Relics: Their Life & Afterlife

Nothing begins life as a relic. This day conference will explore the processes surrounding the creation of relics, their significance within history and antiquarianism and the various ways that they have been venerated, interpreted and preserved over centuries. Central to this is the idea of sanctity itself and how it is expressed through material objects and places that have been in proximity to a sacred person, whether the bones of a martyr, a scrap of cloth, a jewel encrusted reliquary or the churches built to mark the spot where early saints were martyred. Such objects and sites don’t remain in a static condition-they have a long ‘afterlife’. The sacred life becomes etched into landscapes and cultural memory through archives, records, legends and art– long after a sense of the historical person at the centre of the relics is out of reach and this is also part of their story. There is growing interest in pilgrimage, sacred heritage and the cult of the saints. Recently, the recovery and dating of the relics of St Eanswythe; the reliquary of St Magnus; the lost relics of Thomas Becket and the conservation of Lucca’s ’Volto Sancto’ have all caught public imagination.