Cult of Relics C 09

Dividing Relics
The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Robert Wiśniewski
Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780199675562
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: February 2019
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199675562.001.0001
Dividing Relics
Robert Wiśniewski
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199675562.003.0009
Abstract and Keywords

It is commonly believed that the practice of dividing corporeal relics had begun
as early as the fourth century and that it was initiated in the eastern
Mediterranean, to appear in the West at a much later date. This chapter
challenges both these views. It demonstrates that there is no early description of
dismembering a saint’s physical remains, and the evidence of the veneration of
specific body parts is extremely scarce. Testimonies to the deposition of the
same saint’s relics in several places can be better explained by transfers of
relics, their independent discoveries, or the production of contact relics than by
the actual division of relics. If this practice really existed in Late Antiquity, it was
probably extremely rare in either part of the empire before the sixth century.
Keywords: transfer of relics, contact relic, West, division of relics, saint, discovery
At the beginning of the twentieth century Hippolyte Delehaye published an

important study on the beginnings of the cult of martyrs which is still quoted,
and justly so, in most books and articles concerning this phenomenon. While
Delehaye studied the cult of the saints with a most scholarly eye, he also looked
at them with deep respect and affection, and he considered certain
developments of their cult as highly unsuitable. In his view, two closely
connected practices were particularly embarrassing: first of all, the custom of
taking the bodies of saints from their graves and placing them elsewhere, and
secondly, that of dividing them. Delehaye had no doubt that the responsibility for
these developments lay with the Greeks.1 In his opinion, the process of
disinterring and dividing martyrs’ bodies began in the East in the second half of
the fourth century, while Rome, identified with the West, was immune from such
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Dividing Relics
practices at least until the end of the sixth century. The fact that in the last
decade of the fourth century Bishop Ambrose sent out the relics of Milanese
saints to some of his colleagues did not change Delehaye’s opinion about the
profound difference in the Western customs: his conclusion was that Ambrose
simply followed Eastern practice.
The conviction that the process of dismembering saints’ bodies began in the East
in the fourth century is generally accepted in scholarship.2 Any doubts concern
rather the ‘purity’ of Western customs, i.e. the non-existence of the practice in
Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Africa.3 Admittedly, in 1990 Cyril Mango asked in this
context the question ‘Are the Greeks to blame?’, but it has not been satisfactorily
answered.4 John Wortley, in his interesting article about the origins of the
veneration of body parts, suggested what mechanisms could have given rise to
this phenomenon, but did not question the traditional conviction of where and
when it started.5 My purpose in this chapter is to find out what the late ancient
practice of dividing relics (p.160) consisted in, when it appeared, and whether
Western and Eastern customs in this matter were really different.
The strongest evidence to support the thesis that the East and West differed in
this respect comes from two well-known documents from sixth-century papal
correspondence. The first of these is a letter sent to Pope Hormisdas by his
legates in 519.6 It concerns the request of the future Emperor Justinian, who
wanted to bring from Rome to Constantinople relics of the Apostles and of St
Laurence. Before writing to the Pope, the legates explained to Justinian that his
demand had been made ‘according to the custom of the Greeks’ (secundum
morem Graecorum) and was contrary to the ‘practice of the Holy
See’ (consuetudo Sedis Apostolicae). As Justinian accepted this argument, the
legates, seeing his religious zeal, asked Hormisdas to send to Constantinople
what they called sanctuaria apostolorum (the context makes it clear that these
were contact relics sanctified by being laid on the graves of the Apostles) as well
as fragments of the chains of Sts Peter and Paul, and of the gridiron of St
Laurence.
The second classic testimony to the difference between Western and Eastern
practices is the letter of Gregory the Great, written in 594 to Constantina, wife
of the Emperor Maurice. The Pope, from whom she had sought ‘the head of St
Paul or some other part of his body’ (caput eiusdem sancti Pauli, aut aliud quid
de corpore ipsius), answers that he neither could nor dared to disclose the
Apostle’s sepulchre.7 And to strengthen his argument he related how, by divine
intervention, an attempt made centuries earlier to carry away from Rome the
bodies of the Apostles had ended in failure, and how in recent times all the
witnesses of the opening of the tomb of St Laurence had lost their lives shortly
after the event, even though the tomb was opened in order to repair the grave
not to take the body out of it. Gregory reminded the empress that according to
the custom of the Roman Church, suppliants received strips of cloth (brandea)
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sanctified by contact with the grave which were as sufficient both to heal and to
consecrate a church as the bodies themselves. He promised too to send to
Constantina some filings of the chains of St Paul, if he could only manage to file
them off, which was not necessarily achievable, because for one supplicant the
filings were obtained swiftly and easily, whereas for others even prolonged
efforts did not produce any success.
In both letters, the mos Graecorum, the custom of opening graves, is contrasted
with the mos Romanorum, which leaves them intact. Both letters are usually
considered to prove that the West for a long time opposed the Eastern practice.
However, two questions arise. First, what did the difference between Western
and Eastern attitudes towards the relics precisely consist in? Secondly, can we
refer the state of affairs described in the sixth-century (p.161) correspondence
to the earlier period? Briefly, do these two testimonies suffice to assert that the
customs of the two parts of the Mediterranean world in the fourth and fifth
centuries really differed?
As to the first question, one should note that what is discussed in both letters is
rather the problem of transferring than that of dividing relics. Only Constantina
expressly asked the Pope for the head of St Paul (which, it is worth noting, had
already been separated from the torso at the moment of martyrdom) or ‘for
some other part of his body’. If the empress had actually expressed her request
in such a way, the difference between Western and Eastern practices would have
been significant: the Romans did not allow dismembering bodies; the Greeks
accepted it. But it is interesting to note that in his answer Gregory suggests that
the difference was of another kind. According to the Pope, the divergence lay in
the fact that the Greeks permitted the opening of tombs, not dividing bodies.
When he quotes a negative example of some Eastern monks plundering one of
the Roman cemeteries, he refers to people who wanted to take away entire
bodies, not their fragments. I do not want to deny firmly that in the sixth century
attitudes towards dividing relics in different parts of Christendom were really
different, but I propose not to take it for granted, and to examine instead the
earlier customs more carefully. All the testimonies which I will adduce are fairly
well known, but I think that the common interpretation of this material, that it
demonstrates the practice of dismembering bodies, is too hasty.
A good starting point for studying this issue will be an imperial edict directly
forbidding the practice we are dealing with. This law, issued on 26 May 386 in
the name of Valentinian II and Theodosius I, stated that:
No person shall transfer a buried body to another place. No person shall

sell [or divide?] a martyr. No person shall traffic in them (nemo martyrem
distrahat, nemo mercetur). But if anyone of the saints has been buried in
any place whatever, persons shall have in their power to add whatever
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building they may wish in veneration of such place, and such a building
must be called a martyrium.8
If the prohibition on moving bodies from their tombs is simply a reiteration of

established Roman law,9 the rest of the edict regards a new practice which did
not exist before the fourth century. What kind of practice was it? The verb
distrahere is ambiguous. It can mean ‘to sell’, just like mercari in the following
sentence, but also ‘to tear into pieces’.10 Both meanings make sense in this
context. However, even if we choose the latter translation, we should remember
that in late antique penal legislation, especially in the religious domain, the (p.
162) choice of a specific term served rather to express the outrage of the
emperor and his strong disapproval of the stigmatized custom than to describe it
precisely.11 The legislator who condemned those who opened the graves could
easily have qualified every act of taking bones out of the tomb as ripping the
body to pieces, even if this did not reflect exact reality. That is why, in order to
learn what actual practice was, it is necessary to go further, and study the fate of
specific saints’ bodies which were displaced in the course of the fourth and the
fifth centuries.
One Saint in Many Places

