The Missing Saint
When my son was killed in a car accident we had the unhappy task of sorting through his belongings. Some we gave away to charity, some we threw out, some were kept as momentos. I still have on my desk his computer, vastly out-of-date by now and incredibly slow by modern standards, but it was his prize and joy and I simply can't bring myself to send it off for recycling. Other bereaved people have made regular shrines of their loved one's possessions: I know of one woman near here who keeps her son's room exactly as it was before he committed suicide - nothing is moved, nothing touched (apart from dusting) and she went through great mental anguish recently when the light bulb blew and had to be replaced with a new one.
Much the same attitude can be seen in auction houses, where field glasses that once belonged to General Montgomery fetch thousands of pounds more than identical objects in the army surplus store, and possessing something owned by Princess Diana is the modern equivalent of owning a gold mine. People who decry the value attached to relics in some branches of the Christian religion should remember that the mediaeval superstition began in this entirely natural emotion. If your friend or relative or admired church leader was tortured to death rather than give up his faith, you would value whatever of his person or belongings you could find.
For example, when Cyprian of Carthage was led out for martyrdom on September 14, 258, many of those present threw down handkerchiefs and scarves for him to kneel on, in the hope that they would be stained with his blood. Such cloths were preserved as keepsakes by those lucky enough to own them and passed from generation to generation in honour of a brave "soldier for Christ".
By this time most Christians believed that a martyr went straight into God's presence, yet retained an interest in those he (or she) had left behind. If you prayed to such a person, he could be relied upon to present your requests to God and thus make their fulfilment more likely - a curious extension of the patronage system which was such a feature of Roman culture. Even if you had never known the martyr in person, possession of a relic - a momento - gave you a relationship with him that ensured a favourable reception for your petitions.
Over time this simple belief grew into a system of superstition that led to all sorts of follies. It became Canon Law that no church could be consecrated unless it had a relic placed under its altar - and relic mongers grew rich flogging highly dubious bits of bone as relics of saints of whom no one had ever heard. Rich men, conscious of their need of especial grace - it was, after all, easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven - amassed collections of relics in the hope that they would ease the passage into glory. Frederick the Elector in the time of Luther famously had a vast collection that included not only chips off the True Cross, but even a feather from the wing of the Archangel Gabriel, dropped when he came to visit the Virgin Mary.
In 1902 the British Museum acquired a portable altar of German origin that dated to the Twelfth Century. It was a beautiful object, decorated with an ivory plaque carved with the crucifixion and another showing the Virgin Mary. It also had an enamelled brass plate like an icon depicting a saint. Like all such objects, the altar once contained a relic or two - that, after all, was what distinguished a portable altar from a breadboard - but few of these relics have survived the years and the Museum has a fine array of empty reliquaries. (It also has a couple of relics, includng a ring that once belonged to Queen Kethevan of Georgia, who was martyred in 1624 by Shah Abbas of Persia for refusing to convert to Islam.)
Mind you, back in 1980 the Museum curators did discover a few bone fragments in a golden head of St Eustace from Basle, purchased in 1830 when the cathedral there fell on hard times. The Museum authorities send the bits of bone back to Basle, though I am not sure what the Protestants of that city made of them.
The British Museum is at present in the throes of reorganising its exhibitions and some of the objects that were my favourites have disappeared into the storerooms - and one has been vandalised! Among the objects which were to feature in the Mediaeval Gallery was this portable altar and before putting it on display, the authorities sent it down to the workroom to be checked and cleaned. For reasons that are not clear, this involved removing the brass plate - behind which was found a folded piece of parchment on which was a list of 40 saints. First on the list was John the Baptist, followed by James, John, Mary Magdalene and then going down to St Benedict, founder of the Benedictine Order of monks, and on to obscure and virtually unknown saints.
Prompted by curiosity the restorers prised open the back of the altar and to their astonishment found inside it a neatly folded piece of cloth. When they unfolded it, they found that it contained tiny cloth bundles, each neatly labelled with a strip of vellum. One by one they were able to tick off the relics against the list to find that all were present and correct - apart from one. Almost as interesting was the fact that St Benedict's bit of bone was wrapped in a piece of silk that came from Byzantium and could be dated to the 8th or 9th century - in other words, the cloth, and presumably the relic it contained, was three or four centuries old when it was placed in the altar.
However there was another interesting discovery: one of the relics was wrapped in a piece of cloth that dated to the 19th century, indicating that someone had opened the altar and sorted through the relics not long before it was sold. It is not beyond the realms of possiblity that it was the seller who opened the altar and removed just one of its relics, presumably for personal use, before placing it for sale.
If you would like to view the relic, Britain's Guardian newspaper has a video of James Robinson, a Museum curator, showing it off. I cannot be held responsible if, at some time in the future, the video is removed from their website.
vandalised! Twenty-odd years ago when I lived in London and visited the British Museum on a regular basis, one of its most spectacular exhibits was the Hinton St Mary mosaic, a massive floor which showed Bellerophon slaying the Chimera in one roundel and a second roundel showed a male head behind which was the Chi-Rho symbol of Christianity. It has been suggested that the head is the earliest representation of Christ and that later generations misinterpreted the figure of Bellerophon as St George slaying the dragon.
To my horror I discovered that the roundel of the head of Christ has been hacked out of the mosaic and stuck in a display case. The rest of the mosaic, I presume, has been sent by the barbarians in charge of the Museum to be used for roadfill. My only hope is that, despite what the gallery attendant told me, the object in the display case is, in fact, a reproduction and the original and complete mosaic is safe down in the basement. Return
apart from one Unfortunately the Museum authorities have not told us which is the missing saint. Return
© Kendall K. Down 2009
