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In his famous 1543 Treatise on Relics, Jean Calvin complained that if one were to gather all the purported pieces of the True Cross from the churches and cathedrals of Europe, it would ‘form a whole ship's cargo’. This comment not only highlights the questionable authenticity of relics, but also alludes to their inherent mobility. Indeed, as portable religious objects, relics played an essential role in the drive to export Christianity across the globe. Bound as it was to contemporary mercantile and colonial politics, Christian proselytization was imbricated with the circulation of material goods. Objects crafted in far off regions, such as Gujarat and Nagasaki, gained new life in European liturgical contexts. This essay examines imported caskets crafted from mother‐of‐pearl, tortoiseshell, and lacquer that were transformed into reliquaries on the Iberian Peninsula arguing that such reliquaries harnessed the established potency of the itinerant relic, while simultaneously inventing a new visual idiom that spoke to the precarity of the Catholic faith as it traversed great transoceanic distances. In so doing, it demonstrates the active role played by technologies of transit in the shaping of material and devotional culture in the early modern era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paper‐based cultural relics are of great value and have been facing irreversible damage caused by multiple factors, among which acid hydrolysis and ultraviolet photodegradation are the main processes leading to paper deterioration. Paper protection highly relies on a limited range of materials with single functions, and the design of new materials that ensure long‐term safety and efficiency by simultaneously addressing the issues of acidification and UV degradation in paper is highly desired. In this study, the introduction of carbon dots (CDs)‐enhanced layered double hydroxides (LDH) 0D/2D nanohybrids (CDs/Mg‐Al LDH) is proposed as novel dual‐functional materials for paper protection against UV degradation and acidification. Through a CDs‐assisted in situ growth strategy, CDs/Mg‐Al LDH with ultrathin thickness (≈9.1 nm) and CDs‐intercalated structure are achieved. The CDs/Mg‐Al LDH nanohybrids demonstrate high dispersibility, strong UV absorption, and remarkable photostability, resulting in protected‐paper with decelerated acidification, oxidation, and yellowing degradation processes under both accelerated UV‐aging and dry‐heat conditions. Additionally, the protected‐paper can emit uniform blue light under 365 nm UV excitation allows for easy identification of the distributed CDs/Mg‐Al LDH within the paper, marking a unique and practical feature. This research paces a new direction for the protection of paper‐based relics with emerging carbon dots‐based 0D/2D nanomaterials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, also known as the ‘Síndone’ or ‘Holy Shroud’, faces significant doubt based on scientific evidence. Carbon‐14 testing conducted decades ago placed its origin in the Middle Ages, raising questions about its connection to Jesus Christ. This article highlights an anatomical anomaly: the hand placement covering the genitals appears inconsistent with human proportions, suggesting a possible artistic intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Life in Early Medieval Wales" by Nancy Edwards is a comprehensive and balanced synthesis of the archaeology of late Roman and early medieval Wales. The book covers the decline of the Roman province of Britannia to the end of the Viking Age, providing insights into settlements, society, daily life, agriculture, trade, belief and ritual, power and authority, and the impact of the Vikings. While the book is a valuable resource for students and scholars, it lacks in-depth discussions on mortuary practices, linear monuments, the eleventh century, and a popular synthesis for a wider readership. [Extracted from the article]

To develop an environment‐friendly detergent for textile relics adsorbing soil/rust stains, the relationship between surfactant types and concentrations, the nature of additives and the type of textile (e.g., cotton, linen, silk or wool) were systematically investigated. Results showed that the detergent formulations of sodium montmorillonite (5 g/L) as additives were overall the best options for soil stains removal on textile relics. Specifically, the most suitable surfactant for cotton, linen, silk and wool textiles relics adsorbing soil stains was rhamnolipid (8 g/L), tea saponin (6 g/L), tea saponin (8 g/L), alkyl glycosides (10 g/L), respectively. The detergent formulations of ascorbic acid (5 g/L) as additives were more beneficial for rust stains peeling‐off from the surface of the textile relics regardless of the type of surfactant and textile relics. But the optimal surfactants for different textiles relics were different. In detail, the most suitable surfactants for cotton, linen, silk and wool textiles relics adsorbing rust stains were separately rhamnolipid (10 g/L), Tea saponin (8 g/L), Tea saponin (6 g/L), Alkyl glycosides (6 g/L). This indicated that the washing effect of detergent formulation was related to the types of stains and textile relics' fiber. These findings not only demonstrated the necessity for developing detergent formulations for different textile relics, but also illustrated the complexity and diversity of the textile relics' stain‐washing work. Moreover, this work also assists understanding of the washing mechanism of textile relics and help the department of textile relics protection to properly wash textile relics and extend the life of textile relics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the course of the nineteenth century, literary manuscripts came to be seen as tangible evidence of the creative process and as a key to the personality of the author. The material traces of writing were understood to outlive their creators and promise to resurrect the authorial body through the magic of the relic. This article reconstructs how authorial script gradually transformed into