The Beginnings of The Cult of Relics Robert Wisniewski Full Chapter

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics
Robert Wi■niewski
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T H E BE G I N N I N G S O F T H E C U L T O F R E L I C S
The Beginnings of the

Cult of Relics
R O B E R T W IŚ N IE WS K I
1
3
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© Robert Wiśniewski 2019
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To my wife Marta
Acknowledgements
The research for this book was possible thanks to the grant that I received
from the National Science Centre (Poland: Grant 2011/01/B/HS3/00736) and
also thanks to the Cult of Saints Project funded by grant from the European
Research Council and run by Bryan Ward-Perkins (ERC Advanced Grant
340540) but I am also grateful to other institutions which helped me to work
on several chapters of this book in a scholarly and comfortable atmosphere.
All Souls and Trinity colleges (Oxford), the Institute for Advanced Study at the
Central European University, the Kosciuszko Foundation, and the Lanckor-
oński Foundation granted me scholarships for research stays in Oxford,
Budapest, and Princeton.
Contents
List of Figures xi
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
1. Prehistory and Early Chronology of the Cult of Relics 8
2. The First Miracles 27
3. Defenders of Cities 48
4. Relics and Divination 70
5. Burials ad Sanctos 83
6. Finding Relics 101
7. Touching Relics 122
8. Displaying and Seeing Relics 144
9. Dividing Relics 159
10. Discussions and Theology 180
11. Eastern, Western, and Local Habits in the Cult of Relics 203
Conclusions 214
Bibliography 219
Index 243
List of Figures
5.1 A tomb of unnamed saints in the church of the rue Malaval

(Marseilles), encircled by individual graves. Photo courtesy of
Manuel Moliner. 91
7.1 Tomb slab with libation holes (Rome). Marble, second century
(CIL 06.07010/1). Drawing by Magda Różycka. 128
7.2 Reliquary casket with the traces of a lock. Eastern Mediterranean,
sixth century. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
public domain. 135
7.3 Stone reliquary found in the apse of the southern nave of the
church in Hippos, Palestine (inv. St 00.14). The interior is divided
into three compartments, one of which contained a glass phial with
tiny particles of bones (inv. G 1008.01). Photo courtesy of Jolanta
Młynarczyk. 135
7.4 Marble slab over the tomb of St Paul in San Paulo fuori le
Mura (Rome), with openings leading to the sarcophagus.
Drawing by Magda Różycka. 136
7.5 Stone reliquary with an opening in the lid, discovered in the
southern pastophorium of the church in Hippos, Palestine
(inv. St 03.08). When found, the stick was still stuck in the opening.
Photo courtesy of Jolanta Młynarczyk. 138
8.1 Box with stones from the Holy Land (Vatican, Museo
Sacro 61883 ab). Photo © Governatorato SCV—Direzione dei Musei. 148
8.2 Silver casket, known as the Capsella of Brivio, with the representation
of the raising of Lazarus from the Musée du Louvre.
Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre)/Gérard Blot. 151
8.3 Capsella Africana. Vatican, Museo Sacro della Biblioteca Apostolica
(inv. no. 60859). Photo © Governatorato SCV—Direzione dei Musei. 152
8.4 Silver casket with the Cross flanked by Peter and Paul.
Photo © Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum. 153
11.1 Inside of the tomb of the saints from the church of rue Malaval
(Marseilles), with a bronze pipe through which oil was poured into
the tomb. Photo courtesy of Manuel Moliner. 208
Abbreviations
AASS Acta Sanctorum (Brussels)

