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This essay examines the conceptual framework that informs Marcus's distinction between history and theology, and considers what stands to be gained by this manner of classification. The essay observes that Marcus's classification hinges upon a theory of religion that views gospels as artifacts expressive of sincere belief and, further, suggests this approach serves to mystify the origins of the Christian theological metanarrative by replicating the explanation asserted within the gospels themselves. By reversing the conceptual framework and the explanatory priority, one could deploy a theory of religion that sees gospels as artifacts of persuasion and thereby argue that they aim to naturalize the initially unnatural truth claim that Jesus was the christ by connecting him to a known social type: John. From this approach, it would not be belief in Jesus as the christ that explains the modified constructions of John the Baptist; rather, modifications of John the Baptist would be precisely what construct belief in Jesus as the christ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Constantine's Letters / Konštantínove Listy is the property of Institute for Research of Constantine & Methodius's Cultural Heritage and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article, some accusations about the participation of women and men in the practices of "Dhikr-i Erre" which is the dhikr method of the Yasawiyya Order, and the claim that dhikr-i erre is a paganist relic are included and these allegations were evaluated based on Ahmad Yasawi's Diwan-ı Hikmat and other sources. The evaluation of the claims about "dhikr-i erre", the spiritual education method of Yasawiyya, which plays an important role for Turks in the understanding of Islam in Central Asia, will contribute to the approach of Yasawiyya studies to historical reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work is an attempt for a new interpretation of the 14th century charter that quotes the main localities on the road from Buda to the Czech lands up to the Hungarian border on the Morava River. Apart from the document, the road has been named as the Czech Road. The Charter is one of the bases of the overall solution, but the survey of the area of interest from Holice to the eastern foothills of the Little Carpathians became equivalently important. Landline remnants have been precisely located and connected to other communication directions. For the first time, it has been proven that the document does not have the function of the itinerary, but merely quotes localities with the collection of charges on the road with the starting points of the Buda-Czech (surrounding) countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the place of miracle mediators in the spectrum of fourteenth-century healing practitioners. Using the canonisation inquest testimony for Lady Delphine de Pui Michel, collected in Provence in 1363, the article identifies the kinds of healing practitioners available to sufferers and then looks at three miracle mediators in particular. These three miracle mediators show that all of the people making relics available to others for healing purposes had knowledge about how to produce, distribute and use relics. But some also had significant knowledge of health and medicine. This article places miracle mediators in the spectrum of healing practitioners and offers a way to study non-titled female healing practitioners in the later Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gupta Empire is often thought of as the symbol of the Golden Age in Ancient India. From the fourth to the beginning of the sixth centuries ce, Gupta emperors ruled over the greater part of North India. It is noteworthy that the true founder of the Gupta Empire, Samudragupta (c. 350 -- 75), claimed sovereignty over Sri Lanka. Besides, North India played a major role in the Singhalese chronicles written by Buddhist monks from the island. This situation leads us to study the special relationship between North India and Sri Lanka during the Gupta period. The first part of the article deals with the expansion of the Gupta Empire to control, even if indirectly, the coastal regions. The second part focuses on Buddhism, which is the ferment of cultural unity among several regions within South Asia. The third part addresses the building of the imaginary representation of Sri Lanka through the study of some extracts mainly from the Rämäyana and, to a lesser extent, from the Raghuvamsa, both texts known or thought to be known during the Gupta period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Histórica: Historia Moderna is the property of Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In her seventh-century vita of St Radegund, Baudonivia refers in passing to the attendance of a layman named Leo at an Aquitanian ecclesiastical council. This Leo may be identifiable with the ‘Leo of Poitiers’ named by Gregory of Tours as a partisan of Chramn, the rebellious son of King Chlothar i (r. 511–61). If so, then Leo's attendance suggests that the council assembled during the brief period of alliance between Chramn and Childebert i, 555/8. This long-neglected council thus provides insight into one of the major events of a comparatively obscure decade in the history of the regnum Francorum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the use and promotion of contact relics in medieval England. It argues that by the late eleventh and early twelfth century, large English monastic houses were uncomfortable with unauthorised individuals touching high status corporeal relics and so re-introduced and promoted contact relics as alternative objects of veneration. It argues that contact relics were an important aspect of English saints' cults until the Reformation, in a similar manner to Celtic and Brittonic cults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how one object—the alleged papal throne of St Peter in the Vatican—became a battleground for Protestant and Catholic readings of the early history of Christianity in Britain and Ireland. For many progressive Protestants, archaeology provided the long-sought-after scientific and material vindication of the authority of scripture. But critical analysis of scripture and historical texts could either authenticate or discredit sacred things. As tangible traces of Catholic apostolic authority, the material remains of early Roman Christianity provoked much religious, moral, and political debate in nineteenth-century Britain. This article discusses how these debates were mediated in popular print and visual culture in Britain and Ireland by examining a widely publicized pamphlet debate between the English Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman and the Irish novelist Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan). Although this was a debate about the theological authority exerted by the material remains of the past, the battle over Peter’s chair was conducted exclusively in the realm of word and image through exegesis and illustration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the volume of scholarship dedicated to crusade motivation, comparative little has been said on how the crusades affected the lives of individuals, and how this played out once the returned home. Taking as a case study a Cheshire landholder, Geoffrey of Dutton, this article looks at the reasons for his crusade participation and his actions once he returned to Cheshire, arguing that he was changed by his experiences to the extent that he was concerned with remembering and conveying his own status as a returned pilgrim. It also looks at the impact of a relic of the True Cross he brought back and gave to the Augustinian priory of Norton. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the Japanese Occupation of China (1931-45), countless Chinese cultural relics were simply destroyed or looted in accordance with Japan's notorious 'Three Alls Campaign,' also known as 'Burn all, loot all, and kill all'. Due to the 1972 Japan-Chian Joint Communiqué, however, the Chinese Government renounced its demand for war reparation from Japan. The question then becomes whether, when the Chinese Government renounced its claims for war reparations in a peace treaty. Chinese individuals still have a means to vindicate their rights to request restitution of Chinese cultural relics from Japan. The primary purpose of this research is to tackle two questions: First, was the taking of Chinese cultural relics during the Japanese Occupation prohibited by law? Second, can the Chinese individuals legally require the restitution of looted cultural relics? This paper handles a case of a 1300-year's old Tang dynasty stele in Japan which has been asked to hand over to China since 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article recounts the itinerary of a forgotten religious devotion. From 1845 to 2005, many Montreal Catholics venerated in their cathedral the relics of saint Zoticus. The remains of this mysterious saint came from the catacombs of Rome. Promoted by the clergy, the devotion to saint Zoticus was not restricted to the realm of public devotions but was adopted as an integral element of the private devotional world of many Catholics. In looking at the particular example of saint Zoticus, this article reveals the keen interest that existed for relics of catacomb saints in Quebec. The religious fervor surrounding these relics constituted one of the distinctive expressions of ultramontane piety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