a collectible object pursued as a memento and a commodity. Letters, drafts, and fair copies by major modern writers found their way into the collections of British aristocrats and American industrialists at the same time that hunting for literary autographs diversified into a middle‐class pursuit. Surveying recent scholarship on nineteenth‐century collecting and material culture, the essay offers a condensed cultural history of the literary manuscript as a collectible and draws attention to how collectors and collecting feature in fictional texts of the period. It focuses on the artefactual mobility and custodial afterlives of Romantic papers in Victorian literature and culture, exploring a form of collecting which crossed boundaries between periods and national literary traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extraction effect and feature matching are poor in the three‐dimensional reconstruction of metal cultural relics, which leads to a poor reconstruction effect. Therefore, an optimization method of three‐dimensional reconstruction of metal cultural relics based on 3D laser scanning data reduction is proposed. The overall technical design route of the method is shown as follows. Based on this model, the 3D laser scanning method is used to collect 3D images of metal artefacts, combined with colour space and 2D entropy detection methods to pre‐process 3D images, and feature matching of point clouds is carried out to extract and optimize the significant value of superpixels, and a 3D reconstructed visual model is constructed. Affine transformation is used to obtain the affine invariant moment of the structural light parameters of the visual feature lines of metal cultural relics. The light stability adjustment of the three‐dimensional reconstruction of metal cultural relics is realized by using the linear structural light adjustment method in the HSV colour space. The rigid and non‐rigid registration methods are introduced to match the point cloud. The product quantization algorithm is used to linearize the error function, and the block feature detection and matching model of spatial image is obtained. The noise number is judged by the threshold value, and the three‐dimensional reconstruction technology is combined to realize the three‐dimensional reconstruction of metal relics. The simulation results show that this method has good visual expression ability, high feature recognition rate, and improves the three‐dimensional reconstruction ability of metal relics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronometric studies of charcoal production remains are largely based on 14C‐dating of associated charcoal. Owing to intrinsic limitations, however, this method provides no meaningful time resolution for post‐1650 CE features. We investigate the potential of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of heated sandy sediments as an alternative and complementary tool for dating charcoal kiln remains. Seven samples from five relic charcoal kilns and 11 complementary samples from the underlying sandy substrate are used. Through a range of procedural tests, we demonstrate that the single‐aliquot, regenerative‐dose procedure in combination with OSL signals from quartz allows determining equivalent doses both accurately and precisely. For four of the five investigated kilns, OSL ages are consistent with independent age information from 14C‐dating and written sources. Especially for post‐1650 CE features, the precision can be significantly better than that of 14C‐dating, and we highlight the potential of OSL dating for distinguishing, relatively, between charcoal production phases with an unprecedented time resolution. We conclude that the approach is a promising alternative to 14C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have investigated the spatiotemporal variability in water microbial communities, yet the effects of relic DNA on microbial community profiles, especially microeukaryotes, remain far from fully understood. Here, total and active bacterial and microeukaryotic community compositions were characterized using propidium monoazide (PMA) treatment coupled with high‐throughput sequencing in a river‐reservoir ecosystem. Beta diversity analysis showed a significant difference in community composition between both the PMA untreated and treated bacteria and microeukaryotes; however, the differentiating effect was much stronger for microeukaryotes. Relic DNA only resulted in underestimation of the relative abundances of Bacteroidota and Nitrospirota, while other bacterial taxa exhibited no significant changes. As for microeukaryotes, the relative abundances of some phytoplankton (e.g. Chlorophyta, Dinoflagellata and Ochrophyta) and fungi were greater after relic DNA removal, whereas Cercozoa and Ciliophora showed the opposite trend. Moreover, relic DNA removal weakened the size and complexity of cross‐trophic microbial networks and significantly changed the relationships between environmental factors and microeukaryotic community composition. However, there was no significant difference in the rates of temporal community turnover between the PMA untreated and treated samples for either bacteria or microeukaryotes. Overall, our results imply that the presence of relic DNA in waters can give misleading information of the active microbial community composition, co‐occurrence networks and their relationships with environmental conditions. More studies of the abundance, decay rate and functioning of nonviable DNA in freshwater ecosystems are highly recommended in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Persistence of the Sacred: German Catholic Pilgrimage, 1832–1937" by Skye Doney explores the history of Catholic pilgrimages to Trier and Aachen in Germany. The book examines how Catholicism in Germany, both as an institutional religion and as a mass movement, navigated the intersection of faith and empirical science. Doney delves into the motivations and experiences of pilgrims seeking healing, atonement, or religious inspiration through contact with holy relics. The book also explores the tensions between clerics and skeptics, the gendered nature of pilgrimages, and the commercialization of pilgrimage souvenirs. While the book could benefit from further development in certain areas, it offers valuable insights into the embodied nature of faith and the participatory aspect of religious practices. [Extracted from the article]

