotion of Images’, in The Church and the Arts, ed. Wood, pp. 179–94.

33  Bolton, ‘Advertise’, p. 127; and Wolf, ‘From Mandylion’, p. 167.

34  Sansterre, ‘Variation’, p. 228, emphasis mine.

35  Klein, ‘Eastern Objects’. Also see discussion of Radegund in Chapter Two, and Anatole Frolow, Les Reliquaires de la Vraie Croix (Paris, 1965).

36  Robert Ousterhout, ‘Rebuilding the Temple: Constantine Monomachus and the Holy Sepulchre’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, XLVIII (1989), pp. 66–78.

37  Elizabeth Pastan and Sylvie Balcon, Les vitraux du choeur de la cathédrale de Troyes (XIIIe siècle) (Paris, 2006), no. 1b; Catherine Fernandez, ‘Quidem lapis preciousus qui vocatur Cammaheu: The Medieval Afterlife of the Gemma Augustea’, PhD dissertation, Emory University, 2012; Gia Toussaint, ‘Jerusalem – Imagination und Transfer eines Ortes’, in Jerusalem, du Schöne, ed. B. Reudenbach (Bern, 2008), pp. 33–60.

38  Fernandez, ‘Quidem lapis’; Amy G. Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, NY, 1995); Elizabeth Pastan, ‘Charlemagne as Saint? Relics and the Choice of Window Subjects at Chartres Cathedral’, in The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages, ed. M. Gabriele (New York, 2008), pp. 97–135; Anne Latowsky, Emperor of the World: Charlemagne and the Construction of Imperial Authority, 800–1229 (Ithaca, NY, 2013).

39  Cynthia Hahn, ‘The Sting of Death is the Thorn, but the Circle of the Crown is Victory Over Death: The Making of the Crown of Thorns’, in Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond, ed. C. Hahn and H. Klein (Washington, DC, 2015), pp. 193–214.

40  Hahn, ‘Sting of Death’; Elisabeth Antoine-König and Diane Antille, ‘Le trésor de l’abbaye de Saint-Maurice d’Agaune’, exh. cat., Musée du Louvre, Paris (2014), pp. 107–9.

41  Emily Guerry, ‘The Wall Paintings of the Sainte-Chapelle’, PhD dissertation, University of Oxford, 2012; Alyce A. Jordan, Visualizing Kingship in the Windows of the Sainte-Chapelle (Turnhout, 2002); Meredith Cohen, ‘An Indulgence for the Visitor: The Public at the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris’, Speculum, LXXXIII (2008), pp. 840–83.

42  Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York, 1985).

43  Meditations on the Life of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis, trans. Samuel Kettlewell and H. P. Wright (Oxford, 1892), pp. 104–5.

44  For Prague and Karlštejn I have relied on: Barbara Drake Boehm, ‘Charles IV: The Realm of Faith’, in Prague: The Crown of Bohemia 1347–1437, ed. B. D. Boehm and J. Fajt, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum, New York (New York, 2005), pp. 23–33; Paul Crossley, ‘The Politics of Presentation: The Architecture of Charles IV of Bohemia’, in Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe, ed. S. Rees Jones, R. Marks and A. J. Minnis (York, 2000), pp. 99–172; Paul Crossley and Zoë Opačić, ‘Prague as a New Capital’, in Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, pp. 59–73; Jiří Fajt, ‘Charles IV: Toward a New Imperial Style’, ibid., pp. 3–21; Jiří Fajt and Jan Royt, ‘The Pictorial Decoration of the Great Tower at Karlštejn Castle: Ecclesia Triumphans’, in Magister Theodoricus: Court Painter to Emperor Charles IV, ed. J. Fajt, exh. cat., National Gallery of Prague (Prague, 1998), pp. 107–215; Jaromir Homolka, ‘The Pictorial Decoration of the Palace and Lesser Tower of Karlštejn Castle’, in Magister Theodoricus, pp. 46–99; Kateřina Horničková, ‘My Saints: “Personal” Relic Collections in Bohemia before Emperor Charles IV’, Medium Aevum Quotidianum, LXIV (2012), pp. 50–61; Peter Kováč, ‘Notes on the Description of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris from 1378’, in Court Chapels of the High and Late Middle Ages and their Artistic Decoration, exh. cat., National Gallery in Prague (Prague, 2003), pp. 162–70; R. Lützelschwab, ‘Prag- das neue Paris? Der französische Einfluβ auf die Reliquienpolitik Karls IV’, in Wallfahrten in der europäischen Kultur – Pilgrimage in European Culture (Proceedings of the Symposium Pēibram, May 26th–29th 2004), ed. D. Doležal and H. Kühne (Frankfurt am Main, 2006), pp. 201–19; David Mengel, ‘Bones, Stones, and Brothels: Religion and Topography in Prague under Emperor Charles IV (1346–78)’, PhD dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2003; Karel Otavský, ‘Reliquien im Besitz Kaiser Karls IV, ihre Verehrung und ihre Fassungen’, in Court Chapels, pp. 129–41; Iva Rosario, Art and Propaganda: Charles IV of Bohemia (London, 2000); Jan Royt, ‘The Dating and Iconography of the So-called Relics Scenes in the Chapel of Our Lady at Karlštejn Castle’, in Court Chapels, pp. 64–7; Robert Suckale and Jiří Fajt, ‘The Circle of Charles IV’, in Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, pp. 35–45.

45  The Shrine of the Three Kings in Cologne presents the culmination of Ottonian relic collecting, but was not set into a fully realized sacred space of the cathedral until the Gothic and even modern era. Rolf Lauer, Der Schrein der Heiligen Drei Könige (Cologne, 2006).

46  Crossley, ‘Politics of Presentation’, p. 99.

47  Fajt, ‘Charles IV’, p. 13.

48  Milena Bartlova, ‘Karlštejn: A Sacred Place and Castle of the Holy Grail: Critical Comments’, in Court Chapels, pp. 28–32.

49  Mengel, ‘Bones, Stones, and Brothels’, p. 336.

50  Otavskýin “Reliquien”, in Court Chapels, pp. 129–41.

51  These included authentics but nevertheless this bishop remains anonymous. Magister Theodoricus, p. 518.

4 The Reliquary After Trent: The Affective, the Collective

1  Quoted and translated in Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991), p. 354, citing cod c. 5, p. 696.

2  W. Telfer, The Treasure of São Roque: A Sidelight on the Counter-Reformation (London, 1932), p. 207. In the first part of this chapter I further rely on the following: Arnold Angenendt, Heilige und Reliquien: Die Geschichte ihres Kultes vom frühen Christentum bis zur Gegenwart (Munich, 1997); Paul M. Bacon, ‘Art Patronage and Piety in Electoral Saxony: Frederick the Wise Promotes the Veneration of His Patron, St. Bartholomew’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, XXXIX (2008), pp. 973–1001, esp. pp. 975–7, and fig. 3; Livia Cárdenas, Friedrich der Weise und das Wittenberger Heiltumsbuch: Mediale Repräsentation zwischer Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Berlin, 2002); Anton Legner, Reliquien: Verehrung und Verklärung: Skizzen und Noten sur Thematik und Katalog zur Ausstellung der Kölner Sammlung Louis Peters in Schnütgen-Museum (Cologne, 1989); Thomas DaCosta Kauffmann, Court, Cloister, and City: The Art and Culture of Central Europe, 1450–1800 (London, 1995); Julia Strehle, Lucas Cranach d. Ä. in Wittenberg (Leipzig, 2001); Andreas Tacke, Ich armer sundiger mensch: Heiligen- und Reliquienkult am Übergang zum konfessionellen Zeitalter (Göttingen, 2006); Hugh R. Trevor-Roper, The Plunder of the Arts in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1970).

3  A book with woodcuts was also produced. A website displays the images and commentary on each from a recently published CD-ROM: www.hdbg.de/gruenewald/heiltum.

4  See Tacke, esp. the essay by Philippe Cordez, ‘Wallfahrt und Medienwettbewerb. Serialität und Frommenwandel der Heiltumverzeichnisse mit Reliquienbildern im Heiligen Römischen Reich (1460–1520)’, in Ich armer sundiger mensch, pp. 17–73.

5  R. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (New York, 1995), p. 60.

6  Trevor-Roper, Plunder of the Arts, p. 27.

7  St John of the Cross in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, 3.35.3, cited by Alfonso Rodríguez and G. De Ceballos, ‘The Art of Devotion: Seventeenth-century Spanish Painting and Sculpture in its Religious Context’, in The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600–1700, ed. X. Bray, exh. cat., National Gallery, London (London, 2009), pp. 45–57, esp. p. 45. Also Maarten Delbeke, The Art of Religion: Sforza Pallavicino and Art Theory in Bernini’s Rome (Farnham, 2012).

8  Helen Hills citing Deleuze: ‘Introduction and The Baroque: The Grit in the Oyster of Art History’, in Rethinking the Baroque, ed. H. Hills (Farnham, 2011), pp. 3–38.

9  Alexander Nagel, The Controversy of Renaissance Art (Chicago, IL, 2011), pp. 202, 211.

10  See discussions by Mitchell Merback, Pilgrimage and Pogrom: Violence, Memory, and Visual Culture at the Host-Miracle Shrines of Germany and Austria (Chicago, IL, 2012), pp. 95–6, and Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia, PA, 2007), who both wish to differentiate these elements.

