Stephen A. Allen wrote:
>
> On more general legal points: the practice of using relics to dedicate a
> church appears to have begun in Late Antiquity, and it appears to have been
> considered the norm, even legally mandated, though the Middle Ages (and also
> unto today). The relics were central to the holiness of the church: altars
> without relics were supposed to be destroyed, and if a bishop wished to
> close a church for whatever reason (interdiction, settling a property
> dispute), several canons instruct him to remove the relics from the altar
Or, presumably, by denouncing the relics that were stored there? With
the
number of fraudulent relics around, it must have been fairly easy to
level
accusations of forgery or of simple error.
"Sorry, that's a sheep's skull, not a man's. We're closing this
church."
Any known cases of this?
Then again, maybe there was a conspiracy of silence. Once denunciations
started to fly, perhaps the laity would start to get suspicious of
*all*
relics.
Alasdair.
P.S. I stand much corrected on the original matter of dedications.
Thanks
for posting the correct details
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