The relics of Christ. A history of the sacred in the West
de Nicolas Guyard
Deer, 312 p., € 24
Evoking relics today calls for an indulgent smile or scathing irony. But sometimes also awakens the fascination for these marvelous objects which have crossed many eras and many places. Lecturer at the University of Montpellier, specialist in the sacred, the author questions in this book the history of relics. Why have so many kings, emperors or abbots acquired so many of these items and at such prices? What is the relationship between relics and the religious, political and cultural construction of Christian societies?
Holy Land
The legend of “The invention” (that is to say of the discovery) of the relics of the Passion in the 4th century by the mother of the Emperor Constantine in Jerusalem, disseminated in particular by Ambrose of Milan, reinforces and enhances the emerging taste for pilgrimages to the Holy Land . It also establishes the power of the emperor: “The Hélène-Constantin couple, mother-son, (…) becomes, under the pen of Ambroise, an echo of that formed by the Virgin and her Son. “
Many pilgrims then brought objects from the Holy Land back to the West. When Jerusalem is threatened by Muslim conquests, the most precious are put away in Constantinople, which will offer them or sell them later to the princes of the West. This is how little by little, with the relics, “The essence of the sacral power of Jerusalem” moves to Rome, Aachen or Paris, legitimizing the power of emperors and kings.
“Holy Blood”
The relics are multiplying in profusion. The 12th century is racing for the “Holy Blood” of Christ, inviting the faithful to “To associate the materiality of a relic and the spirituality of a devotion centered around the mysteries of the Eucharist”. The acquisition at great expense by Louis IX of the crown of thorns also testifies to the evolutions of Christian devotion: “If the relic of the True Cross referred from Constantine to the image of a victorious Christ accompanying the emperor in his successes, the Crown of thorns has a much more painful connotation, emphasizing the sufferings and death of Jesus. “
→ READ. Why do we put relics in altars?
“At the start of the 16th century, the Christian West was saturated with the sacred in general, and with the relics of Christ in particular. “ The Protestant Reformation, which promotes a religion “Internalized and spiritualized”, sees in it only superstition and idolatry. The Catholic Church has no theological arguments to oppose it. But, in the 17th century, some Jesuits took up the defense of the relics. They seek to retrace its history and prove their authenticity, which becomes “Henceforth as much a matter of scholarship as of the commitment of an ecclesiastical authority”.
Scholarly controversies
However, “ this massive production of stories of relics and sanctuaries opens the door to scholarly controversies, in particular around methods of producing historical and authentic knowledge ”, questioning the authenticity she wanted to prove. In the 18th century, the philosophers of the Enlightenment will see in the relics “The shining proof of the darkness brought by the ecclesiastical world on the minds of their faithful”.
The French Revolution will cause some destruction, but also the displacement and the rescue of many sacred objects. Even if the cult of relics experienced a certain revival in the 19th century, the clergy gradually lost interest in them and relegated them to the rank of popular piety. As for the twentieth century, it is to science that the ardent defenders of relics now turn to authenticate them, while certain objects leave churches to join museums. Thus tending to erase “The border between worship and culture”.
This book reads like an epic. Full of details and anecdotes without claiming an impossible exhaustiveness, richly sourced, it draws through the history of relics that of all Christendom. Questioning our relationship to the sacred, and the relationship between the material and the spiritual in a religion of the Incarnation, which believes in a God who truly became man.
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