11  Brian Curran et al., Obelisk: A History (Cambridge, MA, 2009), p. 148; and see Nagel, Controversy, p. 181.

12  For the Jesuits see: William A. Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-century Spain (Princeton, NJ, 1989); Marcello Fagiolo, ‘The Scene of Glory: The Triumph of the Baroque in the Theatrical Works of the Jesuits’, in The Jesuits and the Arts, 1540–1773, ed. J. W. O’Malley (Philadelphia, PA, 2005), pp. 199–228; Jaime Lara, ‘God’s Good Taste: The Jesuit Aesthetics of Juan Bautista Villalpando in the Sixth and Tenth Centuries B.C.E.’, in The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, ed. J. W. O’Malley, G. A. Bailey, S. J. Harris and T. F. Kennedy (Toronto, 1999), pp. 505–21; John W. O’Malley, ‘Saint Ignatius and the Cultural Mission of the Society of Jesus’, in O’Malley, Jesuits and the Arts, pp. 3–26; Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic Reformation in Germany (Princeton, NJ, 2002); Philip M. Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints: Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria (Berkeley, CA, 1993); Mark S. Weil, ‘The Devotion of the Forty Hours and Roman Baroque Illusions’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 37 (1974), pp. 218–48.

13  Linda Anne Nolan, ‘Touching the Divine: Mobility, Devotion, and the Display of Religious Objects in Early Modern Rome’, PhD dissertation, University of Southern California, 2010; William E. Wallace, ‘Friends and Relics at San Silvestro in Capite, Rome’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 30 (1999), pp. 419–39; Patricia Fortini Brown, ‘Painting and History in Renaissance Venice’, Art History, 7 (1984), pp. 263–94.

14  Henry Kamen, The Escorial: Art and Power in the Renaissance (New Haven, CT, 2010), p. 207.

15  Jesús Domínguez Bordona, ‘Federico Zuccari en España’, Archivo Español de Arte y Arqueologia, III (1927), pp. 77–89, esp. p. 84. I want to thank Jack Freiberg for discussing this material with me and for sharing portions of his book before publication (Bramante’s Tempietto, the Roman Renaissance, and the Spanish Crown (Cambridge, 2014)).

16  Fray Jose de Sigüenza, Fundacion del Monasterio de El Escorial por Felipe II (Madrid, 1927), p. 197; Kamen, Escorial, pp. 221, 222. Also for the Escorial see: Adam G. Beaver, ‘Scholarly Pilgrims: Antiquarian Visions of the Holy Land’, in Sacred History: Visions of Christian Origins in the Renaissance World, ed. Katherine Van Liere, Simon Ditchfield and Howard Louthan (Oxford, 2012); George Kubler, Building the Escorial (Princeton, NJ, 1982); Guy Lazure, ‘Possessing the Sacred: Monarchy and Identity in Philip II’s Relic Collection at the Escorial’, Renaissance Quarterly, LX (2007,) pp. 58–93; Guy Lazure, ‘Perceptions of the Temple, Projections of the Divine: Royal Patronage, Biblical Scholarship and Jesuit Imagery in Spain, 1580–1620’, Calamus Renascens: Revista de humanismo y tradición clásica, I (2000), pp. 155–88; Guy Lazure, ‘Crainte de Dieu et désir du savoir. La mentalité religieuse de Fray José de Sigüenza (1544–1606) à travers “La Fundación del Monasterio de El Escorial”’, MA, thesis, Université de Montréal, 1996 (I want to thank Guy Lazure for generously sharing his unpublished thesis with me); Manuel Arias Martínez, En olor de santidad: relicarios de Galicia (Santiago de Compostela, 2004); Tessa Morrison, Juan Bautista Villalpando’s Ezechielem Expanationes: A Sixteenth-century Architectural Text (Lewiston, NY, 2009); Rosemarie Mulcahy, La decoración de la Real Basílica del Monasterio de El Escorial: ‘A la mayor gloria de Dios y el Rey’ (Madrid, 1992); Rosemarie Mulcahy, ‘Federico Zuccaro and Philip II: The Reliquary Altars for the Basilica of San Lorenzo de el Escorial’, Burlington Magazine, CXXIX (1987), pp. 502–9.

17  Lazure, ‘Crainte de Dieu’, chap. 3, p. 107, citing Sigüenza, Fundacion del Monasterio, pp. 110–11.

18  Sigüenza, Fundacion del Monasterio, p. 195, and for other comments and stories, pp. 190–272, 454–506.

19  Here I follow the work being done by Felipe Pereda. I want to thank him for generously sharing the text of a talk given at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013, ‘The Return of Nicodemus: Naturalism as Bildzauber in Baroque Spain’. Also on São Roque: Maria Filomena Brito, Igreja de São Roque: Roteiro (Lisbon, 1999); Telfer, Treasure of São Roque; Nuno Vassallo e Silva, ed., Esplendor e devoção: Os Relicários de S. Roque: Colecção património artístico, histórico e cultural da Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa (Lisbon, 1998); Michael Snodin, Nigel Llewellyn et al., eds, Baroque: Style in the Age of Magnificence, 1620–1800, exh. cat., Victoria & Albert Museum, London (London, 2009), pp. 194–203.

20  Bray, Sacred Made Real, p. 164.

21  Pereda typescript, ‘Return of Nicodemus’.

22  A. V. Remígio, ‘The Monastery of Saint Mary of Alcobaça: The Conservation-Restoration of the Sanctuary Reliquaries’, available at www.e-conservationline.com, accessed 26 April 2013. See also Jorge Rodrigues, The Monastery of Alcobaça (London, 2007).

23  Patricia Andrés González, ‘Emblemática y orfebrería en Castilla y León: la custodia de Juan de Arfe en la catedral de Valladolid’, Paisajes emblemáticos, 2 (2008), pp. 517–35, esp. fn. 1.

24  Ibid., p. 530.

25  This section relies on the archival work in Lynn Matluck Brooks, ‘The Dances of the Processions of Seville in Spain’s Golden Age’, PhD dissertation, Temple University, 1985. See esp. pp. 84–98, quote at p. 90.

26  Francis G. Very, ‘The Corpus Christi Procession in Spain: A Literary and Folkloric Study’, PhD dissertation, University of California, 1956, p. 171 and throughout for other details.

27  Sabina de Cavi, ‘Applied Arts in Naples: Materials and Artistic Techniques from Micro- to Macrocosmos’, West 86th, XIX (2012), pp. 196–230, esp. p. 202. Also see for Bologna and devotion: Patricia Rocco, ‘Maniera Devota, Mano Donnesca: Women’s Work and Stitching for Virtue in the Visual Culture of the Conservatori in Early Modern Bologna’, Italian Studies, LXX (2014), pp. 76–91.

28  Helen Hills, ‘Beyond Mere Containment: The Neapolitan Treasury Chapel of San Gennaro and the Matter of Materials’, California Italian Studies, III (2012), pp. 1–21, esp. p. 8. I rely throughout on Hills’s brilliant work on the materiality of this chapel.

29  Ibid.

30  For Waldsassen see: Johannes Hamm, Barocke Altartabernakel in Süddeutschland (Petersberg, 2010), pp. 138–9; Werner Schiedermair, ‘Die Waldsassener Heiligen Leiber’, in Waldsassen. 300 Jahre Barockkirche, ed. P. Mai and K. Hausberger (Regensburg, 2004), pp. 357–68; Trevor Johnson, ‘Holy Fabrications: the Catacomb Saints and the Counter-Reformation in Bavaria’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, XLVII (1996), pp. 274–97; Sabine Leutheuβer, Die barocken Ausstattungsprogramme der ehemaligen Zisterzienser-Abteikirchen Waidsassen, Fürstenfeld und Haitenhaslrach (Munich, 1993); Georg Schrott, ‘Spiritalität – Seelsorge – Herrschaft – Identität: Dimensionen der Festkultur im Stift Waldsassen’, in Solemnitas: Barocke Festkultur in Oberpfälzer Klöstern, ed. M. Knedlik and G. Schrott (Regensberg, 2003), pp. 169–92.

31  Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, 1991, trans. 1974 edn), pp. 183–4 (see Chapter One).

32  Schiedermair, ‘Waldsassener Heiligen’, p. 363.

33  De Cavi, ‘Applied Arts in Naples’, p. 221.

34  Ibid., p. 219.

35  The oratory dates to 1493 so the architect was gazing towards the original shrine at the site. See also Franz Matsche, ‘Das Grabmal des Johannes von Nepomuk im Prager Veitsdom als sakrales Denkmal’, in Johannes von Nepomuk: 1393–1993, ed. R. Baumstark, J. V. Herzogenbert and P. Volk, exh. cat., Bayerisches National Museum, Munich (Munich, 1993), pp. 36–50.

36  Paul Koudounaris, The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses (New York, 2011).

37  John Beldon Scott, Architecture for the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin (Chicago, IL, 2003), quotes on pp. xxi, xxii.

38  See ibid., fig. 18.

39  Ibid., p. 116.

40  Amedeo di Castellamonte called it a reliquary, as cited by Beldon Scott, Architecture for the Shroud, p. 136; other comments by contemporary critics and Guarini, pp. 191, 214.

41  Giovanni Gaspare Craveri, Guida de’ forestieri per la real cittá di Torino (Torino, 1969), pp. 24–6 (of 1753 edition).

42  Vittorio Amedeo Barralis, Sacred Anatomy of the Image of Our Lord Christ Imprinted on the Holy Shroud (engraving, 1685); Vittorio Amedeo Barralis, Sacred Crown to be Presented to the Christ of the Passion on the Holy Shroud (engraving, 1685); Beldon Scott, Architecture for the Shroud, figs 126–7.

