13 August 2006
Christian Relics and the Historical Jesus
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From the 4th Century, Christian relics became an important part of both the Roman and Byzantine Christian tradition.
Transcript
Transcript
Rachael Kohn: Christian relics have been popular since Roman times, but are they good for the faith, or bad for it?
Hello, I'm Rachael Kohn and this is The Ark on ABC Radio National. Whatever the answer, holy relics have a long and at times scandalous history. The church and the people benefited from them, but some clerics were critical.
Today, modern scholars might dismiss holy relics as fakes, but the quest for the historical Jesus has some parallels. That's the view of Biblical scholar Robert Crotty.
Meanwhile, when you're in Rome, you might take a look at these.
Robert Crotty: Well certainly it would have to be by special arrangement, but it would be possible for such a pilgrim to see such things as one of the thorns that was put into the head of Jesus, nails with which he was nailed to the cross, part of the cross itself.
But then coming down even to such things as the foreskin of Jesus when he was circumcised, and a very special image of Jesus on a cloth which is known as the Veronica, and which seems to have just surfaced recently in a monastery outside of Rome.
Rachael Kohn: Most people today would regard these as improbable, sort of the result of an enterprising church. How do you explain the origins of this cottage industry in relics?
Robert Crotty: Yes, most people today would see them as quite ludicrous, and I would too.
However the cottage industry began actually in Jerusalem, that after the time of Constantine the Great, sites in Jerusalem, particularly the site where Jesus was crucified, where he was buried, where in Bethlehem he was born, and on the Mount of Olives where he was said to have ascended into heaven, those sites became sacred sites, identified particularly by the mother of Constantine, Helena. And on each site there was a very grandiose construction and Christian pilgrims from Europe came to Jerusalem because it was believed that there was a certain sacred power from Jesus, and Jesus who had died in a sacrificial death that those particular places had the power of that sacrificial death inherent in them.
Rachael Kohn: Was this a way of claiming Jerusalem for the church, separating it from its Jewish past?
Robert Crotty: Oh certainly separating it from its Jewish past, separating also from its Roman past.
But there are other sacred places in other parts of Europe, where there were relics, that is the bodily remains of holy people, particularly martyrs. And one of the things about those bodily remains was that they could be moved around. Now where you had difficulty with Jesus was that those pieces obviously couldn't be taken. If there were to be bodily relics of Jesus, so that, as it were, the experience there could become portable, there's very few, that's why the foreskin, the milk teeth of Jesus, an image of Jesus, was thought to be as far as you could go because Jesus was believed to have ascended bodily into heaven, there was no body left.
So they began to think in terms first of all of bits and pieces of the body that might have been left behind, but then there were all the sorts of bits and pieces of implements that were associated with his sacrificial death. So the cross, and nails, and a spear, the crown of thorns, and images of Jesus that might have been left on cloths and so on. So the shroud of Jesus for example eventually became important.
Now these were portable, so they could be taken back, and in the main, in the first instance at least, Constantinople, so modern Istanbul, became the centre where these relics of Jesus were accumulated.
Rachael Kohn: Were they at first collected in a place in Jerusalem before they want to Constantinople?
Robert Crotty: No. There was no one place, because the places, for example the tomb of Jesus, the place that was identified as Calvary, the place of the ascension in Jerusalem, they were marked out and that's where the pilgrims went. However, if the pilgrims wanted to take something back, or if others wanted to set up shrines outside of Jerusalem, that's where you needed some sort of relic or an implement, or whatever, to take away from Jerusalem and put somewhere else, for example in Constantinople.
Rachael Kohn: You mentioned that the relics of martyrs were also collected. Who would be amongst them?
Robert Crotty: There was a whole range of martyrs, particularly from the early church under the Romans. You had early Christians, for example St Polycarp who was martyred under the Roman power, and in some way it was believed that these Romans, by being martyred, were extending, carrying on from the death of Jesus, so that the death of Jesus was sort of contained in their act of sacrificial death, and so that their body had some sort of power within it.
However, particularly as we get into the Middle Ages, it was then felt that the implements that were associated with the actual sacrificial death of Jesus, that these were even more powerful still, and so by the 11th, 12th century, in Constantinople we know that there was an enormous collection of these sorts of relics of Jesus.
Rachael Kohn: Robert, were there any early Christians who were critical of this movement, who questioned the focus on relics?
Robert Crotty: Oh yes. They included for example St Augustine who recognised that some of these relics were fakes, that they were being manufactured and they were being sold and all the rest of it, that there was a trade in them, even though he recognised that these sorts of relics were powerful, he also saw that there were great dangers in it. And by the Middle Ages, Pope Innocent III actually came out and made a statement against some of the more ludicrous of the relics that were present in Rome at that stage.
So that by that stage there's the foreskin of Jesus for example, and he specifically makes mention of this. But that didn't stop the trade and the gathering together in certain places of the relics.
Rachael Kohn: Well you mentioned Constantinople as being an important, indeed the pre-eminent focal point of the trade in relics and also the collection of relics together in Hagia Sophia, the great church that Constantine built. Now would this have to do with the fact that the Muslim invasion into Israel, or Palestine, the Holy Land, meant that Christians had to sort of rescue their relics and bring them somewhere else?