The three earliest known translations of relics which took place in the 350s were
certainly not accompanied by dividing them. The contemporary evidence does
not say how the transfers of Timothy, Luke, and Andrew to Constantinople
occurred precisely,12 but we know that Babylas was transported to Daphne in a
well-closed metal coffin.13
More interesting is the story of the relics of John the Baptist. According to
Rufinus, in 362 pagans destroyed his tomb in Sebaste in Palestine, burnt his
bones, and dispersed the ashes over fields. Some pious monks, however, quickly
collected those remains, and took them to Jerusalem, whence, during the
episcopate of Athanasius (i.e. before 373), they arrived in Alexandria. Later on,
Bishop Theophilus deposited them in the church built at the site of the ancient
temple of Serapis, which had just been closed on the emperor’s orders.14 In the
same period the Emperor Theodosius brought to Constantinople the head of the
saint, which had before been kept in Cilicia, and before that in Jerusalem. We
have already seen that another head was discovered in the mid-fifth century in
Emesa.15
Another case of dispersed relics is that of the ashes of the Forty Martyrs of
Sebaste in Cappadocia. In the 370s, Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa
spoke about their relics, venerated in various places in their country.16 In the
Testament of the Forty Martyrs, whose date of origin is not easy to determine,
(p.163) but which possibly dates from the fourth century, the martyrs forbid
the distribution of their ashes;17 so the text testifies that some discussion about
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the practice of dividing relics was taking place. In the early fifth century we find
relics of the Forty Martyrs also in Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Brescia.18
The Forty Martyrs were not the first Eastern saints whose relics arrived in the
West. Before 386, a group of relics was brought to Milan, most probably from
Constantinople. The dating of this event is founded on Ambrose’s Letter 77,
written in the same year, in which he describes the discovery of the grave of
Gervasius and Protasius. Ambrose claims that in that year the people of Milan
asked him to dedicate a new church in the same way as he had dedicated the
basilica at Porta Romana, that is, with the use of relics.19 He does not state,
though, when exactly, and with what relics, he consecrated the latter church. As
for the relics, the answer can probably be found in the Martyrologium
Hieronymianum. Under the date of 9 May (without mentioning a year, as would
be useless in a liturgical calendar) the Martyrologium notes the ingressus of the
relics of the Apostles John, Andrew, and Thomas into the basilica at Porta
Romana. On 27 November the Church of Milan celebrated the ingressus of the
relics of the Apostles Luke, Andrew, John, the martyr Euphemia, and a less well-
known St Severus (the specific church is not mentioned).20 It is difficult to
determine which of these sets came to the city before 386, but it is quite certain
that both had arrived before 396, when relics of all these saints (except Severus)
were sent by Ambrose to Victricius of Rouen.21 Some relics of the same saints
are attested soon after in other cities in Italy: in Brescia, in Fundi close to Nola,
and probably also in Lodi.22 At about the same time, Paulinus of Nola hoped to
receive some relics of Eastern martyrs from a ‘saintly Silvia’ who was coming
back home from the East.23 Finally, shortly after 415, St Stephen’s relics were
brought to several places in the West, particularly in Africa.
(p.164) All this shows that the relics of certain saints could be found in several
places and in the second quarter of the fifth century Theodoret of Cyrrhus in his
Cure for the maladies of the Greeks seems to consider the division of saints’
bodies a normal practice:
The bodies of individual saints are not interred in the same tomb. Towns
and villages divide them amongst themselves, because they worship them
as saviours and physicians of souls and bodies, and venerate them as
patrons and protectors of the town; they use them as envoys to the Lord of
all things, and they receive through them divine gifts. And in spite of the
fact that the body is divided, the grace remains undivided and the smallest
particle of relics has the power equal to that of an undivided martyr.24
Theodoret repeats the same in two of his letters in which he claims that many
people say that a saint is buried in their church, whereas in fact they have only
small particles (smikrotata leipsana) of his body.25 The Martyrdom of Nikethas
the Goth, possibly dating from the same period, tells us about a failed attempt to
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divide this saint’s body, which might suggest that the author knew about other
attempts of this kind.26
With these seemingly obvious proofs that the bodies of saints used to be divided
in the early fifth century we can conclude the survey of literary testimonies and
move on to the archaeological evidence. Among the late antique reliquaries
discovered in several churches of the Mediterranean, some were found
unopened since their deposition, thus giving us a chance to see what their
contents looked like. Unfortunately, many of these finds have not been carefully
examined. In earlier times, archaeologists were often more interested in the
containers than in the relics themselves, and so their reports often just say that
a given reliquary contained ashes, which, however, were not analysed by
laboratory methods. It is therefore difficult to say whether the dust found inside
was placed there as relics in the form of ashes or was the residue of the
disintegration of body fragments or some other objects. There are, however, a
few reliquaries, both from the East and from the West, which contain small bone
fragments deposited in them probably before the sixth century.27
Briefly, there are three arguments for the early dating of the practice of dividing
saints’ bodies. First, as early as the end of the fourth century, there is literary
evidence of relics of the same saints deposited in various places of the (p.165)
Christian world. Secondly, Theodoret explicitly says that the distribution of one
martyr’s relics among many churches is common. Thirdly, some late antique
reliquaries contain little bone fragments, material proof of the dismembering of
a human body.
These arguments leave no doubt that relics of many saints were dispersed
already in the fourth and earlier fifth centuries and that this caused no
amazement. The question is whether this fact allows the conclusion that the
actual practice of dismembering bodies existed at that time. I think there are
reasons to give a negative answer to this question.
First, literary sources never talk about specific body parts which would have
been separated from the other parts. In fourth- and fifth-century texts we find no
mention of the veneration of a hand, a digit, or a foot of a martyr. The only
credible exceptions are the two heads of St John the Baptist and the head of St
Phocas (dispatched to Rome, according to Asterius of Amasea, while the rest of
his body remained in the East).28 But these are specific cases, because both
martyrs had been beheaded, and so the separation resulted from the action of
persecutors, not worshippers.29 Secondly, the early accounts of discoveries and
translations of relics never describe the act of dismembering a body. Admittedly,
there are passages in hagiographical writings which show the burial of a saint
thronged by a crowd of people wanting to touch the body during the ceremony;
they collect pieces of his garments, and press so much on the bier that it looks
as if they want to tear the body itself into pieces. But all these scenes are highly
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rhetorical and one can doubt if in any of these cases the integrity of the corpse
was really in danger.30 One may suggest of course that the practice of
dismembering bodies existed, but was embarrassing to such a degree that no
one was eager to describe it. The practice would thus be placed in the grey zone
of late antique religiosity which has left no traces in the sources. Such a zone
certainly did exist, but it is quite unlikely that practices associated with the cult
of relics were lost in it. The reason for arguing this—and this is my third
argument—is that at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century
the cult of relics as such was not unanimously accepted by all Christians. More
about this will be said in Chapter 10; here it is sufficient to point out that
although the writings of the adversaries of this cult (p.166) have perished, the
arguments of at least one of them are well preserved in Jerome’s Against
Vigilantius. Jerome refutes his adversary’s accusations one by one, and there is
no mention of the dismembering of bodies. As has already been said, Vigilantius
knew a variety of regional customs. If he had come across the practice of
dismembering, he would certainly have referred to it, with a view to discrediting
the worshippers of relics. Fourthly, numerous literary testimonies to the Eastern
cult of relics in the fourth and fifth centuries come from Western authors who
should have been sensitive to differences between the practices of the Romans
and the Greeks. Surprisingly, none of them notices any peculiarity about Eastern
customs in this field.
Division Without Partition

