wearable and portable relics in the late antique west

on belief and skepticism in the first centuries of relic veneration

Below is an essay I wrote while at Oxford on belief and skepticism surrounding relics in late antiquity. I’m not sure if the argument is all that convincing (it was one of the only essays where I flirted with anthropology) but I’ll leave that up to you. Elsewhere, I recently wrote about the proposed smoking area ban for The Critic. I’m writing full-time now and open to commissions; editors can find me via the contact page on my new website (shout out to my sister for putting it together.)

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In a survey of relic-centred piety from 700 to 1200, Julia Smith identified the three primary characteristics of relics as ‘incompleteness, indeterminacy and portability.’¹ These characteristics are interrelated: the incompleteness of the relic—as dust, ash, or a sliver of bone—creates ambiguity. Without identification, such matter is dirt; through identification, it is transformed into a site of holy power. Recent work, particularly by art historians, has emphasised the necessity of the reliquary to the identity of the relic. A reliquary identifies the matter within it as holy, thus making the relic; in Cynthia Hahn’s words, ‘enframement does not stage the relic subsequent to its importance, but is coterminous with its moment of recognition.’² However, the reliquary is not an absolute boundary for the power of the relic, one of the essential characteristics of which is ‘its power to trespass boundaries and containment.’³

This characteristic produces one of the most distinctive elements of the relic cult, which Hahn calls ‘scalability’: ‘in addition to the micro-environment of the portable relic, the power network of the relic is successively ‘increased’ through various layers: the sharing of space with other relics, and placement in altars, chapels, and the larger environment of the church.’⁴ The relic is at its most complete and determinate, then, when it is static: enclosed in a reliquary within a shrine within a church, framed by multiple layers of sacred space like a Matryoshka doll. Conversely, its identity is most vulnerable when it is removed from these authenticating contexts.

This essay will examine moments when the substance of a relic challenged believers, focusing particularly on a subclass of late antique portable relics which were permanently itinerant (rather than travelling as part of a translation from one church to another.) Used for prophylactic purposes, such relics were carried in bags around the neck or suspended from belts. In these cases, the body itself took on a function equivalent to a reliquary. However, the body was not a fixed site of holiness: the variability of thoughts and behaviours, as well as movement between sacred and profane space, meant that the body could oscillate between sin and sacrality. I will argue that the practice of wearing relics cast their inherent ambiguity into sharp relief, allowing space for scepticism and necessitating regulation of devotional behaviour.

Belief in the efficacy of relics seems to have begun in the middle decades of the fourth century.⁵ This was, as Peter Brown has demonstrated, a moment of astonishing religious and cultural change.⁶ Late Roman society regarded the bodies of the dead as contaminants and buried them far from human habitation, outside the walls of the city. The cult of saints transformed tombs from places of pollution to loca sanctorum—the holiest places, where something of the world to come could break though. The significance of this transformation is even more striking because relics were not left safely in their tombs: the first securely-dated evidence of the translation of relics dates from between 351 and 354, when Caesar Gallus brought the coffin of St Babylas to a martyrium in Daphne. More common than full-body translations was the movement of dust from tombs, oil from shrine-lamps, and other small fragments.

These relics were not diminished by fragmentation; rather, the whole power of the saint was thought to dwell in the smallest particle of their body, pars pro toto. In the second quarter of the fifth century, Theodore of Cyrrhus wrote that ‘in spite of the fact that the body is divided, the grace remains undivided and the smallest particle of relics has the power equal to that of an undivided martyr.’⁷ As these fragments spread across Christendom, so holy sites multiplied, no longer tied to the places associated with Christ’s life or the tombs of the martyrs. In the third quarter of the fourth century, Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem preached to his congregation at Golgotha that ‘[t]he holy wood of the cross, still to be seen among us today, bears witness; its fragments were taken from here by the faithful and now virtually fill the whole earth.’⁸

