medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 24/03/2008, <b class="gmail_sendername">Henk &#39;t Jong</b> &lt;<a href="mailto:[log in to unmask]" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"><a href="/cgi-bin/wa-jisc.exe?LOGON=A3%3Dind0803%26L%3DMEDIEVAL-RELIGION%26E%3D7bit%26P%3D1676739%26B%3D------%253D_Part_5838_31380276.1206453892332%26T%3Dtext%252Fhtml%3B%2520charset%3DISO-8859-1%26pending%3D" target="_parent" >[log in to unmask]</a></a>&gt; wrote:<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">


<br> Besides that: all these reliques are fakes, so why act as if we believe in<br> them and write serious studies about them, let alone make documentaries<br> about them with lots of question marks. Balderdash and piffle, except as a<br>


 religio-cultural phenomenon.<br> <br> </blockquote></div>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 <span id="st" name="st" class="st"></span><span id="st" name="st" class="st"></span>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. <br>
<br>
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 <span id="st" name="st" class="st">Luke</span> preserved in Prague (but not St <span id="st" name="st" class="st">Luke</span>&#39;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 <span id="st" name="st" class="st">Padova</span>
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 <span id="st" name="st" class="st">Luke</span> 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.<br>
<br>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 <span id="st" name="st" class="st">Luke</span>, in which case historians inclined to automatic skepticism about ancient <span id="st" name="st" class="st">relics</span> (I hang my head) must think again.
<br><br>The scientific report was published as: <span><br></span><div style="margin-left: 40px;"><span>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. </span><span>(Fonti e ricerche di storia ecclesiastica padovana ; 29). </span><span>Padova : Istituto per la Storia Ecclesiastica Padovana, 2003, (753 p.) </span><br clear="all"></div><br>-- <br>Paul Chandler, O.Carm.&nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp;Institutum Carmelitanum<br>
via Sforza Pallavicini, 10&nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp;00193 - Roma&nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp;Italy<br>

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