{"title":"Relics and Divination","authors":"R. Wiśniewski","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780199675562.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780199675562.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"As early as in the second half of the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus assured his audience that the saints, living or dead, had the power to predict the future. This chapter seeks to explain how such predictions were obtained. There were at least three divinatory practices in which relics could be used: incubation in martyrs’ sanctuaries, interrogation of demoniacs in the presence of relics, and the drawing of lots on martyrs’ tombs. The problem is that the literary evidence for the first practice in the early period is rather scarce, for the second, exceedingly scanty, while for the third it is simply non-existent (we only know about it from material evidence). This reticence of the written sources does not necessarily reflect the actual popularity of these methods and plausibly results from their ambiguous character—neither praised nor condemned, they have left very few traces in literature.","PeriodicalId":414701,"journal":{"name":"The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130647051","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The First Miracles","authors":"R. Wiśniewski","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"In the first half of the fourth century Christians did not expect to see miracles in their lifetimes. This chapter explains how this attitude changed throughout the following decades. Above all, it emphasizes the importance of the newly created infrastructure of Christian sanctuaries owing to which they developed into healing centres. It discusses their monumental architecture, the teeming crowds of pilgrims, almsgiving practised in martyria, and the presence of the sick in sanctuaries. Also, it sets the belief in power of relics against the wider background of Christian thaumaturgy and addresses the question of how the belief in the power of relics spread throughout the Mediterranean.","PeriodicalId":414701,"journal":{"name":"The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics","volume":"80 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114474870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Finding Relics","authors":"R. Wiśniewski","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"When the cult of relics developed in the mid-fourth century, very few tombs of saints whose remains were to be venerated in the centuries to come had been identified. This chapter presents the early history of the search for and finding of such graves, which started in the last decades of the fourth century. It seeks to explain the reasons which lay behind this process, focusing both on the needs of the congregation and the role of the discovery in church politics. It also analyses the sense of the literary pattern of inventio and tries to find out how much this pattern reflected reality. Finally, it presents a case study: a literary dossier of the discovery of the relics of Gervasius and Protasius by Bishop Ambrose of Milan in 386.","PeriodicalId":414701,"journal":{"name":"The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134258824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Burials ad Sanctos","authors":"Robert Wiśniewski","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780199675562.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780199675562.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Both textual and material evidence demonstrates that many Christians would go to great lengths to bury their kin ad sanctos, close to the tombs of saints. The beginnings of this practice are often dated to the late third century. This chapter argues that the basis for such an early dating is tenuous. It also deals with the character of physical proximity between the ordinary dead and the martyrs: how close were the bones of the former placed to those of the latter? Were the relics put inside their tombs? Also, this chapter seeks to explain the reasons why people buried their dead ad sanctos. While acknowledging their religious motivation it shows that some Christians simply desired to entomb their dead close to a famous hero rather than to the source of a beneficial power.","PeriodicalId":414701,"journal":{"name":"The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics","volume":"170 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131754444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Conclusions","authors":"R. Wiśniewski","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0012","url":null,"abstract":"This part of the book summarizes the findings presented in the preceding chapters and in particular traces the chronological development of the cult of relics. It also shows this phenomenon against a wide background of the new Christian religiosity which started to emerge in the Mediterranean in the fourth century and which profoundly changed Christian attitudes to space and time and the material world. The cult of relics was an element of this new religiosity, but it can be fully understood only when studied together with its other aspects, such as the idea of the Holy Land and the practice of pilgrimages, the rise of monasticism and monastic holiness, the development of the Christian calendar, and the habit of feasting.","PeriodicalId":414701,"journal":{"name":"The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115324453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Displaying and Seeing Relics","authors":"R. Wiśniewski","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"In Late Antiquity most relics, even after they had been discovered, remained hidden: ordinary people rarely had an opportunity to see them. Visual contact with them, however, was not entirely impossible. This chapter studies various aspects of this contact, trying to answer the following questions: Where were the reliquaries stored and were they visible for visitors to churches? What did their iconography say about their contents? Were they constructed in a way which made it possible to peek inside? Also, it discusses some exceptional situations in which the very bones of martyrs were put on display and explains why this happened.","PeriodicalId":414701,"journal":{"name":"The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics","volume":"146 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124257145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Prehistory and Early Chronology of the Cult of Relics","authors":"R. Wiśniewski","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0001","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter presents the framework which will be referred to throughout this book and begins with a presentation of the biblical ‘prehistory’ of the cult of relics. It demonstrates that the veneration of the martyrs in the pre-Constantinian period was clearly a distinct phenomenon from the cult of relics as it emerged in the mid-fourth century. The novelty of the latter phenomenon consisted in the belief in the miraculous power of relics and in the new, hitherto unknown practices it involved. Even though a few literary episodes found in late antique literature seem to attest that this belief and practices started to develop earlier, this chapter argues nevertheless that they cannot contradict its principal argument, namely that a profound change in the attitude toward saints’ bodies occurred no earlier than in the middle decades of the fourth century.","PeriodicalId":414701,"journal":{"name":"The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121995176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Touching Relics","authors":"R. Wiśniewski","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"It is often implied that adherents of most religions naturally seek to come close to sacred objects. This chapter shows that in early Christianity this was not always the case. It studies the evolution of attitudes toward the physical remains of saints, dealing with the question of how the taboo of contact with a dead body lost its power. Also, it deals with how close, direct, and frequent the physical contact with relics was, how and how often they were exposed for veneration, whether it was possible to touch a reliquary or relics themselves, how indirect relics were produced, and what made them efficient.","PeriodicalId":414701,"journal":{"name":"The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123676984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Defenders of Cities","authors":"R. Wiśniewski","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780199675562.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780199675562.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter studies early testimonies to the use of relics as efficient palladia and examines the sources of this phenomenon, which unlike exorcizing and healing had no parallels in the Bible: the prophets, Christ, and the Apostles were never portrayed as powerful protectors of cities. For this reason the Greek and Roman background of this phenomenon deserves a detailed study aimed at finding out if there was any connection between the saints’ relics and the guardian statues and amulets whose growing popularity is attested in the late antique sources. This chapter argues that the Christian belief in the protection provided by the saints ran in parallel with the widespread belief in the power of amulets and that despite evident interactions between Christian and non-Christian practices it cannot be seen as resulting directly from pagan beliefs.","PeriodicalId":414701,"journal":{"name":"The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130363803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Eastern, Western, and Local Habits in the Cult of Relics","authors":"R. Wiśniewski","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"The cult of relics spread with what was an astonishing speed. This chapter addresses the questions of whether in this process the cult of relics evolved locally, and especially whether the general distinction between Eastern and Western customs is useful for describing it. The chapter argues that although several practices did indeed develop in specific places and remained more popular in their regions of origin, they did proliferate nonetheless. The diversity of customs in this field never disappeared, but is mostly due to limited contacts between different regions and to a lack of interest in making the cult of relics uniform.","PeriodicalId":414701,"journal":{"name":"The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics","volume":"101 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132066058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：