Late eighth-century portable reliquary with carrying strap {x}

The nascent cult of relics was not, however, met with unanimous acceptance. When Avitus of Braga sent his translation of Lucian’s Revelatio sancti Stephani to his bishop, he included ‘some dust of the flesh and sinews and—in order to make it even more trustworthy—some solid bones which, by their manifest sanctity, are more precious than a new pigment or perfume.’⁹ Avitus’ recognition that dust alone was not sufficient reveals that the appearance of relics presented a significant challenge to credulity: it was not easy to believe that divinity rested in dirt. This criticism was made forcefully in the early fifth century by Vigilantius, whose treatise against the cult of relics no longer survives. From Jerome’s invective response Contra Vigilantium, we know that Vigilantius found it difficult to reconcile the appearance of a relic—‘a bit of powder wrapped up in a costly cloth in a tiny vessel’—with the sanctity it was thought to represent.¹⁰

In Jerome’s account, Vigilantius believed that the profane substances of bones and dust defiled the sacred space of the church: ‘Thus, according to you, the sacred buildings are like the sepulchres of the Pharisees, whitened without, while within they have filthy remains, and are full of foul smells and uncleanliness.’¹¹ Contra Vigilantium provides a rare witness to scepticism regarding relics; the force with which Jerome responded to him, however, suggests that his views presented a real and significant challenge and were probably shared by other late antique Christians whose testimonies do not come down to us. That Vigilantius’ treatise has been lost is reflective of the typical pattern: texts which express scepticism tend to be deemed heretical and suppressed or simply not copied; the survival of orthodox texts can therefore create a misleading impression of consensus.¹²

Even the papacy was aware of the difficulties raised by the ambiguous matter of relics. In a letter of 594 to the Byzantine Empress Constantina, Gregory the Great described the practice of relic-making at Rome: a piece of cloth was placed in a small box and placed near the bodies of the saints. He related an anecdote about one of his predecessors, Leo I, who, when ‘certain Greeks’ doubted the efficacy of such relics, took scissors and cut the brandeum so that blood miraculously flowed from it, demonstrating that sanctity could inhere in such apparently ordinary matter. He then described an event two years before, when Greek monks came to Rome to dig up the bones of men buried in an open field, intending to pass them off as relics of the saints. So, he concluded, ‘the greater doubt has been engendered in us whether it be true that they really take up the bones of saints, as they are said to do.’¹³

A century later, Gregory’s story about the bleeding brandea was adapted by a monk or nun at Whitby. In this version, Gregory divided pieces of cloth, enclosed them in separate boxes and affixed his seal. On their return journey, however, the leader of the men opened the seals and ‘found nothing inside the boxes except just some dirty pieces of cloth.’¹⁴ They returned to Rome in indignation, whereupon Gregory is shown performing the same miracle that he had attributed to Pope Leo. Gregory’s doubt regarding supposed holy bones and the pilgrims’ doubt regarding the brandea demonstrate that, both in sixth-century Rome and seventh-century Northumbria, Christians understood the difficulty of reconciling the appearance of relics with the sanctity thought to reside in them: in appearance alone, there was nothing to distinguish the bones of a martyr from those of an ordinary person.

The raw matter of the relic thus demanded a container which could differentiate it from visually identical, non-sacred matter. Numerous containers survive from the early Christian period, but it is difficult to determine which of them functioned as reliquaries as the matter they once contained has degraded or been removed without being catalogued. Discovery within an altar is the most secure means of demonstrating that a container was used as a reliquary. Reliquaries of this group vary in appearance from highly decorated artefacts made of precious metals or ivory to small, undecorated wooden boxes. Among the identifiable reliquaries found outside altars are ampullae from pilgrimage sites which were designed to hold water, oil or dust from a holy place. The metal ampullae found at Monza and Bobbio are engraved with scenes from the Gospels and images of saints, while the clay ampullae from Abu Mena in Egypt are engraved with images of St Menas.¹⁵ Some reliquaries might contain multiple layers, with the materials becoming more precious the closer they were to the relic: a reliquary box from the mid-fourth to mid-fifth century, found buried in the apse of a church in Bulgaria, contained a silver box wrapped in black cloth; within the box was a third box, this time made of gold and again wrapped in silk, and within that rested three small relics.¹⁶ While some reliquaries were undecorated, most demonstrate a general tendency towards ornamentation: either by precious fabrics, metals, and gemstones, or by depictions of holy scenes and sites, reliquaries proclaimed themselves as sacred matter.

