The Beginning of the Cult of Relics by Robert Wiśniewski

(review)

Adrien Palladino

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 31, Number 1, Spring 2023,

pp. 105-107 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2023.0005

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/883995

[ Access provided at 7 Apr 2023 12:45 GMT from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ]
Book Reviews

Robert Wiśniewski
The Beginning of the Cult of Relics
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019
Pp. 249. $85.00.

Historian Robert Wiśniewski attempts to examine the birth of the Christian cult
of relics from an all-encompassing perspective, examining texts, inscriptions,
visual evidence, and archeological evidence of the manifestations of the cult from
ca. 300–600 c.e. Such broad documentation, based on an impressive amount of
data, has benefitted both from Wiśniewski’s long-lasting engagement with the
topic and from his collaborative work on the Oxford ERC project The Cult of
Saints, directed by Bryan Ward-Perkins.
Wiśniewski’s monograph has previously received a number of reviews. I can
only validate the communis opinio on the usefulness of the book, which con-
stitutes one of the best surveys on this broad topic—alongside the 2018 study
in German by Martina Hartl (Leichen, Asche und Gebeine. Der frühchristliche
Umgang mit dem toten Körper und die Anfänge des Reliquienkults [Regensburg:
Schnell & Steiner]). In eleven chapters—from the “prehistory” of the cult to beliefs
and practices—Wiśniewski examines all aspects of the use of martyrs’ whole or
fragmented bodies, highlighting the gradual transformation from undisturbed
graves to sacred bodies as epicenters of magico-religious and cultural practices.
Particularly interesting in this transformation are the modalities of accessing the
sacred and how a society that “feared and avoided any contact with dead bodies,
came to touch, rub, and kiss the bones of those whom they considered saints”
(122). Considering the ways in which such taboo was overcome, Chapters Seven
to Nine focus on anthropological, archaeological, and material aspects of the
cult of relics, with which I am particularly engaged as an art historian and which
have not been the central focus of previous reviews.
In approaching the sacred and the bodies of saints, textual sources have often
proven insufficient. A corpus of descriptions has been studied, from which we
can recall the evidence from Gregory of Tours’s frequently cited sixth-century
Liber in gloria martyrum mentioning fenestellae and other modalities of access.
Wiśniewski evokes a myriad of other crucial sources, dissociating rhetoric and
actual practices in a careful historical analysis. He mentions the existence of both
public spaces (churches, martyria, etc.) needing reliquaries and small-scale private
reliquaries that could be worn or carried on the body (140). Regretfully, in this

Journal of Early Christian Studies 31.1, 105–113 © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press
106    JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

