Reliquaries: Saints Preserve(d for) Us!

Reliquary of St. Anania, Rome. St. Anania is said to have been the disciple who baptised St. Paul the Apostle.

I first discovered reliquaries on visiting Italy, years ago.

Since then, I've seen a lot of reliquaries, in France and other countries, but it was that first time, in the Cathedral Museum in Florence, that I saw the best reliquaries of all. There was a hand-shaped reliquary containing an arm-bone (of St. John the Baptist?), which pointed at the sky just like John the Baptist is always shown doing. There was a philatory (a transparent reliquary) which contained all the bones of another saint, whom I've forgotten, but the bones were stacked in an asthetic way and wound with gold and pearls in a shrine (reliquary shaped like a house) made of glass and gold. There were dozens of the usual cross-shaped reliquaries and lots of wonderful, dangly, crown-shaped ones.

"Casket of Teudericus" reliquary from the second half of the 7th c. (?) (Canton Valais: Saint Maurice Abbey treasury). This reliquary is a product of the monastic workshop of St. Maurice d'Agaune. Signed by the artist and dedicated by the Priest Teudericus to the monastery. Gold cloisonné, gemstones, and cameo on wood. 5.25"

For a nice, clear explanation of the reliquary concept I'm going to quote the Virtual School, a defunct part of the EC's European Schoolnet site, which is a portal for lower education in Europe. It has the most dazzling array of useful information I've come across. If you want something explained well and simply, I have not found better than European Schoolnet; unfortunately, I never seem to come across what I need except by accident.

Reliquary of St. Louis of Toulouse. Silver, France, 15th-17th century, Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris, France.

Here we go:

"Relics are holy objects associated with holy people, and is prevalent in Judaism, Buddhism and Christianity, among others.

"In a world where people believed that evil and the Devil existed all around in the natural world, it was comforting to believe that good was also something that could be seen and touched. The motivation for most pilgrimages was to see and touch something holy and consequently benefit from being in contact with good.

"Brandea were the most common kind of early Christian relic in the centuries immediately following the death of Christ. These were often ordinary objects which had become holy by coming into contact with holy people or places. These might include, for example, pieces of tomb, a handkerchief of a saint or dust from the Holy Land.The advantage for pilgrims was that they could and did make their own brandea; by rubbing a piece of cloth against a holy tomb or by filling a small flask (ampulla) with holy water, they could take the holiness home with them.

"Early relics were often carried in small, purpose built containers called reliquaries which were hung around the neck, almost like good luck charms.

"Bodily relics were particularly important because the spirit of the saint was said to actually remain in the bodily remains. Wherever the body (or body parts) went the (holy) spirit was sure to follow. There were some religious critics who suggested that the cult of relics owed more to pagan traditions than Christian teaching, but such was the popularity of the relics and the miracles that surrounded them, it would have been very difficult for the Church to resist even if it had wanted to.


"In converting pagan people the Church needed every trick in the book. In the 13th century, even the great medieval philosopher and saint, Thomas Aquinas, produced a threefold defence of the cult of relics. He argued that, firstly, the relic acts as a physical reminder of the saint, making it easier for people to understand the importance of the saint. Secondly, because the saint worked miracles through the body, the body remains holy and is therefore valuable in itself. Finally, because miracles occur at sites with relics, God must approve of the preservation and worship of relics.

Foot reliquary of St. James, Namur, France
"The only way of guaranteeing yourself a widely acknowledged, 'authentic' relic was to steal one. Many of the most famous pilgrimage sites in Europe included stolen relics in their collection. The theft was easily justified. Often the idea for the theft came in the form of a dream or vision, which was widely considered to be the way God and saints communicated . Often the saint itself decided. If the saint allowed itself to be taken without punishing the thieves and if the saint continued to produce miracles, then clearly he or she was happy in their new home."


If you've ever read P.D. James' A Morbid Taste for Bones, you'll know that many saints' bones were essentially stolen from their home tomb to begin with, regardless of the locals' feelings about it.

Strangely, Galileo's middle finger is displayed at the Science History Museum in Florence inside a beautiful reliquary (below). Does this mean he was a Science Saint? He was definitely a hero and a martyr to his beliefs, and it's interesting that he is celebrated in the same way as a religious figure. The finger was detached from the body by Anton Francesco Gori (how apt a name) on March 12, 1737; it is not clear whether this was a sanctioned move or not. And, of course, given the way he got in trouble for bucking the establishment, I find it intensely ironic that it was his middle finger they saved.


In any case, if you ask nicely I might show you some of the reliquaries I've made. There are quite a number, mostly (with one excellent exception) celebrating, not saints, but animals, which at one point in my life I was seeing as Saints of Nature, martyrs to the Cause of Progress - particularly those killed by poison and other dangers of modern life (and then mummified with time). Bwa-ha-ha. My thoughts have evolved, but the reliquaries remain.

