Then there's always Chaucer's Pardoner. In my field at least (Middle English literature), there's a growing recognition that the _reception_ of medieval topics is part and parcel of the process of evaluating the historical claims made about the literature and culture. As a pedagogical concern, I find ample and compelling parallels between medieval discussions of the relative truth or fabrication of historical claims about relics and a number of contemporary discussions important to contemporary religious culture.

 

I know we've had this discussion before, with strong opinions expressed all around, and the question is never fully resolved, as it should not be.

 

Which makes me wonder (and you can address me offline, if you wish), is there a critical mass of folks interested in a 'medievalism' listserv, where post-medieval transformations of medieval ideas would be the heart of the discussion?

 

Best from Anchorage,

 

Dan

 

 

medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture On 25/03/2008, V. Kerry Inman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

It seems to me that this is not the issue and would be an unproductive direction for discussion. Henk asserted that all relics are fakes and unworthy of scientific study except as a religio-cultural phenomenon. Many relics are certainly fakes (necessarily at least all except one when there are multiple heads of a single saint, etc., etc. -- medieval commentators already made many such critiques). It seems, however, on the evidence, that some relics are not fakes, even some quite ancient ones.

I cannot agree with Karl Brunner that the "truth" or authenticity of a relic is not a historical question, even though the cult of relics, whether they were true or false, is no doubt the more interesting area of study. If the results of the Padova study are accepted, for example, we may have additional, interdisciplinary evidence for a very early beginning to the Christian cult of relics, predating the earliest literary evidence by two or three generations (if I'm not mistaken; I'm thinking of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, ca. 167). This is surely not an insignificant historical finding. The new results may also provide criteria for a re-evaluation of other data. For example, the late tradition about Luke's burial place in Thebes was not previously accorded any particular weight as far as I know, like similar traditions about the other apostles, which are generally regarded with skepticism. If the Luke tradition is now supported by dated archaeological evidence, it must be estimated differently. Will that make a difference to the weight we give to other non-incredible data in the legend, and so on? Isn't this just the normal historical procedure of weighing the available evidence, and not dismissing any of it in an a priori fashion?

Not all medieval people were totally credulous. At least some of them were concerned that the relics presented for their veneration should not be fraudulent. Bernardino of Siena, just to mention one, preached caustically against fake, implausible and impossible relics (and the credulity associated with them), but he was not at all opposed to relics or perhaps even to credulity in other matters. So as a historical question, the issue of authenticity has a history even in the Middle Ages. Insofar as the cult of relics is still living today, authenticity remains a historical issue. Many devout people today would certainly not wish to venerate fraudulent relics, any more than they would wish, say, to visit their mother's grave or Napoleon's tomb or the battlefield of Ypres and find that they had been deceived and that it was really somewhere else. In this case, authentication is a historical service.





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