This thread on the development of representational reliquaries has so far
avoided asking WHY they appeared during 10th/11th centuries. The
literature cited also tends to beg this question.
One possibility is that at this time relics and reliquaries were used in
different ways. Now they went out more on parade, not just in the local
processions of the churches in which they resided but also as part of
distant fund-raising and building campaigns. Moreover, the accounts of the
assemblies for the Peace of God and Truce of God indicate that the oaths
were sworn on collections of relics brought from all over the regions in
question. The new "majesties" and other spectacular reliquaries make
sense in the context of mass devotional processions where many different
focuses of the holy would have been competing for attention. In some its
aspects, perhaps this should be a subtopic in the ongoing debate about the
apparent "emergence of the crowd" in 11th-cent. Europe.
--John Howe
Texas Tech
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