The four reasons named above make me seriously doubt that the process of
dividing bodies began before the sixth century or, to be more cautious, that it
was a regular practice. Of course, the question arises how, after having argued
that the phenomenon did not exist, one can explain its alleged consequence,
namely the fact that the relics of the same saints were enshrined in various
places, a fact seemingly attested by both literary and archaeological evidence.
Let us examine first the group of Eastern relics which appeared in Milan, and
then in other cities in the West, in the last two decades of the fourth century,
namely those of saints Andrew, Luke, Timothy, Thomas, and Euphemia. We know
that since 358 at the latest, the bodies of the first three of them rested in the
church of the Holy Apostles adjacent to Constantine’s mausoleum in
Constantinople. According to Procopius, during Justinian’s restoration of this
church they were discovered under the pavement.31 Thus, once laid in the earth,
they evidently remained hidden and it seems improbable that they were
accessible to anybody. When in 359 Bishop Macedonius ordered the removal of
Constantine’s body from his mausoleum, which had been damaged by an
earthquake, riots broke out in the city.32 One can hardly believe that afterwards
anyone would have dared to take from the imperial sanctuary any fragments of
the Apostles’ bodies.33 It seems equally unlikely that the body of Thomas the
Apostle was dismembered and some part of it brought to Italy. (p.167) Anyway,
in 384 the pilgrim Egeria says that his corpus integrum (complete body) was
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enshrined in Edessa. As for the martyr Euphemia, her body lay in a sarcophagus
in Chalcedon up to the seventh century.34 Thus, the relics which Ambrose
imported to Milan were certainly not body parts.
What kind of relics were they? The answer is not easy, but it is interesting to
note that in the basilica at Porta Romana Ambrose deposited relics from places
which were then highly popular with Western pilgrims travelling through the
eastern Mediterranean. While those pilgrims could hardly obtain body parts,
they certainly could bring home some non-corporeal relics. Such relics were
indeed known in that period: an inscription found in Spoleto, for example,
testifies to the presence of fragments of St Peter’s chains in that town,35 and
Augustine asserts that the relic venerated in Ancona was in fact, whatever some
inhabitants of the town maintained, a stone from St Stephen’s stoning.36
Certainly, one can wonder if contact relics could have been used at the
dedication of a church, as the Milanese relics were. Ambrose claimed that in
order to dedicate the new basilica he had to ‘discover martyrs’, which would
suggest that contact relics were unsuitable for this purpose. Furthermore, we
know that, when asked by bishops desiring to dedicate new churches, he offered
them blood of the freshly discovered martyrs, Gervasius and Protasius, that is a
kind of corporeal relic,37 and he did not send to anybody relics of Nabor and
Felix, the two well-known Milanese martyrs, whose tombs remained unopened.
The same desire for corporeal relics for dedications is attested by a letter of
Paulinus of Nola, who informs Sulpicius Severus that he is awaiting the arrival of
ashes (cineres) of some Eastern martyrs, but for the moment has nothing to offer
his friend, who is going to dedicate a new basilica.38 Had contact relics been
good enough for this purpose, he would not have hesitated to send to Sulpicius
relics obtained by touching the grave of Felix of Nola, whose cult he zealously
promoted. Both these cases are, however, quite easy to explain. Ambrose wanted
to share with other bishops the famous relics which he personally had
discovered; that is why he offered them Gervasius and Protasius and not Nabor
and Felix. Paulinus in turn planned to give Sulpicius something better than he
had been asked for: eventually, he sent him a fragment of the True Cross.
Moreover, we have some clear evidence of contact relics being deposited in
churches, probably for their dedication. Some of this has already been adduced
in Chapter 7. Here, it is worth mentioning an interesting piece of evidence from
Milan. In 1578, Carlo Borromeo discovered (p.168) in the church of San
Nazaro (identified with the Ambrosian Basilica Apostolorum or the basilica at
Porta Romana) an ancient reliquary offered by Manlia Daedalia, sister of
Manlius Daedalius, consul of 399. The reliquary represented Christ with two
figures, evidently Peter and Paul. It contained only pieces of fabric.39
To sum up, corporeal relics were probably preferable for dedications, but
certainly not strictly necessary. I think that Ambrose’s envoys or just some
Westerners visiting the East received in famous shrines in Constantinople,
Chalcedon, or Edessa no more than other pilgrims did, namely some dust, which
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perhaps in Milan was recognized as the ashes of the Apostles.40 Dust can quite
easily be interpreted as ashes and in the case of any powdered remains the
distinction between contact and corporeal relics surely was very fine, all the
more so as the Latin word (cineres) was used more frequently in a poetical than
a technical sense. The only relic of a different kind which arrived in Milan was
perhaps the blood of St Euphemia, miraculously produced and distributed in her
sanctuary in Chalcedon.41 If so, it was a corporeal relic, yet obtained without
violating the body’s integrity. Be that as it may, the presence of these Eastern
relics in the West is not proof of the practice of dividing corpses.
In the East, however, the presence of one saint’s remains in different churches
certainly cannot be explained by classifying them as contact relics. The Greeks
also believed in the power of objects physically linked to saints in one way or
another,42 but they called them eulogia, whereas the term leipsana was reserved
for the corporeal fragments or entire bodies.43 We know then that the same
martyrs’ leipsana were deposited in various places.44 But does it prove that
these saints’ bodies were intentionally divided at some point? I think that it does
not, because relics could multiply in other ways as well.
The first of these has been studied by John Wortley,45 who draws our attention to
the fact that some bodies of martyrs had already disintegrated (p.169) when
the cult of relics began to grow. This applies particularly to the victims of
persecutions whose corpses were burnt to ashes. A good example is the case of
the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. According to their Martyrdom, the bodies of these
soldiers were burnt to ashes after their death, but some Christians collected
them and took them to different places. It is possible that the story of the Forty
Martyrs and their relics is legendary, all the more so since turning human bones
into fine ash requires very much higher temperatures than an ordinary pyre ever
reaches. But we know that the relics which were venerated as those of the Forty
Martyrs in the second half of the fourth century were ashes.46 Thus, in this case,
Christians certainly did not carry out the dismemberment. Divided relics of this
category can also be found in the West. In addition to the Acts of Fructuosus of
Tarragona (which is difficult to date),47 we can read about the bishop and his
two deacons who were martyred and their bodies burnt. A group of Christians
came and collected their ashes and distributed them among themselves. Soon,
however, they were admonished in a vision in which the saint ordered them to
bring all the relics back and bury them all together. The relics of three Anaunian
martyrs killed in 397 in one of the Alpine valleys were, in their turn, distributed
without protests; their ashes found their way to Brescia, Turin, Milan, and
Constantinople (possibly to the sanctuary in Drypia).48 In all three cases, the
division of ashes was probably easier because they belonged to a group of
martyrs and not to a single person. Interestingly, it seems that once deposited in
one or many receptacles, these ashes were not divided any more. Gaudentius of
Brescia says directly in one of his sermons that when he was in Cappadocia, the
nieces of Basil of Caesarea offered him relics of the Forty Martyrs and that they
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gave him all that they had.49 So the ashes were not divided, but were passed on
‘in the whole’. Sozomen’s Church History and Gerontius’ Life of Melania, two
other sources which mention transfers of these relics, do not suggest their
further division either.50
It is important to observe a note of criticism with regard to the dividing of relics,

