The Beginning of the Cult of Relics by Robert Wiśniewski

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Beginning of the Cult of Relics by Robert Wiśniewski Adrien Palladino Robert Wiśniewski The Beginning of the Cult of Relics Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019 Pp. 249. $85.00. Historian Robert Wiśniewski attempts to examine the birth of the Christian cult of relics from an all-encompassing perspective, examining texts, inscriptions, visual evidence, and archeological evidence of the manifestations of the cult from ca. 300–600 c.e. Such broad documentation, based on an impressive amount of data, has benefitted both from Wiśniewski’s long-lasting engagement with the topic and from his collaborative work on the Oxford ERC project The Cult of Saints, directed by Bryan Ward-Perkins. Wiśniewski’s monograph has previously received a number of reviews. I can only validate the communis opinio on the usefulness of the book, which constitutes one of the best surveys on this broad topic—alongside the 2018 study in German by Martina Hartl (Leichen, Asche und Gebeine. Der frühchristliche Umgang mit dem toten Körper und die Anfänge des Reliquienkults [Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner]). In eleven chapters—from the “prehistory” of the cult to beliefs and practices—Wiśniewski examines all aspects of the use of martyrs’ whole or fragmented bodies, highlighting the gradual transformation from undisturbed graves to sacred bodies as epicenters of magico-religious and cultural practices. Particularly interesting in this transformation are the modalities of accessing the sacred and how a society that “feared and avoided any contact with dead bodies, came to touch, rub, and kiss the bones of those whom they considered saints” (122). Considering the ways in which such taboo was overcome, Chapters Seven to Nine focus on anthropological, archaeological, and material aspects of the cult of relics, with which I am particularly engaged as an art historian and which have not been the central focus of previous reviews. In approaching the sacred and the bodies of saints, textual sources have often proven insufficient. A corpus of descriptions has been studied, from which we can recall the evidence from Gregory of Tours’s frequently cited sixth-century Liber in gloria martyrum mentioning fenestellae and other modalities of access. Wiśniewski evokes a myriad of other crucial sources, dissociating rhetoric and actual practices in a careful historical analysis. He mentions the existence of both public spaces (churches, martyria, etc.) needing reliquaries and small-scale private reliquaries that could be worn or carried on the body (140). Regretfully, in this [End Page 105] part the author mentions the episode (168) but does not cover the reliquary gifted by Manlia Dedalia to Ambrose of Milan, who buried it in the Basilica Apostolorum in Milan in the fourth century. This capsella is likely one of the only preserved pieces of evidence that we have of a “private” reliquary gifted by a wealthy woman to the church. This preserves evidence of the integration of a small-scale reliquary within a larger deposit, hinting at the need to examine material evidence in a more integrated way. This includes examination of the ways objects linked with the cult of relics have crossed the centuries because they were preserved in church treasures or in reliquary deposits. Sources are often elusive about practical dimensions such as the materials from which reliquaries were made, their shape, who was allowed to access and manipulate them, and their implementation within sacred spaces. Archeological evidence about this is relatively scarce, except for a significant corpus from the Middle East, constituted mainly of aniconic and simple typologies of reliquaries. More elaborate reliquaries bearing figurative imagery were often melted down, removed, or lost. In cases of reliquaries found in early archeological contexts in the nineteenth century or in church treasures, we must rely on limited second-hand accounts of archaeological excavations or art historical examinations. Wiśniewski’s approach to material culture is problematic because it is limited to a few pieces of individual archaeological and visual evidence—Wiśniewski is, after all, a specialist in texts, so he deals with objects and images in only a dozen pages (mainly 145–55). A stronger integration of material and visual culture within the book would have allowed the author to answer some...