43  Beldon Scott, Architecture for the Shroud, p. 264.

5 Relics Destroyed, Relics Returned, Relics Reinvented: The French Revolution, Napoleon, Celebrity, the Photograph

1  Antoine Lilti, Figures publiques: l’invention de la célébrité (1750–1850) (Paris, 2014).

2  Rolf Reichardt, L’Imagerie révolutionnaire de La Bastille: collections du musée Carnavalet, exh. cat., Musée Carnavalet, Paris (Paris, 2009), p. 37. The quotes in the following discussion come from this catalogue.

3  As reported in Le Courrier de Gorsas on 5 March 1790. See Reichardt, L’Imagerie révolutionnaire, p. 135.

4  Genevieve is a perfect example of the contradictions: both for her celebration as the patroness of Paris by revolutionaries and the eventual destruction of her cult site and reliquary by the same group. See Sheila Delany, ‘St. Genevieve in the Revolution: Sylvain Maréchal’s Counter-History’, Conserveries mémorielles, 14 (2013), http://cm.revues.org, accessed 3 July 2013.

5  Cited by Daniel J. Sherman, Worthy Monuments: Art Museums and the Politics of Culture in Nineteenth-century France (Cambridge, MA, 1989), p. 98. On the Jacobins: Gustave Gautherot, Le Vandalisme Jacobin: Destructions administratives d’Archives, d’Objets d’Art, de Monuments religieux à l’Epoque Révolutionnaire (Paris, 1914).

6  Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte (New York, 1890), vol. II, p. 76. Other sources for this discussion include: Suzanne Desan, ‘Redefining Revolutionary Liberty: The Rhetoric of Religious Revival During the French Revolution’, in The Rise and Fall of the French Revolution, ed. T.C.W. Blanning (Chicago, IL, 1996), pp. 358–84; Anne Dion-Tenenbaum, L’orfèvre de Napoléon: Martin-Guillaume (Paris, 2003); Dominique-Vivant Denon: L’oeil de Napoléon, exh. cat., Musée du Louvre, Paris (Paris, 1999); Cecil Gould, Trophy of Conquest: The Musée Napoléon and the Creation of the Louvre (London, 1965); Odile Nouvel-Kammerer, Symbols of Power: Napoleon and the Art of Empire Style, 1800–1815, exh. cat., Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (New York, 2007); Werner Telesko, Napoleon Bonaparte: Der ‘moderne Held’ und die bildende Kunst, 1799–1815 (Vienna, 1998); Thierry Lentz, ‘Napoleon and Charlemagne’, Napoleonica: La revue, I (2008), pp. 45–68: Napoleon. org, accessed 7 August 2014; Henri Welschinger, Le Pape et L’Empereur, 1804–1815 (Paris, 1905).

7  John Beldon Scott, Architecture for the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin (Chicago, IL, 2003), p. 268.

8  Alain Pillepich, ‘Napoleon and the Iron Crown’, in The Iron Crown and Imperial Europe, ed. G. Buccellati (Milan, 1995), vol. I, pp. 335–43.

9  Most of this material is from Jannic Durand and Marie-Pierre Laffitte, Le trésor de la Sainte-Chapelle, exh. cat., Musée du Louvre, Paris (Paris, 2001); but also for the gift of the thorn: Count Riant, Exuviae Sacrae Constantinopolitanae (Geneva, 1877), p. 279.

10  Suzanne Glover Lindsay, ‘Mummies and Tombs: Turenne, Napoleon, and Death Ritual’, Art Bulletin, 82 (2000), pp. 476–502, both comments on p. 476.

11  Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Memoirs, vol. II, p. 425.

12  10:512: cited by Catherine Waters, ‘“Fashion in Undress”: Clothing and Commodity Culture in Household Words’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 12 (2007), pp. 26–41, at p. 33.

13  Cited by Sudhir Hazareesingh, ‘Napoleonic Memory in Nineteenth-century France: The Making of a Liberal Legend’, Modern Language Notes, 120 (2005), pp. 747–73, at p. 758, discussing Emmanuel de Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, ed. M. Dunan (Paris, 1951), vol. I, pp. 15, 21.

14  Hanneke Grootenboer, Treasuring the Gaze: Intimate Vision in Late Eighteenth-century Eye Miniatures (Chicago, IL, 2012); Marcia Pointon, ‘“Surrounded by Brilliants”: Miniature Portraits in Eighteenth-century England’, Art Bulletin, 83 (2001), pp. 48–71; Julian Yates, Error, Misuse, Failure: Object Lessons from the English Renaissance (Minneapolis, MN, 2003), pp. 28–62. Also for the Napoleon miniatures see: Élodie Lerner, ‘L’image de Napoléon au miroir de sa politique artistique’, in Splendeurs de l’Empire: Autour de Napoléon et de la cour impériale, ed. Fondation Napoléon (Metz, 2009), pp. 47–59. For Paulinus, see Cynthia Hahn, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–circa 1204 (University Park, PA, 2012), pp. 15, 20–21.

15  Yates, Error, p. 46.

16  Pointon, ‘Surrounded by Brilliants’, and Grootenboer, Treasuring the Gaze. They are, of course, later than the wonderful eye relic, in eye-shaped reliquary, c. 1606, of St Edward Oldcorne at Stonyhurst College; see ‘Eye Relic’, www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017gm45, 4 May 2012.

17  Heinz K. Henisch and Bridget Ann Henisch, The Photographic Experience, 1839–1914: Images and Attitudes (University Park, PA, 1994), p. 5.

18  See Geoffrey Batchen, Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance, exh. cat., Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 2004); Natalie Hegert, ‘Photograph/Index’, in Objects of Devotion and Desire: Medieval Relic to Contemporary Art, ed. Cynthia Hahn, exh. cat., Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery of Hunter College CUNY, New York (New York,), pp. 56–7.

19  Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York, 1981).

20  Henisch and Henisch, Photographic Experience, p. 166.

6 The Reliquary Effect: Contemporary Artists and Strategies of the Relic

1  See Gene Ray, ed., Joseph Beuys: Mapping the Legacy (New York, 2001), p. 68, referring to Adorno’s statement of 1951: ‘After Auschwitz, no more poetry’.

2  Eleanor Heartney, Postmodern Heretics: Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art (New York, 2004); James Elkins, On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (New York, 2004); Alexander Nagel, Medieval Modern: Art Out of Time (New York, 2012); for relational art, see Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon, 2002).

3  Caroline Tisdall, Joseph Beuys: We Go This Way (London, 1998), p. 79. David Adams, ‘Joseph Beuys: Pioneer of a Radical Ecology’, Art Journal, LI (1992), pp. 26–34; Uwe Claus et al., eds, Joseph Beuys: Filz, Fett, Honig, Gold, Blut–: Symposium zur Material-Ikonografie (Bedburg-Hau, 2008); Beuys and Mark Rosenthal, Joseph Beuys: Sculpture and Drawing (New York, 2007); Beuys and Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen et al., Joseph Beuys und das Mittelalter, exh. cat., Schnutgen-Museum, Cologne (1997); Matthew Biro, ‘Representation and Event: Anselm Kiefer, Joseph Beuys, and the Memory of the Holocaust’, Yale Journal of Criticism, XVI (2003), pp. 113–46; Lucrezia De Domizio Durini and Beuys, The Felt Hat: Joseph Beuys, a Life Told (Milan, 1997); Hal Foster, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism (New York, 2011); Claudia Mesch and Viola Maria Michely, Joseph Beuys: The Reader (Cambridge, MA, 2007), including Benjamin Buchloh, ‘Beuys: The Twilight of the Idol’ (1980), pp. 109–26; Mark Rosenthal, Sean Rainbird et al., Joseph Beuys: Actions, Vitrines, Environments, exh. cat., Menil Collection, Houston TX and Tate Modern, London (Houston, 2004); Charity Scribner, ‘Object, Relic, Fetish, Thing: Joseph Beuys and the Museum’, Critical Inquiry, XXIX/4 (2003), pp. 634–49; Ann Temkin, ‘Joseph Beuys: Life Drawing’, in Thinking is Form: The Drawings of Joseph Beuys, ed. A. Temkin and B. Rose (New York, 1993), pp. 42–7; Caroline Tisdall, Joseph Beuys et al., Joseph Beuys, exh. cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (New York, 1979); Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen, ‘Joseph Beuys et le Moyen Age: Les “Moyen Age” de l’art contemporain’, Cahiers de la villa gillet, XVII (2003), pp. 21–36.

4  Tisdall, Joseph Beuys (1979), pp. 10, 101.

5  See Graham Harman’s work, and its discussion: ‘Object-oriented Ontology’ on Wikipedia, with multiple links to online texts, accessed 9 August 2014.

6  The idea of the wound is further developed in Show Your Wound, installation, Munich, 1976, see Tisdall, Joseph Beuys (1979), p. 214 – the title is an obvious reference to the Christ of the Last Judgement.

7  Nancy Spector, ed., Barney/Beuys: All in the Present Must be Transformed, exh. cat., Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (New York, 2006), p. 21.

8  His inspiration is still important to art students, see https://sites.google.com/site/socialsculptureusa, accessed 6 August 2013. See especially articles by David Adams, including ‘On Joseph Beuys and Anthroposophy’.

9  Interview by Sean Rainbird, 2001, http://historyofourworld.wordpress.com/tag/sean-rainbird, accessed 7 August 2013; for Beuys and his Christianity, see Westermann-Angerhausen, Joseph Beuys und das Mittelalter, esp. the treatment of crystal, crosses and relics, pp. 24–31; also Steffen Köhler, Der versteckte Christus: Beuys, Nitsch, Rainer (Dettelbach, 2009).