in the case of both the Forty Martyrs and the group of Fructuosus. There is no
doubt that such criticism proves the existence of the censured phenomenon. But,
if dividing the ashes of a number of saints was frowned upon, then (p.170) it
must have been all the more unthinkable to dismember the complete body of a
single saint.51
The second type of ‘non-invasive division’ consisted in finding and opening the
grave of a saint and taking his body to another place. The evidence for this can
be found in the accounts of the discoveries of the relics of Gervasius and
Protasius and those of St Stephen.52 In both cases the bodies had been laid in a
church, but shortly after some relics of those saints spread throughout the
empire. And they were certainly considered to be bodily relics. As for the
martyrs of Milan, Victricius of Rouen received some tiny particles (minutiae) and
their blood, which were offered also to Gaudentius of Brescia and probably to
Paulinus of Nola as well.53 It seems that blood relics were quite popular in the
West in these years. In Italian sources they appear for the first time in Naples,
just a few years before the discovery of Gervasius and Protasius.54 We know
from the account of Ambrose that when he opened the grave of the saints,
everybody saw a large amount of blood. It is impossible to say what, if anything,
was behind this literary image. But in this image the blood is described as being
separate from the bodies.55
In the case of the relics of St Stephen, the author of the story of their discovery,
Lucian of Caphargamala, claims that:
Then, with psalms and hymns, they brought the body of the most blessed
Stephen to the holy church of Zion, where he had been ordained
archdeacon. Out of his limbs they left us small particles, but great relics:
soil with dust, where his entire body had been decomposed; the rest they
took away.56
As in Milan, all the bones are deposited in one place, but some tiny objects,
which the author wanted to believe were (almost) corporeal, became
independent relics. In both situations, the physical remains of the saints, or what
(p.171) was considered to be their physical remains, were indeed distributed,
but these were only small particles already separated from the body.
Apart from this, we can observe two other ways of ‘dividing’ relics, which
consisted in distributing body parts which in fact had never belonged to the
same corpse. First, it did happen that an alleged grave of the same saint was
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found independently in two different places. The best example is the two heads
of John the Baptist, the first one probably discovered in Jerusalem before the
370s, and the second in 453 in Emesa.57 It is not certain whether either of them
had ever belonged to the body deposited in Sebaste. Also, a few biblical saints
had more than one grave.58 This is hardly surprising: as we have seen in Chapter
6, the resting places of most biblical saints had to be discovered in the fourth
and fifth centuries and an old grave of any John could easily have been identified
as the tomb of one of his great New Testament namesakes. Sometimes such
identification posed a problem, as we can see in an episode in the Religious
History of Theodoret. When relics of St John arrived in Cyrrhus, a monk Jacob
prayed to God to reveal to him which John exactly it was.59
Many a time, relics taken from their original resting place multiplied in the
successive stages of their journey. Let us return to John the Baptist. As has been
said, according to Rufinus, his bones, burnt in 362 in Sebaste, were collected by
monks and brought to Jerusalem and from there to Alexandria. However, at the
end of the fourth century, each of these three cities boasted having the saint’s
body. Jerome, who mentions the tomb of John in Sebaste several times in his
writings, never suggested that it was empty or that it contained only a part of
the remains of the saint: ‘There lie the prophets Elisha and Obadiah and John the
Baptist,’ Jerome says in one of his letters.60 This example shows that relics
which spent some time in one place and then were taken away tended to
reappear in the same location.61
Another example of this phenomenon is provided by the dossier of the relics of

St Stephen. It contains several texts written in the space of about ten years after
the discovery of the tomb of the Protomartyr. The first of these is the Revelatio
sancti Stephani composed by Lucian shortly after the event, (p.172)
immediately translated into Latin by Avitus of Braga, and sent, together with
some of Stephen’s relics, to Spain, via Orosius, who was just coming back home
from the Holy Land. Orosius also took a letter from Avitus to Bishop Palchonius
of Braga, but he did not reach Spain, which was being ravaged by the Visigoths.
He stopped at Minorca,62 whence the relics arrived in Africa.63 Shortly after,
Augustine mentions their presence in Hippo and other African cities (and
Ancona), as does Quodvultdeus in relation to Carthage.64 In the East, according
to the lives of Melania the Younger and Peter the Iberian, some relics of Stephen
were deposited on the Mount of Olives, and Marcellinus Comes mentions their
transfer to Constantinople.65 The Greek sources speak vaguely of leipsana,
without defining their character with any precision.66 The Latin texts, however,
are more specific. Lucian, in the passage already quoted, claims that he was left
only with small particles of the body: ‘little body parts … earth and dust’ (parvos
articulos … terram cum pulvere),67 but Avitus, the translator of the Revelatio,
writes in his letter to the bishop of Braga that he is sending him something
more:
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Wherefore I have sent to you, by my saintly son and co-presbyter Orosius,