St Leocadia, a fourth-century Toledan Christian virgin and patron saint of the city, miraculously emerged from a sepulchre in the presence of Ildephonsus, Archbishop of Toledo, and the Visigothic King Recesvintus, in the 7th century. After this wondrous event, in which a fragment of her veil was cut as proof of her public visitation, her body was removed from Toledo to be preserved from the Muslim conquest, taken to Flanders and eventually repatriated to her home town at the request of Philip II as the Lutheran threat to the Spanish northern territories escalated. A wave of literature and images concerning her figure was produced in the wake of three events: the return of her relics to Toledo in 1587, those of Ildephonsus in 1596 and the inauguration of the chapel of Our Lady of the Tabernacle, also in Toledo, in 1616. The following essays consider why and how this virgin saint became instrumental in cementing the alliance of Church and Monarchy as well as buttressing the Archbishop of Toledo's status as Primate of Spain in the early seventeenth century. Focusing on the historical, visual and literary portraits of Leocadia, they examine the manner in which Early Modern Spanish authors—Miguel Hernández, Lope de Vega, José de Valdivielso and Pedro Calderón de la Barca—and artists—Francisco Merino, Blas de Prado, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, Antonio de Lanchares and Pedro Orrente—imagined and recreated the narrative of her sanctity paying particular attention to the function of public witness as effected by their works as well as by their readers and viewers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rich hagiographical corpus, charters and privileges of the monastery of Werden on the Ruhr allow unparalleled access to its ninth-century history. This article focuses upon three ninth-century vitae of its founding saint which delineate both the transformations which Werden underwent in the course of the century and the ways in which the monastery attempted to respond and adapt to these changes. In so doing, it illuminates the role that saintly relics and hagiography could play in the formation of Christian communities both within and beyond cloister walls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of translation, also considering its broader definitions throughout historical periods including the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Early Modern period. It compares a number of case studies on subjects including the Medieval translation of relics and the Eucharist, Renaissance translators of pagan literature, and coin specie.

