TREASURES OF HEAVEN 3(#*$3, )! -#0 3, (*" "! 4,$#,* #* '!"#! 4(- ! 5),7! !"#$!" %& '()$#*( %(+*,-#, .,-+!) (. /-!#*, 0. +)#11#$. '(**, (*" 2('!3 ),%#*3,* $.! 0-!4!-(*" '53!5' ,1 ()$ • $.! 6(-$!)3 ()$ '53!5', %(-$#',)! • $.! %)#$#3. '53!5', -,*",* "#3$)#%5$!" %& &(-! 5*#4!)3#$& 7)!33, *!6 .(4!* (*" -,*",* The exhibition catalogue has been supported by Paul Ruddock and an anonymous donor. This publication accompanies the exhibition Treasures Copyright © ./,/ The Trustees of the Walters Art Gallery. Front cover: Reliquary with the Man of Sorrows, of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe, Essay and catalogue entries by Holger Klein copyright © ./,/ detail (cat no. ,..) organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Walters The Cleveland Museum of Art. All rights reserved. No part Back cover: Panel-Shaped Reliquary of the True Cross, Art Museum, Baltimore, and the British Museum, London. of the contents of this book may be reproduced, stored detail (cat. no. 52) in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any !"#$%$&$'( )*&!+ means, including photocopy, recording, or other information and retrieval systems without the written permission of The Cleveland Museum of Art the copyright owners. ,- October ./,/–,- January ./,, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore The Walters Art Museum ,0 February ./,,–,1 May ./,, 4// North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland .,./, The British Museum, London thewalters.org .0 June ./,,–2 October ./,, Distributed by This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Yale University Press Council on the Arts and Humanities P.O. Box ./2/5/ 0/. Temple Street Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data New Haven, Connecticut /41./-2/5/ Treasures of heaven : saints, relics, and devotion in medieval yalebooks.com Europe / edited by Martina Bagnoli ... [et al.]. p. cm. Dimensions are given in centimeters; unless otherwise Issued in connection with an exhibition held indicated, height precedes width precedes depth. Oct. ,-, ./,/–Jan. ,-, ./,,, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Feb. ,0–May ,1, ./,,, the Walters Art Museum, Biblical passages are quoted from the Revised Baltimore, and June .0–Oct. 2, ./,,, the British Museum, Standard Version. London. Includes bibliographical references and index. Translations from the Italian by Martina Bagnoli and Riccardo $+%( 2-3-/-2,,334--5-/ (pbk.) Pizzinato, from the French by Charles Dibble, and from the $+%( 2-3-/-0//-,43.--0 (hardback) German by John Heins ,. Reliquaries, Medieval—Exhibitions. .. Christian art and symbolism—Medieval, 1//–,1//—Exhibitions. 0. Relics— Maps by Jennifer A. Corr and Nathan Dennis Europe—Exhibitions. 5. Christian saints—Cult—Europe— The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore Exhibitions. I. Bagnoli, Martina. II. Cleveland Museum of Art. Manager of Curatorial Publications: Charles Dibble III. Walters Art Museum (Baltimore, Md.) IV. British Museum. Curatorial Publications Coordinator: Jennifer A. Corr V. Title: Saints, relics, and devotion in medieval Europe. (6,41....& -0 ./,/ -/5.2’53./25/-5 — dc.. ./,//.4554 Contents vii Directors’ Foreword !"#$ % | &#'( $'() $' "*$"# !"#$ 6 | ("$$.# '& &"/$- viii Acknowledgments xii Lenders to the Exhibition 5 The Religion of Relics in Late 137 The Stuff of Heaven: xii Contributors Antiquity and Byzantium Materials and Craftsmanship xiv Maps Derek Krueger in Medieval Reliquaries xvii Chronology Martina Bagnoli 19 Relics and Their Veneration Arnold Angenendt 149 “A Brilliant Resurrection”: Enamel Shrines for Relics in Limoges 237 Abbreviations 29 Catalogue 1–35 and Cologne, 1100–1230 238 Abbreviated References Barbara Drake Boehm 247 Index 00 Illustration credits 163 The Spectacle of the Charismatic !"#$ + | ,"$-.#/0, $-. 1"/0$1 Body: Patrons, Artists, 55 Sacred Things and Holy Bodies: and Body-Part Reliquaries Collecting Relics from Late Antiquity Cynthia Hahn to the Early Renaissance Holger A. Klein 173 Catalogue 77–124 69 “Non Est in Toto Sanctior Orbe Locus”: Collecting Relics in Early !"#$ 7 | ).8'04 $-. (/44*. ",.1 Medieval Rome Guido Cornini 211 The Afterlife of the Reliquary Alexander Nagel 79 Catalogue 36–54 223 Catalogue 125–139 !"#$ 2 | #/$3"* "04 !.#&'#("05. 99 Relics, Liturgical Space, and the Theology of the Church Éric Palazzo 111 From Altar to Amulet: Relics, Portability, and Devotion James Robinson 117 Catalogue 55–76 13 !"