relics from the body of the blessed Stephen the first martyr, that is some
dust of the flesh and sinews (pulverem carnis atque nervorum), and—in
order to make it even more trustworthy—some solid bones (ossa solida)
which, by their manifest sanctity, are more precious than a new pigment or
perfume.68
One has the impression that the earth and dust mentioned by Lucian began to
solidify. We do not know anything about the kinds of relics brought to Minorca
(Severus of Minorca, who tells the story of the relics’ arrival on the island, just
mentions reliquiae),69 but we do know that in Uzalis there arrived an ampoule
the inside of which looked as if it was ‘sprinkled with blood and had something
like traces of tiny straws which seemed to be particles of bones’70 Finally,
Augustine talks about ashes which arrived in Hippo.71 Even more interestingly,
he also knows a story about the arm of St Stephen deposited in Ancona, which,
however, he considers to be untrue, claiming (p.173) that the relic of Ancona is
actually a stone used at the stoning of St Stephen. As we can see, the dust which
had been left to Lucian changed into bones, blood, and, eventually, an arm.
Certainly, Augustine knew that the latter was actually simply a stone, which only
after the discovery in 415 had started to be venerated as a corporeal relic, but
we may doubt whether the inhabitants of Ancona shared this opinion.72 Thus,
our sources demonstrate that relics do multiply and change their form when
travelling. Even if a part of them is left at every stage of the journey, the rest
does not seem diminished, quite the contrary. This could have occurred through
three different means. Sometimes it was an entirely literary phenomenon, just
an author’s amplification—it seems, for example, that Avitus’ ‘solid bones’ were
the ‘very little body parts’ that had been left to Lucian. Sometimes people
reinterpreted the nature of the relics they possessed—that is what probably
happened in Ancona. Finally, the multiplication could have resulted from a
forgery, pious or not. The news about the discovery of an illustrious saint both
created demand for his relics and helped to convince potential ‘customers’ about
the authenticity of offered objects—because people knew that the grave of the
saint in question really had been opened. Incidentally, Augustine knew of monks
who sold suspect martyrs’ relics at the very beginning of the fifth century.73
The evidence presented above does not prove beyond all doubt that in the fourth
and fifth centuries the actual practice of dismembering bodies did not exist at
all. It does, however, permit an explanation of the well-documented dispersion of
relics without appeal to the practice of dismembering bodies, a practice which,
we have to remember, has left no direct traces in the sources. The lack of
evidence does not necessarily exclude the very existence of the practice, and
acts of division may have happened. But if it was the case, in Late Antiquity it
was at most a marginal phenomenon, as it has left no record of praise, criticism,
or commentary on the part of either group, the advocates and the adversaries of
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the cult of relics alike. Thus the Greeks are not to blame, not because the
Romans are guilty, but because the offence was not committed.
Further Development
What changed this attitude? What made Gregory the Great defend, without
much success, the remains of the saints against the new practice?74 An essential
role was probably played by the growing demand for relics. Certainly, the
fundamental reason for this craving appeared already in the second half of the
fourth century, when the belief in their power emerged. The demand, (p.174)
however, grew stronger in the centuries that followed. Suffice it to mention the
practice of depositing relics under altars, which appeared already in the fourth
century, became common in the sixth century, and was decreed obligatory at the
second Council of Nicaea (787).75 Moreover, the number of communities which
needed relics steadily increased. Even if the frontiers of the Christian world did
not shift dramatically between the fourth and sixth centuries, the degree of
Christianization of several regions, especially in the West, considerably changed,
and new churches were built almost everywhere, and especially in rural areas.
This process would gain even greater momentum in the Carolingian and
Ottonian periods, with the Christianization of the countries west of the Rhine
and north of the Danube, which imported relics on a large scale.76
In most cases, this growing need could have been satisfied either by relics of
new saints or in the ways discussed above: by contact relics which were often
recognized to be corporeal, by the miraculously found bodies of saints known or
unknown before, by dust collected inside or outside renowned graves. It seems,
however, that these very methods played a role in the development of the
practice of dividing bodies. There are two reasons behind this development.
First, these methods promoted a view that corporeal relics were better than
others, which is clearly visible in the case of the stone from Ancona which at
some point came to be recognized as a bone of St Stephen. Secondly, they made
people think that the partition of saints’ corpses was a norm, as Theodoret
already wrote in the second quarter of the fifth century.
It seems that this conviction did not meet with any theological opposition,
although it could have had at least some potentially difficult doctrinal
implications. In the first place, there was the question of what would happen to
divided bodies at the resurrection of the dead. This problem was already
discussed in the treatise On the Resurrection of the Dead, traditionally
attributed to the second-century apologist Athenagoras. Even if this attribution
is inaccurate and the text was actually written later, its conclusions do not differ
from those of such second-century authors as Justin the Martyr and Theophilus
of Antioch.77 And the answer which the text gives is clear enough: all bodies,
even those eaten by cannibals, will easily be resurrected, for God is able to
recognize and reunite all the particles belonging to every single body.78
Certainly, in spite of this answer common people could have been anxious about
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the fate of disintegrated corpses. At the beginning of the fifth century, Augustine
still felt obliged to emphasize in his sermons that the martyrs do not (p.175)
care about any misfortunes that may befall their bodies. For him, however, it was
merely an issue that he had to explain to his congregation, not a real theological
conundrum.79
The second theological problem lay in the belief in the power which lingered in
relics. People often doubted whether a saint could have many abodes on earth
and be active in all of them simultaneously. For the healing sanctuaries it was
not a purely academic problem. Those which possessed the entire bodies of
saints tended to emphasize that their power was concentrated at their graves,
but minor shrines claimed that a saint could be permanently present also in
other places or at least visit them occasionally.80 The multilocation of saints was
not taken for granted. The author of the Miracles of St Thecla, written c.480,
mentions a garden which the saint used to visit more often than other places and
says that every year she would leave her sanctuary in Seleucia to participate in
her feast in Dalisandos.81 It seems that even if Thecla was able to move without
her relics, she was supposed to be only in one place at any one time. Later on,
Gregory of Tours tells a story about a meeting of saints convened in a church for
which St Stephen arrived late because he was busy saving a ship in a storm.82
And we can also detect some traces of anxiety concerning the possibility that the
distribution of a saint’s remains might diminish their power. This could happen
even when a given church did not possess the entire body. When the rumour
spread in Uzalis that the local bishop was going to take a part of St Stephen’s
relics enshrined in the local church and deposit it elsewhere, a crowd of
inhabitants assembled to prevent the division.83 Such sentiments were probably
not uncommon. But they were not founded on theological considerations.
Actually, from the doctrinal point of view, the question did not raise serious
doubts. On the one hand, already Gregory of Nazianzus emphasized that the
tiniest particle of a saint’s remains had power equal to that of the entire body;
this particular view was developed shortly after by Victricius of Rouen in his
treatise De laude sanctorum.84 On the other hand, several writers emphasized
that if the saints wanted to heal, expel demons, or protect towns, they could do
so without their relics.85 In either case, division did not change anything.
Thus, it does not seem that any of these issues got in the way of translating and
dividing relics. We will see in Chapter 10 that the arguments put forward (p.
176) against these practices were rather of a biblical and historical character.
Such things had not happened in ancient times; the saints of the Old and New
Testaments were not taken out of their graves, claims Athanasius.86
The growing need for relics, the growing and widely shared conviction that
saints’ bodies could (and almost ought to) be divided, and the at least silent
theological consent to this fact finally led to the practice of dividing bodies. Its
start, however, was by no means sudden; all the more so as there were factors
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which retarded this process. One of them was certainly the fact that the division
of bodies, including those of the saints, was prohibited by law.87 There was
moral or aesthetic resistance as well. At the end of the fourth century and the
beginning of the fifth, touching and even seeing a decomposed body aroused
horror, among Christians and pagans alike.88 It seems that this aesthetic
sensibility changed very slowly. It is true that the newly discovered saints’
bodies happened to be displayed uncovered in public already at the end of the
fourth century. It was almost certainly the case in Milan in 386, when people
were allowed to admire the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius for two days.89 We
have seen, however, in Chapter 8 that such moments were exceptional. Once
deposited under altars, relics were rarely shown again, and if so, they were
closed in reliquaries which did not permit their contents to be seen. Reliquaries
with a peephole appeared on a large scale only in the thirteenth century, when
the practice of dividing bodies was already a well-established custom.90
The mental shift which slowly led to the acceptance of the new custom was not a
dramatic change, but a long and gradual process of getting used to the practice,
probably stimulated by a few events and factors which gave it momentum. The
first step was taken by those who organized the fourth-century translations,
which—and here Delehaye is surely right—were essentially an Eastern
phenomenon. The key role might have been played by the first initiatives of the
emperors and by the translocations of relics during the reign of Julian which
resulted from the attacks on Christian martyria (the case of John the Baptist in
Sebaste was not isolated). The next step was distributing already disintegrated
bodily or quasi-bodily remains, such as ashes, dust, and ‘blood’ which were
found in the graves. An important factor was that non-corporeal relics had been
divided since the fourth century without any restraint, as was the wood of the
Cross.91 All these practices can be observed in both parts of the empire. If they
are actually more noticeable in the East, this results not necessarily from the
hypothetical otherness of the Greeks, but from (p.177) historical conditions:
the main category of graves miraculously found in the fourth and fifth centuries
was the tombs of great biblical figures and it was self-explanatory that in order
to find them one should look in the East. After all, who would expect to find
graves of Samuel, Abdias, or Andrew in Gaul, Spain, or Italy?
The earliest testimonies of specific separate body parts, apart from the heads of
decapitated martyrs, appeared, slowly, only in the sixth century. There is a very
fine line between taking out of the tomb some particles which are already
detached from the corpse and those which are barely attached to it. The
transition from plucking a dead monk’s hair to snapping off his arm was gradual.
It is symptomatic that in both the East and the West the earliest body parts
detached from corpses seem to have been fingers. According to Theodore
Lector, Emperor Anastasius received a finger of St Sergius of Resapha, and
Gregory of Tours mentions another finger of the same saint kept hidden in the
house of a Syrian merchant in Bordeaux. He claims that a Merovingian
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aristocrat cut this relic into pieces with his knife, but the saint disapproved of
this act and punished the perpetrator.92 An instructive description of how a relic
could be detached in an acceptable way can be found in the almost
contemporary Life of St Radegond by Baudonivia.93 The episode tells of a finger
of St Mammas: Queen Radegond requested a relic of this saint from the
patriarch of Jerusalem. The patriarch, with his clergy, prayed to the saint and
only then did he open the tomb and proceed to examine the saint’s body parts.
He touched them one by one, and finally one of the fingers came off and stayed
in his hand. It is difficult to say if the description is truthful, but it certainly
showed readers how the act of division, an exceptional thing, should look.
Gregory of Tours is even more cautious in this respect. The only act of dividing a
body that he finds acceptable is the case of a finger of St John the Baptist which
miraculously appeared on the altar in order to comply with the request of a
woman who had spent two years at the saint’s tomb praying for this favour.
Probably this sixth-century change really was slightly faster in the East, as the
letters of Hormisdas’ legates and Constantina quoted at the beginning of this
chapter seem to suggest. The East, however, should not be considered uniform
in respect of customs relating to the cult of relics. Attitudes towards the dead
body and burial practices differed among the peoples of this vast and diverse
region. It seems, for instance, that in Egypt the opening of saints’ graves was
favoured by the old indigenous practice of keeping the sarcophagi of the
‘important dead’ in a special room at home. As already noted, as early as 369
Athanasius condemned those who laid the corpses of martyrs on wooden tables
instead of burying them. He also said that Antony had instructed his (p.178)
disciples to hide his body lest it be taken ‘to Egypt’. A century later the practice
of transferring bodies was vigorously disapproved of by Shenoute.94 John
Wortley sees in this local custom one of the factors which gave rise to the
practice of dividing bodies. This could have been the case, but its influence was
quite indirect and delayed, for, as far as we can see, the earliest officially
approved translations of relics, as well as the instances of dividing the saints’
bodies, had nothing to do with Egypt. I wonder whether it could have been
northern Mesopotamia and the neighbouring parts of Syria and Armenia that
played a major role in the development of both practices. I have already
discussed the Edessene tradition of transferring the body of St Thomas the
Apostle from India to that city. Even if the story is almost certainly untrue, it
shows that in the Syrian milieu already in the fourth century the act of removing
a body from the grave and taking it to another place did not raise anxiety. At the
beginning of the fifth century, bones of a number of Persian martyrs were
brought by Bishop Marutha to Maipherqat, later known as Martyropolis (modern
Silvan), in the region of Sophene situated between Armenia and Osrhoene.95
About the same time in the northern Syrian town of Resapha the body of St
Sergius was stolen from his original tomb, and then transferred three times to
different churches inside the walls, while some relics of this martyr found their
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way to other places.96 It is worth remembering that it was in the Syriac context
as well that Theodoret wrote about saints’ remains laid in diverse churches.
Certainly, all this does not diverge much from the fifth-century testimonies which
can be found in other parts of the Christian world. But Syrian testimonies are
quite numerous. More importantly, the sixth-century evidence points to this
region as being deeply involved in the very start of the actual practice of
dividing of body parts. The fingers of St Sergius attested in Constantinople and
Bordeaux came from Resapha, the latter finger being brought to Gaul by a
Syrian merchant. The strongest witness to the new customs comes from two late
sixth-century church historians. In his Lives of the Eastern Saints, John of
Ephesus, another contemporary of Gregory of Tours, born in Amida in Sophene,
says, without any embarrassment or a justificatory tone, that in his days the holy
bones of St Paul the Anchorite were taken round the region and wherever his
skull or right hand appeared, it saved the surrounding territory from hail, storm,
and plague.97 In the same period Evagrius claims that in the skull of Simeon
Stylites the (p.179) Elder, which was kept in Antioch, only some of the teeth
were still in place, because others were brutally pulled out by the faithful.98
But let us repeat once again—the West was not that slow to follow. In the mid-
seventh century, Clovis II opened the tomb of St Denis and tore off the saint’s
arm.99 Admittedly, this act was considered outrageous, but not necessarily
because of its violent character, but because snatching off the arm of a saint
worshipped in a famous abbey without the consent of the monks was still a step
too far.
Notes:
(1) Delehaye 1933, 53–61.
(2) See McCulloh 1976, 145; Heinzelmann 1979, 20–2; Hunt 1981, 174–5; Legner
1995, 11–15; Beaujard 2000, 283; Clark 2001, 167.
(3) Grabar 1946, vol. 1, 40–1.
(4) Mango 1990, 61.
(5) Wortley 2006b.
(6) Collectio Avellana 218.
(7) Gregory the Great, Epistulae IV 30; see p. 141.
(8) Codex Theodosianus 9.17.7 (27 February 386). The edict is erroneously
attributed to Gratian as well.
(9) Herrmann-Mascard 1979, 31–2.
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(10) Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucillum 30.14 (magna vi distraheretur a

