Relics

MONICA M. WHITE

Relics – objects connected with a holy per­son or event – are venerated in all Eastern Churches. Primary relics are from the body of a holy person (usually bones, but also hair, blood, etc.), while secondary relics are objects from an event in sacred history or with which a holy person has come into contact, most famously the True Cross. Relics can play an important role in the cult of a saint. The discovery of incorrupt relics has often been taken as a sign of sanc­tity, particularly in Kievan Rus, although this has never been an official requirement for sainthood (Lenhoff 1993). Relics can also help spread a saint’s cult by being bro­ken up and distributed, or by exuding oil which can be collected by pilgrims.

The healing power of relics is attested in the Old Testament. In 2 Kings 13.21 a dead man was revived when his body touched that of Elisha. Although the New Testament makes no reference to human remains effecting cures, it does describe miracles accomplished through secondary relics, such as the woman with a haemorrhage who was healed by touching the hem of Christ’s garment in Mark 5.25–9 (see also Acts 19.12).

These stories shaped Christian beliefs about relics, encouraging the idea that the body of a holy person had a power which could be transferred to objects with which it came in contact, both before and after death. The practice of keeping relics in homes and churches may have originated in Egypt, where it was not unusual for pagans and Christians alike to store the mummies of relatives in their homes. Christians may have begun distributing pieces of such mummies, particularly if they had belonged to martyrs or holy men, in the belief that they had healing properties (Wortley 2006: 12–14, 18–27).

Attempts by the authorities to discourage the distribution of relics (contrary to early Roman Law) were largely ineffectual, and their veneration quickly became wide­spread in the churches. As their popularity grew, so did the trade in them and the distribution of false relics. Athanasius of Alexandria and the Theodosian Code attacked these practices, apparently to no avail (Wortley 2006: 24–6).

In addition to curing individuals, relics took on broader political and ecclesiastical functions. Gregory the Illuminator, for example, brought relics with him to use in his work in Armenia. Despite his desire for his own body to remain concealed after his death, his relics were eventually discov­ered, and possession of them became a source of authority for heads of the Armenian Church from the 12th century onward (Kouymjian 2005: 221–5).

Constantinople soon after its foundation amassed a spectacular collection of relics from across the Christian world. They do not seem to have been banned during Iconoclasm, possibly because biblical precedents existed for their veneration (Wortley 2003: 169–73). Particularly prized were the city’s Marian relics, which included her milk, spindle, girdle, and robe. The robe, in particular, was believed to have saved the city from destruction on a number of occasions (Wortley 2005).

Relics were well represented in Byzantine iconography, and by the 10th century a complete graphic “life cycle” had been developed for them. This included the Invention or discovery of a relic, its Trans­lation to a new city or church, the Adventus or formal greeting of the relic when it arrived, its Deposition in its new resting place, and its Veneration (Walter 1982).

Plate 53 Exhuming relics of the saints at Optina Hermitage. RIA Novosti/AKG.

Plate 54 A reliquary containing the remains of several saints. Relics are commonly found in Orthodox ritual and the saints are widely venerated by the faithful as vessels of the Holy Spirit, still active after their deaths. Photo by John McGuckin.

Although relics were numerous, they came from a relatively restricted group ofsaints. In his survey of relics in the Greek Orthodox church, Otto Meinardus (1970/71) found evidence for 3,602 relics of 476 saints, out of the approximately 3,800 saints who were liturgically recognized by the late Ottoman period. Furthermore, five saints (Charalampos, Panteleimon, Tryphon, Paraskeva, and George) accounted for nearly a quarter of all relics.

Because relics were coveted, theft was common. The relics of many famous saints were taken to the West in the medieval period, and Constantinople lost most of its relics when the city was sacked in 1204 (Geary 1990). The Vatican has, however, returned a number of relics to various East­ern Churches since the mid-1960s as part of efforts to improve ecumenical relations (Meinardus 1970: 348–50).

Relics attracted international attention when the Russian government sponsored the exhumation of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, who were murdered by Bolsheviks and buried outside the city of Ekaterinburg in 1918. Although DNA tests made a strong case that the remains were those of the Romanovs, Patriarch Aleskii II refused to accept the findings and did not send a representative to the reburial ceremony on July 17, 1998. Nevertheless, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized the family, along with other new martyrs of the Soviet period, at a bishop’s council in August 2000 (King and Wilson 2003: 381–503).

SEE ALSO: Ecumenism, Orthodoxy and; Healing; Iconography, Styles of; Myrobletes Saints; New Martyrs; Old Testament

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Geary, P. (1990) Furta Sacra: thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

King, G. and Wilson, P. (2003) The Fate of the Romanovs. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.

Kouymjian, D. (2005) “The Right Hand of St. Gregory and Other Armenian Arm Relics,” in P. Borgeaud and Y. Volokhine (eds.) Les Objets de la memoire: pour une approche comparatiste des reliques et de leur culte. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 221–46.

Lenhoff, G. (1993) “The Notion of ‘Uncorrupted Relics’ in Early Russian Culture,” in B. Gasparov and O. Raevsky-Hughes (eds.) Christianity and the Eastern Slavs, vol. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 252–75.

Meinardus, O. (1970) “An Examination of the Traditions Pertaining to the Relics of St. Mark,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 36: 348–76.

Meinardus, O. (1970/71) “A Study of the Relics of Saints of the Greek Orthodox Church,” Oriens Christianus 54/55: 130–278.

Walter, C. (1982) Art and Ritual of the Byzantine Church. London: Variorum.

Wortley, J. (2003) “Icons and Relics: A

Comparison,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 43: 161–74.

Wortley, J. (2005) “The Marian Relics at

Constantinople,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 45: 171–87.

Wortley, J. (2006) “The Origins of Christian Veneration of Body-Parts,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 223: 5–28.