The article presents a report from an April 21-25, 2015 conference in Weingarten, Germany on the history of holy objects and saints hosted by the hagiography department of Rottenburg-Stuttgart diocese academy and the Middle Ages and Early Modern sacrality and sacralization working group of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft research society. Topics of presentations delivered included the design and use of cast metal pilgrims' badges in the Middle Ages, descriptions of relics in the medieval manuscript "Flores epytaphii sanctorum" by Thiofried von Echternach, and the deification of swami Vidyatirtha of the Srngeri Hindu temple in India as the god Svayambu-Linga.

This article examines the little-known history and, for a time, notoriety of Carfin, a 'Scottish Lourdes', re-created in 1921 in rural Lanarkshire. It explores the ways in which gendered, ethnic, sectarian and nationalist identities were negotiated and re-inscribed at this shrine commemorating the Virgin Mary and a pantheon of saints, in the context of interwar institutional insecurities about socialism, secularisation and the feminisation of religion. As a site for the materialisation and mobilisation of a robust Catholic masculinity, Carfin provided a space - outside of paid employment and beyond the labour movement - for channelling male piety, pride and self-esteem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While for the sixth/twelfth century onwards there is no lack of data allowing the recovery of the sacred geography of al-Andalus, such data are scarce for the earlier period. This article surveys the available information for Umayyad al-Andalus and how it relates to the different strata of the population, analysing it within the context of the Islamicization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the history of religious practices in Europe during the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the religious Reformation from the early 1500s to about 1570. Particular attention is paid to religious relics in Christianity and the Catholic Church. The author argues that relics were part of a larger system of beliefs and religious practices such as pilgrimage, miracles and indulgences, which were also important to the religious lives of believers.

This article examines the body of Francis Xavier, preserved whole since its exhumation in 1553, through the lens of material history. It traces the corpse's translation from the China coast to the Malay peninsula and onward to its final resting place in Goa. Historical sources relating to the many examinations of the body are discussed, as well as the devotional traditions that emerged as a result of the miraculous preservation of the body in the tropic heat of Western India. Testimony from late-sixteenth- and seventeenth-century visitors sheds light on how early-modern Asian Catholics understood the relic. [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 changing meanings of a powerful Corfiot symbol, St Spyridon, the patron saint of Corfu. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the saint – whose cult had been bolstered by the civil rather than the ecclesiastical authorities – was venerated by both the Greek and Latin inhabitants of Corfu, thus symbolizing a unity at least on the level of the civic religion. Following the 1716 siege of the town by the Ottomans, one can clearly see that the Venetian state and its representatives did not hesitate to lavish many honours on St Spyridon in thanks for his alleged intervention during the siege, which saved not only Corfu but the whole of Western Christianity. At the end of the century though, when the island fell to the allied Russian and Ottoman forces, the old equilibrium between the two religious groups began to become unsettled. A text written by the Orthodox theologian Athanassios Parios just a few years after the Russo-Ottoman victory attempts to rewrite the behaviour of the saint towards the Catholics and present him as the defender of the Orthodox Church and the enemy of any rapprochement between Greeks and Latins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the execution of priests at the end of the 16th century including Edmund Campion, Alexander Brian, and Robert Southwell, focusing on the writings of recusants discussing these executions. Other topics include the martyrdom of the executed priests, the use of the martyrs' body parts and possessions as relics, and the accessibility of relics in the late 16th century.