The remains of Amani, a century‐old scientific laboratory in Tanzania, are quintessential modern relics. When anthropologists turn to such infrastructures of, originally colonial, knowledge‐making, their own implication with the object of their study – and with its epistemological and political‐economic origins and order – becomes part of the ethnographic pursuit. This entanglement between researcher and research material should challenge familiar realist modes of ethnographic writing 'about' such places that elude the anthropologists' own, compromised position within them. Matters are complicated further when the studied knowledge‐making sites already are broken, having failed their purpose – as in the case of the vestiges of an abandoned colonial institution. In this essay, I wonder how such ruins of knowledge‐making might transform the knowledge made by anthropologists working within them. Instead of just adding 'reflexive' confessions to realist accounts, could writing take part in the defeat that the scientific station's remains seem to embody – writing not 'after/beyond' but 'going along with' failure? Drawing on non‐representational ethnography, and poet‐anthropologist Hubert Fichte's embrace of epistemic defeat as anticolonial method, I trace my engagements with just one fragment of the scientific station – a driver's uniform. In doing so, I experiment with an object ethnography that 'fails' to detach author and object, or settle the question of failure, and instead foregrounds performativity, ambiguity, and mirth as starting points for an ethnography of, and in, our modern ruins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a writer and researcher, Murray tends to stay within the disciplinary boundaries of Sinology and does not significantly compare or contrast Kongzhai with any ritual site outside of China. In Chapter 2, "Proposing a History of Kongzhai", Murray turns to the local, inquiring into the ways in which Confucian orthodoxy and local activism worked together or in conflict to develop and then extinguish Kongzhai's Confucian "aura." During the Sui dynasty (589-618), so the story goes, a lineal descendant of Confucius (Kongzi) acquired the robe and cap of his famous ancestor and buried them together with a set of jades near what is now the city of Shanghai. [Extracted from the article]

The de‐acidification method has always been a hotspot in the research of paper‐based cultural relics conservation science. The existing de‐acidification methods are either not thorough enough or not easy to operate, requiring innovation and breakthrough. Moreover, the strength of the paper cannot be significantly improved by the simple de‐acidification treatment. To achieve the reinforcement of paper, another intervention process is often required, and each intervention may cause damage to the fragile paper cultural relics. This study introduces electrosorption deionization technology to the conservation treatment of paper cultural relics. Based on the electrosorption technology, an integrated treatment of paper de‐acidification and reinforcement was applied to sample papers using a composite electrolyte of de‐acidification and reinforcement materials and a self‐made electrosorption device. The experimental results show that both the de‐acidification and reinforcement effects on the paper samples obtained a significant promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stone cultural relics are widely distributed globally and have significant historical and cultural significance and research value. However, most of them have suffered severe weathering and erosion due to the physical and chemical effects of different climatic conditions. Herein, a series of nano‐silica/fluorinated polyacrylate composites as surface protective coatings to protect simulated stone cultural relics were prepared with dodecafluoroheptyl methacrylate (DFMA), acrylates, and different contents of nano‐silica. The storage stability, mechanical stability, coagulum rate, and surface tension of the composite coatings were measured. The UV absorption, chemical structure, surface morphology, and thermal properties of composite films were characterized. When the nano‐silica content was 6 wt%, the optimal nano‐silica/fluorinated polyacrylate (Si‐F‐3) composite with excellent comprehensive properties was applied in the protection of simulated stone cultural relics. Compared with the uncoated original stone samples, the simulated stone cultural relics treated with Si‐F‐3 composite not only had freeze–thaw resistance but also could slow down sulfate erosion and freeze–thaw coupling cycle (SEFTCC) test damage. To conclude, the nano‐silica/fluorinated polyacrylate composites could be a desirable solution for protecting stone cultural relics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the Andreis, an account of the 1462 Roman adventus of St Andrew's head relic. While the text is most commonly known from Book VIII of Pope Pius II's Commentaries (1462‐64), it appeared in discrete parts and circulated independently from 1462. The Andreis is revealed as a compilation of texts by several authors, undermining Pius' traditional role as the sole author of the Andreis and later Commentaries. Additionally, the Andreis is identified as an early festival book, with similar norms of circulation, impact, and elite presentation. Recreating the adventus through texts written for the event, the Andreis reflects contemporary expectations for festival books, while also encouraging support for an Ottoman crusade. Thus, circulating separately and later as part of the Commentaries, the Andreis contributed to Pius' crusade campaign and reputation, arguing for the pope's authority as Peter's heir, his popularity as a leader, and his rightful role as the protector of Eastern Christians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Cult of the Dead: A Brief History of Christianity" by Kyle Smith explores the devotion to martyrs throughout history and its impact on Christian art, literature, and spirituality. The book discusses the preservation and honoring of relics from martyrs' bodies, as well as the connection between tomb and shrine. It also examines the development of historical accounts of martyrs and the use of relics for healing and protection. The author acknowledges the reservations and criticisms of the relic cult, but emphasizes the enduring significance of martyrdom in the communion of saints. [Extracted from the article]

