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Public uses of human remains and relics in history
\"The principal theme of this volume is the importance of the public use of human remains in a historical perspective. The book presents a series of case studies aimed at offering historiographical and methodological reflections and providing interpretative approaches highlighting how, through the ages and with a succession of complex practices and uses, human remains have been imbued with a plurality of meanings. Covering a period running from late antiquity to the present day, the contributions are the combined results of multidisciplinary research pertaining to the realities of the Italian peninsula, hitherto not investigated with a long-term and multidisciplinary historical perspective. From the relics of great men to the remains of patriots, and from anatomical specimens to the skeletons of the saints: through these case studies the scholars involved have investigated a wide range of human remains (real or reputed) and of meanings attributed to them, in order to decipher their function over the centuries. In doing so, they have traversed the interpretative boundaries of political history, religious history and the history of science, as required by questions aimed at integrating the anthropological, social and cultural aspects of a complex subject\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Stolen Bones of St. John of Matha
On the night of March 18, 1655, two Spanish friars broke into a church to steal the bones of the founder of their religious institution, the Order of the Most Holy Trinity. This book investigates this little-known incident of relic theft and the lengthy legal case that followed, together with the larger questions that surround the remains of saints in seventeenth-century Catholic Europe.
Drawing on a wealth of manuscript and print sources from the era, A. Katie Harris uses the case of St. John of Matha’s stolen remains to explore the roles played by saints’ relics, the anxieties invested in them, their cultural meanings, and the changing modes of thought with which early modern Catholics approached them. While in theory a relic’s authenticity and identity might be proved by supernatural evidence, in practice early modern Church authorities often reached for proofs grounded in the material, human world—preferences that were representative of the standardizing and streamlining of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century saint-making. Harris examines how Matha’s advocates deployed material and documentary proofs, locating them within a framework of Scholastic concepts of individuation, identity, change, and persistence, and applying moral certainty to accommodate the inherent uncertainty of human evidence and relic knowledge.
Engaging and accessible, The Stolen Bones of St. John of Matha raises an array of important questions surrounding relic identity and authenticity in seventeenth-century Europe. It will be of interest to students, scholars, and casual readers interested in European history, religious history, material culture, and Renaissance studies.
eBook
An Irreverent Curiosity
When the American travel writer David Farley learned that a controversial Roman Catholic relic -- the circumcised foreskin of the infant Jesus -- had suddenly vanished in 1983 from the Italian village of Calcata, where it had been an object of pilgrimages and a mainstay of the local economy for centuries, he suspected herein lay a peculiar tale, to say the least.
Newspaper Article
Sacred plunder : Venice and the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade
In Sacred Plunder, David Perry argues that plundered relics, and narratives about them, played a central role in shaping the memorial legacy of the Fourth Crusade and the development of Venice's civic identity in the thirteenth century. After the Fourth Crusade ended in 1204, the disputes over the memory and meaning of the conquest began. Many crusaders faced accusations of impiety, sacrilege, violence, and theft. In their own defense, they produced hagiographical narratives about the movement of relics—a medieval genre called translatio—that restated their own versions of events and shaped the memory of the crusade. The recipients of relics commissioned these unique texts in order to exempt both the objects and the people involved with their theft from broader scrutiny or criticism. Perry further demonstrates how these narratives became a focal point for cultural transformation and an argument for the creation of the new Venetian empire as the city moved from an era of mercantile expansion to one of imperial conquest in the thirteenth century.
eBook
An Artful Relic
Winner of the 2022 Roland H. Bainton Book Prize from the
Sixteenth Century Society & Conference
In 1578, a fourteen-foot linen sheet bearing the faint
bloodstained imprint of a human corpse was presented to tens of
thousands of worshippers in Turin, Italy, as one of the original
shrouds used to prepare Jesus Christ's body for entombment. From
that year into the next century, the Shroud of Turin emerged as
Christianity's preeminent religious artifact. In an unprecedented
new look, Andrew R. Casper sheds new light on one of the world's
most famous and controversial religious objects.
Since the early twentieth century, scores of scientists and
forensic investigators have attributed the Shroud's mysterious
images to painterly, natural, or even supernatural forces. Casper,
however, shows that this modern opposition of artifice and
authenticity does not align with the cloth's historical conception
as an object of religious devotion. Examining the period of the
Shroud's most enthusiastic following, from the late 1500s through
the 1600s, he reveals how it came to be considered an artful
relic-a divine painting attributed to God's artistry that contains
traces of Christ's body. Through probing analyses of materials
created to perpetuate the Shroud's cult following-including
devotional, historical, and theological treatises as well as
printed and painted reproductions-Casper uncovers historicized
connections to late Renaissance and Baroque artistic cultures that
frame an understanding of the Shroud's bloodied corporeal
impressions as an alloy of material authenticity and divine
artifice.
This groundbreaking book introduces rich, new material about the
Shroud's emergence as a sacred artifact. It will appeal to art
historians specializing in religious and material studies,
historians of religion, and to general readers interested in the
Shroud of Turin.
eBook
‘Purest Bones, Sweet Remains, and Most Sacred Relics.’ Re-Fashioning St. Kazimierz Jagiellończyk (1458–84) as a Medieval Saint between Counter-Reformation Italy and Poland-Lithuania
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.
Journal Article
Sacred Plunder
In Sacred Plunder , David Perry argues that plundered
relics, and narratives about them, played a central role in shaping
the memorial legacy of the Fourth Crusade and the development of
Venice's civic identity in the thirteenth century. After the Fourth
Crusade ended in 1204, the disputes over the memory and meaning of
the conquest began. Many crusaders faced accusations of impiety,
sacrilege, violence, and theft. In their own defense, they produced
hagiographical narratives about the movement of relics-a medieval
genre called translatio - that restated their own
versions of events and shaped the memory of the crusade. The
recipients of relics commissioned these unique texts in order to
exempt both the objects and the people involved with their theft
from broader scrutiny or criticism. Perry further demonstrates how
these narratives became a focal point for cultural transformation
and an argument for the creation of the new Venetian empire as the
city moved from an era of mercantile expansion to one of imperial
conquest in the thirteenth century.
eBook
Imagined Romes
This volume explores the conflicting representations of ancient Rome—one of the most important European cities in the medieval imagination—in late Middle English poetry.
Once the capital of a great pagan empire whose ruined monuments still inspired awe in the Middle Ages, Rome, the seat of the pope, became a site of Christian pilgrimage owing to the fame of its early martyrs, whose relics sanctified the city and whose help was sought by pilgrims to their shrines. C. David Benson analyzes the variety of ways that Rome and its citizens, both pre-Christian and Christian, are presented in a range of Middle English poems, from lesser-known, anonymous works to the poetry of Gower, Chaucer, Langland, and Lydgate. Benson discusses how these poets conceive of ancient Rome and its citizens—especially the women of Rome—as well as why this matters to their works.
An insightful and innovative study, Imagined Romes addresses a crucial lacuna in the scholarship of Rome in the medieval imaginary and provides fresh perspectives on the work of four of the most prominent Middle English poets.
eBook