ARTEFACTS relics 

Artefacts, talismans, icons, amulets and lucky charms have been popular since prehistoric times and were used mainly to ward off the evil effects of malignant forces and to bring good luck. They take many forms, rings, necklaces and bracelets in a variety of materials ranging from gold and precious stones to humble plastic beads. Others are carved replicas of animals, insects and birds in wood, stone and ivory. I recall as a child I carried a rabbit’s foot for good luck and my mother’s purse was never without her lucky miniature brass leprechaun.

While charm bracelets in Western society are still popular, they tend to be decorative rather than considered to have mystical properties or a protective function. In less advanced societies however, faith in amulets and artefacts persists. Belief too, in the efficacy of holy relics, in particular the bones and remains of the beatified are endemic to some religions. Paintings, carvings and icons of religious significance are still worshipped universally and even a prayer or the invoking of a saint’s name to intervene on behalf of the devoted is widely practised in Catholicism. Testimony to the alleged efficacy of the latter can often be seen in the public notices columns of newspapers where petitions to St Jude, the patron saint of disparate causes, thank him for favours received.

Whereas in ancient times amulets and charms were considered a vital insurance policy, today, although a certain embarrassment would be associated with them, many people still carry them for protection and good luck.

Belief in statues weeping blood or tears of oil, exuding fragrances or producing auras seem to be on the increase, and miracles associated with Marian visitations around the world abound despite no scientifically verified evidence, the latter being of great concern because of the serious physical harm they can cause. At Denver in 1991, for example, dozens of the faithful in search of a sun miracle suffered retinal damage, including one woman who had come to pray for her crippled child.

The belief in the efficacy of certain religious relics was born of another belief – that diseases were produced by the emissaries of Satan who possessed the bodies of the afflicted. As God’s will was considered manifest through miracles and saints, apostles, prophets and martyrs were his intermediaries, any earthly remains of their person or objects with which they came into contact became sacred, and were thought to be endowed with supernatural powers. It was believed that in some mysterious way the virtue in a holy hair, a piece of wood, or the bone of a saint would drive out the demon and effect a cure.

In the early part of the second millennium and up to the middle ages man lived in perpetual fear of natural phenomena which were put down to the intervention of God. In a spiritual age when ignorance was the handmaiden of faith, belief in miracles prospered and for political reasons the Church fathers decided that they were necessary to propagate the faith.

Although relics were sought after and venerated in Roman times, by the eleventh century they were commonplace, the list both long and macabre – splinters from the true cross, Christ’s blood, seventeen foreskins (all allegedly his), the crown of thorns, baby teeth, hair clippings, the bones of Mary Magdalen, a vial of Mary’s milk, her scarf, St Peter’s tooth, the head(s) of John the Baptist, a finger from the hand of apostle Thomas, and countless bones allegedly belonging to a large number of assorted religious luminaries.

The relics, originally intended as an aid to devotion, soon became objects of worship in their own right, as did the ornate caskets which contained them. Shrines were built to house the caskets and became meccas to which the faithful beat a pilgrims’ path.

From the very beginning the Church realised the value and power of relics and commercialism took over swelling the coffers of many an abbey, church and monastery.

Notwithstanding that most relics were spurious, they were well sought after even to the extent of murder, theft and forgery. The bones of St Foy at Agan for example, were stolen by Armisdus, a monk from Congues, who spent ten years planning the caper, and when the crusaders plundered Jerusalem in 1099, a horrible massacre of Muslims and Jews ensued and the Holy Sepulchre was recovered. In 1204 Constantinople too was submitted to a merciless pillage resulting in the dispersal of the spoils.

Heading the list of famous relics and still revered in modern times is the Shroud of Turin alleged to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. First drawn to public attention in Lirey, France, by the widow of a knight, Jeanne de Vergey, in 1898, it was photographed for the first time and the negative revealed in much greater detail and form the faint original impression of a figure on it. In the 1970s, a group of scientists investigated the cloth and although some were convinced of its authenticity, others questioned the ‘blood stains’ which were found to contain hematite and vermilion, substances used by medieval artists as a red pigment. Notwithstanding that in 1989, carbon dating methods put the probable date of the shroud at between 1260 and 1390, settling the question of whether it was a forgery once and for all, it continues to attract the faithful as a holy relic.