10  Tisdall, Joseph Beuys (1979), pp. 16–17.

11  Buchloh, ‘Beuys: The Twilight of the Idol’, p. 204, quoting Tisdall, Joseph Beuys (1979), p. 72. This is also the source for other quotes on Fat Chair.

12  Rosenthal, Joseph Beuys: Sculpture, p. 26.

13  And this issue is the crux of his disagreement with Duchamp. Nagel has compared relics to readymades: Medieval Modern, pp. 238–9.

14  Ray, Joseph Beuys, and Biro, ‘Representation and Event’, have both used this terminology.

15  De Domizio Durini, Felt Hat, p. 56; Tisdall, Joseph Beuys (1979), pp. 248–53.

16  De Domizio Durini, Felt Hat, p. 25.

17  ‘Statement on How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare’, trans. Tisdall, in Tisdall, Joseph Beuys (1979), p. 105.

18  The hare is intriguingly associated in Germany, through Dürer’s Hare, to the history of art itself (and recall Beuys’s wife was an art historian). The hare was also considered a primitive master of disguise with enhanced senses of sight, hearing and smell. Beuys was interested in other animals as well, including the bee and the coyote.

19  Adams, ‘On Joseph Beuys and Anthroposophy’.

20  De Domizio Durini, Felt Hat, p. 24.

21  Temkin, ‘Beuys Life Drawing,’ pp. 38–9.

22  Quotes from De Domizio Durini, Felt Hat, pp. 23, 24, 34.

23  Tisdall, Joseph Beuys (1979), p. 108–13.

24  Spector, Barney/Beuys, pp. 28–32.

25  Cynthia Hahn, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–c. 1204 (University Park, PA, 2012), chap. 5.

26  De Domizio Durini, Felt Hat, p. 40.

27  Tisdall, Joseph Beuys (1979), pp. 114–15.

28  Ibid., pp. 70–71.

29  Ray, Joseph Beuys.

30  Tisdall, Joseph Beuys (1979), p. 89.

31  Rosenthal and Rainbird, Joseph Beuys: Actions, Vitrines, p. 57.

32  Buchloh, ‘Beuys: The Twilight of the Idol’, pp. 109–10.

33  Biro, ‘Representation and Event’, p. 117.

34  Sharp interview (1969): ‘Energy Plan for the Western Man – Joseph Beuys in America’, in Four Walls Eight Windows, ed. Carin Kuoni (New York, 1993), p. 85.

35  Carol Duncan, Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London, 1995); De Domizio Durini, Felt Hat, p. 61. Rudi Dutschke, a friend, wrote a poem calling him “often crucified”, and see Köhler, Der versteckte Christus.

36  Interview with Paul Thek, Duisburg, 12 December 1973, in Harald Falckenberg and Peter Weibel, Paul Thek: Artist’s Artist (Hamburg, 2008), p. 383. This volume also includes the 1981 interview with Richard Flood, originally published in Artforum. The artist’s comments below come from these two interviews unless otherwise noted. Letters are also published there and notebooks are reproduced in: Paul Thek and Anke Bangma, Paul Thek: The Wonderful World That Almost Was: Snap! Crackle! Pop! Was! Touch Me Not!, exh. cat., Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (1995). Of particular interest in Artist’s Artist are essays by Falckenberg, Kelly, Germer and Wilson. Also see Elisabeth Sussman, Paul Thek, et al., Paul Thek: Diver, A Retrospective, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (New York, 2010), and Marietta Franke, ‘Work in Progress – Art is Liturgy’: das historisch-prozessuale und betrachterbezogene Ausstellungskonzept von Paul Thek (Frankfurt am Main, 1993).

37  Georges Didi-Huberman, ‘Wax Flesh, Vicious Circles’, in Encyclopaedia Anatomica: A Complete Collection of Anatomical Waxes, ed. M. Von During, M. Poggesi, G. Didi-Huberman and Museo Zoologico La Specola, Florence (Cologne, 1999), pp. 64–74.

38  Cited by Biro, ‘Representation and Event’, n. 48, citing Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama (London, 1977, orig. German edn, 1928), pp. 215–20.

39  Thek and Bangma, Paul Thek: The Wonderful World, p. 91.

40  Michele Camillo Ferrari, Thiofridi Abbatis Epternacensis. Flores Epytaphii Sanctorum (Turnhout, 1996), vol. II.6, p. 49. Thiofrid also discusses a second shape, which he calls a ciborium, and he comments on the meaning of its columns, which rise to a dome that collects the souls of the blessed.

41  Thek and Bangma, Paul Thek: The Wonderful World, p. 60.

42  Germer in Artist’s Artist, pp. 243, 244; also Cynthia Hahn for arm reliquaries: ‘The Voices of the Saints: Speaking Reliquaries’, Gesta, 36 (1997), pp. 20–31.

43  Both again Germer in Artist’s Artist, pp. 243, 244.

44  Falckenberg, ed., Paul Thek, letter of 18 July 1965, p. 298.

45  Both quotes in a letter to Hujar: Artist’s Artist, p. 323.

46  Thek and Bangma, Paul Thek: The Wonderful World, p. 23.

47  See Rosenthal and Rainbird for Beuys’s influence: Joseph Beuys: Actions, Vitrines, pp. 99–125.

48  See www.robertsmithson.com, accessed 30 July 2015.

49  Alexander Nagel in Medieval Modern draws a number of these parallels, as well as one to Kurt Schwitters.

50  Whitney Museum wall label acc. 2014.108.

51  See Donald Cosentino, ‘Hip-Hop Assemblage: The Chris Ofili Affair’, African Arts, XXXIII/1 (2000), pp. 40–51, 95–6.

52  Coco Fusco, ‘Captain Shit and Other Allegories of Black Stardom: The Work of Chris Ofili’, Nka: The Journal of Contemporary African Art, 10 (1999), pp. 40–45; Richard Rambuss, ‘Sacred Subjects and the Aversive Metaphysical Conceit: Crashaw, Serrano, Ofili’, ELH, LXXII/2 (2004), pp. 497–530.

53  See www.dariorobleto.com, accessed 29 July 15; and conversation with the artist, 31 May 2014.

54  Daniel Arasse, Anselm Kiefer (Paris, 2007), p. 21. Also on Kiefer see: Matthew Biro, Anselm Kiefer (London, 2013); Biro, ‘Representation and Event’; Lisa Saltzman, Anselm Kiefer and Art after Auschwitz (New York, 1999); Marina Warner, Anselm Kiefer: Next Year in Jerusalem, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York (, 2011).

55  Warner, Next Year, pp. 9, 10.

56  Roberta Smith, ‘A Spectacle with a Message’, New York Times (18 November 2010).

57  Biro, Anselm Kiefer, p. 9.

58  Warner, Next Year, pp. 15–16. She also suggests that the sheets are reminiscent of ritual curses, which were written on lead.

59  Ibid., p. 10.

60  Arasse, Anselm Kiefer, pp. 17ff.

61  Biro, Anselm Kiefer, p. 130.

Conclusion

1  Georges Didi-Huberman and Thomas Repensek, ‘The Index of the Absent Wound (Monograph on a Stain)’, October, XXIX, (1984), pp. 63–81. And see chapters One and Two.

2  Edmund de Waal, The Hare with the Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance (New York, 2010), p. 65.

3  Blake Stimson, ‘Between Inside and Out’, in Sculpture and the Vitrine, ed. J. C. Welchman (Burlington, VT, 2013), pp. 251–70, quotes p. 252. In the Introduction (p. 2), Welchman compares the effects to those of fencing and laws of private property. Other essays in the volume consider Thek and Beuys.

4  Anya Bernstein, ‘The Impossible Object: Relics, Property, and the Secular in Post-Soviet Russia’, Anthropology Today, XXX (2014), pp. 7–11.

5  Jaś Elsner, ‘Relic, Icon, and Architecture: The Material Articulation of the Holy in East Christian Art’, in Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond, ed. C. Hahn and H. Klein (Washington DC, 2015), pp. 13–40.

6  Alisa Lagamma and Barbara Drake Boehm, Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African Reliquary, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (New York, 2007).

7  7 Ibid., p. 228.

8  See http://mleuven.prezly.com/five-centuries-of-silver-atm-museum-leuven#, accessed 21 July 2015.

9  Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York, 2010), chap. 24 and p. 183; Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen, ‘Spolia as Relics? Relics as Spoils? Meaning and Functions of Spolia in Western Medieval Reliquaries’, in Saints and Sacred Matter, pp. 173–92.

10  See Wikipedia article, ‘Vietnam Veterans Memorial’, http://en.wikipedia.org, accessed 6 August 2014. Kent Garber disparaged the wall, calling it a gash.

Acknowledgements

After the scholarly nature of my 2012 book, Strange Beauty, with its thousand-plus footnotes and hundreds of bibliographic entries, it has been a pleasure to write this book and to set myself at play in this field of knowledge. Relics and reliquaries are mysterious things and exploring their secrets has been a fascinating task. This is only a beginning, of course, as there is so much more to know and understand. But I take this material as a challenge to myself and to others to understand the intelligence of material things. I most particularly do not imagine that relics and their use is a superstitious practice. Unlike a recent author who ends his book concerning relics with the triumph of Protestantism, I know our concern with relics has not ended; there are still material things that intrigue and provoke us whether we have faith or not.

