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This essay examines two shoe soles cut from a Torah scroll which British historian and collector of Judaica Cecil Roth collected in Greece in 1946. As Holocaust relics, the Torah scroll shoe soles are, in turn, sacred and sacrilegious, texts and objects, Greek Jewish and non-Jewish Greek artifacts. Roth's recovery of the shoe soles is compromised by occurring under the auspices of the British Army during the Greek Civil War and in the controversial climate of collecting Judaica displaced by the Holocaust. I discuss the ongoing story of the shoe soles: their separation, their use, and their best location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hariulf’s History of St Riquier is usually consulted for detail on liturgical, architectural and political history, but is rarely considered in its entirety. It was written in the changing and competitive world of the late eleventh century, when there were challenges for established communities, both in terms of innovative approaches to monasticism and the emergence of new political entities and potential patrons. In the past that Hariulf creates St Riquier had been the focal point of Ponthieu for generations and had stood the test of time as the conduit of royal patronage and liberality, symbolised by its great Carolingian church built by Abbot Angilbert. It remained, in Hariulf’s view, a centre of monastic excellence, whose abbots responded to and practised contemporary spirituality, and it had adopted strategies to strengthen its position, including care for its patrimony, securing new relics and memorialising its past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heavy military attack and colonial domination during the successive Japanese invasion wars hit the Chinese traditional culture and people the hardest and wreaked havoc on cultural relics, causing a catastrophic and irremediable loss to society. The topic of restitution of looted Chinese cultural relics during these wars arose owing to the long-pending historical issues between China and Japan. However, this issue has never attracted significant attention from the international community. Applying empirical analysis and drawing on the case study, this paper primarily focuses on two typical representative cases of the recovery of looted Chinese cultural relics from Japan, which triggered three significant issues to be addressed: the legal analysis of two recovery cases through litigation and non-litigation relief; proving the legality concerning different ownership rights of the Chinese government and individuals seeking to recover state-owned and privately-owned cultural relics; exploring the legal grounds for recovering state-owned and privately-owned cultural relics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What sacred objects did the Lusignan kings of Cyprus treasure in their collection of holy items? Certainly, they had fragments of the Holy Cross and saints' skulls, but what about Passion relics such as the titulus placed above the crucified Christ, or the white rock to which the cross was affixed? This study explores overlooked fourteenth-century Franciscan apocryphal stories about the life of Christ and didactic narratives which, among other things, cite Passion relics and their respective proprietors. In the following essay, I will turn attention to relics which, according to these texts, were in the safe-keeping of the kings of Cyprus. In addition to evaluating the reliability of such evidence, I will discuss the nature of the relics, identify the mysterious relic-hoarder king, and seek to uncover a representation of such a relic in the 'Royal Chapel' at Pyrga, Larnaca. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines three of the most iconic sites associated with Islamic mysticism, or Sufism, in Ottoman Hungary. These are three mausoleums located in Buda, Pécs, and Turbék, near Zigetvár. The first two are the final resting places of the Sufi mystics known as Gül Baba and Idris Baba. The third is Sultan Süleyman's mausoleum next to a Sufi dervish lodge, the foundations of which were uncovered during recent excavations. The research sheds light on the (embodied) material practices associated with these sites, as well as their sensory engagement and synaesthetic experiences. The bodies of the spiritual leaders, presented in the first two cases, serve as living sites of mystical experiences, both through self-destructive acts graphically represented on their bodies, and through bodily miracles such as hypercorporeality, multilocality, and dream visions. The third case concerns the body of a secular and a spiritual leader, the temporary burial of his disemboweled and embalmed body in the mausoleum at Turbék, and the tradition that his heart and entrails were kept in a reliquary-like vessel at the site, which interestingly paralleled contemporary Habsburg customs. Building on Thomas Csordas (1990) and Manuel Vásquez (2011), I explore the role of human and non-human "supernatural" actors interacting in these mystical networks, focusing on the role of their embodiment and materiality, their movement and their physically fragmented bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stone relics in the Meili section of the ancient Tea Horse Road in Yunnan, China, are important for Sino-Tibetan cultural heritage. However, these relics were exposed to the risk of hydraulic erosion due to the construction of a hydroelectric power station, and thus protecting these relics is now imperative. Preliminary investigations and analyses of stone relics are crucial for their subsequent conservation and restoration. Thus, in this study, multi-analytical characterization including the microstructure, mineralogical characteristics, elements, and chemical compositions of the stone relics was conducted using optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS), polarized light microscopy, x-ray diffraction (XRD), and attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR). In addition, the contaminants and pigments on the surfaces of the stone relics were identified and analyzed by Raman spectroscopy. OM, SEM and Raman spectroscopy indicated that the surface contaminants mainly comprised of moss and soil dust, and some of the stone relics exhibited porosity and weathering. Polarized