Textiles and apparel archaeology is an indispensable part of history and archaeology. As most unearthed textile relics are silk, soft and multi‐layered in nature, their frangibility poses enormous difficulties in their transportation, storage and exhibition. Traditional methods may not be suitable for accurately monitoring their condition under various external situations, due to the particularity of the textile relics. Herein, a smart, flexible, fabric‐based monitoring system, which integrates sensing fibers, textile technology, and traditional silkscreen conservation, is developed for the preservation and conservation of textile relics. The proposed integrated electrochemical fabric bears a high level of flexibility and diversification in structure, and furthermore can act as a protective cover to monitor external environmental impact factors such as pH value, strain, humidity, temperature, and ultraviolet light. The newly developed system can act as a daily monitoring solution to achieve real‐time and prolonged preventative control from various mechanisms of degradation, so as to ultimately support and uphold the conversation and preservation of textile relics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The skeletal remains of the alleged Italian Saint Nazarius (1st or 3rd century AD) were examined by a team of anthropologists of the University of Milan upon request from ecclesiastical authorities who sought scientific verification of their authenticity and to add tangible information on the life of the saint. Anthropological analyses were performed for the construction of the biological profile as well as pathological and traumatic analysis and were later compared with historical and hagiographic documentation. In addition, biological sampling of one bone sample was performed for radiocarbon dating. As a result, the osteobiography of the skeletal remains showed a concordance with the available historical data, thus supporting their authenticity and permitted the implementation of further information on the lives of the alleged saint. Furthermore, interesting anatomical 'mistakes' in the postmortem assemblage of the facial bones by the fossores, a guild of gravediggers, morticians and keepers of the Christian catacombs, were noted. This paper discusses the relation between science and religious heritage by demonstrating through a concrete case study the contribution of anthropology in a mutually beneficial collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the liturgical functions of cross‐shaped staurothekes, reliquaries of the True Cross, in twelfth‐century Sicily. These luxurious objects were once at the centre of the devotion of the growing Christian communities on an island undergoing dramatic social changes. This contribution examines the figuration of these crosses and the messages they conveyed to their audiences, focusing on documented processions as displays of public piety. To this end, the contents of two liturgical manuscripts from Palermo, evidence in contemporary pictorial arts and coinage, and the urban layout of the Norman capital will shed light on the reception of the symbol of the cross in the cosmopolitan, yet increasingly intolerant Sicilian kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the liturgical functions of cross‐shaped staurothekes, reliquaries of the True Cross, in twelfth‐century Sicily. These luxurious objects were once at the centre of the devotion of the growing Christian communities on an island undergoing dramatic social changes. This contribution examines the figuration of these crosses and the messages they conveyed to their audiences, focusing on documented processions as displays of public piety. To this end, the contents of two liturgical manuscripts from Palermo, evidence in contemporary pictorial arts and coinage, and the urban layout of the Norman capital will shed light on the reception of the symbol of the cross in the cosmopolitan, yet increasingly intolerant Sicilian kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acute storms (e.g. hurricanes) are major stressors to eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) through burying oysters and settlement substrate. Subsequently, managers use many restoration efforts, of which one approach is bag‐less dredging. This resurfaces relic shells as settlement substrate; however, buried shells turn black in anoxic sediments potentially influencing spat settlement. This study compared three shell types: sun‐cured white shell utilized in oyster reef restoration and two representative black shell types for bag‐less dredging. Settlement was significantly higher on sun‐cured white shell suggesting that restoration activities resurfacing black shells may not provide suitable substrate and alternative methods of providing substrate should be prioritized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the materiality of early medieval devotion to the saints. It argues that, even though most of the material objects themselves no longer survive, there is nevertheless much to be gleaned from surviving caches of relic labels about what churches believed they possessed. It exploits the same evidence to explore how types of relic‐objects changed over time, track evidence for the importance of oral tradition in their formation, and identify pathways of circulation. In demonstrating how churches curated the relics in their care, it pinpoints