corpore).
(11) Harries 1999.
(12) The transfer of Luke and Andrew is described in the Passio Artemii, but the
text is not trustworthy: see Burgess 2003.
(13) Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 5.19.13. It was transported in the same way
in 362, when it was carried out of Daphne on the orders of Julian: see John
Chrysostom, In Babylam 87–90.
(14) Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica 11.28. Similar attacks on Christian martyria

in other towns are mentioned by Julian, Misopogon 357C and 361A–B.
(15) The first head: Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 7.21.4–5; Chronicon Paschale
s.a. 391; the second head: Chronicon Paschale s.a. 453; Marcellinus Comes,
Chronicon s.a. 453.
(16) Basil of Caesarea, In sanctos XL martyres 8; Gregory of Nyssa, In XL

martyres I, p. 137 and In XL martyres II, p. 166. For the dating of Basil’s sermon,
see Bernardi 1968, 83–4 (370s); for Gregory’s sermon, Leemans 2001, argues for
c.375 (against traditional dating to the 380s). For the testimonies to this cult,
see Limberis 2011, 137–40.
(17) Testamentum XL Martyrum 1.
(18) Brescia: Gaudentius, Tractatus 17.11–37; Jerusalem: Gerontius, Vita

Melaniae 48; Constantinople: Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 9.2.
(19) Ambrose, Epistula 77.1.
(20) Martyrologium Hieronymianum, VII Id. Mai, V Kal. Dec.
(21) Victricius, De laude sanctorum 6.
(22) Brescia: John the Baptist, Andrew, Thomas, Luke (Gaudentius, Tractatus
17.3–11: after 397); Concordia: John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Andrew,
Thomas (Chromatius of Aquileia, Sermo 26: after 388); Fundi: Andrew, Luke
(Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 32.17: 402); a basilica apostolorum was dedicated,
during Ambrose’s episcopate, in Lodi as well, but we do not know whose relics
were deposited in it (Ambrose, Epistula 4.1). For chronological problems with
identifying these relics and dating their transfers, see Y.-M. Duval 1977, 303–18.
(23) Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 31.1.
(24) Theodoret, Graecorum affectionum curatio 8.10–11.
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(25) Theodoret, Epistula 131 (CXXX), p. 121, and 145 (CXLIV), p. 169.
(26) Passio Nicetae Gothi 8.
(27) See Buschhausen 1971. In this catalogue of ancient reliquaries few were
found with bone fragments inside: B 20 (Pula), C 1 (neighbourhood of Varna); C
6 (Lopud near Dubrovnik, but Buschhausen’s dating is probably too early); C 10
(Chur, Switzerland); C 23 (Çoban Dere, Bulgaria); C 60 (Synnada).
(28) For the heads of John the Baptist, see n. 15; for the head of Phocas, see
Asterius of Amasea, Homilia 9.10; in the later fifth century that was also the case
for the head of St Julian in Gaul: see Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistulae VII 1.
(29) A case apart is two testimonies to specific fragments of St Stephen’s body.