BHG Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca (Brussels 1895, 1909², 1957³;
Bibliothecae Hagiographicae Graecae Actuarium, ed. F. Halkin
(Brussels, 1961)
BHL Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina, Brussels 1949 (2nd edition);
Bibliothecae Hagiographicae Latinae Novum Supplementum, ed.
H. Fros (Brussels, 1986)
CCG Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca (Turnhout)
CCL Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina (Turnhout)
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin)
CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (Leuven)
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna)
CSLA The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity Database:
<http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk>
GCS Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten (drei)
Jahrhunderte (Berlin)
ILChV Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres, ed. E. Diehl, vols 13
(Berlin, 1961, 2nd edn)
LCL Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA, and London)
MGH AA Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Auctores Antiquissimi (Hanover)
MGH SRM Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum
(Hanover)
OECT Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford)
PG Patrologiae Cursus Completus, series Graeca (Paris, 1844–55)
PL Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Latina (Paris, 1841–9)
PLRE Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, ed. A. H. M Jones,
J. R. Martindale, and J. Morris (Cambridge, 1971–92)
SC Sources chrétiennes (Paris)
SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (Amsterdam and Leiden)
SH Subsidia Hagiographica (Brussels)
Teubner Bibliotheca Teubneriana (Leipzig)
TU Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur
(Berlin)
Other abbreviations follow the sigla of L’Année philologique.
Introduction
This book is about the veneration of the bones of saints, about the belief in
their power, and about the ways of contact with them. The phenomenon
known as the cult of relics appeared in Christianity in the fourth century,
spread quickly, and became a common and almost obvious trait of Christian
piety. It was present in all currents of Christianity until the early modern
period, when the rejection of the cult of relics became a distinguishing feature
of the Reformed Churches. It is still one of the issues on which Catholics,
Orthodox, and ancient Eastern Christians differ from Protestants.¹ In the
modern world, however, this phenomenon hardly raises discussions similar
to those which are provoked by such questions as the priesthood of women or
papal primacy. Among those who do not venerate relics their cult may arouse
puzzlement, but rarely outrage. Some relics attract amused interest. The Holy
Prepuce, or the foreskin of Jesus, the milk of Mary, the two skulls of John the
Baptist (one of them when he was 8), or animal bones found in a reliquary,
mentioned at a lecture on late antique or medieval piety, invariably enliven the
audience, which usually expects more of the same (and often more does
follow). Beyond this amusement, however, there are usually questions: did
people really believe that these relics were true and held power able to heal the
sick, check the enemy, or appease the sea? Did they think that touching,
kissing, and, sometimes, eating relics was an act of piety? And if so, how did
this belief and these practices begin?
All these are important issues. The rise of the cult of relics was really an
astonishing phenomenon and the purpose of this book is to explain its
beginnings. It deals with such questions as: When exactly did the cult of relics
begin? How did it spread? How strong and common was it? What were the
relics expected to do? And what did people do with them? With the exception
of Chapter 1, which traces the prehistory of the cult of relics, the chapters that
¹ It was long believed that a similar attitude gained momentum during the Iconoclastic crisis,
but John Wortley convincingly argues that there is no reliable evidence of the hostility of
iconoclastic emperors toward relics: see Wortley, ‘Iconoclasm and Leipsanoclasm: Leo III,
Constantine V and the Relics’, in Wortley 2009, 253–79.
2 The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

follow deal with specific aspects of this phenomenon, and not with the
subsequent stages of its development. Chapters 2–5 are focused on beliefs,
Chapters 6–10 on practices. Chapter 11 addresses the question of how uniform
the cult of relics was.
Thus the construction of the book is thematic, but the study has been
founded upon a strong conviction that the cult of relics had its history² and
that in order to be understood, it must be studied with a constant awareness of
its chronology. This aspect of the research, seemingly obvious to a historian, is
often absent from studies dealing with the cult of relics. This phenomenon is
usually presented either as having existed in Christianity from the beginning,
at least in embryo, or as having appeared suddenly in Late Antiquity in its fully
mature form, like Athena who sprang fully grown and armed from the head of
Zeus. In consequence, snippets of evidence from the entire period c.300–600
(and even later) are often used to reconstruct the picture of this phenomenon,
on the assumption that they are pieces of the same puzzle. This assumption, if
not absurd, is hazardous. This book will show more than once that the cult of
relics exploded rather than developed, but also that not all of its elements
appeared at the same time, and we can trace the origins and evolution of at
least some of them.
In order to trace this development, this book takes a broad, but limited,
chronological perspective, examining the growth of the cult of relics until it
had gained a mature and stable form, which in most aspects took place before
the end of the fifth century, in others at the end of the sixth century. Only
occasionally will I refer to later evidence. This evidence comes from diverse
parts and languages of ancient Christianity, because this is the only way to
observe interactions within a still unified world, and to avoid easy judgements
about differences of custom between Eastern and Western Christendom.
The book is about the relics, that is, corporeal remains or other objects
connected with people considered to be saints. Their cult, however, can be
seen as a part of two wider phenomena, namely the cult of saints (which did
not always require relics) and the veneration of holy objects (which did not
have to be linked with saints). Consequently, the cult of saints will be con-
stantly present in the background, and frequently I will be asking questions
about the relations between the saints and their relics. Also, I will refer to other
sacred objects and places which people venerated and in whose power they
believed, both pagan, such as tombs of heroes, protecting statues, talismans,
and magical artefacts, and Christian, such as souvenirs from the Holy Land,
fragments of the True Cross, holy books, and sacred springs.
The term ‘relics’, which we come across in most modern European
languages, comes from the Latin reliquiae. In Late Antiquity this word was
² Brown 1981.
Introduction 3
widely used in reference to the remains of saints. It is important, however, to
say that this term, as well as its equivalents in other languages of ancient
Christendom, was not entirely technical. On the one hand, it could signify
remains of any man or woman; just as the term corpus, which was used
without distinction for the bodies of the dead, holy or not. On the other
hand, in the context of the cult of saints the word reliquiae covered an entire
spectrum of objects, from entire bodies to ashes, to strips of cloth which
touched the tombs of saints and which we usually qualify as contact relics.
Even more generic was the term memoriae, or souvenirs, which could be used
in reference to the shrines of martyrs, reliquaries, as well as corporeal and
contact relics of any sort, not to mention the feasts of saints. As we will see, this
usage reflects a widespread conviction that all these material remains can have
similar functions and power. Greek terminology was slightly more precise, as
it distinguished between bodily and contact relics. The former were called
leipsana (remains) or sōma (body); the latter were usually referred to as
eulogiai (blessings).³ In Syriac the standard terms for relics are pagrā (body)
and garmē (bones), minor relics were also referred to as margānītā (pearls),
and dust from the dwelling place or tomb of a saint, mixed with oil and water,
was called hnana (grace). In Coptic, whose religious vocabulary was based on
Greek, we usually come across the term psoma (Greek sōma, body). In
Georgian a standard word was nacili, in Armenian nšxar, both meaning
‘fragments’. The semantic fields of these terms did not overlap exactly, but
in all the regions of Christendom both corporeal remains of saints and contact
relics were objects of veneration. The objects which remained in physical
contact with saints in their lifetime or after death included pieces of cloth,
instruments of torture, or oil from lamps burning over their tombs. All were
considered to transfer the power which dwelt in the bodies of the saints.⁴ In
this book all these categories will be discussed, but special attention will be
paid to corporeal relics, because contact relics were considered their substi-
tutes, and because the new attitude to dead bodies was the most significant and
interesting change in late antique mentality.
Once it emerged, the cult of relics aroused some criticism, but much more
enthusiasm. Both attitudes were expressed in writings, although, as ultimately
³ The term eulogia covered not only various objects connected with saints, but also their hair
and nails: Antonius, Symeonis Stylitae Vita Graeca 29; Vita Symeonis Stylitae Iunioris 130.9,
232.24. The only passage known to me in which leípsana might signify contact relics is
Callinicus’ Vita Hypatii 8.4, which says that Flavius Rufinus deposited in Rouphinianai leípsana
of Peter and Paul. From what we know of the custom of the Church of Rome these leípsana must
have been non-corporeal remains (see pp. 134–5). This, however, is an isolated testimony;
moreover, it seems that Callinicus, who wrote a century after the dedication of this shrine,
simply did not know what sort of relics it possessed.
⁴ See e.g. Vita Danielis Stylitae 82; Gerontius, Vita Melaniae 69; Gregory of Tours, Histor-
iarum libri 4.36.