the active participation of scribes and relic custodians in interpreting and re‐interpreting them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyses the previously unstudied relic of Catherine of Siena's right foot, and its relationship to religious reform in late fifteenth‐century Venice. The relic was gifted to the Venetian Dominican convent of Santi Giovanni e Paolo by the Order's Master General, Gioacchino Torriani, between 1487 and 1500. The essay argues that Torriani's donation formed part of a broader effort to establish Catherine's status as a legitimate stigmatic, and hence to promote Dominican Observant reform. The final section explores the possible implications of this in the context of the convent space. Using both textual evidence and other Venetian depictions of the saint – in particular Andrea di Bartolo's Catherine of Siena with Four Mantellate and Giovanni Bellini's lost Catherine of Siena altarpiece – the article analyses the differing constructions of Catherine that were disseminated from Santi Giovanni e Paolo in the fifteenth century, contextualizing the stigmata iconography of the relic and reliquary within these images. In so doing, it aims to highlight the multifaceted nature of late fifteenth‐century Dominican reform, and also to emphasise the ways in which material and artistic evidence can reveal complexities in the narratives of Dominican Observance presented in extant archival material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the limitation of storage condition, paper cultural relics are constantly subject to human damage and natural aging, requiring rescue protection. In this study, a series of nanocellulose/calcium carbonate microcapsule/fluorine‐acrylamide styrene/acrylic copolymer composite protection materials were prepared and used as an efficient self‐healing composite coating for paper cultural relics protection. CaCO3 microcapsules were prepared by interfacial reaction method and doped into the polymer materials to obtain the self‐healing composite coating. The properties of composite protection materials were studied via the self‐healing experiment, dry heat accelerated aging test, and reversible experiment. The effects of composite protection materials on simulate paper cultural relics were analyzed. The results show that when the amount of hollow calcium carbonate microcapsules was 0.500 g, the composite protection materials had good comprehensive performances. The prepared materials work positive influence on the conservation of simulate paper cultural relics that could be one of the potential materials for application in protection of paper cultural relics. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 60: 288–296, 2019. © 2019 Society of Plastics Engineers [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because it is often difficult to preserve fragile relics in situ at underwater cultural heritage sites, it is sometimes necessary for relics to be extracted and moved to a controlled environment on land for protection and study. This paper discusses the feasibility of using the volatile organic compound veratraldehyde as a temporary consolidant for underwater fragile relics extraction. The results show that different materials (iron, tile, sand, wood) under water can be bonded together and extracted when using veratraldehyde. The fact that veratraldehyde is difficult to spread on the surface of underwater objects is a problem that can be solved by adding a layer of strong hydrophobic polypropylene (PP) fibres onto the object, serving as a 'package' for the relics. Under laboratory conditions, we used veratraldehyde and PP fibres to extract broken tiles from underwater sand onto an exhibition stand. The broken tiles, in both condition and distribution, were safely and completely retained as the veratraldehyde was slowly removed by the soaking process. This work fills a gap in knowledge about temporary consolidant materials in underwater archaeology, and provides a new method for extracting underwater fragile cultural relics without damaging them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Marine cyanobacteria are important contributors to primary production in the ocean and their viruses (cyanophages) affect the ocean microbial communities. Despite reports of lysogeny in marine cyanobacteria, a genome sequence of such temperate cyanophages remains unknown although genomic analysis indicate potential for lysogeny in certain marine cyanophages. Using assemblies from Red Sea and Tara Oceans metagenomes, we recovered genomes of a novel uncultured marine cyanophage lineage, which contain, in addition to common cyanophage genes, a phycobilisome degradation protein NblA, an integrase and a split DNA polymerase. The DNA polymerase forms a monophyletic clade with a DNA polymerase from a genomic island in Synechococcus WH8016. The island contains a relic prophage that does not resemble any previously reported cyanophage but shares several genes with the newly identified cyanophages reported here. Metagenomic recruitment indicates that the novel cyanophages are widespread, albeit at low abundance. Here, we describe a novel potentially lysogenic cyanophage family, their abundance and distribution in the marine environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The imprint of the feet and lower limbs, as well as the blood and rivulets, present on the Shroud of Turin were analysed with regard to anatomical and pathological characteristics. In the dorsal image of the cloth, the crucifixion position shows the left foot on top of the right one; in the frontal view, the feet are almost parallel. The nail used in the crucifixion was driven through the foot. In the frontal image, the knees, the tibiae and the ankles seem to be parallel with different varus–valgus angles; the left one is straighter than the right one, which shows a greater angle. Because of this parallelism, both ankles show a plantar flexion that is dissimilar in the dorsal images. We describe for the first time the anatomical study of the image of the Shroud through modern concepts. At the level of