Art, Relics, and the Senses in the Cult of Saint Demetrios of Thessaloniki

Abstract

An examination of the art and the textual evidence surrounding the cult of Saint Demetrios in Thessaloniki reveals that early Byzantine veneration of Demetrios prioritized the sense of vision as a means of engaging with the saint and emphasized the human ability to perceive the divine with the spiritual senses. Thessalonian clerical and administrative elites, needing to articulate alternative ways to attain closeness with their saint when his bodily relics could not be accessed, promoted views of matter and the senses exemplified in the mosaics of Hagios Demetrios. With the appearance of myron (a combination of perfumed oil and blood) at Demetrios’s shrine in the middle Byzantine era, possibly prompted by competition from rival saints, the cult rapidly refocused veneration toward this bodily relic and desire for physical contact with it. The dramatic change of emphasis from the visual and immaterial to the tactile and material as the basis for communicating with the saint is expressed in the design of reliquaries made to house this myron, which assert that vision is no longer sufficient to gain communion with the saint. The two groups of artworks—the early mosaics and the later reliquaries—provide differing sensory paradigms that guide their beholders and users toward the correct way to experience the divine. Through an analysis of the cult of Demetrios, this article seeks to nuance our understanding of the role of art, relics, and the senses in medieval saints’ cults.