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 Sacred Things and Holy Bodies Collecting Relics from Late Antiquity to the Early Renaissance HOLGER A. KLEIN The bodies of the martyrs, after having been exposed and insulted the martyrs’ disciples eagerly collected the bones and body parts of their in every way for six days, and afterwards burned and turned to masters. While St. Polycarp’s companions “took up his bones which are ashes, were swept by the wicked into the river Rhône which flows more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold, and laid near by, so that not even a relic of them might still appear upon them in a suitable place,”4 the disciples of Hippolytus, “stunned with the earth. And this they did as though they could conquer God and sorrow, went along with searching eyes, and in their garments’ folds gath- take away their rebirth in order, as they said, “that they might not ered his mangled flesh.”5 even have any hope of resurrection.”1 Intimately tied to concepts of wholeness, corporeal integrity, and the resurrection of the body, the collecting of bones and body parts of holy As this passage from an early account of the martyrdom of a group of martyrs was an important aspect of the Christian cult of relics already Christians at Lyon in Roman Gaul around 177 suggests, one of the ways in during Antiquity.6 While the mangled bodies or ashes of many Christian which Roman authorities tried to discourage Christians from spreading martyrs of the first centuries were buried by members of local Christian their faith and from seeking martyrdom was to shatter their hopes for res- communities in cemeteries or other “suitable places,” few burial sites were urrection and salvation by burning their bodies and scattering all that was marked by tropaia, or victory monuments, like those of Sts. Peter and left of their earthly remains. Similar stories of the scattering of holy bodies Paul at the Vatican Hill and the Via Ostiense, and developed into memoriae, are known from a number of early saints’ Lives and passiones, or martyrdom places in which Christians gathered to commemorate the life and death accounts, most famously perhaps from the second-century Martyrdom of Christ’s most distinguished followers and martyrs.7 More often than of St. Polycarp, whose body was burned in the stadium at Smyrna in 155/56 not, as was the case with the protomartyr St. Stephen, the resting places to prevent his fellow Christians from venerating his earthly remains and of early Christian martyrs remained unrecorded or were forgotten soon worshiping him like Christ.2 Prudentius’s description of the martyrdom after their death.8 In such cases, the saints themselves had to make their of St. Hippolytus, whose body was torn apart and scattered by wild earthly presence known and communicate their wishes for proper burial horses, paints an equally vivid picture of the violent dismemberment and and veneration to chosen individuals in dream visions or through other scattering of a martyr’s body.3 However, both narratives also stress how forms of divine inspiration.9 saCrEd tHings and Holy bodiEs | KlEin | 55 In 385/86, Bishop Ambrose of Milan was thus inspired to dig in front martyrs’ sacred presence throughout the empire—and thus fortify it.18 But of the chancel screen of the Basilica of Sts. Felix and Nabor outside it was not only bishops who were willing to part with their sacred treasures. Milan, where he promptly discovered the intact bodies of the previously When Bishop Gaudentius of Brescia (d. 410) passed through Cappadocia unknown martyrs Sts. Gervasius and Protasius.10 Despite long-standing on his way to the Holy Land in 386, the nuns of Caesarea bestowed on him prohibitions against disturbing the dead and the enactment, in February a gift of relics of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, which they themselves 386, of a law stipulating that “no person shall transfer a buried body to had previously received as a gift from St. Basil. Upon his return, Gaudentius another place . sell the relics of a martyr . or traffic in them,”11 Ambrose deposited these and other relics in a new church, which he consecrated in moved the remains of the martyrs to the Basilica of Fausta and on the 402 and named Concilium Sanctorum in celebration of the precious “gather- following day transferred them to his new basilica, commonly known as ing of saints” he had been able to assemble.19 the Basilica Ambrosiana, where he laid them to rest under the altar.12 It was not the last time that local martyrs would call Ambrose to action. Less than ten years later, in 395, Ambrose discovered the bodies of Sts. Sacred Things and Holy Places Nazarius and Celsus in a garden outside Milan and transferred them to the Basilica of the Holy Apostles.13 Early Christian attempts to gather and preserve the remains of holy men Such transgressions of imperial law were not restricted to the bishop and women were not an isolated phenomenon. Indeed, they formed part and the diocese of Milan. Other bishops were likewise able to channel and of a much broader culture of collecting that focused on bodily remains obey the wishes of long-forgotten martyrs and become, as Peter Brown of people as much as on material remains of things that could either claim has shown, important impresarios of their cult: In 392/93, Bishop Eusebius direct physical contact with the body of Christ or were associated with of Bologna, for instance, found the remains of the martyrs Agricola and events and places related to his life, ministry, and death through the account Vitalis in a Jewish cemetery outside the city, removed them, and honored of the Gospels.20 them with proper burial in a church.14 More careful in his efforts was Already during the first half of the fourth century, Christian pilgrims Bishop Exuperius of Toulouse, who did not dare to move the body of were drawn to Jerusalem and the Holy Land from faraway regions to see St.