light microscopy revealed that the mineralogical morphology of stone samples mainly appeared as allotriomorphic, hypidiomorphic, and colloform structures. ATR-FTIR, and XRD confirmed that the stone relics mainly consisted of quartz, muscovite, illite, and chlorite. In addition, Raman spectroscopic analysis showed that the pigments on the relic surfaces included chalk, barium white, langite, green earth, amorphous carbon black, chrome red, and chrome yellow. The findings of this study may provide scientific support for the conservation of the stone relics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the visual responses (with political, spiritual and social connotations) to the visual statements about the role of Rome and the pope in Western Christendom made by Pope Urban V (1362–1370) at the time of his return to the Urbe from Avignon in 1367–9. It investigates the plurality of responses to these papal statements, the chain of further visual communications that these statements set in motion as well as their longue durée by engaging with the reception of the pontiff's powerful messages by different audiences, both secular and ecclesiastic, from Rome to the Italian peninsula more broadly, and southern France, in the following 50 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, the walls of the Theban Tomb 123 (Luxor, Egypt) are the result and evidence of diverse histories developed over a span of 3400 years. They encapsulate, as overlapping layers, material and intangible transformations that reveal multiple uses, meanings, and ontologies which converged in the necropolis of Thebes. At this tomb, originally built for a scribe named Amenemhet, a detailed study of the stratigraphic matrix of one of the walls was undertaken. Forty-eight stratigraphic units have been documented and arranged in a Harris matrix through an exhaustive survey of the macroscopic evidence about the historical changes on the wall. The analysis performed reveals the complexity of these spaces and their multiple occupations across thousands of years and sheds light on the unambiguous visions of these places regarded as pristine relics of the pharaonic past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since China's inheritance, the history of the long river has left a brilliant cultural treasure. As a witness of history, they reflect the process of human activities. With today's rapid development, the protection of cultural relics is gradually deepening. Stone coated cultural relics are the most inheritance. However, the body material of stone carut articles is extremely fragile under the influence of time and environment. It is necessary to make it easy to continue to keep; it is necessary taking the necessary protection measures. But currently used protective materials have certain defects more or less. This paper is based on this, with the purpose of extending the life of the cultural relics; it proposed the use of nanomaterial Ti02 modified common protection materials WD-10. It performed comparison by adding different concentrations of Ti02, and the microsurrant rock obtained by the ground is used as a sample to detect its protection effect. And it has achieved appropriate ratios to enhance protection performance. The experimental results of this paper showed that the concentration of Ti02 was a modification result of the modification of the concentration, and the performance was most excellent. The value in the detection of the moist angle is 80% or more and excellent ultraviolet aging properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An African ploughing his fields in western Mpondoland in 1910 uncovered two elephant tusks at the site of what had once been King Faku's homestead. This obscure incident in the Transkeian Territories of South Africa provides an entry point to examining the consolidation of colonial bureaucratic control, and African responses to it, in the second decade of the 20th century by the Union of South Africa government. The unearthing of the tusks illuminated, on the one hand, Mpondo attempts to control the relics of Faku, and the memories associated with them, and to reassert traditional authority over the allocation of land; and on the other, efforts by the colonial administration of the Transkei to tighten control over land and strengthen 'native affairs' administration. In the process it explores how differing approaches to dealing with the government and contestations for power within Mpondo society impacted on their relations with the colonial state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every year thousands of pilgrims, most on foot, travel to Santiago de Compostela, a medieval pilgrimage destination in northwestern Spain. Recent scholarship has mapped a historical shift of the focus in contemporary pilgrimage from the relics of St. James, ostensibly held in the crypt in Santiago's cathedral, to the journey itself as a primary site of meaning and transformation. However, this scholarship has not addressed the ways in which the meaning of pilgrimage is bound up with pilgrims' practices relating to their own and others' bodies. Pilgrims' feet, in particular, have become a fraught focus of contemporary pilgrimage. Pilgrims' practices of walking the pilgrimage, together with recorded images of their feet in social media videos, work to materialize two forms of nostalgia. The first involves the desire to return to a past time of imagined authentic pilgrimage. The second encompasses a melancholic recognition of the fragility of the present moment and longing for human connection. A detailed reading of two YouTube videos documenting the care of pilgrims' own and others' injured feet allows for an analysis of how recorded images of feet posted by pilgrims on social media reveal the complex relationship between bodies, social media, and nostalgia in pilgrimage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his book Le portrait du roi, Louis Marin seems to continue Ernst Kantorowicz's work on the Middle Ages, extending it to Early Modernity. Marin's book adds another body to the historical and juridical political bodies of Kantorowicz's King described in The Two King's Bodies, namely the portrait of the King. According to Marin, this body drives the interchange between the historical and juridical bodies; hence, the absolutist king