all the doubts were rejected, the enthusiasts had much more chance to leave a
trace in the evidence. Relics appear quite often in late antique literature. We
can obviously find them in hagiography, but they are also mentioned in other
narrative sources and other literary genres. Preachers refer to their power,
pilgrims note the places in which they were deposited, and authors of letters
write about sending them to their correspondents. Occasional mentions can
be found also in other writings in any language of ancient Christianity. This
evidence makes it possible to construct a literary history of relics. It is
necessary, however, to emphasize that in this book, in the reconstruction of
beliefs and practices concerning relics, the chronology of the sources will be
followed much more closely than that of the events they describe: a sixth-
century author describing a supposedly fourth-century custom will be con-
sidered a witness of his own times rather than of the fourth century. The bulk
of the textual evidence studied in this book, drawn from every genre and
language of late antique literature, is quite well known to scholars, and only
rarely will I have occasion to analyse texts not quoted in earlier studies, but my
essential aim is not to bring out new sources, but rather to ask new questions
or propose new answers.
Being a historian by training I am more at ease when working with textual
evidence. But the cult of relics left many material traces which must be studied
carefully; otherwise the picture of the phenomenon will be not just incomplete,
but simply false. It is only the papyrological evidence, for instance, that shows
a form of divination which consisted in drawing lots close to the graves of
saints; it is only epigraphy that attests the presence of relics of Peter and Paul
in Africa; it is the material evidence that permits us to trace the evolution of
the physical access to relics. Last but not least, while the corpus of the textual
evidence is more or less closed, the amount of accessible material evidence is
still growing. Of course, material evidence cannot be considered to be a
window through which we can easily see the world as it really was. First, the
dating of this evidence is often uncertain and so it is difficult to use it in
reconstructing the dynamics of the development of the phenomenon. Secondly,
the interpretation of the archaeological finds is very often difficult. A flacon of
perfume, for instance, and an ampoule with the blood of a martyr look very
much the same. Thirdly, while archaeological evidence is essential for under-
standing practices, one has to be cautious in using it to reconstruct beliefs.
Graves found around a tomb of a martyr show that people wanted to be buried
close to the saints, but they do not say why. Having all this in mind, I have
tried to follow the fairly obvious methodological postulate of using all kinds of
accessible evidence, keeping in mind limits and traps proper to each of them.
The cult of relics started to attract scholarly interest already in the early
modern period, when the cult of saints became an object of lively discussion
between the Catholics and Protestants. The latter considered it an apparent
result of a swift ‘paganization’ of post-Constantinian Christianity; the former,
Introduction 5
its nearly original feature. This discussion was usually led cum ira et studio, but
it did inspire serious research. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the
Bollandist Society, a group of Jesuit scholars, laid the foundations for the
critical study of hagiography, providing us with critical editions and tools to
study the textual evidence of the cult of saints.⁵ At the beginning of the
twentieth century, Hippolyte Delehaye, a member of this learned society,
began to study the cult itself.⁶ The interest in this phenomenon grew even
stronger in the last quarter of the twentieth century, not only among the
Bollandists. André Grabar, Gilbert Dagron, Alba Maria Orselli, to name just a
few, studied particular cults, types of cults and cult-sites, and specific aspects of
cult. A strong boost for those studies came from the book of Peter Brown, The
Cult of the Saints, published in 1981, which argued that this phenomenon was
not just a new manifestation of a perennial popular religion, but developed in
specific historical conditions and as such could be an object of historical
research. Brown analysed the situation in the Latin West. Since then several
authors have focused their interest on particular regions of the late antique
world. Yvette Duval and Victor Saxer studied the cult of saints in Latin Africa,
Arietta Papaconstantinou in Egypt, Brigitte Beaujard in Gaul, John Wortley
in Constantinople, and Elisabeth Key Fowden the sanctuary of St Sergius in
Resapha. Pierre Maraval presented an extensive survey on pilgrimage sites in
the East, most of which were related to the cult of saints.
All these studies paid considerable attention to relics. However, since the
relics were not the main object of their analysis, certain questions, for example
concerning physical contact with relics, dividing bodies of saints, development
of faith in the protective power of relics, differences between West and East,
either have not been asked or did not produce satisfactory answers. The
studies dealing specifically with relics are few. In one of them Arnold Ange-
nendt examined the development of the cult of relics from the beginning until
the early modern era. However, Late Antiquity was for him just a prehistory
for the period he was most interested in.⁷ Andreas Hartmann studied the
attitude toward physical, although not necessarily corporeal, remains of heroes
and other important people in the whole of classical Antiquity, but stopped in
the fourth century, and did not deal with the Christian cult of relics.⁸ Both
works can be useful in providing parallels and later developments, but their
centres of gravity lie firmly outside the period I am studying.
Interestingly, more research has been done on reliquaries than on relics.
Helmut Buschhausen, Alexander Mintschev, Galit Noga-Banai, Anja Kalinowski,
Ayse Aydin, and Cynthia Hahn studied diverse types of ‘relic-containers’, but
the evidence which they have collected has made it possible to study the cult
⁵ For the history of the Bollandists, see Godding et al. 2007.