The tomb, body and relics of the Anglo-Saxon St Cuthbert (d.AD 68y) are best known for then miraculous preservation and migration across North East England in flight from Viking raiders throughout the period AD 795-995, before coming to rest at Durham Cathedral (Cramp 1980; Campbell 1991, 79). Their current display emphasizes their role as 'Treasures' of the Cathedral and as symbols of England's conversion and early Christianity. What are not mentioned are the modern interactions with the tomb that led to the creation of their modem display as a key attraction of the World Heritage Site. As this article will argue, post-medieval examinations and uses of the tomb have also been important in attempts to control and produce very particular meanings at the site of display. I offer an examination of nineteenth-century engagements with the tomb and body of St Cuthbert, showing how the saint's remains were a locus of conflicting claims of authenticity and ownership. Through antiquarian practices of exhumation and detailed publications of their findings, curator-custodians were engaged in a distinctively local struggle to produce an authoritative narrative for the saint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a cup looted during the Second China War of 1860, as it moved through the hands of different collectors and as it changed its identity and physical form. Identified as the ‘Skull of Confucius’ when it was first exhibited at the London International Exhibition of 1862, the cup, made from the calvaria of a human skull, was richly mounted in gold and jewels. Following its exhibition it quickly changed owners, but soon lost its identity with Confucius; eventually stripped of its mounts, it reverted to being merely a fragment of skull. As such it then became a craniological specimen, examined by those interested in its racial and cultural origins. Pieced together from a variety of sources, the skull-cup’s collecting history provides an interesting example of the many ways in which objects can change materially as well as in meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the collection of relics at the monastery of the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration near Clyde, Missouri from 1920 to 1931. Topics include the monastery's aid to European Catholics after World War I; the sending of shrines and relics from Austrian, German, and Italian religious orders to the monastery; and spiritual aspects of the feeding of the hungry through the monastery's aid efforts.

In 1599 Valencia celebrated the arrival of an ancient Christian martyr whose remains were the latest addition to the collection of the city's archbishop, Juan de Ribera (1532-1611). Through an examination of some of Archbishop Ribera's relic acquisitions, I explore the inner workings of the early modern sacred economy of relics. Ribera's collection strategies blended distinct modes of exchange and linked him to a clandestine economy of relic theft. These transactions reflected the relic's own uncertain ontological status as both person and object. This ambivalence became a factor that fostered an atmosphere of anxiety around the early modern relic economy, as did Protestant reformers' critiques and their upending of the traditional Christian symbolic order. The reaffirmations of the cult of relics by the Tridentine Church stabilized the value of the sacred commodities. The economy of relics illustrates how the sacred constitutes a heretofore underexamined area of inquiry for commodity studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the formation processes at an unparalleled Bronze Age settlement in the Iberian Meseta. The site of El Cerro (Burgos, Spain) presents a series of challenging features: the simultaneous inhumation of three subadults alongside a dwelling quarter and adjacent pits, some of them filled with apparent formality, including such anachronistic elements as Neolithic and Beaker items and several placed deposits, such as a leg of a cow. A critical evaluation of the contextual dataset, a re-fitting operation, and an assessment of the abrasion and size of a ceramic sample were carried out. The archaeological peculiarities of the site are explained as a contextually specific cultural response to a grievous and traumatic episode: the death of three young siblings, which entailed the abandonment of the settlement through prescribed practices. Some depositions are a product of recognizable intentionality, while others are regarded as unintended cumulative outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the attitudes among Protestants toward a Catholic pilgrimage to the Holy Robe in the cathedral of Trier, Germany, in 1844. Focusing on the Protestant parishes of Winningen, Koblenz, Trier, and Bonn, Germany, the author seeks to shed light on the confessional conflicts and debates about the relationship between the Protestant Prussian state and the Catholic Church in the 19th century. Issues addressed include the social conditions of Catholics and Protestants, Ultramontanism, and the history of religious processions in the Rhineland region of Germany.