has three bodies in one: the historical, the semiotic-sacramental, and the juridical. Following Kantorowicz and Marin's argumentative line, this paper addresses the ways in which absent or dead bodies can act politically, in particular, the shift in political legitimation that goes hand in hand with the transition from a politics of relics to a politics of images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on pectoral crosses, which functioned as relic containers and amulets and were characterized by a blend of figural imagery and inscriptions. Arguably produced between the late eighth and the early ninth centuries, the geographical origins of the crosses are still contested between Byzantium and Rome, while other alternatives have yet to be fully considered. Some of these pectoral crosses bear inscriptions in Greek which have been interpreted as 'incorrect', but may reflect the conventions of spoken language in an evolving hellenophone Mediterranean. It is possible that their owners read the text during private prayer and meditation while holding the pendant. In particular, this paper considers a now lost enkolpion, the inscriptions of which, in Latin and Greek, reveal that it was intended for an audience familiar with both languages, at least in religious practices. One of its inscriptions quotes a well-known liturgical hymn sung at Mass before the celebration of the Eucharist. Thus, there is scope for a wider investigation into the function as well as cultural origins of pectoral crosses. The combination of figural illustrations and inscriptions and the variety of precious materials and relics on such pectoral crosses may have been intended to elicit a sort of 'tactile prayer', suggesting the use of synesthetic ways to apprehend the Incarnate Logos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers a previously unpublished collection of writings relating to the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo, fought in Belgium on 18 June 1815.1 The author of these documents, Thomas Ker, was a Scottish merchant living in Brussels at the time of the battle, and this discussion places his observations on the battlefield in the days following the famous encounter between Napoleon and Wellington in the context of accounts by civilian visitors published soon after the event (mostly between 1816 and 1817). These include works by Sir Walter Scott, Robert Hills, James Simpson, and, importantly also, women, with Charlotte Eaton, Georgiana Capel, and Anne Laura Thorold among them. These writings are used here to provide insight into the transformation of Waterloo from a scene of carnage to a popular tourist attraction, with a particular focus on the role of relic collection in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reliquaries were among the most highly valued items in the medieval churches, and cathedrals accumulated hundreds of them. Their shapes and materials, the relics contained within, and other essential details were registered in lists written by cathedral treasurers. In the Nordic countries, most medieval reliquaries as well as written documents concerning them have disappeared. However, a few inventories with relics and reliquaries from Nordic cathedrals are preserved. This essay examines how the material dimensions of reliquaries were put into words in those lists and what the chosen words reveal about the way these objects were perceived by their keepers and audiences. [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]

Bernardo de Toro (Seville 1570–Rome 1643) was a devotee of the Immaculate Conception and the last leader of a mystic group called the Brotherhood of La Granada. This article analyses what Toro did to create two shrines dedicated to the Brotherhood in the convents of La Concepción (Lebrija) and La Encarnación (Seville) of which neither has survived. This article reassembles their original components, which included the remains of the four leaders of the Brotherhood and investigates how Toro combined the relics of the four men, their portraits and the image of the Immaculate Conception in order to safeguard their spiritual legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Key Cultural Relics Protection Sites in China (CKCRPS) are part of China's tangible cultural heritage with the highest level of protection. These sites constitute an important witness and remnant of Chinese civilization. Little research attention has been devoted to heritage conservation and tourism use of CKCRPS, however. Therefore, this article aims to promote the conservation planning and tourism revitalization utilization of CKCRPS by studying its spatial and temporal differentiation characteristics. This article uses geospatial analysis to explore the spatial distribution and temporal evolution of the 5,053 CKCRPS and their impact on tourism development in various provinces of mainland China. The results show that CKCRPS is mainly concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the sites have experienced the evolution process of concentration–dispersion–reconcentration–redispersion, and the program has a significant positive impact on tourism development, but the influence is smaller in central provinces and greater in peripheral provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Mexico the dispatching of relics—body parts, skin, blood, or other personal objects with saintly residue—has become relatively commonplace. With a focus on the 2011 tour of the wax effigy and relics of Pope John Paul II, this essay draws on recent work at the intersection of religion, aesthetics, materiality, death, and violence to reveal the unique dimensions, coherence, and patterns of movement within contemporary Catholic Church evangelism that is necessarily both spiritual and political. In emphasizing the role of media, I develop two main lines of exploration: first, the dynamics of contemporary mediatic global Catholicism which has increased its reliance on images and objects such as relics; and second, the media-spectacle of narco-violence through which images of dead bodies circulate and saturate the Mexican social imaginary. I suggest that critical scholarly attention to Catholicism as a dynamic theopolitical infrastructure is critical for a broader and more dimensioned anthropology of Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]