Sixth-century pilgrim ampulla from the shrine of St Sergios in Syria.

Reliquaries were not merely containers, however; by enclosing the relic, the reliquary also took on some of its holiness. As Seeta Chaganti has argued, reliquaries were characterised by an ‘effect whereby contained and containing are interchangeable, and the borders between them are indeterminate.’¹⁷ John Chrystostom neatly summarised this phenomenon when he asked his congregation to embrace reliquaries, ‘[f]or the martyrs’ chests too contain much power, just as the martyrs’ bones, then, too hold great strength.’¹⁸ Late antique Christians did not have to touch the relic itself to benefit from its power; rather, touching the reliquary or tomb or simply being in its vicinity was enough to trigger a miracle. The power of the relic extended even beyond the reliquary, overflowing into the ‘scalable’ environments of the shrine, church, and locality: at Tours, the church of St Martin—and the tomb within it—became the centre of a sacred complex made up of monasteries, shrines and oratories, where ‘the symbolic power of the church spilled over to affect the surrounding compound.’¹⁹

Gregory of Tours described numerous miracles taking place in the courtyards surrounding the church. The power of the relic was contagious: it radiated outwards, settling in and sanctifying its immediate environment. It could stretch further still, into the surrounding countryside: a sixth-century preacher suggested that the farmland surrounding Tours was ‘overwhelmed by the fertility of their crops’ due to the presence of St Martin. Comparing Tours to other regions in Gaul, he explained that ‘this place that is ornamented so gloriously with the tomb of his most holy body must be considered more exalted than all these others.’²⁰ Here, the preacher articulated a familiar logic: the sacredness of a space depended on the importance of the relics housed within it and their corresponding power to intercede for pilgrims. But the deposition of relics within a church functioned symbiotically: just as the relic sanctified its dwelling, so the trappings of sacred space removed the dangerous ambiguity of the relic. Enclosed within a vast, holy complex like Tours, there was no doubt that dust was holy dust.

Emile Durkheim’s notion of sacred contagion is useful for understanding how relics operate. In Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, Durkheim argued that one of the essential characteristics of religion is the opposition of sacred and profane things. Furthermore, the sacred is fluid, liable to overflow and invade the profane, and vice versa. The sacred is protected from the profane by rites and interdictions which prevent the flow of one into the other.²¹ Reliquaries, liturgical rites and other strategies of enshrinement can be understood to perform this function. When relics were translated, their power radiated outwards into profane space. Gregory of Tours related a story of an imprisoned man in Soissons being freed from his chains as the relics of St Martin were carried in procession through the town. He could not see the procession, but he could hear the chanting that accompanied it.²²

The liturgical rites which accompanied processions and translations can be understood as a kind of performed reliquary: chanting of psalms, burning of incense and other ritual acts constructed an aura of sanctity around the relic which protected it from the intrusion of profane space. As Sabine MacCormack has argued, the arrival of a relic mirrored an imperial adventus, as crowds gathered with flags, candles, incense, and musical instruments to greet the relic.²³ When the relic of the True Cross arrived at Radegund’s monastery in Poitiers in 568, it was set in an ornate reliquary (‘blessed wood of the Lord's cross enshrined in gold and gems’) and accompanied by ‘legates with gospels ornamented in gold and gems.’²⁴ In addition, Venantius Fortunatus composed two hymns for the occasion—including Vexilla regis, which drew explicit parallels with the ceremonial of the adventus—which were likely sung as the reliquary was received.²⁵ Similarly, Gregory of Tours tells us that while transporting the relics of St Julian from Brioude to Limoges, a monk ‘spent his entire journey chanting psalms and giving thanks’.²⁶

Relics did not only move as part of translations; from the fifth century onwards, literary evidence suggests that some relics were permanently on the move, carried on the body as a defence against illness and other dangers of travel. Such relics were not accompanied by liturgical rites, nor were they enshrined within elaborate reliquaries: their appearance varied from undecorated bags to small boxes to gold medallions. If, as I have argued, reliquaries were necessary to the making of relics by removing their ambiguity and stabilising them as sacred matter, then wearable relics presented a particular problem: unlike a jewelled casket or engraved ampulla, the body was not a reliable guarantor.