biomechanics and anatomy, the image on the Shroud of Turin does not comply with modern knowledge; in fact, the image fails with regard to some aspects that we cannot interpret yet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the language of 'mapping' and 'topography' often invoked to describe the activities of Pope Damasus (366–84). Damasus, widely seen as an impresario of the saints, is credited with creating a systematic Christian topography around Rome. This article challenges this perspective, asserting instead that Damasus worked neither systematically nor holistically to transform landscape; his modest interventions relied upon forgotten cemeterial sites of little interest to Rome's dominant Christian power‐brokers. To see Damasus's activities as transformative of the Christian landscape, then, is to confuse later evaluations of his work and to ignore the complex political processes that 'mapped' Christianity onto the urban and suburban landscape of late fourth and early fifth‐century Rome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Victricius of Rouen's De laude sanctorum (c.396) contains an original discussion of the cult of relics, introduced by a brief excursus on his recent trip to Britain. In this article, I argue that the author used both sections to define two symbolic territories, Britain and the centre of the empire, which invited his audience to think geographically about the concepts of Romanness, orthodoxy, and legitimacy. Exploiting a long‐standing tradition of stereotypes and geographical imaginations, Victricius used his argument of the unity of relics to justify his position in the Felician controversy, a contemporary episcopal and political conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although certainty is a fundamental notion in epistemology, it is less studied in contemporary analytic epistemology than other important notions such as knowledge or justification. This paper focuses on Wittgensteinian certainty, according to which the very basic dimension of our epistemic practices, the elements of our world-pictures, are objectively certain, in that we cannot legitimately doubt them. The aim of the paper is to offer the best philosophical way to clarify Wittgensteinian certainty, in a way that is consonant with Wittgenstein's fundamental insights. The paper critiques two alternative proposals for clarifying Wittgensteinian certainty that are philosophically unsatisfying: the rule view and the proposition view. Finally, it instead shows how viewing world-pictures as pictures, in the sense of unclear conceptions, is a more philosophically fruitful approach to understanding world-pictures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops the concept of the 'theological relic': a facet of secular life and culture that maintains traces of (and so remains bound in some way to) its genealogy in the theological. The theological relic, then, is something that fails to be either robustly religious or properly secular. It is, instead, a product of the relations between these social spaces. The article illustrates this concept by examining a cultural history of the whale, highlighting this creature's complex bonds with the theological. The whale, in other words, is figured as a theological relic: a creature of the secular that remains shrouded enough by traces of the theological that these vestiges of divinity are implicated in the whale's powerful late-twentieth-century cultural reconfiguration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terence's famous humanistic motto, 'homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto,' was transmitted from antiquity to modernity as an isolated fragment of a surviving play, and was subjected to various forms of translation and interpretation. In this essay, Joseph McAlhany argues that fragments and translation, by their nature, resist completion and wholeness, and it is this quality that makes them paradigmatically humanistic. After a history of the uses and abuses of this line, in particular the unsuccessful scholarly attempts to provide it with an authoritative meaning and a definitive translation, a close reading of the line reveals the humanistic ironies already present in the line itself. The translations of this fragment demonstrate not only the resistance to completion and the recognition of loss that are essential to humanism, but also how, and why, this crumb of classical antiquity continues to nourish the discourse of humanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enclosures, single large curvilinear structures, constitute ubiquitous relics of past human societies in marginal environments. Many enclosures suffer from severe scarcity of related artefactual and ecofactual remains, allowing only tentative assessments of their date and function. A case in point comes from the Judean Desert, Southern Levant, where several dozen enclosures were surveyed and described as Chalcolithic cult sites. Using new research strategies, incorporating critical evaluation of previous surveys, test excavations and optically stimulated luminescence dating, we were able to date enclosures to a much broader time span than previously suggested, and reject their proposed ritualistic function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes a recent court case concerning the relics of two 14th-century Russian Orthodox saints, during which the Russian state ruled to confiscate the relics from the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church. I examine the church's attempts to fight back, paying particular attention to how the conflicting parties have differently framed the disputed objects' materiality. In doing so, I link the ongoing debates over whether dead bodies can be considered property and who owns the bodies of saints, to the current battles in Russia over the boundaries between the sacred and the secular. The relics affair, I suggest, ultimately points to the issue of how politics itself is constituted through the battles to define these boundaries, who claims the power to draw these lines, and why issues dealing with dead