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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture On 24/03/2008, Henk 't Jong <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > > Besides that: all these reliques are fakes, so why act as if we believe in > them and write serious studies about them, let alone make documentaries > about them with lots of question marks. Balderdash and piffle, except as a > religio-cultural phenomenon. > > Henk, this seems very sweeping. A counter-argument would be provided, for example, by the relics of Luke the Evangelist in Padova. These were subjected to intensive scientific study in 1998-2001, and -- while a positive identification is, of course, impossible -- all the results were consistent with the authenticity of the relics. I gather the results surprised the scientific teams and perhaps even the church authorities. The Padova skeleton, of an elderly man with arthritis, was carbon-dated to between mid-1st and early 4th c.; DNA from the teeth shows he was very probably from Syria; the missing skull was matched with the reputed skull of St Luke preserved in Prague (but not St Luke's other skull, brought to Rome from Constantinople in the time of Gregory the Great, now dated 5th-6th c.). The leaden casket is the original burial container; its decoration is typically 1st-2nd c.; pollen inside it included pollen from Greece; carbon dating of small animal remains in the casket revealed that it had been in the Padova area since the 5th or 6th c., earlier, in fact, than the associated literary traditions. The casket fits perfectly into the pagan marble sarcophagus, reworked in the 2nd c., associated with St Luke in Thebes in Boeotia, the traditional place of his death (a theory is that it may have been removed from there in the time of Julian the Apostate). And so on. All in all, the results of the most extensive scientific tests available today, and a thorough review of the historical documentation, were consistent with the skeleton being actually that of St Luke, in which case historians inclined to automatic skepticism about ancient relics (I hang my head) must think again. The scientific report was published as: San Luca evangelista testimone della fede che unisce : atti del congresso internazionale, Padova, 16-21 ottobre 2000. vol. 2, I risultati scientifici sulla ricognizione delle reliquie attribuite a san Luca / a cura di Vito Terribile Wiel Marin, Francesco G.B. Trolese. (Fonti e ricerche di storia ecclesiastica padovana ; 29). Padova : Istituto per la Storia Ecclesiastica Padovana, 2003, (753 p.) -- Paul Chandler, O.Carm. | Institutum Carmelitanum via Sforza Pallavicini, 10 | 00193 - Roma | Italy tel: +39-06-6810.0849 | fax: +39-06-6830.7200 [log in to unmask] ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html