Search Results (6)

Relics and mortal remains attributed to saints and martyrs, long venerated within Christian tradition, represent a unique area of scientific inquiry conducted under canonical procedures aimed at verifying authenticity, ensuring preservation, and promoting public devotion. This study focuses on the canonical recognition of the bone remains preserved in the Specus Martyrum of Atripalda (ancient Abellinum), attributed to Saint Hipolystus and the martyrs Crescentius and Irenaeus. The investigation was promoted by the Diocese of Avellino in preparation for the Hipolystian Jubilee commemorating 1720 years since their martyrdom (1 May 303 A.D.). A multidisciplinary approach was applied, combining historical analysis of sources such as the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (5th century), the Passio Sancti Hipolysti (9th century, edited in the Acta Sanctorum) and another Passio written by the Bishop Ruggero (13th century), with anthropological, radiographic, and radiocarbon (¹⁴C) analyses. The skeletal remains were examined through recognition, lateralization, cataloging, and evaluation of morphological and anthropometric features. The results identified elements compatible with an elderly male and two subadult individuals, consistent with the traditional identities of the martyrs. Despite the challenges posed by commingling, fragmentation, and environmental degradation, the investigation demonstrated how scientific rigor can effectively support canonical processes, offering a methodological framework for the verification of relics and contributing to the preservation of religious and cultural heritage. Full article

Miracle tales are almost the sole source for the investigation of the emergence and spread of the relic cult in the early phase of Chinese Buddhism. The earliest excavated relic casket dates back to 453 CE, over four centuries after Buddhism was introduced to China. Through a critical textual analysis of Ji Shenzhou Sanbao Gantonglu, it is evident that the initial form of relic veneration was based on miraculous responses. Legends about imperial relic worship before the 3rd century are all later fabrications. Two archeological finds—the alleged relic murals in a Han tomb at Horinger, Inner Mongolia, and the stūpa-shaped bronze vessel in Gongyi, Henan—are not directly related to relic veneration. Based on the available evidence, it is tentatively concluded that relic worship first emerged around the 3rd century in the vicinity of Luoyang, the capital of the Western Jin, and later spread to the south of the Yangtze River after the Yongjia chaos. The early worshippers included both monks and lay Buddhists, such as merchants and lower-ranking officials. Royal interest in relics did not arise until the 5th century. The rise of relic veneration in China occured two or three centuries later than that in Gandhāra, from which Chinese Buddhism was significantly influenced. Compared to the cult of images or scriptures, relic veneration also emerged relatively late in China. The reluctance to adopt relics as worship objects can be partly explained by (the mahāyāna) Buddhist doctrines and the Chinese cultural mentality. Full article

Culture is the reflection of the values and ideals of society, and changes over time as values change. The early eleventh century was a time of change due to religious ideals and new governments in the French and German Kingdoms, and the values and ideals of those societies were reinforced and molded by ritual veneration of saints’ relics and the episcopal vitae which gave histories of the saints who were venerated and the churches and monasteries that kept their relics. This contribution evaluates the use of saints’ relics by those involved in the pax Dei movement and by Pope Leo IX at the Synod of Reims (1050). It then evaluates how the public veneration of saints helped to promote the ideals found in episcopal vitae from Toul and Regensburg, namely that holy bishops should belong to a network of saints, that they defend and provide for their people, that they support monasticism, and that they show respect for Rome and the office of pope. Full article

This article explores the Counter-Reformation medievalization of Polish–Lithuanian St. Kazimierz Jagiellończyk (1458–1484)—whose canonization was only finalized in the seventeenth century—as a case study, taking up questions of the reception of cults of medieval saints in post-medieval societies, or in this case, the retroactive refashioning into a venerable medieval saint. The article investigates these questions across a transcultural Italo–Baltic context through the activities of principal agents of the saint’s re-fashioning as a venerable saint during the late seventeenth century: the Pacowie from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Medici from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, during a watershed period of Tuscan–Lithuanian bidirectional interest. During this period, the two dynasties were entangled not only by means of the shared division of Jagiellończyk’s bodily remains through translatio—the ritual relocation of relics of saints and holy persons—but also self-representational strategies that furthered their religio-political agendas and retroactively constructed their houses’ venerable medieval roots back through antiquity. Drawing on distinct genres of textual, visual, and material sources, the article analyzes the Tuscan–Lithuanian refashioning of Kazimierz against a series of precious reliquaries made to translate holy remains between Vilnius to Florence to offer a contribution to the entangled histories of sanctity, art and material culture, and conceptual geography within the transtemporal and transcultural neocolonial context interconnecting the Middle Ages, Age of Reformations, and the Counter-Reformation between Italy and Baltic Europe. Full article

Eagerly venerated and able to perform miracles, medieval relics and religious artefacts in the Latin West would occasionally also be subject to sensorial and tactile devotional practices. Evidenced by various reports, artefacts were grasped and stroked, kissed and tasted, carried and pulled. For medieval Norway, however, there is very little documentary and/or physical evidence of such sensorial engagements with religious artefacts. Nevertheless, two church inventories for the parish churches in Hålandsdalen (1306) and Ylmheim (1321/1323) offer a small glimpse of what may have been a semi-domestic devotional practice related to sculpture, namely the embellishing of wooden sculptures in parish churches with silver bracelets and silver brooches. According to wills from England and the continent, jewellery was a common material gift donated to parishes by women. Such a practice is likely to have been taking place in Norway, too, yet the lack of coherent source material complicate the matter. Nonetheless, using a few preserved objects and archaeological finds as well as medieval sermons, homiletic texts and events recorded in Old Norse sagas, this article teases out more of the significances of the silver items mentioned in the two inventories by exploring the interfaces between devotional acts, decorative needs, and possibly gendered experiences, as well as object itineraries between the domestic and the religious space. Full article

The aim of this paper is to examine the exchange of practices that developed when treating the bodies of ordinary laymen and those of saints. Body parts that had been obtained in unorthodox ways were used in private households in a manner strongly resembling the official methods of relic veneration. Conversely, the church authorities carried out repairs to damaged reliquaries by adopting an approach that mirrored the ways in which common people were healed in their homes (the application of holy images, use of votive gifts, etc.). Full article