Cultural Memory and Medieval Reliquaries

Samuel Gerace – PhD Candidate History of Art

Oftentimes as academics, we are specifically called to work on interdisciplinary research projects. Perhaps it is my undergraduate work in Fine Art, or the influence of friends and colleagues in the Social Sciences, or simply the interdisciplinary nature of History of Art, but I find this type of research to be some of the most fulfilling.

In my own PhD research, I study early medieval house-shaped shrines from Britain and Ireland, and trace their connections to continental reliquaries and chrismals from the seventh to the eleventh century. To define these terms, a reliquary is a container that holds the corporeal remains of saints and or objects that they may have touched in life. The term 'chrismal' is slightly more complicated, but in the early medieval period, it was used to describe containers for chrism oil as noted in the Missale Francorum, the Eucharist in the Rule of St Columba, and relics in Gregory of Tours Lives of the Fathers (Snoke 1995). As for the term 'house-shaped shrines', arguably one of the most famous house-shaped shrines is the Monymusk reliquary, held by the National Museum of Scotland, in Edinburgh [Figure 1]. The term house-shaped derives from the form of the shrine, which appears like that of a hip-roofed house, though churches, temples, and sarcophagi have all been listed as possible alternatives (Blindheim 1984). While this may be the topic of my thesis, more generally I am drawn to engagements with Christian saints. I leave this phrase specifically vague, as while I’m trained in medieval art, I do not feel particularly precluded from researching how this topic manifests in contemporary art, (early) modern texts, or even in folklore. While I bring a certain Art Historical and even Early Medieval angle into this type of research, my real passion rests in the boundaries between the disciplines and in the records that deal with the spiritual interactions between audiences and the saints, both canonical and popular.  

 

Figure 1

 
The connection between saints and contemporary audiences is an ongoing phenomenon, and can be witnessed in both blogs and in contemporary art displays. Scholar and blogger, Elizabeth Harper, hosts a blog ‘All the Saints you Should Know’, where she writes about the relics of saints, art, and the experience of coming face-to-face with images of death. Harper engages with the narratives and art of the saints, thus extending their sphere of influence to a wider audience. The power of the saints not only rests in their ability to perform miracles, but even more so in their ability to be remembered and the continuing bonds they engender, as seen in the work of Michael Landy’s, Saint’s Alive (Boeye 2013). Responding to both the gallery’s collection and the Golden Legend, Landy produced seven kinetic sculptures that required direct audience participation to ‘come alive’ [Figure 2]. Landy’s present engagement with both long dead saints, writers, and artists offers an interesting lens through which to witness how continuing bonds is present in contemporary art practices. 

Figure 2

 
Indeed, continuing bonds theory, (more often used in the social research disciplines,) also offers a view into medieval art and my own research topic. The Monymusk shrine did not gain its fame by its shape, but by being aligned with one of the most important saints in the Celtic world, St. Columba. It is precisely in trying to tackle this issue that drew me to research on social death and continuing bonds. (Daniels 2009, Jamieson 1995, Klass, Silverman, and Nickman 2014, Unruh 1983). Using theories and discourses more commonly found in social research contexts, new insights can given to medieval art and even present engagements with it. Early medieval scholars have long talked about the saints and how their living audiences developed and interacted with them, but continuing bonds theory provides a language through which to discuss how this takes place and how it can reflect in present practices. In particular, these types of engagements help to push the boundaries of the disciplines, affording new research opportunities. 

Selected Bibliography: 

Blindheim, Martin. "A House-Shaped Irish-Scots Reliquary in Bologna, and Its Place among the Other Reliquaries." Acta Achaeologica 55 (1984): 1-53.  

Boeye, Kerry. "Michael Landy: Saints Alive: National Gallery, London May 23-November 24, 2013." West 86th 20 (2013): 250-255.  

 

Daniels, Inge. "The Social Death' of Unused Gifts Surplus and Value in Contemporary Japan." Journal of Material Culture 14 (2009): 385-408.  

Jamieson, Ross W. "Material culture and social death: African-American burial practices." Historical Archaeology 29 (1995): 39-58.  

Klass, Dennis, Phyllis R. Silverman, and Steven Nickman, eds. Continuing bonds: New Understandings of Grief. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2014.  

Snoek, Godefridus J.C. Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist: A Process of Mutual Interaction.  Leiden: Brill, 1995. 

Unruh, David R. "Death and personal history: Strategies of identity preservation." Social Problems 30 (1983): 340-351.