#"$%&'( | )* The A4erlife of the Reliquary ALEXANDER NAGEL The Relic as Vanitas to suppress these questions: dazzled by these ritual objects, Calvin says, the devotees do not consider what is truly at the basis of the cult and even The early sixteenth-century Dutch reformer Erasmus found the cult of close their eyes in the presence of the reliquary “out of superstition,” not relics highly distasteful, but being a naturally moderate man he counseled daring to gaze upon what is there. Apparently a festival for the eyes, the cult against orgies of destruction. He wanted Christians to see the piece of of relics, all elaborate housings and pompous ritual, in fact imposes and bone and the fragment of clothing not as magical talismans but rather as promotes blind patterns of behavior.4 remnants of a life, prompts to remember the exemplary virtues of a model Catholic theologians countered that the reliquary was a form of Christian. For Erasmus, the most important relics were the writings left protection—protection against mishandling and theft of the relics that it behind by the Evangelists and apostles.1 A physical artifact was, by contrast, contained but also protection against misidentification. But now, in the little more than a memento mori, a form of vanitas. Indeed, any mortal face of the Protestant challenge, Catholic authorities were prolific in laying remains, not necessarily those of a saint, could serve as a reminder that the out guidelines. Carlo Borromeo, the prominent late sixteenth-century life of the body is brief and as a powerful incentive to concentrate on con- bishop of Milan, gave some of the most thorough instructions on how relics cerns of the spirit while we are alive. One need only think of the anonymous should be securely labeled: an engraved or parchment inscription should skull contemplated by St. Jerome, Erasmus’s hero, in so many paintings document the names and bodies of the saints, the date when they were depos- of the saint. ited, and the places from which they had been translated. Relics should be Such a conceptual reorientation was one way to allay the concerns hermetically sealed in reliquaries and kept safe from tampering.5 These about deception that always surrounded the cult of relics.2 John Calvin, less affirmations are in fact the corollary of Calvin’s critique. The relic, indistin- patient than Erasmus, put the matter bluntly: “How do we know that we guishable from ordinary detritus, cannot speak for itself, and thus requires are venerating the bone of a saint and not the bone of some thief, or of an the reliquary, which is really a label expanded into a more elaborate physical ass, or of a dog, or of a horse? How do we know that we are venerating form. The reliquary provides authentication and thus a guarantee that the ring and the comb of the Virgin Mary rather than the baubles of some one is not mistakenly venerating a thief, or a prostitute. harlot?”3 To worship a mere ordinary thing was to succumb to the worst Both the Reformist critic and the Counter-Reformation apologist were idolatrous delusion. Calvin saw the reliquary, which dressed the relic up in clear-eyed about the interdependence of the relic and the reliquary. If the jewels and gold, often shielding it from view, as a device designed precisely compound of sacred substance and precious container are prised apart, #+( ",#(-$.,( %, #+( -($./'"-0 | 1"&($ | 233 as happened with increasing frequency under the impact of the Reformation, have seen, it was not acceptable to replace a saint’s bone with a pig’s each element undergoes a fundamental change. Unprotected, the relic bone, or to replace a saint’s bone with the bone of an ordinary, non-saintly became indistinct matter; emptied, the reliquary became a work of human mortal. An image or any work of human art was, by contrast, eminently art to be appreciated on its own or repurposed as material of some monetary replaceable. Even the most revered images (indeed, those in particular) were value. In 1545, Heinrich von Pflummern, an unreformed and unhappy copied in different media, propagating their power through replication.12 clergyman of the reformed city of Biberach, tallied the destruction wrought The relic thus marks a limit point in the system of signs used in medieval by the reformers: church funds appropriated by the city amounted to religious culture. It was defined as the unsubstitutable sign, a sign whose 49,600 pounds, the objects appropriated for secular use equaled 5,915 pounds, physical relationship to its origin was a necessary part of its meaning. and the objects destroyed came to 7,275 pounds. Grand total: 62,790 pounds.6 Reliquaries, on the other hand, were secondary fabrications. Their raison The distribution is interesting. Almost as many objects were saved d’être was the relic. and repurposed as were destroyed. Without further information it is impos- And yet this also meant that reliquaries often shared in the aura of the sible to know what protocols governed the triage, but it is likely that the relic. Although often made centuries after the time of the reputed relic objects with inherent material value, those composed of precious metals they contained, reliquaries were