Augustine claims that in Ancona people believed that they had an arm of the
Protomartyr, but this, he says, is untrue (Sermo 323.2); see n. 36. According to
Theophanes, Chronographia 5920 (AD 427/8), the arm of St Stephen was
transferred in 427 from Jerusalem to Constantinople. This testimony, however, is
not trustworthy: Mango 2004.
(30) See Antonius, Symeonis Stylitae vita Graeca 29; Callinicus, Vita Hypatii
51.10; Hilary, Vita Honorati 35.2; Honoratus, Vita Hilarii 29; Vita Danielis
Stylitae 100.
(31) Procopius, De aedificiis 1.4.17–21. The problem of the original place of the
deposition of these relics (Constantine’s mausoleum or the church of the Holy
Apostles) was discussed by Mango 1990, 58, who convincingly argues for the
latter solution.
(32) Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica 2.38.35–42; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica

4.21.3–5; see Wortley 2006a.
(33) McLynn 1994, 192–3, aware of the importance of these relics and of the riots
in Constantinople in 359, concluded that the fragments of the Apostles’ bodies
could have been transferred to Milan only by the emperor, namely Theodosius I.
Subsequently, McLynn’s views have changed and now he thinks that these were
simply contact relics, which I find a much better solution, more economic and
acceptable from the chronological point of view.
(34) Thomas’s body: Egeria, Itinerarium 17.1; its transfer: Chronicle of Edessa
s.a. 394; Euphemia’s sarcophagus: Asterius of Amasea, Homilia 11; further
history of these relics: Berger 1988.
(35) Thacker 2012, 398–403; see John Chrysostom, In Babylam 63 (fetters of

Babylas).
(36) Augustine, Sermo 323.2.
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(37) See n. 55.
(38) Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 31.1.
(39) Palestra 1969; Zovatto 1956.
(40) This custom is attested by Gregory of Nyssa, De sancto Theodoro, p. 64.
(41) Evagrius, Historia ecclesiastica 2.3; see p. 137.
(42) Their thaumaturgical power is described by Gregory of Nyssa, De sancto

Theodoro, p. 63 (dust collected from outside the grave); Theodoret, Historia
religiosa 21.16 (oil of martyrs and garments); Gerontius, Vita Melaniae 60 (oil);
Vita Symeonis Stylitae Iunioris 50, 80, 81, 101, 111, 136, 220, 227, 252 (sticks);
115, 152, 163, 194, 235 (dust), 43, 49 (fragments of garments). There are
numerous archaeological testimonies of such objects: olive oil ampoules, clay
tokens containing dust from a holy place: see e.g. Bagatti 1949; Mabert &
Demeglio 1994. On their religious function, see Elsner 1997. They were also
considered to be efficient protection in the afterlife: Gerontius, Vita Melaniae 69.
(43) See p. 3.
(44) I will not deal here with the interesting, but difficult problem of whether in
the East leipsana were necessary for the dedication of a church. Regardless of
the answer to this question, it is certain that in Syria, Cappadocia, and other
regions leipsana of one saint could be enshrined in a number of churches.
(45) Wortley 2006b, 12–14; see also Heinzelmann 1979, 21–2.
(46) Testamentum XL martyrum 1; Gregory of Nyssa, In XL martyres II, p. 166.

See Van Dam 2003, 136–7.
(47) Acta Fructuosi 6; Passio XL martyrum 12.
(48) Burning of the bodies: Vigilius of Trent, Epistula 2.7 and 11; Brescia:
Gaudentius, Tractatus 17.13; Turin: Maximus of Turin, Sermones 105–6; Milan:
Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 52.1; cf. Vigilius of Trent, Epistula 1 (the letter
addressed to Bishop Simplicianus, Ambrose’s successor); Constantinople:
Vigilius of Trent, Epistula 2 (to John Chrysostom); Drypia: see Vanderspoel 1986,
248–9.
(49) Gaudentius, Tractatus 17.16–17.
(50) Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 9.2; Gerontius, Vita Melaniae 48.
(51) The same could be seen in Liber de miraculis s. Stephani 1.7.
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(52) Ambrose, Epistula 77 and Hymnus 11. See also Augustine, Confessiones 9.7;
Paulinus of Milan, Vita Ambrosii 13–16. The latter also describes the discoveries
of the relics of Vitalis and Agricola in Bologna (29.1) and that of Nazarius in
Milan (32–3); Revelatio s. Stephani B 48.
(53) Victricius, De laude sanctorum 10 (minutiae), 9–10 (sanguis), 10 (cruor);

Gaudentius, Tractatus 17.12 (sanguinem tenemus gypso collectum); Paulinus of
Nola, Epistula 32.17 (Hic … inlustris sanguine Nazarius).
(54) Libellus precum 26, written in 383/4, mentions the blood of St Rufininus,
which performed miracles in Naples; for the epigraphical evidence, see Y. Duval
1982, vol. 2, 549. Forearlier traces of a special attitude toward the blood of
martyrs, see Passio Perpetuae 21.5; Pontius, Vita Cypriani 16.6; see also
Prudentius, Peristephanon 5.341–4. The East seems to have been less concerned
about collecting martyrs’ blood in this period, but see Gregory of Nazianzus,
Contra Iulianum I 69; Hilary of Poitiers, Contra Constantium 8. For a later
period, see n. 41.
(55) Gervasius and Protasius: Ambrose, Epistula 77.2 (sanguinis plurimum) and
12 (sanguine tumulus madet); similarly Nazarius: Paulinus, Vita Ambrosii 32.3.
(56) Et tunc cum psalmis et hymnis portaverunt reliquias beatissimi Stephani in

sanctam ecclesiam Sion, ubi et archidiaconus fuerat ordinatus: derelinquentes
nobis de membris Sancti parvos articulos, imo maximas reliquias, terram cum
pulvere, ubi omnis eius caro absumpta est, caetera asportaverunt (Revelatio s.
Stephani B 48).
(57) See n. 16.
(58) Peter and Paul (pp. 14–17), Habakkuk (p. 113), Job (p. 103), James (p. 106).
(59) Theodoret, Historia religiosa 21.20. According to Sozomen, Historia