⁶ Delehaye 1933 (the first edition was published in 1912). ⁷ Angenendt 1994.
⁸ Hartmann 2010.

of relics much more systematically than before. This interest in the material
aspect of the cult of relics is growing stronger in recent scholarship. Alan
Thacker and Anne-Marie Yasin showed how relics organized space of late
antique churches. Julia Smith focused on the access to and physical contact
with relics, asking several question to which I am trying to find answers,
focusing on a slightly earlier period than the one which is the primary object
of her research.
The studies of the authors named above provide the evidence without which
the present book could have hardly been written. Even more importantly,
while now and again the following <print only>pages will engage in a polemic
with specific theses presented in these studies, the ideas that I found in them
made me think about issues that otherwise I would not have been aware of.
This book was written in many places and it would not have been written at
all without the friendly encouragement, help, and criticism of many people to
whom I want to express my gratitude. My interest in the religious phenomena
of late antique Christianity has been developing for years at the late antique
seminar convened at the University of Warsaw by Ewa Wipszycka, the first
person who taught me how to study the saints. At her seminar a group of
friends and colleagues, historians, archaeologists, papyrologists, epigraphists,
and Roman jurists have always been eager to discuss any issue concerning
martyrs and holy monks, their tombs, cults, and corporeal remains. To this
group belong Stanisław Adamiak, Tomasz Derda, Paweł Janiszewski, Elżbieta
Jastrzębowska, Adam Łajtar, Krystyna Stebnicka, Jakub Urbanik, Adam Ziółk-
owski, and many others whose questions and remarks have often had a
profound impact on my research. The idea of writing this book emerged
when I was giving a series of lectures on the early cult of relics in Paris at
the École Pratique des Hautes Études, at the invitation of Bernard Flusin. I had
many occasions to talk either after the lectures or at the Centre d’Histoire et
Civilisation de Byzance with Bernard and also Monique Alexandre, Béatrice
Caseau, Estelle Cronnier, Vincent Déroche, and Catherine Jolivet-Levy. Most
chapters of this book have been either written or presented during my stays in
Oxford, first in Trinity College and then in All Souls. Enjoying all the
privileges, but unencumbered by any usual obligations, of the fellows of
these colleges, I had a lot of time to read, think, talk, and write. Oxford, with
its several late antique seminars gathering every week, has a number of
scholars most happy to talk about relics, and attracts many more from all
over the world. Let me name just a few of them. My special thanks go to Bryan
Ward-Perkins, whose friendship and support helped me to complete this book
and whose quickly developing enthusiasm for the study of the cult of saints
resulted in establishing a research group working on this phenomenon. The
members of this group, Nikoloz Aleksidze, Julia Doroszewska, David Lambert,
Sergey Minov, Paweł Nowakowski, Arietta Papaconstantinou, Fran Murray,
Matthieu Pignot, Geza Shenke, Marta Szada, Efthymios Rizos, David Taylor,
Introduction 7
Marta Tycner, Theo van Lint, Marijana Vuković, and Katarzyna Wojtalik, will
easily find in the following pages a number of references and suggestions
which I owe them. There are also other people at Oxford who hosted me at
seminars, or lunches, eagerly talking about relics: Phil Booth, Kate Cooper, Jaś
Elsner, Ine Jacobs, James Howard-Johnston, George Kazan, Conrad Leyser,
Neil McLynn, and especially Julia Smith are among them. In other places of
the world parts of this book have been discussed with Philippe Blaudeau, Peter
Brown, Bożena Iwaszkiewicz-Wronikowska, Gábor Klaniczay, William Kling-
shirn, Johan Leemans, AnneMarie Luijendijk, Peter Van Nuffelen, and Mari-
anne Sághy. Needless to say, this list is far from being complete. It does not
contain those with whom I rarely talked about relics, but whose sympathy and
support I have felt in my academic life, who copied for me articles, replaced
me at classes, and discussed topics which, seemingly not connected directly
with my research, turned out to be to be essential for informing my thinking
about Late Antiquity. Two persons have to be named for providing material
support: Manuel Moliner and Jolanta Młynarczyk very generously shared with
me images of most interesting reliquaries found during the excavations at
Hippos and Marseilles. My very special thanks go to my former students in
Warsaw, to whom I am deeply indebted for their curiosity, questions, ideas,
and sympathy. Out of them I have to name Katarzyna Parys, Maria Więck-
owska, and Bogna Włodarczyk, who, over a dozen years ago, enthusiastically
started to translate with me Jerome’s Against Vigilantius, a most malicious
treatise attacking an adversary of the cult of relics, thus giving a strong boost to
