What Is a Reliquary? A Container Designed to Prove Its Contents

Relics were classified by their relationship to the saint, and the hierarchy governed value:

• •First-class relics, meaning the body itself or parts of it, which carried the greatest significance and were divided and distributed extensively
• •Second-class relics, being objects the saint owned or used, including clothing and implements
• •Third-class relics, being items that had merely touched a first-class relic, which could be produced indefinitely and were distributed widely
• •Relics of Christ and the Virgin, who were held to have been assumed bodily, which left only objects, blood, milk, and above all fragments of the True Cross
• •Contact relics produced by lowering cloth into a tomb through an opening, which allowed a single burial to supply a very large number of objects
• •The division of bodies was routine and formalised, which is why the remains of a single saint could be venerated in many places simultaneously

The theological position held that a saint remained present in their remains and could intercede with God on behalf of those who venerated them, so a relic was understood as a point of contact with divine power rather than as a memorial. The practical consequences were enormous. A church with an important relic attracted pilgrims, and pilgrims brought offerings, which funded building, which is why several of the greatest medieval churches were built around a relic and designed with ambulatories allowing crowds to circulate past it. Relics authenticated oaths, which were sworn upon them. They were carried in procession against plague, drought and enemies. An altar was required to contain relics for consecration, which created a permanent demand. That demand produced an extensive trade, widespread forgery, and a genre of theft narratives in which the removal of a relic from one church to another was described as a translation and justified on the grounds that the saint had wished to move, which resolved the awkwardness neatly.

Reliquaries drew on the most demanding metalworking techniques available, and the surviving examples are among the finest medieval objects in existence. Construction typically involved a wooden core sheathed in gold or silver plate, worked by repoussé and chasing, set with gemstones, enamels and antique carved gems reused from classical sources. Cloisonné and champlevé enamel produced brilliant colour, with Limoges becoming a major production centre for champlevé work exported across Europe. Forms varied by function and by period. Chasse reliquaries take the shape of a small house or church with a gabled roof. Speaking reliquaries take the shape of the body part they contain, so an arm reliquary is arm-shaped, which is a direct answer to the identification problem. Monstrances and ostensoria from the later Middle Ages use rock crystal or glass to display the relic directly, a shift reflecting increased demand to see rather than merely to be near.

The Reformation destroyed enormous numbers, with reliquaries broken up for their metal and relics burned or discarded as idolatrous, which is why so few English examples survive and why the finest collections are in continental Europe. The French Revolution destroyed more. Many survivors entered museums during the nineteenth century, where they present a persistent interpretive difficulty, since an object made to be venerated in a specific ritual context becomes something else in a display case, and museums increasingly acknowledge that rather than treating them as decorative art. Scientific examination has become routine where permitted, with radiocarbon dating, DNA analysis and isotope work applied to contents, producing results that sometimes support and sometimes contradict traditional attributions, and which are handled with varying openness. Veneration continues in Catholic and Orthodox practice, and major relics still draw very large numbers, with a tour of one saint's remains through several countries in recent decades attracting crowds that surprised most observers.

A relic is unimpressive to look at and impossible to authenticate by inspection, so the reliquary asserts significance through craftsmanship, using gold, enamel, gems and reused classical carvings. Relics were graded from bodily remains through owned objects to items that had merely touched them, and bodies were divided routinely. A relic attracted pilgrims and therefore income, which shaped church architecture, and speaking reliquaries take the shape of the body part inside.