In early Christian thinking, the body was perched dangerously between sin and salvation.²⁷ It was vulnerable to temptations which could lure the soul away from faithfulness to God, but it was also a site where the soul might be drawn closer to God through ascetic training. However perilous the flesh might be, Christians knew that salvation was physical business: on the Last Day, the bodies of the faithful would be raised, purified but still recognisable. The resurrection body was redeemed flesh; Origen (whose views, while perhaps not entirely orthodox, reflect a strand of Christian thought which regarded the body as particularly problematic) argued that such bodies would not possess sex, nor would they grow, excrete, or reproduce.²⁸ The mutability of the body was the source of its danger on earth; this was a characteristic which the bodies of the saints did not possess, and often their sanctity derived from their corpses being found incorrupt. Significantly, the body was one of the few substances which did not become a ‘contact relic’—Gregory recounted how he and others consumed dust from the tomb of St Martin to cure illnesses, but their bodies did not transmit Martin’s power any further. As F.B. Flood notes, ‘this stands in striking contrast to the ability of banal artefacts and materials to both absorb and transmit sacrality emanating from relics.’²⁹

Peter Brown argued that, in the case of Gregory of Tours, ‘the arrival of a relic was an occasion for a skillfully enacted dialogue between relic and bishop, in which the secure holiness of the one highlighted and orchestrated the personal, and, so, fragile holiness of the other.’³⁰ For Brown, unlike Durkheim, this phenomenon is unidirectional: holiness reaches out from the tomb or shrine or relic, but the outside world does not encroach on the holy place/object.³¹ Certainly, this dynamic is visible in some hagiographic sources: Constantius’ Life of Germanus of Auxerre, written between 475 and 480, records that Germanus wore a reliquary around his neck (‘redimitus loro semper et capsula sanctorum reliquias continente’) which he used to perform healing miracles; undoubtedly the wearing of relics enhanced his prestige as a holy man.³² Similarly, Gregory of Tours described how relics of unknown saints worn by his father (‘sacred ashes in a gold medallion’) were passed to his mother, who wore them around her neck, and finally to Gregory himself.³³ When journeying from Burgundy to Clermont during a storm, he ‘took the holy relics from my pocket and raised my hand before the cloud’.³⁴ However, Gregory indicated that the practice of wearing relics was unusual: ‘At that time I was carrying with me relics of St. Martin, even though it was uncommonly bold [to do so.]’³⁵ In this instance, Gregory presumably kept the relics hidden, as he only revealed that he was carrying them after a deaf man was healed through their power. Gregory never seems to have worn a reliquary openly as Germanus—or his parents—did.

The attitude towards wearable relics in both hagiographic and documentary sources is most often one of discomfort. In a letter to an unnamed English archbishop, Alcuin chastised his correspondent for allowing the English to wear reliquaries while they ‘go to their filthy acts and even do their duty by their wives.’³⁶ Similarly, Stephen’s Vita Wilfridi expressed horror when Ecgfrith’s queen, who he left unnamed but who is presumably the Iurminburg mentioned earlier in the Vita, stole Wilfrid’s reliquary and wore it in appropriate settings:

‘His queen moreover, whom we have mentioned before, took away the reliquary of the man of God which was filled with holy relics, and (I tremble to say it) she wore it as an ornament both in her chamber at home and when riding abroad in her chariot.’³⁷

Stephen compared this to the theft of the Ark of the Covenant by the Philistines in 1 Samuel. As a result of this theft, the queen suffered a near-fatal illness, only recovering when Ecgfrith freed Wilfrid from captivity and restored his reliquary. It is unclear whether Wilfrid’s relics were intended for deposition in a church or were to be kept with Wilfrid on his journeys; regardless, Stephen never mentioned Wilfrid performing miracles through the relics, nor does did describe them being worn by the saint. The practice of wearing relics was only discussed in negative terms; Stephen was concerned that relics might be worn in inappropriate settings or by persons of insufficient holiness. Several decades earlier, at the Council of Braga in 675, the bishops had condemned the practice of ‘episcopis quod in solennitatibus martyrum [ad] ecclesiam progressuri, reliquias collo suo imponant et ut maioris fastus apud homines gloria intumescat (quasi ipsi sint reliquiarum arca).’³⁸ The issue seems to have been that the body—even that of a bishop—was insufficiently holy to bear relics.