part the author mentions the episode (168) but does not cover the reliquary
gifted by Manlia Dedalia to Ambrose of Milan, who buried it in the Basilica
Apostolorum in Milan in the fourth century. This capsella is likely one of the
only preserved pieces of evidence that we have of a “private” reliquary gifted
by a wealthy woman to the church. This preserves evidence of the integration
of a small-scale reliquary within a larger deposit, hinting at the need to examine
material evidence in a more integrated way. This includes examination of the
ways objects linked with the cult of relics have crossed the centuries because they
were preserved in church treasures or in reliquary deposits.
Sources are often elusive about practical dimensions such as the materials
from which reliquaries were made, their shape, who was allowed to access and
manipulate them, and their implementation within sacred spaces. Archeological
evidence about this is relatively scarce, except for a significant corpus from the
Middle East, constituted mainly of aniconic and simple typologies of reliquaries.
More elaborate reliquaries bearing figurative imagery were often melted down,
removed, or lost. In cases of reliquaries found in early archeological contexts in
the nineteenth century or in church treasures, we must rely on limited second-hand
accounts of archaeological excavations or art historical examinations.
Wiśniewski’s approach to material culture is problematic because it is limited
to a few pieces of individual archaeological and visual evidence—Wiśniewski is,
after all, a specialist in texts, so he deals with objects and images in only a dozen
pages (mainly 145–55). A stronger integration of material and visual culture
within the book would have allowed the author to answer some of the questions
he presents at the outset with additional nuance and depth. One of these aspects
concerns the circulation of relics fostered by networking and common artistic
and architectural practices among communities in late antique Europe (cf. Alžběta
Filipová, Milan sans frontières: le culte et la circulation des reliques ambrosiennes,
l’art et l’architecture [IVe-VIe siècle] [Rome: Viella, 2019]).
Wiśniewski is right to emphasize the fact that relics, and by extension their
reliquaries, were hidden from sight and touch. While this might seem shocking
for anyone used to later medieval and modern practices, late antique reliquaries
decorated with imagery and made of precious materials were often permanently
hidden from sight. Ephemeral moments of visibility, degrees of visibility, and the
possibilities of hinting at the contents through the visual imagery or materials
are other important aspects, touched on in Wiśniewski’s analysis throughout the
book, especially in Chapter Eight. Even if the container was made invisible and
the rhetoric of authors emphasized this invisibility, it is likely that the evocation
of the relic buried under the altar or floor of the church was achieved through
some other form of representation. Of course, seeing “with the eyes of the mind”
is an important aspect of the early cult, but the mind’s eye sometimes required
visual stimulation to confirm the presence of the saint within the tomb or the
reliquary. This could explain the rarity of representations of saints on reliquaries
or containers since they could appear elsewhere within the sacred space. But, most
importantly, it is crucial to understand the interaction between saints and their
remains, devotional images, and holy scripture—the three important categories
of mediation of the sacred. The emergence of both “iconic” and narrative visual
 BOOK REVIEWS    107

representations of the saints alongside precious reliquaries, the interplay between

materiality, rhetoric, and texts, are aspects that still deserve further investigation
for late antiquity and in long-term and cross-cultural transformations. Such
investigation requires, based on the approach promoted by Wiśniewski, an even
stronger interdisciplinary integration in the future.
Adrien Palladino, Masaryk University

Han-luen Kantzer Komline

Augustine on the Will: A Theological Account
New York: Oxford University Press, 2020
Pp. xv + 469. $150.00.

What does Augustine mean by the notoriously elusive term “the will”? Han-
luen Kantzer Komline’s Augustine on the Will argues that Augustine did not
invent the will, nor did he simply recast a philosophical category, as others have
claimed. Rather, Augustine develops an inescapably theological account of the
will, meaning that any account of human willing must be differentiated by its
location in the Christian narrative: creation, fall, redemption, and consummation
(10–12). While there are common features, how Augustine describes created
willing, fallen willing, justified willing, and heavenly willing are each unique and
distinctively Christian. Before the fall, the will is like a hinge that turns the soul
and is capable of sinning or not; for all humans after the fall, willing is now
stuck due to their evil desires, imposing a certain necessity despite the existence
of free choice; but in Christ, God’s grace through the Holy Spirit empowers the
will—even drives it—to the good; finally, by a further grace the will of the saints
in heaven is liberated even from the ability and desire for sin.
The result is a well-researched, admirably balanced, and largely comprehen-
sive illumination of human willing in Augustine’s thought. In certain places,
especially on prayer and the will (Chapter Four), Christ’s exemplary human will
and efficacious grace (Chapter Six), and the Holy Spirit’s role in illuminating
the meaning of human and trinitarian willing (Chapter Seven), the book truly
shines as a representation of Augustine’s thinking and aims. In addition to its
judicious interventions for specialists, its individual chapters are well structured
as introductions for advanced students, even if the book as a whole may be too
long to serve as a student introduction.
The book consists of eight chapters, which are grouped around the four stages
of human willing. Chapter One concerns the created will in Augustine’s earliest
works, Chapter Two deals with the fallen will up to Ad Simplicianum, Chapters
Three to Four cover the fallen will and transition to redeemed willing, Chapters
Five through Seven concern the redeemed will, and Chapter Eight concludes with
the will eschatologically perfected in heaven.
Kantzer Komline’s book also maps these four stages of human willing onto
Augustine’s development over time, so that, as the bishop ages, his thinking grows