Relics

Buddhists and Christians both came to believe that the remains of the Buddha or Christ, items associated with them and, over time, the remains of other pious or saintly figures, carried spiritual power. These items were therefore collected, housed and worshipped, becoming the focus of pilgrimage ( see pilgrimage story ), local festivals and, in time, a thriving trade. Royal and elite patronage provided increasingly elaborate and costly silks to wrap them and commissioned containers to hold them, using the most precious materials available. This story looks at the development of this practice and some of the reliquaries and relics in both religions.

In Christianity, the practice of relics did not begin immediately and, at first concentrated on the remains of Christian martyrs who were believed to embody the power of god and thus became the focus of worship. The account of the martyrdom of St Polycarp, a second-century bishop of Smyrna in the eastern Mediterranean, records that after his execution and cremation, his followers collected his bones "more precious...than the richest jewels and gold."

Over the following centuries, relic collection and their worship became widespread. Relics were sometimes installed in churches, called martyria as the altar was placed over the shrine of a martyr. Often on the edges of the city, these attracted pilgrims who took relics back to their home churches to be enshrined  (see pilgrimage story) . When Augustine (d.604) [ EXH15 ] was dispatched to convert Kent in Britain to Christianity, Pope Gregory (r.590–604) also sent relics of the holy apostles and martyrs to aid him in the conversion process. This was the first of many such gifts.

But Britain also produced its own saints who became the focus of worship. Bede records the death and burial of Æthelthryth, the Abbess of Ely, in 679. Sixteen years later, her successor and sister, Seaxburh, ordered the monks of Ely to dig up her coffin. According to the observers, the body was uncorrupted, attesting to her sainthood, and it was placed in a white marble coffin found at an abandoned Roman fort. It was later moved to the church at Ely. Her remains were thought to have been destroyed during the Reformation, but her hand was rediscovered around 1811, secured in a priest’s hiding hole at a Catholic house in southern England. The main part of the hand is now kept in the Catholic church of St Ethelreada’s at Ely, Cambridgeshire [ EXH76 ], while the church in Ely Place, London holds a finger.

Relics were not only human remains: items associated with Jesus’s life also came to be venerated. The Turin shroud is probably the best known today, but in the early 4th century, the Roman empress Helena (c.246– c.330), the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine (r. 306–337) who converted to Christianity, is said to have discovered the cross on which Jesus was crucified. Over the following centuries, pieces of the ‘True Cross’ spread throughout Europe. As can be seen from this example at York [ EXH77 ], relics were housed in elaborate caskets (although this one is 19th century) and often wrapped in silk.

Relics, especially the remains of Christian saints, were ‘clothed’ before being placed inside the reliquary. Sometimes they had ‘undergarments’ made of linen, but the outer layer was usually silk. This was often gifted by rich believers, such as the maniple offered to St Cuthbert (634–687) by Aelflaed (d.916), second wife of the then King of Wessex, Edward the Elder [ EXH67 ]. It survived in the tomb of Cuthbert but most relics in Britain were destroyed or dispersed in the Reformation.

The situation was different in continental Europe, and thousands of Asian-made silks used to wrap relics have been identified, such as that found in the reliquary in the church of St Leu in Paris [ EXH78 ] of the head of the discoverer of the 'True Cross’, Helena. The silk wrapping bears a pattern of a mythical creature, the senmurv/simurgh, inside a circle of pearls. The motif —and possibly this silk—is believed to have originated among the Sogdians who lived in the city states of central Asia, such as Samarkand and Bukhara. They were silk producers and important traders of the Silk Roads.

One of the most astonishing remains is a skull cap encasing bones in Turku Cathedral in Finland [ EXH79 ]. The outer layer of the cap is red-dyed silk with a warp-faced twill weave, strongly indicating that it was produced in China: silk produced elsewhere was usually weft-faced. The layer below is also silk, plain weave, dyed red with Caesalpinia sappan (sappanwood), a dye traditionally used in Asia although also found in medieval Europe. Analysis on the fragments of bones held in the cap revealed that they originated from numerous corpses, dating from 550 BC to AD 1220, male and female, and not all were skull bones. The identification of the relic remains uncertain.