Beautiful Flotsam

I found Nader Hasan's art by complete accident, during one of my crazy search-threads on Google. Mr. Hasan, originally from Jordan and now living in Montreal, makes art out of found bits and pieces from anywhere he happens to find them.
“I am obsessed with small work,” he told the McGill Daily, a newspaper for McGill University. It is true: Mr. Hasan's work has the same kind of obsessive arrangement as some of the best Kunstkammern, or the Sedlec Ossuary (see below). Things that most people would walk right past are actually treasures which, when put in one of Mr. Hasan's arrangements, make you suddenly aware of their beauty.


What I love about this work is its attention to detail, the fearlessness of the presentation, and the eye Mr. Hasan has for how things will look together. Small things can so often be, simply, junk; yet even plastic daisies and old (but not antique) radio knobs are reborn in this new context; somehow the age of the materials (old enough to look old without being precious antiques) give these arrangements a mystique; we feel we are holding history in our hands, collected - though whose history is not clear.


I have, since childhood, been obsessed with things that carry mana, which in the Oceanic sense is "an impersonal force or quality that resides in people, animals, and inanimate objects and that instills in the appreciative observer a sense of respect or wonder." [wiki] In other words, for some objects a kind of life-magic clings to them or is infused into them. In some descriptions, mana can rub off of powerful people onto their objects, like pollen rubbing off on to a bee's legs - and if you are the possessor of an object with mana, your own mana increases as a result. In Hawaii, for example, contact with an object owned by the King was often powerful enough to kill a normal person. In my own childhood cosmology, which was built on hearsay, all objects had mana, and the amount varied depending on the object's history and usage. I was left with the feeling that if something had enough magic in it, it could become independent, moving around when I wasn't looking...

But that's another story.

In any case this is why I like Nader Hasan's work: he takes the small, tiny mana of everyday objects, and assembles them, gluing them together with his own artist's mana until they glow with their own kind of power. These small conglomerations of life-magic hold more than the sum of their parts, in every sense of the idea: they exert a sort of power over the senses, making us bend closer to see, making us want to keep one in our house in a shrine, making us wonder about the histories we are looking at - and, finally, making us wish, as always, that we could do that too.

The Zymoglypic Museum (and other things)

If you haven't looked at the Zymoglyphic Museum yet, you should have a look. Among other things, there is an online exhibit of "Photographers of the Marvelous", where I found this lovely photo created by Alessandro Bavari.



The Zymoglyphic Museum also has an exhibit of Frederick Ruysch's 18th century anatomical dioramas, which were "assembled from body parts and starring melodramatic fetal skeletons," according to the ZM. They were then turned into meticulous engravings by Cornelius Huybert. I will be doing a post about Frederick Ruysch and his relationship with Peter the Great later, so check in for that.



They also have an enigmatic little exhibit called "Age of Wonder", which includes a number of quite fun Wonders, including the Self-Destroying Automaton:
"This particular mechanical wonder was a clockwork automaton that not only told time but continuously removed pieces of itself an offered them to passers by. How the internal parts were regenerated has yet to be determined despite intensive investigation by the museum staff."
Besides this whimsical creation, there are a number of quite nice little cabinets and displays, such as the Small Cabinet below.


On another note, if you are interested in anatomy drawings, I would recommend looking at the the U.S. National Library of Medicine's Dream Anatomy exhibit, which is full of interesting images.

Awe-Inspiring Ossuaries

One of my greatest loves in life is when people take what is at hand and make art out of it, particularly a collecting kind of art, like the Wunderkammern. One of the most lovely examples of this is in certain ossuaries, where the gruesome symbols of mortality - human bones - have been elevated to a state of grace through artful arrangement.

Two of the best examples of these are the ossuary at Sedlec, in the Czech Republic, and the Capuchin Crypt, under Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, a church in Rome.

The Capuchin Crypt holds the bones of over 4,000 Capuchin monks, and holds six rooms' worth of intricately stacked and hung bones:


But my favorite is the ossuary at Sedlec, which has an interesting story you can read here [wiki], and which is all the work of one man, a master woodworker, who was told to "put the bones in order". Sedlec holds the remains of many thousands of people over more than seven centuries' worth of burial. It is mind-boggling, and very beautiful:


(Thanks to Jairo Frisco Arenas Ramirez for the Sedlec pics)

Notice the bones stacked behind the coat of arms. It's quite incredible. I can only imagine that, after working with his new materials for awhile, the master woodworker ceased to see the bones as macabre and began to see their sculptural potential instead.

Not all ossuaries are rooms full of beautifully-crafted bone sculptures. Sometimes they are simply a chest full of bones, or a place where bones are deposited. I suppose the Catacombs in Paris could be classified as an ossuary, technically. Wikipedia describes an ossuary as "a chest, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains."

One of the most awe-inspiring -through sheer numbers - is the ossuary at Douaumont, in France, where the bones of those killed at the horrific 1916 Battle of Verdun are kept. The bones of more than 130,000 unidentified French and German soldiers are on display in small, windowed alcoves all around the outside of a, well, very large memorial building. Douaumont is not nearly as artistic, but it is a grim and remarkable testament to the horrors of war, especially one where the technology has outstripped the strategy of its leaders:


Beside this, Sedlec and the Capuchin Crypt, both of whom took centuries to collect their contents, look positively peaceful and merry.