For a long time the treasure of relics, donated by duke Rudolph IV of Austria to the newly founded collegiate chapter All Saints at St Stephen's in Vienna, has attracted much interest from historical researchers. The earliest written source for the treasure, which is mostly lost today, is kept in the archives of the diocese of Vienna and dates back to the second half of the 14th century (relic inventary no. 1). The edition at hand is based on two only slightly later manuscripts, the first of which was written for the provost, and the second one, containing numerous additions and glosses, for the custodian of the collegiate chapter. The commentary provides information on the provenance of the relics and draws on early and recent research on the appearance of the reliquaries. An illustrated inventory, the "Heylthumbuch" from 1502, supplies corresponding pictures (which can be downloaded from the website of the IÖG) for the illustration of the former treasure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on a conference on early Christian cemeteries, held in Regensburg, Germany, from April 19-20, 2013. Focusing mainly on the third century, participants discussed such topics as the catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter, Callixtus, and Praetextatus in Rome, Italy, Christian funeral laws and customs from the second to the eighth century, and the role of relics in the writings of Greek Christian church father Johannes Chrysostomus.

The article discusses the approach of sculptor Tom Marioni to his works which defies the articulation of times and tenses of when his work occurred. Also discussed is Marioni's approach of using objects as artifacts and relics of activity. It further discusses his approach to sites for drinking beer wherein a layer of history informs on the performance and audience positioning.

This article considers a particular episode in the history of Wenlock Priory, the Shropshire monastery where, in 1101, were discovered the relics of St Mildburg by a community of Cluniac monks from France who had colonized the abbey in the generation following the Norman Conquest. Building on recent invaluable work conducted on the subject by Paul Hayward, this article situates the invention of Mildburg's relics in the larger history of religious life in Wenlock, and examines the problematical Miracula Inventionis Beatae Mylburge Virginis and related sources in order to reconstruct an image of the cult and assess the role the discovery of Mildburg's relics played in the developing social and political microcosm of Wenlock and its environs. It will be argued that the invention of Milburg's relics was an attempt by the Cluniac monks to consolidate their institutional position in the area that is likely to have met with mixed feelings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The account of Sir Richard Guldeford's pilgrimage, printed in 1511, is just one of over 500 surviving medieval accounts of the Jerusalem pilgrimage. In many ways conventional, it nonetheless bears a number of distinctive features. Its presentation of first-person detailed eyewitness testimony in conjunction with judicious use of source material, innovative treatment of travel balanced with sober and restrained piety, and eschewal of some of the more fabulous aspects of pilgrimage literature, all make it an important example of the vogue for sober piety in late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century England. It provides evidence of critical engagement with debates surrounding pilgrimage and related aspects of religious practice such as indulgences and the cult of relics, and it is an important example of new approaches to the writing and publishing of the literature of pilgrimage and travel. Richard Guldeford, royal courtier and civil servant, did not write the account of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but it emanated from the Guldeford family's interests in fashionable humanist learning and reformist religious sensibilities. The text's innovations and tensions are representative of wider shifts and deeper fault-lines in late medieval religious culture prior to the enormous religious changes of the Reformation, and are further evidence of the ways in which pre-Reformation orthodox religious culture was neither homogeneous nor unchanging. Above all, it offered a reformed and rehabilitated practice of the Jerusalem pilgrimage at a time when pilgrimage was increasingly vulnerable to attacks from both orthodox and heterodox critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author compares two 12th century medieval sources, the "Descriptio Lateranensis ecclesiae" by John the Deacon and the Icelandic itinerary "Leiðarísir," both of which list relics from saints that were preserved in the Basilica of St. John Lateran and the Chapel of St. Lawrence, or Sancta Sanctorum, in the Palatium Lateranense in Rome. The dating of the texts, Marian relics from Saint Mary the Virgin, and medieval Popes are also mentioned.