my interest in this phenomenon and showing me that it can be interesting for
others. Last but not least, I am deeply grateful to Damian Jasiński and, once
again, Bryan Ward-Perkins, who, with patience and good humour, made my
English readable, and to Jackie Pritchard, the copy-editor of this book, who
kept me from messing it up again and saved me from several errors.
Prehistory and Early Chronology

of the Cult of Relics
This book will argue that in the mid-fourth century Christianity witnessed an
entirely new phenomenon: in the space of no more than one generation,
people born into a society which accorded due respect to the physical remains
of the dead, but nonetheless commonly shuddered at the very thought of
touching them, came to seek physical closeness to the bodies of martyrs in the
newly formed belief that these were endowed with a supernatural power. This
new phenomenon, however, had not come out of nothing. Certain features of
Christianity preconditioned the emergence of the cult of relics, even if they
did not lead on their own to its rise. Some of them, such as admiration for the
martyrs and the belief in the resurrection of the body, can be traced back
to the very early period of Christian history. Others, such as the beliefs in
the sanctity and power of certain material objects and places as well as in the
intercession of the saints, developed at later dates but still before the mid-
fourth century.
There is one other reason which makes me focus in this chapter on a more
distant past. The bulk of the evidence for the cult of relics dates back to the
period starting in the 350s, but there are sources which seem to suggest that at
least some elements of this phenomenon may have appeared earlier. The
sources in question might even indicate that we are dealing with beliefs and
practices for which our surviving evidence is relatively late, but which were
actually present in Christian religiosity from a very early date. In this chapter
I will analyse these pieces of evidence in order to see which features of the cult
of relics can be traced to the pre-Constantinian period. Then, I will discuss the
fourth-century evidence of the emerging phenomenon up to the 360s. This
evidence, presented in chronological order, will demonstrate when the new
beliefs and practices started to appear. The trigger mechanism of the shift in
mentality—the shift that marks the beginning of the cult of relics—will be
discussed in Chapter 2.
Prehistory and Early Chronology 9
THE BIBLICAL BACKGROUND
Before we turn to the evidence concerning the second and third centuries, it is
important to refer to the scriptural background of the cult of relics. It will serve
not so much to study an early phase of its development, for there is hardly any
continuity in this respect between biblical times and Late Antiquity, but to see
what the late antique reader could have found in the texts normative for
Christian beliefs and customs.
The cult of relics, as a regular practice, is absent from the Bible, but a few
intriguing passages could have provided a scriptural justification for this
phenomenon. First of all, two short Old Testament episodes seem to show
that the bones of prophets could have been endowed with special power.
According to the First Book of Kings, a man instructed his sons to bury him
in the tomb of the prophet who had foretold the fall of the sanctuary in Bethel.
He gave the following reason for this:
lay me by his bones, that my bones may be preserved with his bones. For the word
will surely come to pass which he spoke by the word of the Lord against the altar
in Bethel, and against the high houses in Samaria.¹
The words in italics can be found only in the Septuagint and in its Latin
translation known as the Vetus Latina. They are absent from Jerome’s Vulgate
(and likewise from the modern translations based on the Masoretic Hebrew
text). Still, late antique Christians knew this passage in the version quoted
above. However, the sequel of the story, which can be found in the Second
Book of Kings,² shows that if the bones of the prophet actually survived the
destruction of Bethel, it did not happen because they had any sort of intrinsic
power. The reason was that King Josiah, who demolished the schismatic
sanctuary and the surrounding graves, decided not to destroy the tomb of
the prophet who had foretold his deed. Thus, the phrase read in context does
not really testify to a belief in the supernatural power of the prophet’s body
and nothing suggests that late antique Christians should have thought
otherwise.³
A more relevant passage can be found in the Second Book of Kings:
And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites came into
the land, at the beginning of the year. And it came to pass as they were burying a
man, that behold, they saw a band [of men], and they cast the man into the grave
of Elisha: and as soon as he touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood up
on his feet.⁴
¹ 1 Kings 13:31–2. ² 2 Kings 23:15–18.