Shortly after Stephen wrote his Vita Wilfridi, Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica adapted the story of Constantius healing a young girl with his reliquary (‘he took from his neck the reliquary that always hung at his side and in full view of everybody put it to the eyes of the child.’)³⁹ In Bede’s version, however, the miracle is less about the healing of an individual girl than the restoration of orthodox faith to Britain, her eyes standing metaphorically for the expulsion of Pelagianism from the island. More significantly still, Bede inserts a scene in which Germanus visits the tomb of St Alban and, opening the tomb, places relics of ‘relics of all the apostles and various martyrs’ within it.⁴⁰ This addition reflects Bede’s concern with connecting the English Church with the Church Universal, but it also reinvents Germanus’ use of relics. Rather than permanently accompanying Germanus on his travels, as in Constantius’ version, Bede’s relics are returned to a static location. This suggests that while the practice of relic translation was acceptable to Bede, the practice of permanently carrying relics for prophylactic purposes was less so.

Similarly, Carolingian hagiography contains few examples of miracles performed through wearable relics. Wearable relics persisted throughout the medieval period in the form of ornate reliquary jewellery such as the Sandford reliquary, created c. 1100, which was not discovered at a church site and seems to have been intended to be worn as a pendant.⁴¹ The Thame Ring, dating from the fifteenth century, is more elaborate still: its front is set with a large amethyst and its back engraved with a detailed crucifixion scene.⁴² By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, reliquary jewellery was relatively common and at its most elaborate; unlike the undecorated bags of the earlier period, such reliquaries immediately identified their contents as sacred matter. However, dramatic public miracles performed by wearable reliquaries are generally confined to Merovingian hagiography, and the wearable reliquaries of the later period were intended for private devotion rather than displays of spiritual capital. The seventh century seems to represent a turning point in relic belief and a watershed between late antique and properly medieval habits of devotion.

The Thame Ring, now in the Ashmolean Museum.

In a 2011 address, Sarah Foot called for a ‘religious turn’ in ecclesiastical history—a history which takes belief seriously and refuses to reduce religion to social and political explanations.⁴³ Examining belief as a lived, dynamic phenomenon also requires making room for unbelief, for the effort of faith and for its occasional failure. In the only medieval treatise dedicated solely to relics and reliquaries, written by Thiofrid, abbot of Echternach in 1100, Thiofrid repeatedly referred to relics as ‘ash’, ‘dust’, and ‘detritus’. He argued that the relic was inseparable from the reliquary; without the beauty of the reliquary, the relic would be repulsive, and would lose its efficacy. Thiofrid articulated a dynamic which had been present since the beginning of the relic devotion: belief in relics was threatened by their very matter. Stabilising a relic as a site of holy power demanded enframement within matter which did not flit so easily between the sacred and the profane: a jewelled reliquary, a shrine, a church. In the fourth century, Victricius of Rouen had observed that ‘we behold small relics and a little blood, but Truth sees that these small fragments shine more than the sun.’⁴⁴ Victricius understood that the matter of relics presented difficulties, but saw the potential of faith to overcome the immediate judgements of the eyes and the instinctive dart of disgust. By the later middle ages, the relic cult had developed so that pilgrims never saw small relics and bits of blood; instead, they saw ornate reliquaries—‘a recognisable apparatus of identification, of staging, and of glorification’—which proclaimed the true, holy status of the matter within.⁴⁵

1. J. M. H. Smith, ‘Portable Christianity: Relics in the Medieval West (c.700–1200)’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 181 (2012), p. 150.