In 1463, construction was underway on the Fatih Mosque in Istanbul by Sultan Mehmet II. According to one of the Sultan's ambassadors, the Mosque was located "in the best site of the city." The site of the new mosque was the Church of the Holy Apostles, which had served as a site of Byzantine imperial ceremony. While the circumstances of its destruction remain murky, Israel argues that the demolition of the church was subsumed into the rhetoric of conflict as Mehmet conquered Venetian territory along the Adriatic, and as Pope Pius II tried to stir enthusiasm for a crusade. Against this backdrop of political strife, this article explores the reproduction and redefinition of the Church of the Holy Apostles through traces of its relics and architectural forms as the Republic again redefined their relationship with the Byzantine Empire, claiming inheritance over its patrimony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Se presenta un ensayo sobre el origen y evolución de la idea de souvenir como símbolo de la modernidad, apoyado en el concepto de souvenir desarrollado por el filósofo alemán Walter Benjamin. Los temas discutidos incluyen el souvenir como vía para expresar la subjetividad, historia de las reliquias en la tradición cristiana y aspectos psicológicos del coleccionismo.

Social studies students can learn to glean historical information from the study of material culture through active engagement as curators. Teachers can guide students through a pre-survey of helpful reading materials and then through selecting items of personal significance to them: creating labels that objectively describe the chosen items as to origin, composition, background, and provenance; exchanging the created sets of file cards; examining the cards received in the exchange; inferring factual information about the owner of the selected items; and sharing deductions with the class. From this exercise, students will have a chance to learn how historians, anthropologists, and other social scientists use critical thinking in their work, how much can be learned from material culture, and how missteps can result from overtheorizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presented the history of mining area Certej. [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]

The article presents an examination into the history of relics within the Protestant culture of Europe in the years following the English Reformation. Extensive details are given describing the widespread veneration of relics throughout Europe and England in the period leading up to the Reformation, the aggressive physical and literary iconoclastic polemic movement against their veneration during the Reformation by Protestant leaders, and the underground continuation of the practice by the Catholic community of England.

The complexity of cultural exchange witnessed in the archaeological record of ancient Cyprus and its impact on the iconographical repertoire of divine images dedicated in its sanctuaries requires a more nuanced theoretical model than those currently in use. In particular, artistic influences broadly defined as Near Eastern, Egyptian, or Greek have often been isolated as evidence of ethnic division across the religious landscape of Cyprus, even within the same sanctuary. As a result, many Cypriote sanctuaries are interpreted as host to a pantheon of foreign and local divine personalities. Such an interpretation has proven especially problematic in the case of one divine type that features a male figure clad in a lion skin, mastering a small lion and brandishing a club. Rather than privileging foreign parts over the more culturally meaningful whole, this article considers the value (and validity) of postcolonial theory as a model for examining the relationship between image and identity in Cypriote religion. While post-colonial critiques traditionally function within a modern sociopolitical context, recent scholarship has highlighted the relevance of postcolonial concepts such as "hybridity," "middle ground," and "third space" for the interpretation of archaeological data in ancient zones of contact such as Cyprus. In the case of Cypriote divine iconography during the first millennium B.C.E., a postcolonial approach suggests additional ways of thinking about novel identities produced in the context of local sanctuaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The facts regarding the saints of the major churches of Zurich are easy to establish. A priory, later known as the Grossmünster, was erected on the east side of the Limmat over the supposed burial sites of the early Christian martyrs Felix and Regula. In 853 Louis the German founded an abbey of canonesses, dedicated to the same saints, on the west side of the river immediately opposite. In the mid-twelfth century, sculptured reliefs in the new buildings at both sites described episodes from the saints' legend. The Grossmünster acquired Charlemagne relics in 1233, about the same time that a new saint, Exuperantius, for whom there is no historical basis, mysteriously joined Felix and Regula as a companion martyr. Shortly before 1300 the Chronica universalis Turicensis likened Louis' daughters, the first abbesses of his church, now known as the Fraumünster, to saints, mentioning miracles at their tombs in the south transept. A fresco painted nearby about 1300 recorded the earlier translation of the relics of Felix and Regula from the Grossmünster to the Fraumünster in a way that played up the importance of this event.This paper examines these events as part of a competition between these two foundations in which works of art advertised the status and number of their saints, a one-upmanship in which each successive incident was intended to represent the greater prestige of one's own saints in contrast to those of the competing institution. The Grossmünster's interest in Charlemagne, for example, has little to do with any historical connection of the saint to either the foundation or the city, but more likely derives from the fact that Charlemagne was the more famous predecessor of Louis the German. Charlemagne's greater age, legendary status as the first Holy Roman emperor, and recent sainthood thus trump the Fraumünster's longer-standing connection to the Carolingians. The very name Exuperantius and the unusual terms of his "appearance" suggest similar competitive grounds as the basis for his invention.This "battle of the saints" can be seen as the outward expression of a struggle for spiritual and political power within the city. Images of the city's original martyrs and depictions of newly claimed saints defined institutional identity, but it was an identity in flux as these rival institutions sought to position themselves in relation to one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the effect of the controversy concerning the use of phials of blood on the decline of the liberal Catholic movement in the 19th century. Identification of grave of martyrs; Belief on remnants of blood of martyrs; Arguments against the authenticity of relics.