³ This can be seen in the results of the search in the Biblia Patristica, the index of scriptural
quotations in late antique literature, now accessible online: <http://www.biblindex.info>.
⁴ 2 Kings 13:20–1 (Septuagint).

This episode strongly suggests that the healing power remained in the bones of
the famous prophet who had performed diverse miracles in his lifetime. Even
if there is no other passage like this in the Old Testament, these words were
read as a testimony to the power of the relics of saints. Such a reading of this
passage, however, appears only at the end of the fourth century; earlier authors
consider this story to be true and interesting, but isolated, and do not expect a
similar thing to happen again.⁵
In the New Testament we can hardly find a suggestion that the physical
remains of any person could hold any sort of supernatural power, of course
with the important exception of the resurrected body of Christ, which, how-
ever, can hardly be qualified as a relic. Yet two episodes mention a kind of
contact relic. A woman having an issue of blood is healed having touched
Jesus’ garment, and ‘handkerchiefs and aprons’ of Paul the Apostle cure
illnesses and chase away evil spirits.⁶ Of course, neither of these passages
tells about the power of a dead body and, as we will see later on, for over
two centuries following the composition of the New Testament, we cannot see
any continuity in the practice of touching the clothes of holy people in the
hope of regaining health which would date back to apostolic times. Still, this is
an important piece of evidence, as it testifies to the existence of a belief that
miraculous power can be transmitted in a physical way—such a belief was
indeed essential for the development of the cult of relics. In this short section,
however, I have covered all instances of biblical references to relics—or rather
the list of biblical passages which came to be used with reference to the cult of
relics only after the phenomenon in question was already well in place.
P R E- C O N S T A N T I N I A N CHRI S TIANITY: FOU R C AS E S
For post-New Testament Christianity of the second and third centuries we

have no record of an established custom of unearthing the bodies of martyrs or
looking for healing at their graves. Yet, as has been said above, there are a few
pieces of evidence which date back or at least refer to this period and tell about
episodes which strangely resemble the practices of the later centuries. Their
credibility, interpretation, and significance have to be examined.
The first passage calling for a reflection in this context comes from the
Martyrdom of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who was burnt at the stake around
⁵ For the late fourth century, see e.g. Ambrose, De excessu fratris Satyri 2.83; earlier authors:
Origen, In Leviticum homiliae 3.3; Athanasius, De patientia 6; for other quotations, see Biblia
Patristica.
⁶ Mark 5:25–34, Acts 19:12.

