Medieval relics

I didn't just look at Australian stuff at the British Museum yesterday. I also visited an exhibition focusing on the (very) Old World: Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe.

The veneration of relics is one of those things non-Catholics find it hard to get their heads round. No matter how enthusiastic a Protestant may be about Christian unity, their smile wavers a little if you tell them you need to get hold of a saint's knucklebone before you can dedicate your altar.

I wondered, therefore, if the contents of this exhibition might make some visitors squeamish. But there was nothing to fear. Few actual relics were on display -- the show focused instead on the elaborate containers built to hold them -- and those visitors could see were tiny fragments wrapped in cloth. The only relics I got a good look at were various thorns alleged to be from Christ's crown, although I have to say they all appeared to have come from different species of plants. Maybe Pilate's soldiers were also horticulturalists.

I also caught the dimmest glimpse of a piece of the True Cross, and learned for the first time how it had been brought to Europe. Essentially, the Empress Helena went to Jerusalem and tortured the local Jews until they pointed her toward some likely-looking bits of wood; these events were proudly depicted on the reliquary holding the fragment.

But there were more pleasant sights, too. My favourite part of the exhibition -- perhaps because it concentrated on the period I knew least about -- focused on Christianity's early days in Rome. A marble sarcophagus from the fourth century had an intricate relief of the Resurrection. Even better than that was the Epitaph of Severa. Its red-tinted carving showed a rather crudely rendered scene of the Adoration of the Magi (the Star of Bethlehem looked like a child's drawing of a flower). This is apparently the first known depiction of this subject.

Displays from later periods included a good mixture of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox objects. I was taken with a Byzantine altar that had carved marble curtains over the space where the relics were kept. Apparently pilgrims lowered cloth into the space to touch the relics, thus causing the cloth to become blessed.

Many of the Western reliquaries were shaped like the body parts they held. One arm-shaped reliquary was so small that the museum suggested it must have held a bone from a child saint. When I looked at the back of the hand, though, I saw that the knuckles and veins were rendered in detail and looked like they belonged to an adult. I also liked the gilt busts from 12th-century France and Holland, with their saints' beards and tonsures beautifully etched.

As befitted an exhibition held in Britain, there was a room devoted to Sts Cuthbert and Thomas Becket. Items from Cuthbert's shrine included a long curved "griffin claw" -- actually the horn of an ibex. Becket was an excellent example of instant saint-making. As he lay dying from his sword wound; monks collected his blood to be sold to pilgrims. Four hundred years later, Mary Queen of Scots' executioners, hoping to avoid a repeat performance, had her blood-soaked clothes burnt.

Recycling was an important feature both of the age of relics and of the age of iconoclasm that followed. A Scandinavian walrus tusk that was originally a chair leg was hollowed out to hold relics; so was a Muslim-designed bottle with an Arabic inscription. And after the Reformation, reliquaries were converted into household objects like salt cellars.

The British Museum has done an excellent job with this exhibition, avoiding the flashy technology and strained attempts at "relevance" that have marred some of their other recent shows. An unobtrusive soundtrack of Gregorian chant is as interactive as it gets.