Many people engaged me in this project over many, many years but I cannot hope to thank any but the most immediate over the last few years: Martina Bagnoli, Tim Benton, Suzanne Preston Blier, Barbara Boehm, Ra’anan Boustan, Brigitte Buettner, Wenshing Chou, Lynne Cook, Sally Cornelison, Elizabeth Cropper, Tom Dale, Anne Dunlop, Jaś Elsner, Claire Farago, Barry Flood, Sherry Fowler, Jack Freiberg, Cecilia Gaposchkin, David Germano, Oleg Grabar, Emily Guerry, Anne D. Hedeman, Helen Hills, Sandra Hindman, Jessica Horton, C. Stephen Jaeger, Herbert Kessler, Holger Klein, Lynda Klich, Aden Kumler, Marcia Kupfer, Lisa LaGamma, Anne Lester, Estelle Lingo, Stewart Lingo, Sarah McHam, Griffith Mann, Areli Marina, Frank Martin (whose memory is dear and whose reflection can be seen in illus. 98 along with that of another CASVA member and friend, Thierry de Duve), Jessica Morton, Margaret Mullett, Alexander Nagel, Martha Newman, Robert Ousterhout, Karen Overbey, Peter Parshall, Nicholas Paul, Felipe Pereda, Assaf Pinkus, Ellen Prokop, James Robinson, Michael Viktor Schwarz, Julia Smith, Erik Thunø, Ben Tilghman, Gia Toussaint, Ittai Weinryb, Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen, Roger Wieck, Ann Marie Yasin, Nino Zchomelidse and, above all, Caroline Bynum whose constant encouragement and brilliance shines out to those of us in her wake.

Thanks is also due to current and former students: Jennifer Courts, Danyel Ferrari, Susannah Fisher, Natalie Hegert, Megan Hinds, Jeremiah McCarthy, Ross McDonald, Maeve O’Donnell-Morales, Joy Partridge, Stephanie Peterson, Susie Sofranko and Annie Wischmeyer. They have taught me as much as I have tried to teach them.

Editorial work and general discussion supplied by Cathleen Bell has been essential to improvements to the text.

I am especially indebted to the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, for a year-long membership, to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton for a summer membership, to Hunter College for a Scholar Incentive Grant and an award from the Presidential Fund for Scholarship. Additional support for this project was provided by two generous PSC-CUNY Awards, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York.

To my partner in travel and discovery, John Coonley Davies, I am greatly indebted. If he did not drive while I navigated, so many of these mysteries would not have been revealed. He also served as the non-specialist reader, unraveller and photoshopper/cook. I give him my love and respect. This book is dedicated to him.

Photo Acknowledgements

The author and publishers wish to express their thanks to the following sources of illustrative material and/or permission to reproduce it.

© 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn: 88, 89; photos author: 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 12, 15, 29, 30, 34, 35, 39, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 90, 98; photos © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich: 55, 56; photo © Boltin Picture Library/Bridgeman Images: 25; photo bpk, Berlin/Alte Pinakothek, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich/© Art Resource, NY: 41; British Museum, London (photos © Trustees of the British Museum): 38, 53, 54; photos © Trustees of the British Museum, London: 79, 83; photo Lutz Engelhardt (© Dommuseum Hildesheim): 13; © James Fraher for Offaly County Council, Tullamore, Co. Offaly, Éire: 17; Fundacion Banco Santander: 68; photo © David Germano: 10; photo © Giraudon/Bridgeman Images: 81; Treasury, Cathedral Basilica of Sant’Eufemia, Grado, Friuli-Venezia Giulia (photo © Bruno Fachin Editore): 23; Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum (The Edwin Binney, 3rd Collection of Turkish Art at the Harvard Art Museums, 1985.260.93), photo Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College: 16; photo © Holly Hayes/Art History Images: 26; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest Fund, 1990) photo © Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden – © Estate of George Paul Thek, courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York: 92; photo © Jeanne Hunt insidenanabreadshead.com: 75; photo Eddie Janssens: 84; © Anselm Kiefer, courtesy Gagosian Gallery – photography by Robert McKeever: 95; photo © KIK-IRPA, Brussels (Belgium): 1; photo © Rumyana Kostadinova/Varna Archaeological Museum, Bulgaria: 24; photo Thierry Lefébure/© Région Picardie – Inventaire general: 36; photos © Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY: frontispiece, 19, 47; photo © Limburg an der Lahn Cathedral/HIP/Art Resource, NY: 27; courtesy Mai 36 Galerie, Zürich, © Estate of George Paul Thek, courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York (photo D. James Dee): 91; from Aubin Louis Millin, Antiquités nationales, ou, Recueil de monumens . . .(Paris, 1790): 32; Musée Hôtel Bertrand, Châteauroux (photo © The Museums of the City of Châteauroux/Vincent Escudero): 82; Musée National du Moyen Age – Thermes de Cluny, Paris (photo © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY): 44; Museo Nazionale di S. Matteo, Pisa (photo Scala/Art Resource, NY): 31; photo © Museo Sacro Vaticana: 4; photos National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC © National Gallery of Art: 32, 78; photo © Helmut Nickel: 93; photo © Pollak/Art Resource, NY: 77; private collection: 91; Real Monastero de San Lorenzo, El Escorial, Madrid – photos © Scala/Art Resource, NY: 57, 58; photo sAESvhnoYNOP-g at Google Cultural Institute: 68; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (photo Patrizia Tocci – image courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York): 94; photo © Scala/Art Resource, NY/Scala: 69; photo Shonagon/Wikimedia Commons: 96; photos © Tate, London 2014: 88, 89; © Estate of George Paul Thek, courtesy Alexander Bonin, New York: 93; University of Oklahoma Libraries (Bizzell Bible Collection): 14; Victoria and Albert Museum, London: 20, 85; The Wallace Collection, London (photo © The Wallace Collection): 87.

Jean-Pol GRANDMONT, the copyright holder of the image on p. 97, has published it online under conditions imposed by an Attribution 2.5 Generic license – readers are free to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, or to remix – to adapt the work – under the following conditions: attribution – readers must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that author or licensor endorse you or your use of the work, and share alike – if readers alter, transform, or build upon this work, they may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one; Beckstet, the copyright holder of the image on p. 33, Diana de Benutzer, the copyright holder of the image on p. 40, Myrabella, the copyright holder of the image on p. 11, Pierre Poschadel, the copyright holder of the image on p. 42, Clayton Tang, the copyright holder of the images on p. 46, the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, the copyright holder of the images on pp. 45 and 86 (photos Walters Art Museum), Welleschik, the copyright holder of the image on 18, and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, the copyright holder of the image on p. 7, have published these online under conditions imposed by a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license – readers are free to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, or to remix – to adapt the work – under the following conditions: attribution – readers must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that author or licensor endorse you or your use of the work, and share alike – if readers alter, transform, or build upon this work, they may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one; Pierre-Yves Beaudouin, the copyright holder of the image on p. 80, has published it online under conditions imposed by a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license – readers are free to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, or to remix – to adapt the work – under the following conditions: attribution – readers must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that author or licensor endorse you or your use of the work, and share alike – if readers alter, transform, or build upon this work, they may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

Index

Aachen, Palatine chapel 98, 132, 143, 217

Abelard and Héloïse 221

acheiropoieta 45, 112, 117, 127, 227, 230

Acheropita 40

Adam and Eve 183, 185

Afonso Álvares 171

African relics and reliquaries 13, 17, 263

Kotu peoples, basket reliquary 275–8, 96

Agaune, Saint-Maurice d’ 80–83, 125, 138

head reliquary of Candidus 80–83, 28

reliquary of the Thorn 126, 43

Aichel, Jan Santini 201

Albrecht, of Brandenburg 154

Alcobaça, Monastery of Santa Maria 177–82, 221

New Sacristy 63, 64, 65, 66

Altötting, Church of St Mary 107

Goldenes Rössl 2, 39

Amadeus III, count of Savoy 82

Ambrose, bishop and saint 49

Andechs, Kloster, relics broadside 155, 162, 54

Andrew, saint, Apostle 69, 73–4, 77, 111, 26

Angilbert, abbot 51

Anne Marie d’Orléans, Duchess of Savoy 208

Anna of Świdnica, wife of Charles IV 144, 50

Anne, saint 148

Anthony of Padua, saint 89

arca 42, 70

Ark of the Covenant 18, 40–44, 58, 75, 91, 92, 112, 187, 14, 15, 74

arma christi 115, 210

art, relics as 64, 79–80, 102

Ashoka, emperor of India 47, 61–2

Assisi, San Francesco 126

Assumption of the Virgin 118, 183

Augustine of Hippo, bishop and saint 102–7

Baldwin II, Latin Emperor 124–5

Barbati, Father Gaetano 202

Bari, St Nicholas 199

Barney, Matthew 261

Barrett, Elizabeth 231

Bartholomew, saint and apostle 158–60, 56

Basil the Proedros 78–9

Baudonivia, nun 69

Bede the Venerable, saint 42

Bell, Larry 248

Benedict XIV, pope 33, 172

Bernard of Clairvaux 14, 58–9

Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 161, 163

Bernward of Hildesheim, bishop and saint 38, 13

Beuys, Joseph 233–49, 261, 262–3, 266, 269, 88, 89

Fat Chair (poster) 88

The Pack, installation, Staatliche Museen Kassel (poster) 89

Bezalel 41, 185, 214

Bible see scripture, citations

Blanche of Castile 124, 129

blood 9, 14–15, 19, 23, 25, 32–3, 43, 59, 94, 113–15, 121, 125, 129, 162, 163, 177, 191, 196, 222, 240, 254, 276

bleeding woman of Mark 5:21 121

body, the 37, 46, 59, 61, 64, 71, 73, 104, 114–15, 169, 177, 208, 221, 223, 227, 233, 235, 238, 240, 244, 248, 251, 252–8, 260–62, 281, 283

body part reliquaries 37–8, 49, 86, 181, 249, 254

of the Church 38, 86

see also bones, skeletons

Bollandistes 152, 278

Boltanski, Christian 265–6

Bonaventure, saint 126

bones, skeletons 85, 192–5, 200–201, 202, 277

Bouvier, Charles, Les Huit époques de Napoléon . . . (after Charles de Steuben, etching) 83

brandea 68

Buddhist saints and relics 8–9, 13, 17, 18, 19, 24, 26–8, 32, 45, 47, 60–62, 64–8, 233, 246, 263

