by Vorjack
We live in a secular society. At no time is that more clear than when looking back at the middle ages. Religion did not just permeate politics and culture, it even had a major role to play in economics.
Pay for Pray
Pullquote: ”Human beings could construct their own humble imitations of the mercy of God in good works.”
For example, in Diarmaid MacCulloch’s The Reformation, she writes about what you could call “the economics of prayer.” Having someone else pray for your soul was considered one of the few coins that would buy you time off from purgatory. So many charitable works were undertaken to ensure such prayers were said.
One might fund the building of a bridge, then post a sign saying “In memory of …” The person crossing the bridge was expected to say a little prayer for the soul of the one who had it built, shaving an hour or so off the patron’s time in purgatory.
Laugh if you want, but the bridge got built. As someone who’s worked on a fair number of grant proposals, I wish I could offer release for the tormented souls in the granting agency as one of the benefits.
Another aspect of the religious economy was the prevalence of relics. These were artifacts or body parts associated with saints or other holy figures that supposedly acted as a mystical connection to their former owner. Visiting relics and offering prayer could save lots of time off your eventual stay in purgatory, as well as offering healing or other miracles.
Hangnails of the Saints
Pullquote: Then longe folk to go on pilgrimages, And palmers for to seeke strange strands, To ferne hallows couth in sundry lands
Relics became big business to the shrines and monasteries that housed them, as well as to local towns. So it’s not surprising that there would be a certain amount of competition over who had the best, most efficacious relics.
But this is one aspect of the medieval world that hasn’t completely gone away. Lest anyone think that we’re now beyond such things, think about the flap over the Shroud of Turin. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Consider David Farley’s article in The Smart Set, The Family Jewels:
The veneration of holy relics has long been an easy target for Protestants, atheists, and just about anyone who didn’t fall into the hardcore Catholic fold. Even the Church itself has downplayed the role of relics since the Vatican II reforms in the early 1960s. But odd as it may be, relics are making a comeback. Don’t believe me? You should have witnessed the masses in England who turned out two months ago to pray in front of the bones of St. Therese of Lisieux that were touring the country, or the crowds who gathered to see the bones of Mary Magdalene last month, taken on a U.S. tour by a French monk.
Farley goes on to list his ten favorite relics, ranging from the the loincloth of Christ to some of the Virgin’s breast milk. In the latter case, there are 69 known samples of the holy lactation. The best sneer actually comes from John Calvin: “I would fain to know how that milk . . . was collected …. We do not read of any person who had the curiosity to undertake the task.”
Atheists are sometimes accused of being just the same as the faithful. I’ll accept that the day I see atheist lining up to see Richard Dawkin’s underwear or a plate of PZ Myer’s partially eaten calamari.
Let it be known that it was I, not vorjack, who added the image. My apologies. I just couldn’t stop myself.
I don’t know. . . calamari is pretty tasty. ;)
We can poke fun at the Catholics, but I think there are still shades of relic-worship even in secular society. It is probably unlikely anyone would care about Richard Dawkin’s underwear, but what about something slightly less absurd, like say, one of his old schoolbooks? It would be no different than any of the books of his less-famous classmates, but anyone in possession of it would feel they are worth far more, especially if he wrote his name in it somewhere, proving it was really his. And what if someone got their hands on the communion wafer that PZ Myers threw in the trash, complete with some stuck-on coffee grounds? It probably wouldn’t earn tens of thousands of dollars on eBay — we’re not that crazy — but I’ll bet there are still plenty of people who would preserve it and keep it for display. No one would pray to these items or believe they give us a mystical connection to their former owners, but we would still value them, if only because their connection to the lives of people we admire make them unique.
There’s a difference between coveting an item versus thinking it has some special powers.
Secular societies can have their own icon and shrines. We American have Graceland and someday the Neverland Ranch. The Brits have all that Princess Di nonsense.
I went to a church in Rome, I think it was St. Ignacio, where they had a real hand encased in a gold or bronze altar. Supposedly it was the hand that baptized thousands of people to become Christians somewhere. I just thought it was the weirdest thing i’d ever seen. They cut the hand off this poor man’s body! Why not just bury the whole body and put a shrine on top? Freaky. This particular trip to Rome, where I saw all of the relics and GOLD in the churches, made me suspect that there were some weird facets of Catholicism that I didn’t learn about in my CCD classes.
“Atheists are sometimes accused of being just the same as the faithful. I’ll accept that the day I see atheist lining up to see Richard Dawkin’s underwear or a plate of PZ Myer’s partially eaten calamari.”
Sometimes people go just to see the spectacle of it all.
Case in point, atheists visiting The Creation Science Museum.
RobG:
You ignore the fact that in your scenario, the objects mentioned have provenance and that secular society would value them because of their relative rarity, not because they have mystical, magical properties. Relics are fraudulently created and dishonestly promoted as being magical.
First of all, I disagree that secular society values celebrity artifacts because they are rare. If an items rarity were determined by who owned them, then my stuff is just as rare as any celebrity’s, so it should be just as valuable. But I do think celebrity artifacts are treated as valuable because they have cultural significance: they remind us of the achievements of the people who owned them, helping preserve them in our cultural memory. They also can help satisfy the common desire to feel like we have a connection with people that we admire.
That said, I find it hard to believe that relics are valued only because they are supposed to have magical powers. Surely they must see that they are also connections to the past, reminders of the lives of the figures who were influential in the church — the same reasons we value celebrity artifacts, especially when they are from historical figures. True, relics are also supposed to have magical powers, but since they actually don’t have magical powers, I think there has to be more to them than that.
The Onion ran this Colbert Report Worthy parody a while back: Evolutionists Flock To Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain. It is, IMHO, a Perfect Parody which gives the lie to ‘Faitheists’ and their ilk : )
The link for ‘The Family Jewels’ is faulty, and doesn’t seem to work.
It should be http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article12070901.aspx
And the western religions are not alone in this superstitious nonsense. As a ready example, every one of the milliions of ‘stupas’ here in Thailand supposedly contains ‘a holy relic’ of Buddha. Who, by the way, claimed that he was NOT a divine or holy being, but rather a regular human being who through meditation had discovered some worthwhile tricks for living a better life. But try and tell that to the religious bodies that have been established since his death.
Every religion seems to thrive and gain part of its power from ridiculous ‘mumbo-jumbo’.
http://www.slate.com/id/2155745/
One of my FAVE holy relic stories. Jesus’ holy foreskin, the only remaining physical relic of Jesus left on the earth!!