False Relics
Acquisitiveness on this scale created a demand which could only be satisfied by fraud. It was acknowledged by most contemporaries that wicked men did sometimes fabricate relics, and some quite celebrated relics were regarded with intense suspicion. When Henry III of England solemnly received a vase of Christ’s blood from the representatives of the crusading orders in 1247, ‘certain hesitant and incredulous persons’ in the crowd ventured to express doubts about its authenticity. The prior of the Hospitallers of Clerkenwell demanded to know whether these scoffers were accusing the military orders of fraud, but the objections still continued unabated. ‘How can any of the Lord’s blood exist on earth’, insisted the doubters, ‘when the Saviour was bodily resurrected on the third day?’ Nor were they silenced until Robert Grosseteste delivered an angry oration proving its authenticity with arguments drawn from Scripture and natural reason.
Guibert of Nogent observed that in many cases the pressures of popular belief prevented any non-conformist from voicing his doubts. He vividly recalled attending a harangue in which a relic-monger was advertizing his wares in Laon. He was holding up before the appreciative crowd a little box which, he said, contained a piece of the very bread which Our Lord chewed at the Last Supper. Then, seeing Guibert in the audience, he pointed him out and exclaimed: ‘there is a distinguished man, famous for his learning. He will confirm that I am telling the truth.’ To his eternal shame, Guibert was frightened and simply blushed and held his peace. Contemporaries do not seem to have been greatly disturbed by such incidents. It was generally agreed that it was no sin to honour the relics of one saint under the honest impression that it was another, and even Guibert of Nogent was of the opinion that a man who in good faith revered as a holy relic something which was not, might nevertheless enjoy some merit in God’s eyes. A story told by the German Cistercian Caesarius of Heisterbach suggests that God even worked miracles through false relics venerated in ignorance.
The problem caused embarrassment only when two churches claimed to possess the same relic. This commonly occurred when a church had lost its relics by theft, fraud, or force; it would then claim that the wrong relics had been taken in error. The confusion which followed was, in a sense, the penalty which the thief had to pay for his success. In some cases the thief does appear to have taken the wrong relic. Odo of Bayeux, for example, who bought the relics of St. Exupéry from a venal sacristan of Corbeil, was given the body of a peasant of the same name. Fulbert, bishop of Cambrai, practised a similar fraud in the tenth century when the emperor Otto I demanded the relics of two canonized bishops of Cambrai in order to enrich the city of Magdeburg. Fulbert gave him the bodies of two ordinary priests together with a few trappings from the graves of the saints. At the end of the eleventh century the monks of Monte Cassino claimed to have discovered the body of St. Benedict beneath the rubble during the rebuilding of their church, and the controversy which then erupted was still raging fiercely in the nineteenth century. The achievement of the Barians in acquiring the relics of St. Nicholas was so spectacular that others inevitable tried to deflect some of the glory to themselves. In every part of Europe churches announced that they had obtained part of the body of St. Nicholas. A monk of Angers made off with the arm of the saint, which had been detached from the rest of the body and sheathed with silver for use in blessing crowds. But he was unable to escape to France and the relic ultimately came into the possession of the abbey of the Trinity at Venosa. Within a few months the abbot of Angers nevertheless announced that the attempt had in fact succeeded and the arm was in his church. The sailors who had brought the body from Myra gave it out that they had retained the saint’s teeth and fragments of his tomb; a Norman pilgrim bought some of them in 1092 and gave them to the church of St. Peter at Noron. The Venetians claimed that the Barians had left half of the body behind at Myra, which they solemnly translated to Venice in 1099. Almost every successful pilgrimage provoked competition from imposters. The much-visited shrines on the routes to Santiago all had determined rivals who provoked the indignation of the author of the Guide for Pilgrims to Santiago. The church of St.-Léonard de Noblat was afflicted with a rival body set up by the monks of Corbigny, who attributed all St. Leonard’s miracles to their own relics. St. Gilles was claimed by at least four churches in addition to the celebrated Provençal monastery which bore his name: ‘Shame upon the Hungarians for claiming part of his body. Curses upon the monks of Chamalières who imagine that they have the whole body. The same to the people of St.-Seine who boast of his head, and to the Normans who actually display a body purporting to be his. For it is quite impossible that a single particle of the holy body could ever have left its hallowed tomb.’