Gandharan reliquary 67, 275

Prasada 61

Tibetan 32–3

Cahier, Jean-Charles, reliquary of the Crown of Thorns 218–19, 81

Candidus, saint and martyr 80–83

Carlo Borromeo, saint 208, 209

Catherine of Alexandria, saint 109, 136, 209

Cattelan, Maurizio 244

Celanova, monastery of San Rosendo 170

celebrity, reliquary and 212–13, 220, 279

Celestin III, pope 120

Cennino Cennini 15

Charlemagne, emperor and saint 51, 52, 124, 138, 148, 169, 217–18, 229

Charles II, king of Naples 191

Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor 80, 96, 114, 130–49

Charles V, king of France 105, 116, 142

Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor 200

Charles VI, king of France 107, 2, 39

Charles VII, king of France 221

Chartres Cathedral, Notre Dame 124

Christine de Pizan 105

Christopher, saint 152, 245

Cid, El (Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar), and lover Chimène 220, 221

Clement VI, pope 122

cloth 18, 45, 59–60, 68, 94, 112, 112, 115, 120–21, 127, 187, 192, 204, 208

see also Napoleon, clothing

clothing and accessories as memory objects 224–5, 265–7

collecting 9, 20, 25, 43, 46, 47, 49–53, 69–70, 80, 82, 88, 91, 96, 110–16, 122, 128, 132, 137, 142, 144, 151, 153–4, 157–8, 160, 163–7, 169–70, 171–2, 177–8, 200, 203, 220–22, 262, 264, 268, 276

Cologne 73, 132, 172, 174, 242

St Ursula 83–5, 208, 30

head reliquaries of companions of Ursula 29

Cathedral see Nicholas of Verdun

Columcille, saint 71, 73

Concordat of 1801 217, 220

confraternity 174, 187

Conques, Sain te-Foy 54–6, 80, 216

Majesty of St Foi 19

Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, Byzantine emperor 77–8

Constantine, emperor and saint 49, 50, 69, 111, 113, 139, 140, 144, 148, 169, 204

Constantinople 26, 75, 110–14, 122, 174

Hagia Sophia 112–14

Holy Apostles 111, 114

Pharos, palatine chapel of the Virgin 78, 112–14

Cornell, Joseph 262

Cornut, Archbishop of Sens 124, 129

Corpus Christi 92, 109, 163, 176, 183, 185, 187, 68

Council of Trent 89, 152, 153, 161, 164

Cranach, Lucas the Elder 154–60

‘Margaret Reliquary’ 156, 55

‘Reliquary of Bartholomew’s Face’ 156–9, 56

cross 24, 28, 50, 58, 70, 77–80, 111, 113, 115–16, 118, 122, 139–44, 148–9, 167, 187, 204, 208, 220, 236, 240–42, 249, 257, 276

see also relic, Relics of the True Cross

crown 113, 133, 197, 217–18, 225, 228–9

Crown of Thorns, relics of the 35, 93–4, 107, 112, 115, 121, 124–30, 142, 149, 153, 154, 158, 203, 209–10, 218–20

reliquaries 32, 38, 43, 81

crozier 71, 280

of Clonmacnoise 73, 25

crucifixion 20, 124, 129, 148–9, 52

crusades/crusader 28–30, 77, 80, 82–3, 93, 111, 114–16, 120, 122–5, 203

Fourth Crusade, Sack of Constantinople 114, 122

crux gemmata 139–41, 48

custodia 105, 164–7, 182–8, 67, 68

Cuthbert, St 33

Damasus, pope 50

David, Jacques-Louis 216

Dax, Parisian stonecutter 214

de Waal, Edmund 272–3

Denon, Vivant, reliquary 220–23, 82

Deodata, saint 210

Desaix, Louis, general 221

Descriptio lateranensis ecclesiae 116, 118

devotion, reliquary and 8, 9, 43, 45, 48, 59, 64, 71, 79, 89, 92, 102, 110, 113–16, 129–30, 144, 153, 156–8, 163, 196–7, 202, 207, 210

Dickens, Charles, Household Words 224

Dientzenhofer, Georg 192, 70

Diet of Worms 157

Donatello, Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi 89–90

Saint Rossore 31

Duchamp, Marcel 235

ductus 98–100, 104, 109

Durandus of Mende (Guillaume Durand) 91

dust 14, 19–20, 21, 22, 32, 35, 46, 269

ebony 17, 174, 90

Eder, Adalbert 3, 74

edification 42, 91

Egbert of Trier, archbishop 73–7

Einhard 52

Einsiedeln, monastery 137

enamel 14–15, 56, 73, 78, 94, 105, 118, 280

Erlach, Fischer von, Tomb and Shrine of St John Nepomuk 199–200, 75

eruv 12

Escorial, San Lorenzo 164–72, 183, 185, 198

Essen, Galerie M. E. Thelen 258–61, 93

Eucharist (Mass) 32, 82, 91, 92, 109, 115, 150, 152, 160, 161, 164, 170, 177, 183, 208, 253

Euphrosynia, saint 274

Euthymios, saint 274

Evora, Capela dos Ossos 201–2

ex-voto 100, 102, 107, 109–10, 211, 283

fabric 8, 59, 65, 67, 121

see also cloth; felt; silk

Famen Si (Dharma Gate Monastery) 61–6, 68, 275

eight-part reliquary set 22

stupa 21

fat (as material) 236–44, 246, 262

feather art 160, 276, 96

Felix, saint 35, 36, 47

felt (as material) 236–42, 244–5

fenestella 68

Fernández, Gregorio 174–7

Cristo yacente of El Pardo 62

Ferrand, Jean, Disquisitio reliquaria 152–3

Filippo Terzi 171

Florence, Duomo 93, 98

Fluxus 235, 262

Foi, saint 52, 54–6, 80, 82

footprints as relics 25–30, 46, 263

Buddhapada or Footprints of the Buddha 7

Footprints of Christ (Chapel of the Ascension) 5

Fortunatus, Venantius Honorius Clementianus, bishop and hymnodist 70

Forty Hours Devotion (to the sacrament) 163, 165, 166–7, 208

Francis Xavier, St 35, 174

Francisco de Borja, duke and Jesuit saint 171

Francoise d’Amboise, Beata 8

Frederick Barbarossa, Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor 138

Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony 154–60

Fries, Laurent of Alsace, Ars memorativa 100

Gemona del Friuli 100, 102

Geoffrey de Charny 203

George, saint 100, 146–8, 51

Gerald of Wales 118

Gerold, abbot of Saint-Maurice, Paris 126

Gertrude, saint 279–81

Gerung, Matthias, Apocalypse and Satirical Allegories on the Church 150, 53

gifts, gift-giving 48, 61, 62, 64, 69, 77, 82, 98, 107, 122, 125–6, 130, 137, 141, 142, 153, 154, 160, 171, 203, 227, 228

see also ex-voto

Giuliano da Firenze 89

gold glass 15

Golgotha 45, 140–41, 201

Gonçalves da Câmara, Martim 174

Gonzaga, Alois, duke of Mantua 142

Grado, St Euphemia 66

reliquary pyx 23

Gratianus, saint 74

Gregory of Tours, bishop 69

Gregory the Great, pope and saint 42, 75

Grimaldi, Francesco 189

Guarini, Guarino, Chapel of the Holy Shroud 202–11, 217, 77, 78

Gustavus Adolphus 154

Habsburg Dynasty 132

hair 9, 115, 221–3, 227–9, 230, 245, 249–51, 265, 278

Halberstadt, Cathedral 25

Halle, Germany, Hallesche Heiltum 154, 155

Han Yu, Confucian scholar 61

Hautmann, Johann Michael 195, 72

head reliquaries 37–8, 71, 80–85, 89–90, 120, 137, 139, 179, 191, 260, 28, 31, 60

Heavenly Jerusalem 52, 53, 91, 93, 102, 107, 110, 113, 114, 136, 145, 165, 169, 270, 18

see also Jerusalem

Heiltumsbuch 155, 159

see also Halle; Wittenberg

Heinrich von Ulmen 77

Helena, Empress and saint 69, 111, 144, 201

Henri IV, king of France 221

Henry I, king of Germany 80

Heraclius, Byzantine emperor 122

Herzen, Natalie 229

Hildesheim, Cathedral Treasury 38, 13

Hilliard, Nicholas 226–8

Hoet Gerard, Figures de la Bible 14

Holocaust (genocide) 238, 245, 265, 266, 267, 269–70

Holy Land relics 25, 52, 69, 82, 93, 113, 116–17, 124, 140, 149, 201, 262

Hrabanus Maurus 42

Hugh of Lincoln, bishop and saint 264

Hujar, Peter 258

Humbert III, count of Savoy 82

identification, of relics 7–8, 20, 21

indulgence 122, 143, 150, 152, 156–7, 172, 203

Inês de Castro 221

Innocent III, pope 120, 122

inscriptions, reliquary 10, 24, 38, 50, 64, 73, 78–9, 82, 102, 140, 165, 202, 218

intercession 50, 85, 136, 191

inventio (invention) 7

Isabeau de Baviere 107, 109, 2, 39

Isabey, Jean-Baptiste, Napoleon Bonaparte (miniature) 228–9, 86, 87

Islamic relics 18, 23, 24, 26, 28, 45–6, 59, 275

Baraka 46

Sandal of the Prophet 45–6, in Anàm-i Sharif 16

Topkapi Palace 46

Jacobins 215

Jacopo da Trezzo 165

Januarius, saint 189, 191

Jean d’Orville, Chronique de Savoie 137–8

Jean, Duc de Berry 107, 38

Jerusalem, 69, 102, 105, 113, 114, 116, 122, 124, 149, 165, 169, 203, 210, 266–71, 95