Buddhist relics were also wrapped in silk, such as the silk used to wrap paper fragments and incense at Bulguksa (佛國寺,  EXH60  and see below). Silk was also used to wrap the caskets housing the relics, such as the fragment of gold-thread embroidery [ EXH80 ] found at Mireuksa (彌勒寺) western stupa [ EXH51 ]—the oldest surviving stone stupa in Korea, or to cover the inner glass bottle containing śarīra, taken to Japan in 753 by the Chinese monk, Jianzhen 鑒真 (688–763) [ EXH81 ]. Jianzhen’s attempts to reach Japan—this was his sixth and only successful one—are discussed in our Journeys story—coming soon.

Christian reliquaries were also made of precious materials. The Maskell ivories [ EXH2a-d ] might have originally formed a reliquary casket. Often, as in the container used to display the ‘True Cross’ in York [ EXH77 ] or that showing Ælthelreada’s hand [ EXH76 ], the container is made of glass so that the relic can be seen. But in other cases, such as the crucifixion cross reliquary pictured below [ EXH84 ], the relic—here a finger—is hidden in a cavity behind the walrus ivory figure of Jesus. A partially legible and possibly later inscription gives a list of relics, including a piece of the ‘True Cross’: this might refer to the wood of the cross itself. Although adapted to hang in a church, it was possibly originally a pectoral cross, similar to those discussed below. It is unusual for the enameled decoration on the front. This was carried out in Britain and is unique in known Anglo-Saxon art: it may have been crafted by an English goldsmith familiar with German work.

Reliquaries are also seen in the form called a chasse, resembling a sarcophagus or perhaps a church. From the 12th century, chasse-shaped reliquaries with depictions of Christian saints and scenes which were made at the renowned enamelling centre at Limoges in France became very popular. Over fifty surviving reliquaries scattered throughout Europe depicting Thomas Becket (d.1170), the English martyr, shows the richness of Christian networks at this time. The example shown here is from a reliquary in Trönö new church, Hälsingland, in Sweden [ EXH85 ].

In Christianity, relics were also carried around as personal amulets, and we see jewellery made with a small chamber used for this purpose, such as pectoral crosses from St Cuthbert’s tomb [ EXH10 ], the Staffordshire hoard [ EXH69 ], and the Newball cross [ EXH86 ]— and possibly the crucifixion cross discussed above [ EXH84 ]. For more,  see our Crosses story . Personal reliquaries, in the form of small cylindrical containers made of copper-alloy and sometimes with a cross at either end, start also to be seen in elite graves, such as at Westfield and Prittlewell ( see our Death and Burials story ).

In addition to the śarīra, the seven treasures of Buddhism were often included as offerings in reliquaries. The Seokga stupa offerings [ EXH87 ], for example, included a bronze image of flying apsaras, a bronze mirror, jade curved beads (gogok, see  EXH48 ], other beads, pieces of incense wood [ EXH60 ] and paper with writing wrapped in silk. The words of the Buddha were considered suitable offerings and the Seogka stupa also famously held a wooden model stupa containing a miniature printed dharani scroll [ EXH88 ]. This is similar to the later Japanese scrolls distributed by Empress Shōtoku in Japan [ EXH25 ]. An inscription indicates that the model stupa and text in Korea was enshrined at the same time as the reliquary, possibly dating it as far back as the early 8th century ( see the Books story for more ).

As shown in the diagram above, the two outer bowls of the Hōryūji reliquary [ EXH83 ], also contained hundreds of glass beads, pearls, pieces of crystal, ivory, shell and amber, and incense (agarwood— see our Living in Belief story  and  EXH61 ).

As the collection and worship of relics proliferated, they inevitably became part of the gift-giving of the Silk Roads, as seen in the relics sent to Britain with Augustine [ EXH15 ] as gifts from Pope Gregory, or the śarīra taken by Jianzhen to Japan. But, given the demand, it is not surprising that relics soon became an item of trade: an 8th-century Chinese story tells of a minister in the Chinese capital, Chang’an, gifting a relic to a local monk. The monk then took it to the Western Market, where he sold it to a foreigner for a great price. Thefts are also recorded: the attempt by Chinese monk, Mingyuan (明遠), to steal the Buddha’s tooth relic from the temple in Sri Lanka was unsuccessful: it remains there today. In Christian Europe, bodies were exhumed and bones sold. Forgeries were common: Augustine denounced impostors who wandered around disguised as monks, making a profit from the sale of spurious relics. Relic veneration and trade continues today. The Russian warship, the Moska, had a piece of the True Cross and altar in its structure and a quick search online will find plenty of sellers of 'authenticated' relics, both Buddhist and Christian.

Relics offered the faithful the means to identify with individuals closer to them in time and space than the founders of their faiths, and to worship material objects which, they believed, could bring them closer to their gods.

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