Such impostures usually made little or no impression on the flow of pilgrims to old-established shrines. But there were exceptions, of which the most interesting is perhaps the pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Mary Magdalene. During the eleventh century the belief arose that Mary Magdalene was buried in the abbey church of Vézelay, which consequently grew from an impoverished religious backwater in an isolated corner of Burgundy into a powerful and wealthy monastery. The monks encouraged this improbable belief and put about a legend designed to explain how the body came to be there. According to this story Mary expiated her sins after Christ’s death by taking ship for France and exiling herself in the Provençal desert. When she died she was buried in what is now the town of St.-Maximin la Sainte-Baume, until in the middle of the eighth century the place was deserted by its inhabitants and the saint’s remains transferred to Vézelay. Such was the legend which was commonly received in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But the great age of Vézelay ended at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The days when Vézelay had seen the launching of the second crusade and the departure of the third were no more. Disputes within the monastery, constant warfare with the counts of Nevers and the citizens of the bourg, and heavy papal taxes had eroded the abbey’s wealth. In 1279 the monks of St.-Maximin took advantage of the troubles of Vézelay and turned the Burgundian legend to their own use. On 9 December they announced that they had discovered the body of the Magdalene in their crypt. A ‘suave odour’ emitting from the sarcophagus and an authoritative inscription permitted no doubt as to its authenticity and it was immediately put about that the monks of Vézelay had taken the wrong body in the eighth century. Charles of Salerno, count of Provence, was only too pleased to promote a major pilgrimage within his dominions and five months later he presided over a splendid ceremony at which the newly found relics were displayed to a gathering of princes and ecclesiastical dignitaries. St.-Maximin seems to have been accepted immediately as the true resting place of the Magdalene, and Vézelay entirely forgotten. Boniface VIII proclaimed several indulgences in favour of the Provençal shrine, and large numbers of pilgrims hastened to take advantage of them. So matters rested until the cult of Mary Magdalene sank into obscurity during the later middle ages, and pilgrims ceased to care where the penitent of Judaea was buried.
Disputes such as these have a somewhat unreal appearance, for in almost every case neither relic would survive modern critical scrutiny. Procedures for verifying the authenticity of relics consisted rather in a dramatic assertion of belief than a scientific examination of the evidence. When, in the mid eleventh century, the monks of St. Emmeran at Regensburg raised pretentions to possess the body of St. Denis the Areopagite, the reaction of the abbot of St.-Denis near Paris was to open the shrine of the abbey church in the presence of a crowd of bishops, abbots, and noblemen, including several members of the royal family, and to declare with great solemnity that its contents were authentic. The claim of St.-Denis to the body of the martyr was constantly disputed by other churches, and the monks invariably replied with imposing ceremonies at which their own relics were publicly displayed. In 1186 the canons of the church of St. Stephen in Paris ‘discovered’ the head of St. Denis is their own church. The monks of the royal abbey were outraged, and when their complaints fell on
deaf ears they separated the head from the body and exposed it in a separate reliquary for a whole year. It may be assumed that before the relics were publicly displayed they were surreptitiously examined to ensure that all was well. Indeed, when abbot Suger failed to take this elementary precaution before the ceremonial opening of a reliquary, he was rebuked by his monks, who declared that ‘it would have been better for the reputation of the abbey if we had secretly ascertained in advance whether the description on the labels was true.’
Despite the elaborate stage management of these proceedings the populace took a passionate interest in them, and seems to have been readily convinced. Any suggestion that a relic of note was false or had been stolen provoked intense public concern. The object of the ceremonies was therefore to create an atmosphere of popular enthusiasm in which the doubts of individuals would be silenced. In 1162, for example, a rumour spread in Paris that the head of St. Genevieve, the city’s patron saint, was missing from its reliquary in the church dedicated to her. Within hours riotous mobs had gathered at the church. Louis VII threatened to have the canons of St. Genevieve flogged and expelled from their posts, while the archbishop of Sens announced his intention of holding a solemn examination of the relics. On the appointed day the king and the royal family, together with civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries, watched from a specially erected stand as the archbishop and his suffragans opened the reliquary and pulled out the head intact. This was immediately accepted by the crowd as proof, and the prior of St. Genevieve led them in a spontaneous rendering of the Te Deum. Some of the officiating bishops were, however, disturbed at this unexpected change in the protocol of the ceremony, and remained unconvinced of the relic’s authenticity. Manasses, bishop of Orléans, demanded to know who had given them permission to sing, and pointed out that the head in the reliquary might not be that of St. Genevieve, but a substitute placed there by the monks. The prior offered to prove the authenticity of the head by carrying it over a bed of burning coals, but his faith was not put to the test. The bishop’s objections were drowned by the singing and the archbishop of Sens peremptorily ordered him to be silent. The prior’s biographer remarks with satisfaction that Manasses was shortly afterwards ejected from his diocese and struck down by the Lord in condign punishment for his presumption. But the truth is less dramatic. The bishop survived for twenty-five years in his see and died peacefully in his bed at an advanced age.