Chapel of the Ascension 25, 28, 124, 140, 5, 8

Dome of the Rock 26

Holy Sepulchre 93, 116, 124, 127, 140–1, 209

see also Heavenly Jerusalem

Jesuits, Jesuit Order 152, 161, 163, 170–71, 174

Jewish rituals and relics 12, 24, 40–41, 58, 98, 268

João III, king of Portugal 171

João V, king of Portugal 172

João (Juan) de Borja 171

John the Baptist, saint 109, 112

John of the Cross, saint 161

John the Evangelist, saint 109, 113

John Komnenos, Byzantine emperor 112

John of Luxembourg 132

John Nepomuk, saint 198, 75

John the Steadfast, Elector of Saxony 158

John Volek, Bishop of Olomouc, Man of Sorrows reliquary 45

Johns, Jasper 248

Joséphine de Beauharnais (Bonaparte), empress 217, 228

joyaux 105, 107

Juan de Arfe, goldsmith 183–5

custodia of the Cathedral of Valladolid 67

Varia commensuración para la esculptura y arquitectura (1587) 183

Juan de Herrera, architect, El Escorial 165, 57, 58

Jubilee 122, 172

Julius II, pope 162

Justinian, emperor 77

Kabbalah 267–8

Karlštejn Castle, 43, 114, 130–49

Catherine Chapel (Oratory of Charles IV) 136, 139, 142, 144, 50

Holy Cross Chapel 134, 136, 140, 144–9, 47, 51, 52

Mary Chapel (Chapel of Our Lady) 139–40, 48, 49

Kathisma, archaeological site of Church of Maria Theotokos 25, 116, 6

Kelley, Mike 262

keys, to reliquaries 128, 203, 210

Kiefer, Anselm, Next Year in Jerusalem 233, 266–71, 95

Klosterarbeiten 197

Kutná Hora, Ossuary of Sedlec 25, 200–201, 76

Las Cases, Emmanuel de, Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, 225

Lawrence, saint 164, 167

Lazarus relic 209

Lefebvre, Henri 22–3

Leo III, Pope 116

Leuthner, Abraham 192, 70

light, relics and 23, 33, 41, 62, 139, 165, 169, 185, 188, 198

Lille, Saint-Pierre de, thorn reliquary 93, 32

Limburg an der Lahn, Cathedral Treasury Cross 77–80, 27

Lin, Maya, Vietnam Veterans Memorial 281–3, 98

lion of Judah 220

Lionello, Nicolò 102, 105

tabernacle, 37

Lisbon, São Roque 171–7, 198

Capela de Nossa Senhora da Piedade (Our Lady of Piety) 174, 61

Chapel of Our Lady of Doctrine, Congregation of the Oficiais Mecanicos 174, 176

primary altar and altars of the Holy Martyrs 59, 60

literature, literary heroes, relics of 221

Longinus, saint 174, 177

Loreto, Shrine of the Virgin’s House 100

Lotus Sutra 62

Louis IX, king of France 93, 122–30, 132, 139, 148, 203, 33, 42

Louis XI, king of France 100

Louis, duke of Savoy 203

love, lovers, relics of 220–21, 229

Lucca, San Frediano 35, 11

Ludmila, saint 148

Ludwig the Bavarian 132

Luther, Martin 152, 154, 156–7, 160

McCarthy, Paul 262

Maciunas, George 262

Man of Sorrows 43, 148, 45, 52

Manchán, saint 50

shrine of (St Manchán’s Church, Bohar, County Offaly) 17

Manuel I, king of Portugal 171, 177

Manzoni, Piero 262, 264

Marcellinus, saint 52

Margaret of Austria, queen of Spain 176

Margaret, saint 156, 55

Margherita Colonna, Poor Clare 120

Martin, Dom, Benedictine monk 279

Mary Magdalene, saint 169, 209, 264

Mary, mother of Christ (the Virgin, Madonna) 25, 45, 59–61, 100, 102, 107–9, 114, 116, 120–11, 27, 140, 143, 148, 149, 153, 158, 183, 185, 187, 209, 263

materials 14, 19–22, 32–3, 35, 59–60, 64, 77, 84, 161, 165, 189, 191, 193, 197, 233, 234–46, 247–9, 263, 265–6, 268, 283

see also cloth; fabric; individual materials

Mattes, Eva and Franco 264

Matthew Paris 120

Matthias of Arras 137

Maurice, saint 80, 137–8, 209, 28

Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor 154

memory, reliquary and 20, 99–100, 213, 222, 256, 264, 266, 270, 274, 279, 281

Mesarites, Nicholas 112–13

Meyer, Sebastian Apocalypse and Satirical Allegories on the Church 150, 53

Michelangelo Buonarroti 30, 163

Risen Christ 9

micro-architecture 89, 91, 92, 96, 109, 110, 280

miniatures

eye 227–8, 85

portrait 226–31, 86, 87

miracle, miraculous 11–13, 20, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32, 33, 35, 38, 41, 45, 46, 53, 56, 61–2, 68–9, 73, 83, 88, 94, 112–13, 115, 118, 121, 125, 130, 138, 139, 152, 153, 162, 163, 167, 177, 191, 209, 224, 227, 231

mirror 17, 183, 193, 281

Molière 221

Monforte de Lemos, Nosa Señora da Antiga’s School 170

monstrance 91, 92, 100, 102, 104–5, 110, 150, 158, 160, 162, 183, 185, 279

see custodia, tabernacle (for Sacrament)

Munich Veronica, Master of the, St Veronica with the Shroud of Christ 121, 41

Naples, San Gennaro, Treasury Chapel 12, 189, 191, 69

Ossuary of Fontanelle 202

Napoleon Bonaparte 212–13, 217–31, 86, 87

clothing 224–6, 83, 84

Nazis 269–70

netsuke 272–3

Nicholas of Verdun, Shrine of the Three Kings, Cologne Cathedral frontispiece, 12

Nivelles, Collegiate Church of St Gertrude 279–81

reliquary of St Gertrude 1, 97

obelisk 162–3, 183, 283

Ofili, Chris 263

oil, anointing with or exuding 23, 33, 68, 118

Orvieto, Cathedral 93–4

Othmar, saint 137

Otto I, German emperor 80

Ottokar II of Bohemia 201

Paik, Nam June 235

Pallavicino, Sforza 161

Palloy, Pierre-François 213–15

Palmatius, saint 148, 52

Pantheon see Rome, Santa Maria ad Martyres

Paris

Bastille, model of the 213–15, 80

Bibliothèque nationale 216

Cabinet des Médailles 216

Hôtel de Ville 214

Les Invalides 222, 225

Louvre 217, 220, 224

Notre Dame Cathedral 216, 218, 220

Père Lachaise cemetery 221, 225

Pont de la Concorde 213

Saint-André-des-Arts 213

Sainte-Chapelle 93–4, 114, 122–30, 133, 156, 208, 216, 218, 219, 33, 42, 44

Parler, Peter 133–4, 137, 35, 46

Paschal, pope 53, 18

Passion, relics of the 30, 60, 78, 112–13, 114–16, 118, 120. 125, 127–8, 136, 139–42, 148–9, 155, 202–3, 207–8, 210

Patrick, saint 28, 50

Paulinus of Nola 19, 35–6, 46, 58, 71, 111, 226

Pedro I, king of Portugal 221

Pedro II, king of Portugal 174, 177

Peirce, Charles Sanders 19

Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, Le 124

Pérez Villaamil, Jenaro, The Corpus Christi Procession Inside Seville Cathedral 187, 68

