The Shroud of Turin

The Shroud of Turin is a remarkable object, a piece of linen with an image of a dead man depicted with dark red stains that might (maybe) be blood.  The man is shown as a photographic negative, light for the parts that would have been dark and vice versa.  Since the Middle Ages the linen has been thought by many to have been a burial shroud for Jesus after the Crucifixion.

 On the left is a modern photograph of the face on the Shroud, the way it appears if you just looked at it now.  On the right is a photographic negative, showing how the image comes alive when one photographs it using black and white film and then looks at the film (the negative) rather than printing it.  Understandably, this has raised major questions, because this couldn't have been seen before the invention of photography in the nineteenth century (it wasn't indeed noted until around 1900).

The Shroud first showed up in the fourteenth century in France.  It was in the possession of a man known as a notorious relic-monger.  Indeed, the bishop of Troyes declared it a fraud in 1390, saying it was designed to mislead the gullible, tricking them into visiting the church that had it and making offerings.  The bishop also announced that the artist who created it had confessed.  Medieval people believed in relics but also made clear that one should not believe everything presented as such.

Nonetheless, the Shroud has continued to attract attention and belief over the centuries.  In the sixteenth century it was acquired by the cathedral of Turin, where it has been ever since.  It has become a major tourist attraction there, even though one cannot actually see it, instead just seeing the chapel where it lies.  Actual viewings are very rare but also very popular. 

There are enough odd things about it that many still assert its authenticity, even though it's hard to explain where it could have been for 1300 years and why no one knew about it.  The strange "negative" effect has been discussed as the product of rays (?) emanating from the dead man, which of course would make more sense if the dead man were supernatural.  Some people however have claimed to have reproduced something that looks a whole lot like the Shroud using medieval techniques.

Some have said (though it's been disputed) that the plant pollen found on the fibers are more typical of the Middle East than medieval France, though even if this is the case, it might only show the Shroud to be a fourteenth-century Middle Eastern creation.  The carbon-dating of the fibers indicates a medieval date, though some have asserted that those who did the carbon-dating were misled by skin cells and the like left behind by people who touched and kissed the Shroud in the medieval period.

The modern Catholic church does not consider the Shroud a relic.  A relic, as I've noted before, is either a body part of a saint or something a saint touched and used (the latter being so-called second-class relics).  Rather, Pope Francis has called it an "icon."  Like paintings or other depictions of Christ (including Byzantine icons) it is considered to have value in orienting the thinking of the faithful toward divine subjects, even if the object is not divine itself.  The Holy Hanky of Cadouin, once thought to be stained with Jesus's sweat until its "decorative border" was revealed to be a statement of Muslim faith in Arabic, is similarly revered today as something to make the faithful ponder the life and death of Christ.

The Shroud thus indicates that people in the Middle Ages and the twenty-first century have reacted very similarly to relics:  some want to believe, some are dismissive, some say there's a deeper meaning regardless of historical accuracy.

© C. Dale Brittain 2019

For more on medieval religion, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.

Age of Faith?

The Middle Ages is often characterized as an Age of Faith.  It's not entirely clear what this term is supposed to mean, but the assumption appears to be that everyone in the Middle Ages was a devout Christian, living in some odd combination of the stereotypical view of modern evangelical Christians and the Monty Python version of the Spanish Inquisition.

But this vision is false.  By far the majority of the medieval population was at least nominally Christian, as is also the case today in the US and the UK, but this did not mean that their Christianity was anything simple, or that its church enforced certain beliefs on everyone.

To begin, for most of the Middle Ages no one really knew or cared what most of the population believed.  There were no parish churches in rural villages before the twelfth century, so although it was expected that people would come into town to have new babies baptized, church attendance was by no means universal.  Many chronicles took it for granted that the ordinary townspeople and the peasantry would mock the Church and the saints.

One twelfth-century chronicle describes a relic-tour:  the monks needed to rebuild their church and took the relics of their saint on tour, asking for donations wherever they stopped and displayed the relics.  In one town, an ugly crowd approached them, saying, "Ha, if your saint is so powerful, let's see a miracle!"  Then they all laughed.  The monks, terrified, prayed desperately, and to their own shock, as well as that of the crowd, a miracle actually happened (a person healed).

The author of this chronicle was of course trying to demonstrate the power of the saint, but he also assumed that his audience would recognize skeptical townspeople as normal.