2. C. Hahn, The Reliquary Effect, p. 21.

3. Ibid, p. 13.

4. Ibid, p. 57.

5. R. Wiśniewski, The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics (Oxford, 2019), pp. 8-25.

6. P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, 2nd edition (Chicago, 2015), pp. 1-12.

7. Wiśniewski, p. 164.

8. Galit Noga-Banai, ‘Visual Rhetoric of Early Christian Reliquaries’, The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology (Oxford, 2019), p. 221.

9. Avitus of Braga, Revelatio Sancti Stephani, ed. S. Vanderlinden, ‘Revelatio Sancti Stephani (BHG 7850-6)’, Revue des études byzantines, 4 (1946), pp. 178-217: ‘pulverem carnis atque nervorum et, quod fidelius certiusque credendum est, ossa solida atque manifesta sui sanctitate novis pigmentis vel odoribus pinguiora’; trans. Wiśniewski, p. 172.

10. Jerome, Contra Vigilantium, ed. J.P. Migne, PL, 23 (Paris, 1845), Col. 343B: ‘pulvisculum... in modico vasculo pretioso linteamine circumdatum’; trans. W.H. Fremantle, et al., NPNF, Series II, vol. 6 (New York, 1893), p. 418.

11. Ibid, Col. 346B: ‘Et quasi sepulcra pharisaica foris dealbata sint cum intus immundo cinere, juxta te, immunda omnia oleant atque sordeant’; p. 422.

12. David Hunter has suggested that Vigilantius’ views were in fact shared by a majority of Gallic clergy: D.G. Hunter, ‘Vigilantius of Calagurris and Victricius of Rouen: Ascetics, Relics, and Clerics in Late Roman Gaul’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 7/3 (1999), pp. 400-429.

13. Gregory I, Registrum Epistolarum, ed. P. Ewald and L.M. Hartman, MGH, Ep., 1. IV. 30, (Berlin, 1887-91), p. 264: ‘maior nobis dubietas nata est, utrum verum sit quod levari veraciter ossa sancotrum dicuntur’; trans. J. Barmby, NPNF, Series II, vol. 12 (1895), p. 112.

14. The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 108-9: ‘nihil ibi invenit habere, nisi ut viles admodum pannorum sectiones.’

15. S. Bangert, ‘Menas ampullae: a case study of long-distance contacts', in A. Harris, ed., Incipient Globalisation? Long-Distance Contacts in the Sixth Century (Oxford, 2007), pp. 27-33. For excavation contexts of late antique ampullae, see W. Anderson, ‘An Archaeology of Late Antique Pilgrim Flasks’, Anatolian Studies, Vol. 54 (2004), pp. 79-93.

16. A.M. Yasin, ‘Sacred Installations: The Material Conditions of Relic Collections in Late Antique Churches’, in C. Hahn and H.A. Klein, Saints and Sacred Matter (Washington DC, 2015), pp. 148-9.

17. S. Chaganti, The Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary (New York, 2008), p. 15.

18. Quoted in Wiśniewski, p. 133.

19. R. van Dam, Saints and Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, 1993), p. 134.

20. Laudatio Sancti Martini, ed. B.M. Peebles, ‘An Early "Laudatio Sancti Martini": A Text Completed’, Studia Martin et son temps, Studia Anselmiana, 46, pp. 237-49; trans. R. van Dam, Saints and Miracles, pp. 304-7. I was unable to access the Latin text due to library closures.

21. E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. J.W. Swain (London, 1915; repr. New York, 2012), pp. 57-8.

22. Gregory of Tours, Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi, ed. B. Krusch, MGH, SRM, 1.2 (Hannover, 1885), p. 193.

23. S. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1981), p. 150.

24. Baudonivia, De vita sanctae Radegundis libri duo, ed. B. Krusch, MGH, SRM, 2 (Hannover, 1888), p. 388: ‘beatum lignum crucis Domini ex auro auro et gemmis ornatum’, ‘legatarios cum evangeliis ex auro et gemmis ornatis’; trans. J. McNamara, et al., Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, (London, 1992), p. 97.

25. G. Noga-Banai, ‘Relocation to the West: The Relic of the True Cross in Poitiers’, in S. Esders, et al., eds., East and West in the Early Middle Ages: The Merovingian Kingdoms in Mediterranean Perspective (Cambridge, 2019), p. 190.