ecclesiastica 7.10.4, when the body of Paul the bishop of Constantinople was
brought back to the city, many people thought that it was the corpse of Paul the
Apostle.
(60) Jerome, Epistula 108.13; see also Epistula 46.13; Commentarii in prophetas
minores: In Osee 1.1; In Abdiam 1; In Micheam 1.1.
(61) A good analogy is provided by the pillar of salt identified with the wife of
Lot, which was not strictly a relic, but one of the wonders of the Holy Land. In
384 Egeria did not see it, because of recent flooding by the sea (Itinerarium
12.6–7), but about 570 an anonymous pilgrim of Piacenza saw the pillar intact
again and wondered why some people talked about its disappearance (Pilgrim of
Piacenza, Itinerarium 15). See also the story of the transfer of St Hilarion’s body
described by Jerome, Vita Hilarionis 32–3.
Page 21 of 24
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(62) Severus, Epistula 4.
(63) See Gauge 1998.
(64) Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.8 (several places in Africa); Sermones 317.1
(several places); 318.1 (Hippo) and 323.2 (Ancona); Quodvultdeus, Liber
promissionum et praedictorum Dei. Dimidium temporis 9 (Carthage).
(65) Vita Melaniae 48 (Mount of Olives); John Rufus, Vita Petri Iberi 49;
Marcellinus Comes, Chronica s.a. 439 (transferred to Constantinople); Cyril of
Scythopolis, Vita s. Euthymii 35 (54.1) (dedication of the basilica in Jerusalem in
460).
(66) The only exception is the untrustworthy testimony of Theophanes: see n. 29.
(67) Revelatio s. Stephani B 48.
(68) Avitus, Epistola ad Palchonium 8.
(69) Severus of Minorca, Epistula 4.
(70) Liber de miraculis s. Stephani 1.1: see pp. 155–6. In the following century
ampoules of St Stephen’s blood were to be found in several other places, like
Naples, Tours, and Biturges; see Bovon 2003, 304–5.
(71) Augustine, Sermo 317.1 and 318.1.
(72) Augustine, Sermo 323.2.
(73) Augustine, De opere monachorum 28.36.
(74) McCulloh 1980.
(75) For the early evidence, see Ambrose, Epistula 77.13; Victricius, De laude
sanctorum 6; Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 11; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica
5.9.9; and Ephrem, Testament 117–24 (see S. Minov, CSLA E03510), who
condemns this custom. For the eighth century, see Council of Nicaea II (787),
can. 7; see also Jensen 2014.
(76) Röckelein 2002.
(77) See Barnard 1984 and Bynum 1995, 28–34.
(78) Athenagoras, De resurrectione 8; for the authorship of this text, see Barnard
1984.
(79) Augustine, Sermo 335F; Sermo 334.1; De civitate Dei 22.19; De cura pro
mortuis 4–5.
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(80) e.g. Passio Sergii et Bacchi Graeca 30 (see E. Rizos, CSLA E02791); see
Ward-Perkins 2018.
(81) Miracula Theclae 23 (garden) and 26 (Dalisandos).
(82) Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum 33.
(83) Liber de miraculis s. Stephani 1.7.
(84) Gregory of Nazianzus, Contra Iulianum I 69; for Victricius, see pp. 191–3.
(85) This was expressed in the strongest way by Gregory the Great, Dialogi 2.38,
who claimed that actually the saints performed more miracles in places which
did not have their bodies. Even if this remark did not necessarily express a
commonly shared opinion, it was perfectly acceptable from the theological point
of view.
(86) Athanasius, Epistula festalis 41.
(87) See Herrmann-Mascard 1979, 26–41.
(88) Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Macrinae 35; Eunapius, Vitae philosophorum 472.
(89) Ambrose, Epistula 77.4 and 11.
(90) A useful catalogue of late antique reliquaries (with photos) can be found in
Buschhausen 1971. For reliquaries with a peephole, see Diedrichs 2001, 59–140.
(91) It began already in the middle of the fourth century, as is attested by both
literary and epigraphical evidence: Frolow 1961, 158–9.
(92) Theodore Lector, Historia ecclesiastica, epitome 554; Gregory of Tours,

Historiarum libri 7.31.
(93) Baudonivia, Vita Radegundis 2.14.
(94) Athanasius, Epistula festalis 41; Vita Antonii 92.2; Shenoute, Those Who
Work Evil, pp. 212–20; see also Lefort 1954.
(95) See the Greek Vita Maruthae 8 and its Armenian version (30).
(96) See Passio S. Sergii et Bacchi Syriaca, p. 320 and Passio S. Sergii et Bacchi
Graeca 30. Some relics of St Sergius were probably deposited in his martyrium
in Yukarı Söğütlü, c.50 km east of Theodosiopolis in Armenia (modern Erzurum),
dedicated in 431. A dedicatory inscription was published in Candemir & Wagner
1978, 231.
(97) John of Ephesus, Vitae sanctorum orientalium 6.
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(98) Evagrius, Historia ecclesiastica 1.13.
(99) Gesta Dagoberti 52; Fredegar, Liber historiae Francorum 44.
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Dividing Relics

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Print publication date: 2018

Abstract and Keywords

At the beginning of the twentieth century Hippolyte Delehaye published an

No person shall transfer a buried body to another place. No person shall

If the prohibition on moving bodies from their tombs is simply a reiteration of

One Saint in Many Places

Division Without Partition

It is important to observe a note of criticism with regard to the dividing of relics,

Another example of this phenomenon is provided by the dossier of the relics of

Wherefore I have sent to you, by my saintly son and co-presbyter Orosius,

(3) Grabar 1946, vol. 1, 40–1.

(4) Mango 1990, 61.

(5) Wortley 2006b.

(6) Collectio Avellana 218.

(7) Gregory the Great, Epistulae IV 30; see p. 141.

(9) Herrmann-Mascard 1979, 31–2.

(10) Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucillum 30.14 (magna vi distraheretur a

(11) Harries 1999.

(14) Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica 11.28. Similar attacks on Christian martyria

(16) Basil of Caesarea, In sanctos XL martyres 8; Gregory of Nyssa, In XL

(17) Testamentum XL Martyrum 1.

(18) Brescia: Gaudentius, Tractatus 17.11–37; Jerusalem: Gerontius, Vita

(19) Ambrose, Epistula 77.1.

(20) Martyrologium Hieronymianum, VII Id. Mai, V Kal. Dec.

(21) Victricius, De laude sanctorum 6.

(23) Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 31.1.

(24) Theodoret, Graecorum affectionum curatio 8.10–11.

(26) Passio Nicetae Gothi 8.

(29) A case apart is two testimonies to specific fragments of St Stephen’s body.

(32) Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica 2.38.35–42; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica

(35) Thacker 2012, 398–403; see John Chrysostom, In Babylam 63 (fetters of

(36) Augustine, Sermo 323.2.

(37) See n. 55.

(38) Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 31.1.

(39) Palestra 1969; Zovatto 1956.

(40) This custom is attested by Gregory of Nyssa, De sancto Theodoro, p. 64.

(41) Evagrius, Historia ecclesiastica 2.3; see p. 137.

(42) Their thaumaturgical power is described by Gregory of Nyssa, De sancto

(45) Wortley 2006b, 12–14; see also Heinzelmann 1979, 21–2.

(46) Testamentum XL martyrum 1; Gregory of Nyssa, In XL martyres II, p. 166.

(47) Acta Fructuosi 6; Passio XL martyrum 12.

(49) Gaudentius, Tractatus 17.16–17.

(50) Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 9.2; Gerontius, Vita Melaniae 48.

(51) The same could be seen in Liber de miraculis s. Stephani 1.7.

(53) Victricius, De laude sanctorum 10 (minutiae), 9–10 (sanguis), 10 (cruor);

(56) Et tunc cum psalmis et hymnis portaverunt reliquias beatissimi Stephani in

(57) See n. 16.

(59) Theodoret, Historia religiosa 21.20. According to Sozomen, Historia

(62) Severus, Epistula 4.

(63) See Gauge 1998.

(67) Revelatio s. Stephani B 48.

(68) Avitus, Epistola ad Palchonium 8.

(69) Severus of Minorca, Epistula 4.

(71) Augustine, Sermo 317.1 and 318.1.

(72) Augustine, Sermo 323.2.

(73) Augustine, De opere monachorum 28.36.

(74) McCulloh 1980.

(76) Röckelein 2002.

(77) See Barnard 1984 and Bynum 1995, 28–34.

(81) Miracula Theclae 23 (garden) and 26 (Dalisandos).

(82) Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum 33.

(83) Liber de miraculis s. Stephani 1.7.