the middle of the second century. In the closing paragraphs of the Martyrdom
we read the following:
Thus we later picked up his bones, which are dearer than precious stones and
finer than gold, and laid them to rest where it was appropriate. The Lord will
grant that we, as far as we can, shall gather there in joy and gladness, and celebrate
the birthday of his martyrdom, both in remembrance of those who have already
fought the contest, and for the training and preparation of those who will do so in
the future.⁷
The author of the Martyrdom of Polycarp presents himself as an eyewitness.
Yet the dating of this text, and particularly of the quoted passage, has given rise
to some vigorously discussed controversies. Some scholars considered the
entire account to be a third-century composition, while others thought that
the passage in question was interpolated in the third century, still others
believed that it was a genuine account, written shortly after Polycarp’s
death.⁸ For our purpose, it is important to say that whenever the Martyrdom
of Polycarp was written, at the beginning of the fourth century Eusebius of
Caesarea quoted it in the form cited above, so we are dealing with a testimony
which certainly pre-dates the development of the phenomenon in the mid-
fourth century, although it is not entirely clear by how much.
The discussion on the dating of the passage dealing with Polycarp’s burial
has been closely connected with the debate on the beginning of the cult of
relics. Those who propounded the theory of its early start take it as a strong
argument in favour of their view, while their adversaries consider it to be an
interpolation. However, the question which needs to be asked in this context is
whether the attitude of the author to the body of the martyr was really
different from the traditional Greek attitude toward the bodies of heroes
who died in combat. Christians did not invent respect for and care of the
bodies of the dead, especially of those who died a heroic death. Such an
attitude was entirely normal not just among the Jews, Greeks, and Romans,
but also in most civilizations that we know of. It suffices to mention all the
pains that were taken to recover the precious bodies of those who fell in battle
described in the Iliad. One has to be cautious and refrain from interpreting
every single manifestation of respect paid to the deceased as a sign of the cult
of relics. True, the author in question not only tells about the care for the body
of the bishop, but also announces that the anniversary of his martyrdom will
be celebrated at his tomb. Still, nothing suggests that he believed that Poly-
carp’s remains would be at any point taken out of the grave or, even more
⁷ Martyrium Polycarpi 18 (trans. E. Rizos). See also the record in the Cult of Saints in Late
Antiquity database: E. Rizos, CSLA E00087.
⁸ See the discussion and bibliography in the record quoted above and especially
Campenhausen 1957, who considers the passage to be interpolated, and Dehandschutter 1993,
who argues it is original.

importantly, become a source of miraculous power. And this, as we will see in
Chapter 2, was the essential trait of the new attitude toward the remains of the
martyrs: in the fourth century martyrs ceased to be seen as mere examples to
be imitated, and became depositaries of miraculous powers able to chase away
demons, heal the sick, reveal hidden things, protect communities, punish the
impious, and remit sins.⁹
The second piece of evidence which might suggest that Christians sought
physical contact with the bodily remains of martyrs before the fourth century
comes from the apocryphal Acts of Thomas, which date back to the early third
century.¹⁰ This is what their anonymous author says in the epilogue:
And it happened after a long time [after the death of Judas Thomas] that one of
the sons of king Mazdai had a devil, and no man was able to bind him, because he
was very violent. And king Mazdai thought in his mind and said: ‘I will go [and]
open the grave of Judas, and take one of the bones of the Apostle of God, and will
hang it upon my son, and he will be healed’ . . . And he did not find the bones, for
one of the brethren had taken them secretly and conveyed them to the West. And
king Mazdai took [some] of the dust of the spot where the bones of the Apostle
had lain and hung it upon his son, and said: ‘I believe in Thee, my Lord Jesus, now
that he hath left me, who always troubleth men that they may not see the light’.
And when he had hung [it] upon his son and believed, he was healed.¹¹
There are several intriguing elements in this story: the transfer of the body
from India, where the Apostle died, to the West; the miraculous power of the
bones and dust from the grave, and the practice of touching relics. Of course,
one has to remember that the apocryphal acts of Apostles are a very peculiar
literary genre that depicted a world destined to excite wonder, a world in
which the Apostles baptize lions, dogs speak in human voices, and St Peter
brings back to life a dried herring. The religious behaviour described in such
texts does not necessarily reflect actual practice. Still, the evidence is puzzling.
This passage, however, although present both in the Greek and Syriac versions
of the text, can hardly be part of its third-century layer. Apocrypha were
extremely susceptible to diverse redactional interventions and neither version
of the Acts of Thomas in their present form can be deemed original.¹² The
passage quoted above is placed at the end of the text, the part most easily
affected by interpolations. Indeed, the preceding chapter of the Acts ends with
the Apostle’s martyrial death, which, however, does not put an end to, but
gives momentum to the development of his Church: ‘And the Lord wrought
with them, and many were added unto the faith,’ says the author. This sounds
very much like the last sentence of the story. The last chapter seems to have
been added later, and it is quite easy to show why and when this happened.
⁹ Pietri 1991. ¹⁰ Klijn 2003, 15.

¹¹ Acts of Thomas 170, trans. Klijn 2003. ¹² Tissot 1981.