bodies possess a certain affective charge that causes political action. I argue that the case of the Suzdal relics makes visible certain aporias in both secular law and religious discourse, which ultimately make this case impossible for the state to resolve in its favour through conventional judicial means without overruling the law. In this process, the object of dispute itself disappears from the discursive space, becoming buried in a sort of 'black box', the interior contents of which are ultimately unnameable and uncategorizable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent opinion piece rekindled debate as to whether geography's current interdisciplinary make-up is a historical relic or an actual and potential source of intellectual vitality. Taking the latter position, we argue here for the benefits of sustained integration of physical and critical human geography. For reasons both political and pragmatic, we term this area of intermingled research and practice critical physical geography (CPG). CPG combines critical attention to power relations with deep knowledge of biophysical science or technology in the service of social and environmental transformation. We argue that whether practiced by individuals or teams, CPG research can improve the intellectual quality and expand the political relevance of both physical and critical human geography because it is increasingly impractical to separate analysis of natural and social systems: socio-biophysical landscapes are as much the product of unequal power relations, histories of colonialism, and racial and gender disparities as they are of hydrology, ecology, and climate change. Here, we review existing CPG work; discuss the primary benefits of critically engaged integrative research, teaching, and practice; and offer our collective thoughts on how to make CPG work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liesbeth Corens's new book provides a detailed examination of the movements and motivations of expatriate English Catholics in continental Europe between 1660 and I c i .1720. The second section ("Mobility") examines different forms of agency exhibited by English Catholic expatriates in the Low Countries associated with the figures of the educational traveller and pilgrim. For each, Corens shows how travel abroad formed a valuable, much-desired occasion for intellectual and spiritual development, and draws attention to Catholic participation in earlier versions of the continental Grand Tour. [Extracted from the article]

The Dominican church of Santa Corona in Vicenza owed its status and nomenclature to its prestigious relic from the crown of thorns. In the early fifteenth century, the reliquary and its procession were enhanced; the community appeared to increase in number and was taken over by a reform movement. From the late 1470s, an ambitious spatial transformation involved removing the prominent choir precinct from the upper nave; constructing an extended high altar chapel to house new choir stalls; and the creation of a crypt in which the precious relic would be displayed. In 1500, textile merchant Battista Graziani was granted a side chapel location in the newly liberated space of the upper nave. Giovanni Bellini's Baptism of Christ altarpiece, with its unique use of light and composition, focused attention on the figure of Christ and, as suggested by an interpretation of a Dominican text, made reference to the crowning of thorns. Graziani's altar was also subtly related to the high altar, possibly intended to house an image of the crowning of thorns above the projected new site for the relic below. [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]

Terra Nova, 24, 351-356, 2012 Abstract Current palaeotectonic models see the Alps chiefly as a collisional orogen, with the Southalpine retrobelt developed only as a post-collisional feature. New structural and geochronological data show, instead, that the continental margin of Africa-Adria was being structured as a doubly vergent orogen during subduction of Alpine Tethys in the Cretaceous, tens of million years before collision with Europe. Subduction is envisaged here to have nucleated in the latest Albian/Cenomanian within the attenuated Adriatic margin. Most continental slivers exhumed as eclogites in the axial part of the Cretaceous orogen contain gabbros and relics of HT/LP metamorphic rocks, indicating inheritance from Permian to Jurassic rifting. Cretaceous shortening in the Southalpine retrobelt is indicated by several lines of evidence, including orogen-derived turbidites and syn-sedimentary compressional activity since the Cenomanian, Upper Cretaceous pseudotachylytes dating major S/SE-verging thick-skinned thrusts, and widespread fold-and-thrust deformation cut by Eocene plutons and dikes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1058, the Flemish abbey of Saint-Winnoc stole St Lewinna's relics from a minster in southern England. The community worked to establish her cult in Flanders. Although scholars have focused on the material gain Saint-Winnoc probably hoped the cult would bring, this article argues that the development of the abbey's communal identity figured more prominently in its motives. The community saw Lewinna primarily as a means to help bolster its bid for independence from its mother house. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a number of puzzling phenomena and use them as evidence for a hypothesis about why bodily continuity matters for personal identity. The phenomena all belong to a particular kind of symbolisation: each of them illustrates how an entity (object or person) sometimes acquires symbolic significance in virtue of a material link with the symbolised entity. Relics are the most obvious example of what happens here: they are cherished, desired or respected, not because of their intrinsic features, but because of their material link with some significant individual person. Crucial for the hypothesis we wish to defend, is the fact that a human being can in some cases and for some others function as a relic of what she used to be; in these cases a human individual has a specific significance in virtue of a material link (bodily continuity) with her own past. We argue that this phenomenon can be extended and that the importance of bodily continuity for personal identity is constituted by the kind of symbolisation upon which the existence of relics is based. 