There are still plenty of medieval churches scattered across modern Europe, far more than are required for the religious needs of a population now much bigger than the medieval population.  (This is why a number are now ruined or serving other functions, like the theater pictured above.)  But a whole lot of these churches were not set up for the ordinary population, but rather were churches where monks or canons prayed, withdrawn from the world.

If there is one aspect of the "age of faith" vision which is true, it is that far more medieval people entered the church than is the case today.  There are extremely few monasteries in the US or Europe now, but medieval Europe was full of them--and, from the twelfth century on, nunneries for women multiplied as well.  Although these churches did not serve as parish churches, pilgrims and tourists would frequently visit.  It is estimated that perhaps 10% of the male aristocratic population entered the church, even though, of course, there was no "rule," about doing so, and some families sent no sons to the church at all, while others might have everyone convert to the religious life.

The aristocrats and well-to-do merchant families who sent sons to the church produced highly-educated men (and some women) who sought to apply the logic of the ancient Greeks to their own religion.  No one at the time thought the Bible should just be read literally.  It was of course to them the word of God, and therefore it deserved special attention,  but this attention meant having to deal with the contradictions within it (especially between the Old Testament and the New) and the fact that medieval people who considered themselves good Christians were not following Jesus's explicit command to come join him preaching and wandering barefoot around the Sea of Galilee.

So the Bible could certainly be read literally in part (the Old Testament Fathers were real, Jesus's birth and miracles and resurrection were real, and so on), but other parts were to be read morally (urging good behavior), allegorically (so the love poems of the Song of Solomon became a metaphor of Christ's love for His church), or anagogically (so that events of the Old Testament that seemed to make little sense, like Abraham being told to sacrifice his son, were read as prefiguring Christian events, here God sacrificing His Son).

Thus in the supposed Age of Faith, no one worried too much about the majority of the population's rather superficial religion, and the educated leaders of the church devoted themselves to critical analysis of what they sought to believe.

Note:  The Spanish Inquisition began after the Middle Ages were over.  The only time peasant beliefs were a cause for real concern was in southern France in the aftermath of the Albigensian Crusade of the thirteenth century, when an Inquisition (not Spanish though) was begun to try to root out the heresy that had been the excuse for the Crusade.

© C. Dale Brittain 2018

For more on medieval religion, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.

Conques

One of the loveliest medieval villages in France is Conques.  It was a major stop on the pilgrimage route from Vézelay to Santiago.  Efforts have been made to link the town's name to the cockle shell that was the emblem of pilgrims.  The medieval bridge at the bottom of the village's hill is still called the "Romey" bridge because pilgrims (locally called Romeys, even though they were going to Spain rather than Rome) headed (and head) across it.  (In fact, cars still use it.)

There are a lot of tourists and modern pilgrims in Conques, but once the tour buses leave it is still a stunning place.  The village is dominated by the old abbey church. The monks had the bones of Saint Foy ("Saint Faith"), supposedly a girl who was martyred by the pagan Roman governor because she wouldn't give up her Christian faith.

In fact, unlike most French churches, Conques still has the relics of their saint.  She was hidden during the French Revolution and is now in a little museum.  The golden reliquary is in the shape of a seated person, with a head that appears to be that of a man from Late Antiquity.  It is encrusted with semi-precious stones.

The monastery of Conques claimed to have been founded by Charlemagne (unlikely, as Charlemagne founded no monasteries), and "proved" it by carving Charlemagne on the front of their church.  They also had a curious silver object (probably really from around the year 1100) that I would say looks like the letter V, but they called "Charlemagne's A."  According to the monks, Charlemagne listed the 24 best monasteries in his empire (the medieval alphabet had 24 letters, not 26, because I and J were the same letter, as were U and V) and gave them each a silver letter to show it.  Conques naturally got the A, as best of all.  When asked why, if Charlemagne had been handing out letters, no one else seemed to have them, the monks responded by saying that other houses were too embarrassed to admit that were (for example) way down at X or Y, or even worse, not even on the 24-best list at all.

The monks had Foy's bones because, they said, the (other) church that had had them since Late Antiquity didn't respect her properly.  The monks sent one of their number who pretended to join that church, stole the relics, and miraculously wasn't spotted as he fled (because of course she wanted to leave).