Robert Crotty: Yes, from just after 1000, you get in particular restrictions on Christian pilgrims because of the Muslim presence in Palestine, and throughout the 11th century, this becomes increasingly a problem that access to the Holy Land and access to the sacred places, becomes more and more difficulty. And so what then happens is that you get more and more an accumulation in Constantinople of these Jesus relics, so that the need to go to Palestine where there is this hostile Muslim presence being experienced, becomes less and less necessary.
Then the Crusades - we're now up to 1095 - that the Crusades were established to open up the routes for Christian pilgrims. So it was looked upon as in itself, the Crusades were sorts of armed pilgrimages that go back to Jerusalem and to the Holy Land. But within 100 years, what the Crusaders themselves realised when they turned their forces against Constantinople, there's this enormous treasure of Jesus relics in Constantinople itself, and they're stolen. And even though those Jesus relics were rarely known in Western Europe before that time, afterwards they became very popular, so churches for example, are established specifically to hold Jesus relics.
Rachael Kohn: Is this when the shroud, Jesus' shroud, first makes its appearance in the West, in Western Europe?
Robert Crotty: Yes. The shroud is obviously a fake. It's been carbon dated to somewhere around 1300, so at some stage most probably, it was taken from possibly Constantinople, possibly somewhere around it, and it was taken to the north of France, where a particular church was endowed with the shroud, and that was the best place you could go.
Here was the cloth with which Jesus was wrapped up for his death and his image, including the remains of the crown of thorn wounds, the wounds in his arms and feet, the lacerations from the scourging, all of this can be seen, and huge crowds would have spent much energy and much money as well in order to come close to what would have been seen as a focal point of power in that shroud.
Rachael Kohn: Well indeed, money does come into this. This would have been quite important for the church. You've mentioned that these relics were a crutch, and the question is, who were they a crutch for? The believers, or for the church?
Robert Crotty: For both. They were certainly a crutch for the believers. That's why the believers went there, that as far as the believers were concerned, that this actually gave the sacred story of Jesus. So what technically could be called the myth of Jesus, gave it some sort of substance and standing. Now for the, at least certain parts of, church, I mean I would see that there was a certain cynical attitude, there was a lot of money coming in from these, and to have a significant relic associated with your church ensured that your church was financially viable.
And they tried to corner the market and I think in the north of France, the shroud, which is down there as the Shroud of Turin, was one of the greatest moneymakers that could ever have been imagined. So, both were happy.
Rachael Kohn: When Luther rose in the 15th century, did he make any critical remarks about relics?
Robert Crotty: Oh yes, that was certainly part of his mandate that he was against these sorts of relics and he had gone to Rome and seen some of the great display of relics in Rome, and had reacted against it. That had been part of the spur for his reform program. Quite understandably so.
Rachael Kohn: I wonder whether it's a fairly natural impulse to want to embody one's beliefs in something material?
Robert Crotty: Yes, I think it is. I think that for any human being there's a certain point where they say, Well look, my way of life is based upon certain principles, now can I prove them? Where can I get some sort of substantiation for that? And that is precisely the reason why relics and the relic trade flourished.
Rachael Kohn: Is there a contemporary analogue to this kind of mediaeval notion of Jesus being seen, touched, felt, proven?
Rachael Kohn: Well I believe that there is. Since the 19th century there's been taking place what's been known as the search for an historical Jesus. For some, they simply said, Well the Gospels are history, so there we are. However, even from the 19th century, it was known that the Gospels are not histories, that the Gospels are interpretations made by believers. And throughout the 20th century there has been a great attempt to try and write the history of Jesus. So we have Jesus the Nationalistic Zealot, Jesus the Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, Jesus the Wisdom Teacher, Jesus the Wicked Priest who was mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and on and on they go.
Some of them have been written by historians, but the way in which they've been used, these historical reconstructions, is that if you understand the history, then you can base a theological interpretation of Jesus on it. And so some of the principal leaders of this historical Jesus research, such as John Dominic Crossan, would specifically say that unless we know the historical Jesus, then we're not going to be able to talk about any theological interpretation.
And so it becomes a crutch in exactly the same way as the relics did, back in the late Middle Ages. Now I don't think that at the present moment there is any need to search for the authentic Christian belief, I think that there is a wide variety and there should be a wide variety to suit whatever people want to make of Jesus.
Rachael Kohn: So the real problem with the relics and with these biographies, is that they confine Jesus to one particular certified interpretation?
Robert Crotty: Precisely.
Rachael Kohn: Robert Crotty is Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of South Australia in Adelaide.
Next week, the first of a two-part look at New Religions u8nder the Nazis, how spirituality became a vehicle for terror. That's on The Ark with me, Rachael Kohn.
Guests
Professor Robert Crotty
is an Emeritus Professor with the University of South Australia. His field of teaching is mainly Religion Studies - the history and culture of early Christianity, and the interface of Judaism and Christianity in the first two centuries CE.