1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three grave stelae in the Bahrain National Museum are discussed. Their iconography and possible Christian affinities are explored, as well as the earlier, non-Christian background of several symbols attested. Comparisons are made with the situation at Hatra where a broadly Parthian style is encountered on statuary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to group specimens of Tang Sancai of unknown provenance to the different kilns according to their chemical compositions, we studied the elemental abundance patterns of Tang Sancai body samples from different tombs, relics and kilns by instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). Our results indicated that the development process of Tang Sancai in the Prospering Tang period could be divided into at least two phases, withad 705 or so as the boundary between them. The results of factor analysis showed that the red-bodied samples were more likely to be produced near Xi’an, whereas the white-bodied Tang Sancai wares dating to beforead 705 were most probably produced at Huanye Kiln (also known as ‘Gongxian’ Kiln), and the figures were very likely made at an undiscovered kiln near Luoyang or an undiscovered part of Huangye Kiln. Among the white-bodied samples dated fromad 705 toad 755, both types of figures and wares were mainly produced near Xi’an and Luoyang. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike previous studies of how the cult of the saints and martyrs developed in the Christian church, Robert Wi'sniewski has provided a sober but readable study that concentrates solely on the use of relics within the wider cult. His conclusion is that an expanded form of the cult of saints developed in the mid-fourth century as the martyrs were given much of the credit for the Constantinian peace of the church. He notes that Augustine, for example, changed his mind on the subject of relics, questioning ongoing miracles in the 380s but affirming them in the 420s (pp. 44-45). [Extracted from the article]

This article uses a little-known sermon by Victricius, bishop of Rouen, as an approach to the fourth-century debate on the translation of relics. In the last third of the fourth century, the cult of martyrs and their relics was promoted by Damasus of Rome, Paulinus of Nola and Ambrose of Milan, but remained controversial in the western churches. Roman law forbade the disturbance of dead bodies, especially where magic was suspected. Christians as well as non-Christians were repelled by the veneration of bone, bloodstains and dust, and by the extreme asceticism that was often associated with relic-cult. The sermon Victricius preached, welcoming to Rouen a gift of relics from Ambrose, is here interpreted as an attempt at cultural translation. Victricius deploys a late-antique education in rhetoric and philosophy to make relic-cult and asceticism acceptable. Like many others, he uses the adventus, the ceremonial reception of a visiting emperor or his deputy by local aristocracy and officials, as an analogy for the reception of relics by ascetics and clergy. Exceptionally, he equates corporeal relics with the presence of God; but his unique theology of relics was lost to view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shells of the aragoniTe bivalve Neomiodon (Great Fstuarine Group, Jurassic, Scotland) replaced by coarse neomorphic calcite contain oriented relics of the original aragonite ultrastructure. The presence of these relics in such old altered shells, as well as the high Sr content of the replacement calcite, indicate that the process of calcite replacement of aragonite is not a cumulative slow process involving repeated alteration events, but rather a rapid, one-step process. Aragonite relics, once encased in neomorphic spar, will survive as unequivocal evidence of original aragonite mineralogy, barring total remobilization of the enclosing stable calcite, a generally unlikely event. The retention or this residual aragonite and high-Sr calcite supports recent isotopic studies which suggest that the multiple phases of alteration (‘recrystallization’) invoked in earlier literature are unlikely events in the diagenesis of most undolomitized limestones. Retention of aragonite relics appears to be independent of whether alteration occurs in shallow meteoric or, as in the case of our Neomiodon material, deeper burial environments, Pseudopleochroism of the replaced Neomiodon shells appears to be due to organic, largely graphitic, relics, not to the aragonite relics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Translatio Georgii, Aurelii et Nathaliae, in which Aimoin recounts the journey of Usuard of St-Germain to Cordoba in search of relics, and the use which Usuard made of Spanish material in his Martyrology, reveal many inconsistencies. These are explained, by comparing these texts with Aimoins's Translatio Beati Vincentii and other evidence for St-Germain, as the result of attempts to bolster the monastery's standing with Charles the Bald at a time of political difficulty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information on the town of Autun in Burgundy, France from Chapter 13 of the book "Frommer's France" is presented. Autun is one of the oldest towns in the country. Some relics still stand, including the remains of the largest theater in Gaul, the Théâtre Romain. On the highest point in Autun, Cathédrale Saint-Lazare was built in 1120 to house the relics of Saint Lazarus.

Focuses on the relationship between persons and things in reference to the auctioning of Captain James Cook's possessions. Commercial valuation of Cook's possessions; Difference between relics by association and relics of personal substance; Response of people to the auctioning of the spear that killed Cook.