Because Foy was martyred as a girl, twelfth-century accounts say she still is playful and likes to play tricks on people who might not be properly reverent.  Her particular focus is eyes--she will blind evil-doers and restore the sight of those blinded by evil-doers.  If someone came to Conques to seek healing without bringing any of the jewels she expected in return, she might do something like make their hand swell the next time they wore the withheld rings.

Foy also was subversive (a truculent teenager?).  Any noble lord or high official in the church who did something that harmed a poor person was in trouble.  Even her own monks did not get off scot-free, according to twelfth-century accounts.  When they started locking up the church at night to keep out the pilgrims (fearing they would steal the golden reliquary), she broke the locks to let the pilgrims in.

Conques is definitely worth a visit.  Be sure not to miss the treasury/museum with Foy's reliquary.  I knew she was looking after me when my retina detachment surgery was scheduled for a Catholic hospital and the nurses made  me remove my rings before the surgery.  I didn't dare tell Foy I didn't believe in her until after I was healed (fortunately I got both my rings and my vision back). 

© C. Dale Brittain 2018


For more on monasticism, saints, and other aspects of medieval history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.

The Holy Hanky of Cadouin

The monastery of Cadouin, founded in the twelfth century in southwestern France, had and still has the Holy Hanky.  (Its official name is the Saint-Suaire.  It means Holy Hanky.)  Discredited as a genuine relic since the 1930s, it is a very interesting example of how relics were seen and used in the Middle Ages.

Here's a picture of it.  The story is that it was a handkerchief used to wipe the sweat from Christ's brow as he carried the cross on the way to his crucifixion.  Shortly after the year 1100, when the French had just conquered Jerusalem during the First Crusade, the pope's representative on the crusade, the bishop of Le Puy, picked it up in Mustafa's House O' Relics.

(Okay, there wasn't really a Mustafa's House O' Relics, with a certificate of authenticity bearing the genuine facsimile signature of Jesus H. Christ.  But close.  The rest of it's real.)

The bishop sent the precious relic, which he said had protected him in battle, home to his cathedral of Le Puy.  But the cathedral canons frankly didn't believe the story of the priest whom the bishop had commissioned to take it there.  Medieval people were by no means ready to believe in every relic someone presented to them.  The priest ended up in the newly-founded monastery of Cadouin instead, along with the Holy Hanky.  (It's not clear what the bishop's reaction was when he found out what had happened to his relic.)

This small, out of the way monastery quickly became a place of pilgrimage.  People flocked to see something so holy, a physical connection to the redemptive suffering of Christ.  It was widely considered to perform miracles.  Its authenticity was considered proven by the miracles it worked.  And why should we say it didn't?  We weren't there.  It inspired gifts to the monastery from such notable people as Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Over the centuries it continued to be revered.  When France went officially atheistic during the French Revolution and both monks and relics were tossed out in the street, the mayor of the village of Cadouin took the Holy Hanky and hid it under his floorboards, until Catholicism was reestablished.

It continued to receive attention and have miracles attributed to it until the priests of Cadouin unwisely decided in 1934 to prove scientifically that it was authentically from the first century AD.  The first thing to turn up was that what they had always assumed to be a decorative border was actually Arabic writing, saying, "Allah akbar!  There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet."  Oops.

Things went downhill from there.  It's now been determined to have been woven in Egypt shortly before the pope's representative got it.  On the up side, it is one of very few surviving pieces of Egyptian cloth from that period in such nice condition.

Today in Cadouin there is a chain hanging above the altar, where the reliquary with the Holy Hanky used to hang.  There is a display comparing it to the Shroud of Turin (also now known not to be from the time of the crucifixion), discussing how the true source of miracles is not a piece of cloth but God's response to piety and prayer, which may be inspired by almost anything, including an Egyptian handkerchief.

© C. Dale Brittain 2017

For more on medieval religion, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.

Saint Martin

It's November, time to talk about Saint Martin.  Between the election and Veterans' Day it's easy to lose track, but his feast day was November 11, and that day was an important one for medieval people, as rents and the like were often due then (at the end of the harvest).  In parts of Belgium they still have parades in his honor, and some children get presents from him, rather than having to wait for Saint Nicholas almost a month later.

As I noted earlier, although Gaul (France) by the late sixth century had a lot of saints, many of these are not quite as historical as one would like (and had not been revered until sixth-century bishops conveniently discovered their burial places).  But Martin (d. 397) is a historical figure, probably about the first historical saint of Gaul.

