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Liturgy was the perfect and unparalleled medium for public relations in the Middle Ages, and when it came to relics, it could transform any stone, bone, or a piece of wood into an object worthy of devotion. This article revolves around the activating force of the relics of Mary Magdalene in medieval France. It examines two liturgies—from Vézelay and from Saint-Maximin in Provence—honouring the saint, representing two distinct responses whose character reflects the priorities of the communities that produced them and the agendas that set them in motion. Liturgy was accorded a special role in bolstering the claims of Provence over the corporeal presence of Mary Magdalene in its midst, with liturgists adopting a more audacious and unreserved vocabulary to validate these claims over those of Vézelay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes to read Robert de Clari's account of Constantinople through the lenses of vibrant materiality, orientalism and the ethics and affects of colonial pursuit. Why was his account so different from Geoffroy de Villehardouin's? Why was he so focused on objects, on materials, and marvels? If we position his text, one of the first vernacular prose histories in French, in its relation to romance, to broader narratives of empire and the "Saracen" other, and in regard to the politics of colonial logic, we see that his version of events reflects broader logics and legacies of the Crusades and their attempts to colonize, rationalize, and interpret the "Other" through orientalist, racist, and marvelous lenses. Clari's account justifies the sacking of a sister empire—a Christian empire—due to the wealth of the relics conquered and the affective power therein, thus rationalizing the imagined end of Christendom at the borders of Byzantium. Clari thus uses the affective power of relics to imagine a united Christendom, united against a foreign, pagan/"Saracen" other, and to participate in the prophesy that, vaticinium ex eventu, Constantinople was always marked for conquest by the "French" and never for truce with the "Saracens." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 11th–12th centuries, extreme ascetic practices reappeared in Western Europe, in particular, the wearing of hauberks and heavy iron chains, associated with penitence and eremitism. This article discusses the charisma of three ascetic saints of the 12th century: Bernard the Penitent (d. 1182), Wulfric of Haselbury (d. 1154/55), and Godric of Finchale (d. 1170). Their hagiographies were written shortly after their death. The authors emphasize that they were revered as holy men already in their lifetime. Their charismatic power was revealed by miracles of healing and prophecy, sometimes in visions. The manifestations of their charisma continued and even increased after their death and were transmitted and spread through their relics. Their mortifications and the signs of their holiness are comparable to those of the stylites and other hermits of Syria of late Antiquity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1082, at the council of Charroux convened by the papal legate Amatus of Oloron, astonished witnesses observed the Holy Prepuce, a rare body relic of Christ himself, to be miraculously spotted with fresh blood. This spectacular miracle holds implications for our understanding of charismatic strategies of religious reform in France in the era of Pope Gregory VII. Gregory's use of standing legates with regional mandates, such as Amatus, was a novelty in papal administration, but the legates, though empowered as proxies of the pope, were often weak lieutenants. When they could not induce or coerce cooperation, they frequently confronted the impotence of their legal–canonical mandates. The miracle at Charroux, I will show, exemplifies an alternative charismatic strategy, harnessing liturgical art and spectacle to magnify the legate's stature as an authority in the context of the Eucharistic controversy and religious reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The story of the Śrāvastī miracles is one episode of the Buddha's biography that is depicted in the art forms of Dvāravatī from about the 7th to the 11th centuries CE. The fact that many artefacts were produced—in such variety, over such a long period, and at so many sites—shows the popularity of the scene of the Śrāvastī miracles in the Dvāravatī culture. The objective of this research paper is to analyze the significance of the story of the Śrāvastī miracles that affected the creation of Dvāravatī art in Thailand by examining the textual sources together with the Dvāravatī artefacts. The analysis shows that the stories of the Śrāvastī miracles were significant in various ways, being one of the Buddha's necessary deeds, a principal miracle only performed by the Buddha, a means of converting others to Buddhism, and a key source for the idea of making Buddha images as an act of merit. These significant features may explain the popularity of the Śrāvastī miracle theme in Dvāravatī culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stories involving lost items, sick or missing birds and animals, and the strange behaviour of objects such as coins, candles and relic containers are frequently encountered in high medieval miracle collections, with the 'jokes' of St Foy of Conques being a well-known example. Such miracles, in which saints were thought to incongruously exercise their powers on 'minor' or 'trifling' matters, provoked a range of reactions, from laughing delight to unease and outright dismissal. This essay argues that the 'trifling' miracle would be a useful addition to typologies of medieval miracles, and contrasts the ways in which two late twelfth-century monks at Canterbury, Benedict of Peterborough and William of Canterbury, worked to integrate and explain stories like these in their collections of the miracles of Thomas Becket. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks how images came to be regarded as having miraculous power in the centuries before Iconoclasm. It argues that by the fifth century, the miraculous power of relics was intimately connected with their materiality, specifically the belief that relics were imbued with power by contact with a saint. Given this paradigm, images suffered from a lack; if images are representations of saints and not matter touched by them, they should lack the power of relics. Over the course of the sixth and seventh centuries, this apparent lack was overcome by reconceiving images. Rather than simply identifying images with representation, they were understood as material objects in their own right. Understanding images as holy matter rather than representations alone helped usher images into practices of veneration and supplication in the sixth and seventh centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relics traveled for many reasons in the central Middle Ages, including fundraising and property defense. This article examines the effects, rather than the causes, of that mobility; it argues that the physical proximity of multiple relics that occurred as a result of their travel could lead to open competition between their supporters. Despite ecclesiastical efforts to downplay the impression that some saints "outranked" others, ideas about the relative status of saints affected both the treatment of traveling relics and choices about how and when relics were moved. The transportation of a relic into the presence of another raised questions with no easy answers: which saint should miracles be attributed to? Which relics should precede others? Where should visiting relics be housed? Faced with addressing these problems, hagiographers often portrayed laypeople actively choosing to side with one saint over another, rather than in the more typical role of passive adoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of miracles, visions, predictions, and other supernatural phenomena has become important for understanding religious practices, mentalities, and the use of the past in the Middle Ages. In spite of the absence of local martyrs and saints and the small hagiographical production in Venice during the early Middle Ages, these phenomena were also relevant in this region. his article emphasizes both the unique aspects of the Venetian texts and their similarities with early medieval sources from the rest of Italy. In particular, it focuses on the ways Venetian authors employed miracles and divine interventions to shape a past that could be utilized for their present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the conversion of Anne de Gonzague, Princess of the Palatinate, which was allegedly brought about due to her experience with the True Cross. The author argues that Anne de Gonzague's conversion to Catholicism was largely impacted by her epistemological doubts concerning miracles and religious relics, which culminated in her testing of faith by placing a piece of the Cross in a fire and witnessing it not burn.

The aim of this article is to show the diffusion, survival and influence of the Christian medieval legendary in a corpus of historiographic sources. In this case, it is about how the tales of the Sevillian Saints Justa and Rufina, included in the Pasionario Hispánico, the most important hagiographic-liturgical collection in Spain and widely known in the Visigoth and Mozarab epochs, became ecclesiastical and urban stories, adapted and updated in function of the lay and ecclesiastical values and ideals. Thus, we consider that the religious and cultural tradition that grew up around the above-mentioned saints from the late antiquity was kept alive through written works. These served a clearly edifying purposes for faithful and devout Christians, with narrations that served to exalt their hometown, the city of Seville, ennobled by the illustrious patrons who, with their "tangible presence" demonstrated through their relics and miracles, sacralised it and protected its inhabitants during the Reconquest and everyday necessities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In the early 840s, Archbishop Amolo of Lyons wrote to one of his suffragan bishops about extraordinary miracles reportedly taking place at Dijon in the wake of the arrival of mysterious new relics. Re-examining the complex interaction of these relics with pre-existing social and political processes in the region and locally, this article also explores other aspects of Amolo’s letter which have been less discussed, notably its manuscript transmission and the insights it offers into structures of religious organisation. Finally, it argues that the way issues treated together in the letter tend to be separated or even opposed in the historiography points to the need for renewed, critically reflexive attention to the specificities of the Carolingian church reforms. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article sketches the origins of the veneration of relics in the early Church through the Middle Ages to a new approach to them in western Europe after the sixteenth century. They had been seen as a living link between heaven and earth, but new questions transferred them from a symbolic universe to an analytic sphere. The new question was 'how' did this work, about mechanics, not about meaning, the 'why' question, 'What is in it for me now?' How can we value relics today in our scientifically orientated world? Changes in thought are suggested together with ways to return to a serious appreciation of relics. I want to suggest that we can appreciate relics as part of a mutual dependence here and now between ourselves, the living, and the dead who are alive in Christ. This would underline for us a sense of the goodness of the flesh, as well as the accessibility of the living saints in relation to us in Christ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Franks incorporated Saxony into the Carolingian empire through a long, brutal struggle coupled with forced conversion. When Saxons themselves began to write a few decades afterwards, they had to make sense of this history and of their role and identity in their contemporary Carolingian world. In contrast to the portrayal of Saxons in writers such as Einhard and Rudolf, three ninth-century Saxon accounts of relic translations — those of Vitus, Pusinna and Liborius — reinterpreted history to claim a place for the Saxons as a distinct group equal to the Franks within the populus Christianus under the Carolingian monarchs. As a key part of their literary strategies, these authors attempted to salvage from the story of their defeat and forced Christianisation an account of God''s sovereignty, native agency and virtue (especially fidelity) as a foundational element of Saxon identity. These texts prefigure the debates about post-conquest Saxon identity which would underlay the later and better-known Ottonian triumphal self-conceptions. Moreover, the concerns of these authors led them to remarkable hagiographical innovations in grappling with paganism, conversion, miracles, social class and faith. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]