The mortal remains of St Francis Xavier, canonized in 1622, rest in a silver casket in the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa, India. I use the word ‘remains’ in the literal sense as the poor fellow’s body has been dismembered unmercifully by relic seekers both lay and ecclesiastical since he was first laid to rest in 1552. One of his toes was bitten off by a Portuguese lady who wanted a relic of the saint. In 1615, part of his right hand was cut off and sent to the Church of Gesu in Rome, and in 1619, the remaining part of the hand was removed and sent to the Jesuits in Japan. Parts of the intestines have also been removed from time to time and distributed to various places around the world. Ironically, the remains of St Francis are now the subject of a court case, a local family is claiming that the body is not that of the saint at all, but one of their former ancestors.

Heads seem to enjoy a certain status among believers. The reliquaries for the heads of Saint Praxedes and Saint Sebastian, together with the relics of Saint Stephen are still cherished and represent some of the most valuable artefacts in the Vatican’s collection.

Equally bizarre is the life and fate of St Catherine. Born on March 25, 1347, the twenty-third child of a religious fanatic Jacomo Benincasa, her convictions drove her to change the pattern of European history. She lived in a period when religion and politics were inextricably entangled and when the tide of rising nationalism had yet to break the unity of Christendom. Under these circumstances a religious fanatic was able to exert considerable influence on events.

At the age of five she was extremely devout and had a vision of Christ enthroned above St Dominic’s Church in Siena. By the age of twelve she had considered and rejected marriage and pledged herself to perpetual virginity, but because she had for a short time been tempted to try and win a husband she became riddled with guilt. Accusing herself of vanity she frequently flagellated until the blood ran. At sixteen, following another vision, she became a tertiary among the Daughters of Penance of St Dominic’s Order of Preachers, but as the demands made of her were not enough she shut herself up in her father’s house for three years accusing herself of entertaining the foulest temptations. Another vision at the age of nineteen, in which she saw herself betrothed to Christ himself, rewarded her pains and vigils.

Driven by inner promptings, visions and voices, she became well known in Siena for the trances into which she frequently fell. At such times she was totally insensitive and her limbs became stiff and cold. She explained that because she was so full of Christ her senses stopped working. Her catatonic fits reached a peak in 1370, when she lay as though dead for four hours, then wept for two days explaining that she had seen the hidden things of God and was now forced back into the prison of her body.

During an outbreak of plague in the summer of 1374, Catherine nursed the sick and comforted the dying, and enthusiastically called for a crusade against the Mohammedans to free the Holy Places in Jerusalem. Another mystical experience occurred on April 1, 1375, when Catherine received the stigmata. No one ever saw the five wounds until after she died, and their invisibility was explained by saying that she had especially requested it. Her part in trying to convince Pope Gregory XI and other rulers in Europe of the need for war resulted in an agony of confusion of her part in it. On January 30, 1380, she suffered a stroke, her ‘demons’ blaming her for the part she had played in causing a split in the Church. She was struck by paralysis and died on April 29, 1380. Buried in the Minerva Church at Rome, her head was removed and carried to Siena, where it may still be seen, perhaps one of the most repulsive, although one of the most venerated of all Christian relics.

In hindsight, Catherine can be seen as a remarkable example of religious ecstasy, which can now be explained in terms of the morbid psychology of hysteria.

 On a less bizarre note, Dr. Luigi Garlaschelli and his colleagues at the University of Pavia, Italy, have come up with a plausible scientific explanation for the mystery of the clotted blood of a saint which turns to liquid when handled by priests. In Naples since 1389, for example, a sealed phial of the solid blood of St Januarius has turned into liquid every few months before the faithful who venerate it. Up until 1992, this ‘miracle’ has remained unexplained. Reporting their discovery in Nature, the scientists explored the tendency of certain gels to turn to liquid when stirred or vibrated and to return to the solid form when allowed to stand. This is known as thixotropy, and it appears to be what occurs in the holy blood relic of the medieval saint.

To reproduce the effect, Garlaschelli’s team mixed calcium carbonate (or chalk) in a solution in water of hydrated iron chloride and used dialysis to transfer the chemical products across a membrane into distilled water. In medieval times, parchment or animal gut would have worked equally as well. By adding a pinch of common salt, a dark brownish ‘sol’ was formed which set into a solid gel. Gently shaken this gel turned into liquid. Then when left to stand, the liquid solidified. The researchers concluded: “The chemical nature of the Naples relic can be established only by opening the phial, but a complete analysis is forbidden by the Catholic Church. Our replication of the phenomenon seems to render this sacrifice unnecessary.”

The idolatry, veneration and dependence on artefacts or holy relics, whether they be the bones of saints, statues which drink milk, or man-made creations to invoke good luck, cures for diseases and miracles, together with a failure to understand the natural laws of nature, attests to the ignorance and superstitious nature of man still prevalent in many societies today.

                  
Bibliography:

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