This article examines the late fifteenth-century reliquary bust of St. Just in the Schweizerisches Landes-museum in Zürich. Its unique cephalophoric form is explained by the text of the Passio Sancti Justi, which relates the particulars of St. Just's martyrdom and the establishment of his relic cult. The reliquary bust gives visual form to the narration of the passio, which would be read on the saint's feast day, at which time the reliquary would be publicly displayed. The practice of relic ostension and veneration is examined in regard to the particulars of the display of the St. Just reliquary and reliquary busts in general. Other narrative modes of decoration of reliquary busts are examined to underscore the uniqueness of the active narrative mode of the St. Just bust. The visual hegemony of the reliquary bust of St. Just in Flums is posited through comparison with subsequent images of the saint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of body art during the Middle Ages, compared to modern commercial art. Contemporary popular culture has brought to attention medieval body-art reliquaries on display in museums. Included in the discussion are the Medieval reasons to use body art, noting their difference from those of contemporary artists, and that contemporary visual culture, increased violence in the media, and commercial jewelry advertisements has glamorized body parts. During the Middle Ages, usage of body parts in art was a systematic study of saints, relics, and cults.

During the early 980s Archbishop Egbert of Trier commissioned two shaped reliquaries: an episcopal staff encasing relics of an episcopal staff allegedly given to Trier's first archbishop by the apostle Peter, and a traveling altar containing relics of the apostle Andrew's sandal and of Peter's beard. Egbert had a particular knack for making use of the relics of saints, embellishing them with ritual and with art in order to bind his see not only to the court of heaven and its authority beyond time, but to the sacred past and its apostolic authority on earth. This article examines how Egbert used the reliquaries of Peter's staff and Andrew's sandal to forge this double bond of sacred authority. He emerges as a master of what we might, with Claude Lévi-Strauss, call sacred bricolage: able to spot utility in objects and traditions which had hitherto been overlooked and forgotten, he assembled from the old and seemingly outmoded something new and wholly remarkable. He staked out his claims through material objects. Only after he had crafted the objects was a more elaborate context provided through the creation of textual instruments in hagiography and privileges. The reliquaries of Peter's staff and Andrew's sandal celebrated a continuity between past and present that is usually believed to have existed first in texts. This article argues that—on the contrary—the texts elaborate the objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1228, during the construction of the Gothic choir and chevet of the collegiate church of Saint-Quentin, the relics of the church's three patron saints were brought up from the crypt to be displayed in the upper church. Heads, hands and arms were separated from the relics and placed in new reliquaries. Architectural historians have tied such events to building chronologies in the past. This article focuses on social, political, and spiritual aspects of the relationship between the display and use of relics, especially body-part relics, to a Gothic church and its decoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the first time since the nineteenth century, published articles, monographs, conferences, and lectures dedicated to the medieval cult of relics have proliferated during the past decade. Studies specifically of reliquaries that assume the form of parts of the human body have begun to occupy a small corner of this field of research. The newness of this pursuit in literature published in English is evidenced in the rather awkward and inelegant term "body-part reliquaries" that has been adopted in the context of this publication of papers that were first offered at the College Art Association in San Antonio in February 1995. This essay surveys the state of research on "body-part reliquaries." By way of specific example, particular emphasis is placed on French works, a number of which survive and about which there is considerable documentation. Given the perspective of the author, a museum curator and specialist on the subject of head reliquaries, consideration is also placed on the installation of such reliquaries in American museums and what that suggests, historically, about their perception as works of art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]