A miracle constituted certain proof of the authenticity of a relic and a common method of testing relics was to provoke one. In the 830s Erchanbert, bishop of Friesing, ordered the clergy of his diocese to fast for three days when doubts had arisen about a relic of St. Felix; ‘and by this means we hope that we will become worthy of a sign from Almighty God indicating whether the Devil has been deceiving us.’ According to a Canterbury legend, four Norman monks once offered some bones of St. Ouen to King Edgar, promising to prove them genuine by provoking miracles. ‘We can prove it in any manner you suggest by casting them in the fire, for example, and withdrawing them unharmed. And if no such miracle occurs then we will admit that the relics are false and that we are outrageous liars deserving of all the penalties of the law.’ Ultimately it was agreed that a leper should be brought in and touched with one of the bones, and when the leper was immediately healed ‘the whole company fell on their knees in thankgiving for the merits of St. Ouen.’ The story has no historical basis, but it is eloquent of the frame of mind of its twelfth-century author.
Casting relics in the fire was the simplest method of provoking a miracle and was widely practised, particularly in the early mediaeval period. In 979 Egbert, bishop of Trier, doubting the authenticity of the body of St. Celsus, broke off a finger joint and threw it into a brazier of burning coals, where it remained unharmed throughout the canon of the Mass. The monks of Monte Cassino, who possessed a piece of the cloth with which Christ washed the feet of the disciples, placed it in a red hot crucible where ‘it changed to the colour of fire but as soon as it was removed from the coals it reverted to its original appearance.’ A great crowd gathered to watch Meinwerk, bishop of Paderborn, putting St. Felix to the ordeal of fire. Again, when the townsmen of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis entertained doubts about the arm of St. Arnoul they cast it in the fire and it immediately jumped out again. Crude tests of this sort were generally applied when large numbers of relics were suspected. In the sixth century, for example, numerous churches were recovered from the Arian heretics and converted to Catholic use. They were usually found to contain relics of unknown provenance, and the second council of Saragossa officially sanctioned the use of fire to test them. A variety of methods were employed after the Norman conquest of England to test relics of the unknown saints venerated by the Anglo-Saxons. Indeed, the constant attempt to provoke miracles was by no means peculiar to the middle ages. Anna Gonzaga, dowager countess palatine of the Rhine, who died in 1685, left to the abbey of St. Germain a piece of the True Cross ‘que j’atteste avoir veue dans les flammes sans bruler.’
Notes
1 Victricius on saints: De Laude Sancrotum, XII, PL. xx. 454–5.
Early evidence of cult of relics: Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., IV. 15, pp. 350–2 (Polycarp). Prudentius, Peristephanon, V. 41–5, p. 346 (St. Vincent). Monumenta Ecclesia Liturgica, ed. F. Cabrol, vol. i (2), Paris, 1900, p. 192 (nos. 4399–4401).
Jerome and Vigilantius: Jerome, Contra Vigilantium, cols. 346–8; Ep. CIX. 1, vol. ii, pp. 351–3. Cf. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XXII. 9–10, vol. ii, pp. 613–15.
2 Cult of relics defended: Augustine, op. cit., 1. 13, VIII. 17, 27, vol. i, pp. 25–6, 382–3, 405; Contra Faustum, XXI. 21, PL. xlii. 384. Followed by Isidore of Seville, De Ecclesiasticis Officiis, I. xxxv. 1–6, PL. lxxxiii. 770.