26. Gregory of Tours, Liber de Virtutibus S. Iuliani, ed. B. Krusch, MGH, SRM, 1.2 (Hannover, 1885), p. 131: ‘iter totum cum psalmis et gratiarum actionibus carpens’; trans. R. van Dam, ‘The Suffering and Miracles of the Martyr St Julian’, Saints and Miracles, p. 159.

27. For the classic account, see P. Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988).

28. C. Walker-Bynum, The Resurrection of the body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York, 1995), p. 67.

29. F.B. Flood, ‘Bodies and Becoming: Mimesis, Mediation and the Ingestion of the Sacred in Christianity and Islam’, in S.M. Promey, ed., Sensational Religion: Sensory Cultures in Material Practice (New Haven, 2014), pp. 459-493.

30. P. Brown, ‘Relics and Social Status in the Age of Gregory of Tours’, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1982), p. 240.

31. Brown, indeed, echoes Marc Bloch’s view that the early medieval world was one in which ‘the sacred and profane had been almost inextricably mixed.’ For Brown, the enmeshment of the holy in the everyday fabric of life precludes any sharp distinction between the sacred and the profane; he argues that this distinction only emerged in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with the professionalisation of the clerical hierarchy and the retreat of the holy into a more circumscribed, sacramental sphere: P. Brown, ‘Society and the Supernatural: A Medieval Change’, Daedalus, 104/2 (1975), pp. 133-151, quotation at p. 134.

32. Constantius, Vita Germani, ed. W. Levison, MGH, SRM, 7 (Hannover/Leipzig, 1920), p. 253; trans. F.R. Hoare, The Life of Saint Germanus of Auxerre, in T.F.X. Noble and T. Head, eds., Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Pennsylvania, 1995), p. 81.

33. Gregory of Tours, Liber in Gloria Martyrum, ed. B. Krusch, MGH, SRM, 1.2 (Hannover, 1885), p. 95: ‘in lupino aureo sacros cineres’; trans. R. van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs (Liverpool, 1988), p. 79.

34. Ibid., p. 95: ‘extractas a sinu beatas reliquias, manu elevo contra nubem’; trans. p. 80.

35. Gregory of Tours, Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi, p. 187: ‘eo tempore sancti Martini reliquias, licet temerario ordine, super me tamen habebam’; trans. van Dam, p. 267.

36. Alcuin, Epistolae, p. 449: ‘vadunt ad inmunditias suas vel etiam uxoribus debitum solvunt’; trans. S. Allott, Alcuin of York, c. A.D. 732 to 804: his life and letters (York, 1974), p. 69.

37. Stephen, Vita Wilfridi, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1927), pp. 70-71: ‘Regina vero eius olim suprafata chrismarium hominis Dei sanctis reliquiis repletum,—quod, me enarrantem horruit—de se absolutum, aut in thalamo suo manens aut in curru pergens, iuxta se pependit.’

38. Quoted in G.J.C. Snoek, Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist: A Process of Mutual Interaction (Leiden, 1995), p. 259.

39. Ibid., p. 262: ‘adhaerentem lateri suo capsulam cum sanctorum reliquiis collo avulsam manibus conprehendit eamque in conspectu omnium puellae oculis adplicavit.’

40. Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), pp. 58-9: ‘omnium apostolorum diversorumque martyrum’.

41. D.A. Hinton, Gold and Gilt, Pots and Pins: Possessions and People in Medieval Britain (Oxford, 2006), p. 165.

42. Ibid., p. 244.

43. S. Foot, 'Has Ecclesiastical History Lost the Plot?', Studies in Church History, 49 (2013), pp. 1-25.

44. Victricius, De laude sanctorum, ed. J.P. Migne, PL, 20 (Paris, 1845), Col. 453A; trans. P. Buc, ‘In Praise of the Saints’, in. T. Head, ed., Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology (London, 2001), p. 44: [c]ernimus paruas reliquias, nonnihil sanguinis. Sed has minutias clariores esse quam sol est, ueritas intuetur.’

45. C. Hahn and H.A. Klein, ‘Introduction’, Saints and Sacred Matter, p. 6.