He originally came from what is now part of Hungary and was then part of the Roman Empire.  He appears to have converted to Christianity as a youth, just as Christianity was becoming widely tolerated and indeed encouraged in the Empire, but he was still expected to join the army, as all sturdy lads were supposed to do.  He traveled great distances with the troops, getting as far as Amiens, in northwestern France.

Here, according to legend, he had his most famous experience.  Riding along on a wet, cold night, wrapped up in his military cloak, he spotted a poor, ragged beggar.  Feeling sorry for him, Martin cut his cloak in two to share, as depicted centuries later in El Greco's famous painting (where, incidentally, Martin doesn't look anything like a Roman soldier).

To his surprise and understandable shock, the beggar turned into Christ.  This got his attention, as it would certainly have gotten mine, and Martin decided to give up the army life for the religious life.

Monasticism at this time was just starting in the West, although it had been around in the eastern Mediterranean for a century.  Martin founded the first known monastery in Gaul in Tours.  He also became bishop of Tours; the story is that he didn't want to become bishop and tried hiding so they couldn't make him, but the geese among which he was hiding gave him away by honking.  He appears to have been a somewhat disturbing bishop, who followed a rough and simple life rather than the more comfortable life many of his contemporaries chose.

After his death, at least three churches in Tours all claimed precedence over the others on the grounds that Martin loved them best:  Marmoutier, the monastery he founded (the name is a variation of Martini monasterium, Martin's monastery); the cathedral where he had been bishop; and the basilica outside of town where he was buried.  Pilgrims would rub his stone sarcophagus to get saint-dust, until actual holes started appearing in it.

His cape (or at least the half that remained) became an important relic in its own right.  Around the year 900, in the aftermath of Viking invasions, the ancestors of the French Capetian dynasty became titular abbots of Martin's monastery and took the cape as their special possession.  Hugh Capet, first king of the dynasty in 987, got his nickname from the cape.

Martin is the patron saint of beggars, of clothing makers, and of geese-keeping.

© C. Dale Brittain 2016

For more on the medieval church, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.

Martyrs

A martyr is someone who dies for their faith.  Originally in the early Christian church, only a martyr could be a saint.  Once Christianity became the dominant religion, however, it became much harder to die for one's faith, and "confessor" saints became the norm, people who "confessed" their religiosity through the holiness of their life and the miracles they worked (especially after death).

Interestingly, in the US after 911 "martyr" has become a pejorative term.  Those who crashed planes into the World Trade Center claimed they were willing to die for Islam.  (Many Muslims point out that this sure doesn't look like the faith they know, but that's a separate issue.)  Thus "martyr" and "terrorist" have been linked for many in the twenty-first century.  But in the Middle Ages martyrs were greatly admired.

The New Testament itself tells the story of Saint Stephen "protomartyr" (i.e. first martyr), put to death for believing in Christ.  Many churches in the West were dedicated to him, starting in the fifth century.

The West had very few saints before the sixth century, but in the sixth century a great many bones of early martyrs were discovered.  These people, it was universally agreed, had died while trying to convert the pagans of the Roman Empire, or else had been rounded up and put to death by pagan emperors like Nero or Diocletian.  The catacombs of Rome were full of bones, and the Christians were sure that a great many of these were the bones of Christian martyrs put to death in the Coliseum.

Elaborate accounts of the lives and deaths of those who had first brought Christianity to the provinces of the Empire were put together.  The city of Lyon traditionally had 177 martyrs, all supposedly put to death for their faith in the second century.  Attempts were made to name them all, though some of their names, like "Rhône River" or "Mature," seem at best odd.  Other missionaries to the pagans were sent out from Lyon, including Marcellus and Benignus, who in essence had a saint-off contest--they headed north, one on either side of the river, to see who could be martyred first (Marcellus won, or lost depending on your point of view).

By the late sixth century, elaborate explanations were being given for why the martyrs of the second and third centuries were forgotten for a few centuries, only to be rediscovered in the fifth or sixth.  The 177 martyrs of Lyon, for example, were said to have been burned and their ashes thrown in the river--though by the end of the sixth century a church in Lyon would tell anyone interested that it had those ashes, and indeed had had them all the time, since Christians (apparently too timid to be martyred themselves) had secretly pulled them from the river and buried them suitably.