Popular view: Cyprian, Epp. XIII. 5, LXXVI. 2, ed. W. von Hartel, CSEL. iii, Vienna, 1868–71, vol. i, pp. 507, 829. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catachesis, XVIII. 16, XIX. 7, PG. xxxiii. 1071. See Delehaye (4), p. 116.
Aquinas on relics: Summa Theologica, III, q. xxv, a. 6, vol. xi, p. 284.
3 Brandea: Cyril of Jerusalem, loc. cit. Gregory I, Reg. V. 57, vol. i, p. 364; Dialogues, II. 38, PL. lxvi. 204.
‘He who wishes to pray’: Gregory of Tours, In Gloria Martyrum, XXVII, pp. 503–4.
4 Gregory of Tours at Brioude: De Virtut. S. Juliani, XXXIV–XXXV, pp. 578–9.
Dust from Holy Land: Frolow, pp. 158–9 (funerary table). Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XXII. 8, vol. ii, pp. 602–3. Gregory of Nyssa, De S. Theodoro, PG. xlvi. 740.
Hung round neck: Gregory I, Reg. III. 33, vol. i, p. 192. Jerome, Comm. in Evang. S. Matthaei, IV, PL. xxvi. 168. Cone. Ill Bracarense, canon V, in PL. lxxxiv. 589–90. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II, ii, q. xcvi, a. 4, vol. ix, pp. 334–5. Adam, Vita S. Hugonis, vol. ii, pp. 167–8.
Later use of brandea: Guibert, De Vita Sua, III. 18, p. 219. Mirac. S. Michaelis, pp. 880, 883. Faber, Evagatorium, vol. i, p. 94. Ghistele, Voyage, vol. xxxvii, p. 742.
5 Fourth-century ‘inventions’: Delehaye (4), pp. 75–8, 80–1 (Gervaise and Proteus, Stephen). Paulinus, Vita S. Ambrosii, XXXIX, PL. xiv. 37 (Vitalis and Agricola). Marcellinus, Chron., PL. li. 928 (John the Baptist); on the date of this, see Aa. Ss. June, vol. iv, p. 713.
Augustine on dreams: see P. Courcelle, Les Confessions de Saint Augustin dans la tradition littéraire, Paris, 1963, pp. 127–33. F. van der Meer, Augustine the bishop, London, 1961, pp. 531–9.
6 Relics authenticated by dreams: Glaber, Hist., IV. 3, pp. 96–8 (Moses’ rod). Raymond of Aguilers, Hist. Francorum, X–XI, pp. 253–7 (Holy Lance).
Sinful to ignore dreams: e.g. Acta S. Fulconis, II–V, Aa. Ss. May, vol. v, p. 193.
Jean de Meung on dreams: Roman de la Rose, 11. 18257–64, vol. iii, p. 48. Heads of the Baptist: Delehaye (4), pp. 82–3. Aa. Ss. June, vol. iv, pp. 722–46, 751–66.
Dreams criticized: Conc. Carthage, canon XIV, in MC. iii. 971. Augustine, De Cura pro Mortuis Gerenda, X, pp. 639–41. Guibert, De Pignorihus, I. 3, col. 624; elsewhere, he suggests that both were false, Gesta
Dei per Francos, I. 5, p. 132.
Guibert on translations: Gesta Dei, loc. cit.
7 Translations in Greek Church: Codex Theodosianus, IX. 17, ed. T. Mommsen and P. Meyer, Berlin, 1905, p. 463. Delehaye (4), pp. 54–7.
Popes refuse to translate relics: Hormisdas, Ep. LXXVII, in Thiel (ed.), Epp. Pontificum, pp. 874–5. Gregory I, Reg., IV. 30, vol. i, p. 264.
Dismemberment: Theodoret, Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, VIII, col. 1012. Victricius, De Laude Sanctorum, XI, col. 453. Gregory of Tours, Hist. Francorum, VII. 31, pp. 311–12. Baudonivius, Vita Radegundis, II. 15, PL. lxxii. 672.
Austerities before removing relic: Gregory of Tours, In Gloria Martyrum, XIII, pp. 497–8. Cosmas of Prague, Chron. Boemorum, II. 3–4, ed. D. Bretholz, MGH. Rer. Germ., N. S. ii, Berlin, 1923, pp. 84–90. Jocelyn of Brakelond, Chron. de Rebus Gestis Samsonis, ed. H. E. Butler, London, 1949, pp. 112–14.
Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion Page 5