Peter, saint and Apostle 23, 30, 68, 73, 75, 120, 162

Philip, saint and Apostle 93

Philip II, king of Spain 105, 116, 164, 167, 169–72

Philip VI, king of France 154, 158

Philip Augustus, king of France 115, 120

photograph, relic qualities 230–31, 265

pilgrims, pilgrimage 24–5, 28, 45, 46, 53, 56, 62, 83, 107, 112, 113, 116, 117, 118, 122, 152, 155, 163, 188, 203, 209–11, 263, 267, 4

kissing relics 30, 208, 169

touching rosaries to relics 172, 207

Pisa, Campo Santo 25

Polycarp, St 20, 21

Prague 93, 96, 132–5, 139, 143, 149, 171, 192, 199

Cathedral of Saint Vitus 96, 133–7, 199, 35

Chapel of Saint Wenceslaus 133–6, 139, 46

Tabernacle 96, 34

prayer brotherhoods 52

procession, relics in 52–6, 65, 75, 78, 85, 118, 120, 163, 167, 171, 182, 183, 185–7, 196, 214, 245, 258–60, 281

pyramid 23, 104, 162, 252–4, 261

Radegund, Queen and saint 51, 69–71

regalia, imperial 80, 134, 143–4, 148, 217–18

Reims, Cathedral 133

relic

as boundary crosser 13, 32, 189, 191, 249, 269, 276

definition 7, 14, 18, 21, 58

double condition of 7, 58

duplication 152

as gift see gifts, gift-giving humiliation 53

incorruption 33

as indexical 19, 231, 266

and liturgy 52–7, 73, 113, 134, 247

measure 113

multiplication and division of 45–7, 61, 153, 283

and oaths 53

ostentation 152, 207–8

and paradox 13, 20–22, 32, 115, 264

persistence of 32–3, 45

social setting of 9, 41, 48, 53, 57, 70, 83, 121, 227, 234

see also Holy Land relics

relic-ing 9, 20, 32, 49, 57, 213, 278

reliquary

definition of 6, 10, 11–14

as enclosure, enframement, nesting 7, 8, 12–14, 21, 28, 32, 33, 36, 37, 40, 49, 57–71, 78, 92, 130, 210, 226, 242, 248, 261, 270, 272, 279, 283

as gift box 6; see also gifts, gift-giving

as instructional 21, 32, 48–9, 64, 91, 98, 270, 281

purse reliquaries 49, 59, 85

reliquary effect 6, 7, 232, 262, 264, 270, 279, 283

shaped reliquaries 37, 71–86, 128, 182, 253, 254

Renaissance, and reliquaries 88

Resurrection 37, 43, 46, 86, 107, 140, 177, 249

Ribera, Jose de 189

Rint, František 201, 76

Rita of Cascia, saint 35, 130

Robert Bellarmine, saint 174

Robespierre, Maximilien 216

Robleto, Dario 265–6

Roch, saint 100, 171

rock crystal 15, 34, 57, 64, 65, 102, 105, 126, 146, 165, 183, 219, 272, 10

Rodrigo of Castro, archbishop of Seville, cardinal 170

Roman Catacomb saints (heilige Leib) 192–7

Rome

Cemetery of the Jordani, Via Salaria Nova 193–6

Church of Quo Vadis 30

St John Lateran, the Sancta Sanctorum see Sancta Sanctorum

St Peter’s Basilica 118, 120, 122, 163

San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane 209

San Pietro in Montorio, the ‘Tempietto’ 98, 165

Santa Croce in Gerusalemme 25, 201

Santa Francesca Romana (Sta Maria Nova) 118

Santa Maria Maggiore 118

Santa Maria ad Martyres, Pantheon 182, 209

Santa Maria sopra Minerva 30

Santa Prassede 53, apse mosaic 18

Rossore, saint 89, 31

Roulin, Félix, reliquary of St Gertrude, Nivelles 280–81, 97

Rudolph I, Duke of Saxe-Wittenberg, 154

Rudolph II, of Prague, Holy Roman Emperor 154

Saint-Denis (basilica) 43, 100, 133, 204, 216, 221–3, 223

Saint Gall (Sankt Gallen) monastery 137

Saint-Riquier (Centula) 51–2

Sala, George Augustus 224

Salcedo, Doris, Atrabiliarios, 1992–2004 264, 266, 94

Salus Populi Romani 118, 171

Salvi, Nicola 172

Sampaio, Constantino de, abbot 177

Sancta Sanctorum 25, 112, 114, 116–20, 4, 40

Sandback, Fred 12

scripture, citations

I Corinthians (2:9) 58, (4:7) 22, (10:4) 23, (12:12) 86

I Peter (2:4–5) 23

Deuteronomy (21:22) 79, (32:4) 23

Exodus (25:10) 40, (40:17–19) 14

Ezekiel (43:10–11) 98

Genesis (2:7, 3:19, 18:27, 28:14) 20

Hebrews (9:11–12) 43

Isaiah (53:2) 79

Mark (5:21–43) 121

Psalms (26:8) 102, (30:9) 20, (41) 104, (44:2) 79, (131:7) 30

Revelation (11:19) 43, 15

Romans (10:15) 75

Song of Songs (2:8–9) 142

Second World War 233, 235–6, 244, 245, 267, 280

secrets, relics and 13–14, 21, 37, 43

Serrano, Andres 263

Seville, Cathedral 183, 185–8, 68

Sigismund, king and saint 133, 137–9

Sigüenza, monk of El Escorial 165, 167, 169, 185

silk 59, 65, 67, 197, 205

simurgh (sēnmurw) in roundel 20

silver 10, 65, 66, 67, 71, 82, 89, 100, 109, 113, 126, 158, 162, 169, 185, 187, 189, 198–9, 230, 281

Simón de Monasterio 170

Skeuophylax 112

smell 33, 35, 130, 236, 249

Smithson, Robert 262

Soissons, reliquary of the city of (Trésor de la cathédrale Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais) 101, 36

Sontag, Susan 256

Sorel, Agnès 221

sound (as component of reliquary or artwork) 56, 69, 71, 118, 183, 187, 237, 249, 266

space, reliquary and 8, 12, 14, 22–3, 30, 32, 40, 45, 46, 57, 62, 91–2, 99, 107–9, 114, 137, 165, 192–3, 270, 272, 283

Spina, Giuseppe Maria, cardinal 220

spolia 35, 59, 77, 217, 280–81

stars 65, 82, 199, 207

Northern Dipper 64

Staurotheke 77, 27

Stilp, Carl 193, 71

stone (pebbles, rocks) 18, 22–33, 65, 78, 112–13, 116, 117, 124, 126, 127, 134–7, 140–41, 149, 213–15, 239–40, 255, 267, 281, 283

stories, of/and relics 7, 13, 25, 33, 35, 38, 48, 56, 61, 66, 113, 114, 116, 129, 139, 140, 176–7, 189, 196, 222, 240, 254–5, 276

striptease 14

Stuart, Charles Edward (Bonnie Prince Charlie) 213

Stuart, Michelle 263

stupa 61–3, 65, 20

Suger of Saint-Denis, abbot 43

Suzdal, Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church 274

tabernacle (for Sacrament) 92, 96, 98, 100, 102, 164, 165, 183, 193, 34, 37, 71, 74

see also monstrance, custodia

Tabernacle and Temple 40–45, 58, 91–2, 98–9, 102, 104, 109, 116–17, 130, 165, 169, 185, 214

tabernacolini 104–5

Tangermünde in Brandenburg, palace chapel 135

Tempesta, Antonio, The Annual Display of the Holy Shroud in Turin on 4 May (print) 205, 207, 79

terracotta 22, 177–82

tertons 32, 10

theft, relics and 48, 52, 138

Thek, Paul 233, 257–2

Birthday Cake 251–3, 91

A Procession in Honor of Aesthetic Progress: Objects to Theoretically Wear, Carry, Pull or Wave, installation 258, 260, 93

Warrior’s Leg 255, 92

Theodoric (Theodoricus), Master 137, 145–9, 51, 52

Theodosius, byzantine emperor 140

Thessalonika, Hagios Demetrios 68

Thiofrid of Echternach 19, 21–2, 162, 253

Flores Epytaphii Sanctorum 21

Thirty Years War 154

Thomas Aquinas 183

Thomas à Kempis 129

time, reliquary and 12, 21, 32, 33, 37, 62, 197, 277

Tomaso da Modena 148, 52

Tours, Saint-Martin 54

Trier, Cathedral Treasury, Altar of St Andrew 73–7, 26

True Cross, relics of the 7, 69, 70, 77–9, 111, 113, 116, 118, 122, 124, 127, 141–4, 149, 153, 163, 203, 209, 226, 241, 27

Turin Cathedral, of John the Baptist, Chapel of the Holy Shroud 202–11, 77, 78

Turin Shroud 202–11, 217, 79

Urban IV, Pope 94

Ursula, saint and martyr, and the 11,000 Virgins 83–5, 172, 29

Valerianus, saint, reliquary 248, 90

Valladolid, Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción 183, 185, 67

Vanvitelli, Luigi 172

Varna, Museum of Archaeology 67

set of three reliquaries 24

Vasari, Giorgio 104

Vatican, Sancta Sanctorum, pilgrim’s box 25, 4

Venice, Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista 163

vernicle 122

Veronica, saint 45, 121–2, 174

relics of 45, 118–22, 263, 41

Vietnam War 244, 255, 281

Vietnam Veterans Memorial 281–3, 98

Vincentius, saint 38, 13

vision, visibility, visionary 9, 13, 37, 42–3, 47, 62, 64, 66–8, 73, 85, 98, 105, 113, 118, 121, 125–6, 167, 172, 183, 185, 193, 196, 211, 226, 249, 257, 276, 281

Vitalinus, saint 74

Vitrine culture 272

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) 212, 221

Von Steuben, Carl 225, 83

Waldsassen Basilica (Mariä Himmelfahrt und St Johannes Evangelist) 192–8, 200, 202, 3, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74

Warhol, Andy 233

Washington, DC

Vietnam Veterans Memorial 281–3, 98

Washington Monument 283

wax 238, 248–55

Weimar Archive sketchbook ThHStAW Reg. 0123 156

Wen of Sui, emperor of China 61

Wenceslaus, duke and saint 133, 134, 139, 148

Wenceslaus IV, king of Bohemia and King of the Romans 200

Wittelsbach dynasty 132, 154

Wittenberg, Church of All Saints 154–60, 162–3

Wunderkammer 153

Wurmser, Nicholas, Chapel of Our Lady, Karlštejn 136, 15, 48, 49, 50

Zita of Lucca, saint 35, 11

Zuccaro, Federico, Annunciation 165, 58