RELICS, the name given in the Church to, (I) the bodies of the saints, or portions of them, (2) such objects as the saints made use of during their lives, or as were used at their martyr dom. These objects were held in religious veneration, and by their means it was hoped to obtain miraculous benefits.
The origins of the veneration of relics lie in the anxiety for the preservation of the bodies of the martyrs. The church at Smyrna at the death of their bishop Polycarp collected and buried the remains of the martyr in order duly to celebrate the anni versary of the martyrdom at the place of burial. About the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th century it became customary for the bodies of the martyrs not to be buried, but preserved for the purpose of veneration. Already individual Christians began to possess themselves of portions of the bodies of martyrs, and to carry them about with them. Both these practices met with criti cism and opposition, especially from the leading men of the Church. But energetic as the opposition was, it was unsuccessful, and died out. The relic came to be looked upon as in itself a thing of value as the channel, of miraculous divine powers. The Fathers of the Greek Church especially were united in recommending the veneration of relics. All the great theologians of the 4th and 5th centuries may be quoted as evidence of this. Throughout the whole of the Eastern Church the veneration of relics prevailed. Nobody hesitated to divide up the bodies of the saints in order to afford as many portions of them as possible. They were shared among the inhabitants of cities and villages, Theodoret tells us, and cherished by everybody.
The development which the veneration of relics underwent in the West did not differ essentially from that in the East. The West was much poorer in relics than the East. Rome, it is true, pos
sessed in the bodies of Peter and Paul a treasure the virtue of which outshone all the sacred treasures of the East. But many other places were entirely wanting in relics. But the longing for these pledges of the divine assistance was insatiable. In order to satisfy it relics were made by placing pieces of cloth on the graves of the saints, which were afterwards taken by the pilgrims to their homes and venerated. The same purpose was served by oil taken from the lamps burning at the graves, flowers from the al tars, water from some holy well, pieces of the garments of saints, earth from Jerusalem, and especially keys which had been laid on the grave of St. Peter at Rome. A dishonest means of satisfying the craving for relics was that of forging them, and how common this became can be gathered from the many complaints about spu rious relics.
But in the long run these substitutes for relics did not satisfy the Christians of the West, and, following the example of the Eastern Church, they took to dividing the bodies of the saints. Mediaeval relics in the West also were mostly portions of the bodies of saints or of things which they had used during their lives. The veneration of relics also received a strong impulse from the fact that the Church required that a relic should be de posited in every altar.
The most famous relics discovered during the middle ages were those of the apostle James at St. Jago de Compostella in Spain, the bodies of the three kings, which were brought from Milan to Cologne in 1164 by the emperor Frederick I., the so-called sad arium of St. Veronica, which from the 12th century onwards was preserved in Rome and the seamless robe of Christ, the posses sion of which lent renown to the cathedral of Trier.