Relics are back in vogue!

As a once upon a time Christian, going to Chapel on a Sunday morning, unless I was tempted by my ungodly friends to break the family rank, and go AWOL.  As both my gluteus maximus will vouch with their many battle scars.  However, when I was present in chapel, the parch/pastor would often cite the tribulations of having idols or craven images in once home, mocking God.  It was a snide remake about Catholics, and the Papacy, although at the time I was too naïve to understand, comprehension came later.

Relics have been a great source of revenue for the Catholic Church over the centuries, and business is still as brisk today.  With items morbid and curious from complete corpses, arms, legs, and hands as well as individual bones or parts of, or complete sculls from supposed saint’s decapitated heads. Clothes and fabrics are also in great demand, such as the baby cloths of Jesus or the sudarium, a shroud that Jesus was supposedly buried-in.  As well as, the Seamless robe of Jesus is kept in a purpose-built chapel in Trier Cathedral.   Also, we have the sandals of Jesus Christ were donated to Prüm Abbey, Germany, by popes Zachary and Stephen II in the 8th century.  Popes are godly men supposed, but the mere mention of Pope Stephan II (752-7) above connotates not of piety, but forgery.  As Steven II, along with his younger sibling Paul, later Pope Paul I (727-67) are accused by historians of being the authors of the Donation of Constantine.  The well known forgery of supposed Emperor Constantine granting Pope Silvester I (314-35) basically the Western Roman Empire.  For supposedly curing the emperor Constantine of leprosy, so Stephen is not a pope to be trusted!

The official church relics, especially the wood from the so-call cross of Jesus.  Could possibly be seen in every Catholic Church around the world, be it a complete cross, plank, fragment, chip, or even sawdust.  The amount would be enough wood to fill the hold’s of a fleet of cargo ships.  A saying that was true in the mid-1500s, as it is today, said by a dastardly Christian, named John Calvin, a man with blood on his hands.  Calvin wrote: “if we were to collect all these pieces of the True Cross exhibited in various parts, they would form a whole ship’s cargo.”[John Calvin, A Treatise on Relics, p. 233, Second Edition, Edinburgh: Johnstone, Hunter & Co. 1870] However, since Calvin’s day, there are many more churches, and in lands, and continents that Calvin never dreamt of in his wildest dream. In the same vein, the Dutch Humanist and scholar, Erasmus wrote about the proliferation of relics, and the number of buildings that could be constructed from wooden relics claimed to be from the crucifixion cross of Jesus. [John Dillenberger (1999), Images and relics: theological perceptions and visual images in sixteenth-century Europe, p.5, Oxford University]
The early Christian Church was précised in what the true cross was made from, the Triplet Tree (pine+ cypress +cedar).  You are probably saying never heard of it, neither has every sane carpenter nor woodsmen.  Yet, the Church will insist that we believe such myths, as every (modern) wood on earth has been used to imitate the supposed true cross.  We are also supposed to believe the churches account of how Empress Helena in 326 CE found three crosses laying beneath the topsoil, as if in situ.  However, not knowing which was the true cross, she had a corpse laid on each cross in turn, it was only when the corpse was resurrected did she find the cross of Jesus.  The inmates of an insane asylum would appreciate that story.  Well, one can ask where was the Titulus that was supposed to have been nailed to the cross of Jesus, naming him the king of the Jews in tree languages.   If it was not on the cross which Empress Helena found, then the Titulus is a forgery, or Helena’s cross is, or both are fakes.  One can also ask why three languages, the Romans were supposed to be in charge, so why the Greek and Hebrew text.

Not to forget that the Christian Cross was not adopted by Christianity until the mid-6th-century?  Prior to the cross, the Christian symbols were the Anchor, Dove, Ship, Fish and/or Wheel, Lamb, Chi-Rho, and God’s flag, the Rainbow.  Which is now the flag of the Gay community LGBTQ+, as it is God’s covenant with all living creatures.  There is never just one relic that the church has authorized, but you get several, churches claiming that they have the true relic.  What about the prepuce of Jesus, that was a money spinner for the church, bottles of pickled foreskin were in storage within the Vatican, available to the unwitting pilgrim.  Also, there is a lake of relic holy blood, according to Calvin, who is unrelenting in his withering look at relics–from the reputed Holy Blood, “exhibited in more than a hundred places.” One place in particular, where the so-called blood of Christ is stored, is the Basilica of the Holy Blood, Bruges, Belgium.
Today, in a church in Agrigento, Sicily, there is a brand-new relic of a blood soaked shirt, belonging to a martyred Italian Judge, (now beatified) the blessed Rosario Livatino, murdered by the Mafia in 1990. I have nothing against this incredible lawman, who is a hero for standing up against the Mafiosi. But to revere a blood socked shirt, is another thing altogether. Thanks to Gwenllian for passing on that info, which has since been verified, and was the inspiration for this discussion. What do you say?

Approve ~ FS