It is easy to doubt the historicity of most of the West's martyr-saints, even though most western dioceses had a (supposed) martyr for their first bishop.  By the fifth and sixth centuries, with religious persecution far in the past, the West instead started producing historically verifiable confessor saints.

Martyrdom was still preferred, however.  Someone practicing extreme asceticism (living in the desert alone, eating almost nothing) was described as almost like a martyr.  Those who left the ordinary world for the monastery were said to be practicing a "bloodless martyrdom."  A priest or monk who was killed by a layman was presumed to be a martyr, though he would still need some good posthumous miracles for real proof.

When knights headed off on Crusade, starting at the end of the eleventh century, it was suggested that they might wear the crown of martyrdom if they died in the Holy Land.  However, dying of disease or shipwreck (as many did who did not make it back) was hard to construe as martyrdom, and even those killed in battle with Muslims didn't look all that saintly to those who might otherwise have declared them saints.

© C. Dale Brittain 2016

For more on medieval religion and other aspects of medieval history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.

Relics and reliquaries

As I discussed in an earlier post, saints acted as mediators between humans and the divine in medieval Christianity--as indeed they still do in modern Catholicism.  Saints were not distant figures, because medieval churches would still have a piece of them, their relics.

The early church was slightly leery of the idea of preserving body parts of the holy dead.  Certainly they buried them reverently, but the first time that a bishop put bits of the bones of a saint into an altar was at the end of the fourth century.  Saint Augustine, initially uncertain about the practice, became an enthusiastic supporter in the fifth century.

He was convinced because he believed they could work miracles.  The bones of Saint Stephen, who is mentioned in the New Testament as the first martyr (someone killed for his faith), gained a great deal of attention at this time, and churches all over Europe were dedicated in his honor.  Stephen was soon joined by other saints, both "universal" saints like Mary and local holy men and women, who would be revered where they were buried and who would be considered likely to listen to the prayers of their neighbors.

A relic trade quickly grew up, bringing bones especially from the Roman catacombs to churches that needed relics.  Medieval people did not automatically believe every bone was a relic.  If there was any doubt, they would test it, for example by throwing it into a fire and seeing if it hopped out, or trying to see if it would work a miracle.  Scientific method in action.  (Click here for more on medieval miracles.)

Similarly, medieval people were suspicious of people willing to sell relics--who would want to get rid of a real relic?  So if a church did buy a relic, they would usually do so from someone who claimed to have stolen it.  These "holy thefts" were considered only to be possible if the saint was willing to leave--probably because the church where their relics were located was not treating them right.  If someone wanted to steal relics which did not want to go, they would become enormously heavy, or the thief would find it impossible to leave town.

Relics could be classified as first-class or second-class.  First-class relics were actual pieces of the dead saint.  Second-class relics were things the saint had touched or used, like items of clothing.  Some of the  best-known second-class relics were the (supposed) Crown of Thorns, brought from the Holy Land to Paris in the thirteenth century (it is still preserved at the Ste.-Chapelle), and the "chemise" of the Virgin, kept at Chartres, supposedly the nightgown Mary was wearing when she gave birth to Jesus.

Relics were generally kept in reliquaries.  These boxes were beautifully decorated, often inset with jewels.  Sometimes the reliquary would be in the shape of the body part--for example, an arm bone might be kept in a reliquary shaped like an arm.  Sometimes the reliquary portrayed the saint herself.

For important festivals and councils, the reliquaries would be taken out of the church and become part of the procession.  A conference between the abbots and bishops of a number of different churches would also be considered a conference between the saints who had been brought along.  Although saints (like God) could be accessed anywhere, they were considered to be most present with their relics.  Just because they were dead didn't mean that they weren't still alive and part of the community.

A late medieval French king (Louis XI) wouldn't go out without a certain number of relics pinned to his clothes.  This sort of thing strikes many moderns as "superstition," but it is important not to be so dismissive.  As I discussed earlier, superstition is an action unrelated to the desired outcome (like wearing lucky socks), whereas the saints helped protect the king.

One may think of saints and their relics as something for days of long ago.  But during World War II, when American fighters were bombing the French city of Amiens (held by the Germans), the priests of the cathedral took out their saint's reliquary and showed the saint the danger.  The last bombing run stopped just short of the gorgeous fourteenth-century cathedral.  Hard to argue with success!

© C. Dale Brittain 2016

For more on medieval religion, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.