Become a Mummy

This just in: you too can be mummified. That's right, Summum, a religious nonprofit organization in Utah, practices "the rites of Modern Mummification and Transference."

Since the rest of the world is so interested, Summum offers this service to all. Simply inform your local funeral director, and viola! You can have a regular casket, or Summum's artists will take a death-mask and create a hand-made mummiform [outer shell] to fit your exact form, either in the Egyptian style or whatever asthetic or religious style you prefer.

You can also have your pet mummified and encased in bronze or other materials, for the modest fee of "$6,000 to over $128,000 depending on the size of the animal and the type of mummiform you choose." The technique is time-consuming and the materials are expensive, so be prepared.

Another wonder for the Cabinet!

Real Fairies

Here’s an item for the Cabinet, sent to me by Tinkergirl over at Brass Goggles: a mummified fairy has been found in the countryside near Derbyshire, UK. The fairy, delicate and clearly well-preserved, was one of several found when a crack opened in the side of a barrow (burial mound). It is exquisite, with skeletal wings, and immensely detailed: eyebrows and fingernails are still intact. The barrow where it was found appeared to contain more than twenty bodies.

The article says:
”The 8-inch remains, complete with wings, skin, teeth, and flowing red hair have been examined by anthropologists and forensic experts who can confirm that the body is genuine. X-rays of the ‘fairy reveal an anatomically identical skeleton to that of a child. The bones, however, are hollow like those of a bird, making them particularly light.”

Wow! Such an important discovery has not been made since the ground-breaking Piltdown Man, and can be compared with the surprising and pivotal Archeoraptor, as well as the discoveries of Reiner Protsch and Shinichi Fujimura.

The Manifesto

(above: Cabinets of Curiosities, a book with photos by Patrick Maurles)

We’ll start with this.

Early in the Age of Enlightenment, a time of curiosity and ignorance, where the occultism and alchemy of the Rennaissance are melting slowly into the rigid structures of modern science, where reason is overtaking superstition, but the magical thinking bleeds into everything. Magic and science are harder to define, and the world is a chaotic place, which philosophers and scientists strive to categorize. Their categorization wanders into asthetic considerations - after all, we are traveling through the Baroque period - and becomes an art form in itself.
What we have here is a Cabinet of Curiosities, a place where things of interest are set out, in possibly bizarre, possibly fetishistic presentation, for perusal by the discerning, who understand that presentation, and scientific interest, are all a form of magic.

What we have is:

Automata
Automaton (singular) is defined as: "A mechanism having its motive power so concealed that it appears to move spontaneously." The term is generally applied to mechanical human or animal figures which move by clockwork motivation.

For example:



This amazing bird can be found here, where you can hear a recording of its song.

The author of the site, Ray Bates, is an antiquarian horologist in Vermont, and has this description of the bird:
Singing bird box: a small decorative box, often of wood, silver, or, in this case gold, about four inches long and containing a musical mechanism driven by a mainspring which on release of a catch activates multiple cams and levers which accompany the tiny bird which appears from under the lid, producing through a small bellows and variable pitch pipe a remarkably realistic bird song, the bird rotating and flapping its wings, lifting its tail, and turning its head while moving its beak. At the end of the bird song sequence the bird suddenly disappears into the box, the lid closing over it as though it did not exist.

Clocks and Clockwork, in any form, of course.

Wunderkammer
The Cabinet of Curiosities, the Chamber of Curiosities, where Nature was examined in all its minuteness and symmetry. These began at the end of the Renaissance, or the beginning the Age of Reason, which is sometimes thought of as the early part of the Enlightenment:
“Wunderkabinett and Wunderkammer - A Wunderkabinett is most literally a "cabinet of wonders," and a Wunderkammer is a "chamber of wonders," exhibition spaces in which miscellaneous curiosities — odd and wondrous rarities — brought together for private contemplation and pleasure. These words are German, but they are also used by speakers and writers of English because so many of the earliest (16th century) and best examples have been German. The objects on display in these storage/display spaces were marvels of nature.
If some or all of the objects were art, then they were more likely to be called Kunstkabinetts and Kunstkammern instead. These precursors of the museum were developments from the Renaissance. The museum, on the other hand, was a creation of the Enlightenment.
The plural of Wunderkammer is Wunderkammern.”
- From Artlex, the Artist’s dictionary

I always think of Reliquaries as precursors to the Wunderkammer, and because they are so amazing, I may just include them, though they are not really very Reasonable or Enlightened.

Weird Science and Medicine, which relies only partly on scientific ideas; the rest is hocus-pocus of the most marvelous kind.

...The point is the attitude. The objects and ideas from this time depended on a uniquely baroque sense of decoration and presentation, a sense of the strangeness and vastness of the universe (a fascination which diminished as the boundaries of the world became closer and more defined), a time during which the class systems in their most defined and reprehensible forms allowed ever more elaborate and arcane systems of leisure and intellectual advancement.