Sarah Tibbits
Overview:
Reliquaries, at their most basic understanding, are containers for relics. Relics are simply items of great religious significance; for Catholics, this can be the bones or belongings of saints, as well as objects associated with Christ like the nails or crown of thorns. However on their own, relics are plain at best, repulsive at worst. They can easily appear insignificant on their own¹. Enter the reliquary. Carefully crafted and highly decorative, they draw the eye more than any bone or scrap of cloth might. They both stand in contrast to the austerity of the relics they contain while simultaneously drawing attention to said relics. In many ways, the relic is only identifiable because of its reliquary². The beauty of reliquaries is meant to inspire devotion, and to demonstrate the significance of the saint whose relics it contains, hence why gems and precious metals were the favored materials³.
Sometimes, a reliquary makes its contents clear via the iconography it chooses to depict; certain symbols tend to be ascribed to certain saints. Often, however, a reliquary depicts multiple saints or scenes from the life of Christ. Beyond their contents, these objects can reveal other attitudes, including those pertaining to gender. This website aims to examine the role of women in reliquaries, how they are depicted iconically and how the reliquaries of female saints compare to their male counterparts. How prevalent are they? From where do they come? Are there gendered differences in materiality? What about posing and gesture? Ultimately, this site asks what we can determine about the roles and standards assigned to women in the mid to late medieval period (circa 1100-1500).
Often, gender roles are seen as simple or stagnant; this study aims to complicate that idea. Particularly under the current political climate, research into past standards for gender can help contradict the commonly held notion that gender never changes, that it has been the same everywhere for all time. At the same time, living in the Western world means that many of our ideas about gender stem from these Christian legacies. This can thus simultaneously work to demonstrate how modern thought is influenced by our past without landing on the age-old assumption that the findings will look something like men=good and women=bad.
The current scholarship surrounding gendered interrogrations of reliquaries appears to be lacking. In fact, it seems nonexistent. Cynthia Hahn, a Professor of Medieval Art at The City University of New York, has written extensively on reliquaries, but consistently fails to address a gendered comparison. Specific works on women either focus exclusively on the lives of saints in the hagiographical tradition, or they narrow in on one specific set of reliquaries, like St. Ursula’s companions. Shockingly, this website may be the first, or one of precious few, projects investigating a comparison between the portrayals of men and women on reliquaries.
Although focusing on the medieval period, some objects (or parts of objects) slightly predate the 1100 mark. The same is true in the opposite direction; particularly in cases where reliquaries are still in use, they have been repaired and altered up to the 1800s. Most objects, however, fall in the mid to late medieval range. Many archives—well, non-archives—are represented. The MET hosts a huge collection of reliquaries, and the Louvre also has some. In a cooperative attempt to display objects of holy significance in one place, many museums have uploaded object information to the Treasures of Heaven website. Additionally, many church holdings were used.
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Hahn, Cynthia, The Reliquary Effect : Enshrining the Sacred Object (Reaktion Books, 2017), 21, ProQuest Ebook Central.
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Hahn, Cynthia, The Reliquary Effect : Enshrining the Sacred Object, 7.
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Hahn, Cynthia, The Reliquary Effect : Enshrining the Sacred Object, 37.