The essential information which this chapter brings is that of the transfer of
the powerful body of the Apostle to the West. The text is not specific about the
place of its deposition, but we know that the body of Thomas was venerated in
Edessa, where the Acts were most probably written. Interestingly, the evidence
of the tomb of Thomas in Edessa is quite late. Eusebius, who wrote in his
Church History in the 320s about the mission of Thomas in Parthia, does not
seem to know about the transfer of his body to Edessa, a city which he
otherwise mentioned on several occasions.¹³ The story of the transfer is
attested for the first time only in the 360s or 370s by the Syriac writer Ephrem
of Nisibis. In his Hymn 42 he puts the following lamentation in the mouth of
the devil:
The merchant brought the bones: nay, rather! they brought him. Lo, the mutual
gain!
What profit were they to me, while theirs was the mutual gain? Both brought
me loss.
Who will show me the casket of Iscariot, whence courage I derived?
But the casket of Thomas is slaying me, for a hidden power there residing,
tortures me.¹⁴
The crucial element of the story told by the Acts, that of the transfer and power
of Thomas’ bones, is evidently here. Only slightly later, in 384, the Apostle’s
tomb in Edessa was visited by the pilgrim Egeria.¹⁵ The story from the last
chapter of the Acts of Thomas thus appeared most probably between the times
of Eusebius and those of Ephrem and Egeria. It was an important period, in
which Edessa contrived its early Christian history. Later on, we will see
another element of this plan, namely a new version of the letter sent by Christ
to King Abgar. This new version, which also appeared in Edessa between the
times of Eusebius and Egeria, was to guard the city and keep its enemies at
bay.¹⁶ It is difficult to overlook a similar function for Thomas’ tomb and
Christ’s letter: both elevated Edessa to the status of a truly Apostolic Church,
protected by divine power against the Persian armies and the hosts of demons.
The aforementioned epilogue of the Acts of Thomas was probably part of
this new historical policy. It was added because some explanation was needed
of why the tomb of the Apostle who, as the Acts clearly stated, had been active
and died in India was venerated in Edessa. We cannot say when exactly it
happened, but the 350s–360s seems to be a reasonable guess, considering
that the earliest safely dated testimonies to belief in the power of relics date
back to those two decades. It is quite certain that we are not dealing with a
third-century story.
¹³ Thomas and Parthia: Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 3.1.1.

¹⁴ Ephrem, Hymnus 42.2 (trans. J. T. S. Stopford). ¹⁵ Egeria, Itinerarium 17.1 and 19.2.
¹⁶ See pp. 64–5.

The two episodes that follow which might be used to illustrate a pre-
Constantinian interest in relics come from the West. The first of these is set
in Rome and concerns the bodies of the Apostles Peter and Paul. In late
antique evidence we come across stories about the attempted and aborted
transfer of their relics which supposedly took place in the middle of the third
century. This extremely interesting, although confusing dossier consists of a
few elements.
The oldest of them is a wall in the so-called triclia, or banquet hall, at the
Catacombs of St Sebastian, on the Via Appia, south-east of Rome. The wall is
covered with graffiti invoking both Apostles. One of them can be dated to the
year 260, and since it was written over an older graffito of the same kind, the
practice of making them must have started earlier, although probably not
earlier than the middle of the third century.¹⁷ The inscriptions bear testimony
to a cult of the Apostles which consisted in asking them for prayer and having
a meal (refrigerium) in their honour. The epigraphic evidence does not explain
why this practice developed in this specific place, at a distance from the tomb
of Peter on the Vatican Hill and that of Paul on the Via Ostiense.
The second piece of evidence is an entry in the Depositio Martyrum, or the
earliest extant Christian calendar. It is preserved in the so-called Chronogra-
phy of 354, but was most probably composed earlier in the fourth century.¹⁸
Under the third day before the Kalends of July, that is on 29 June, it mentions
a commemoration of ‘Peter in the Catacombs and Paul, on the Via Ostiense’.
The feast of Paul on the Via Ostiense is obvious,¹⁹ but that of Peter at the
Catacombs is puzzling. The Catacombs mentioned in this entry are certainly
those of St Sebastian, for that was the place called Ad Catacumbas, which only
subsequently gave its name to other underground cemeteries. Interestingly,
unlike other entries in the calendar, this one gives not only the day of the
celebration, but also the year, ‘during the consulate of Tuscus and Bassus’,
that, is AD 258. Most disappointingly, it does not say anything about what
happened on that day.
The third piece of evidence is a monumental inscription from the same
Catacombs of St Sebastian. Its author was Pope Damasus (366–84), who
placed several epigrams commemorating the saints in suburban martyria
and cemeteries. The one at St Sebastian’s begins thus: ‘Here the saints abided
previously. You ought to know this, whoever you are, you who seek equally the
names of Peter and Paul’ (Hic habitasse prius sanctos cognoscere debes, nomina
quisque Petri pariter Paulique requiris).²⁰ It has been widely discussed whether
the word habitare referred to an otherwise unattested stay of the Apostles in
this place or to the deposition of their relics. Recently, David Eastman has
¹⁷ Marichal 1962. For the role of this place, see Jastrzębowska 1981.
¹⁸ Burgess 2012, 381–2. ¹⁹ See Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 2.25.7.
²⁰ Damasus, Epigrammata 20.

proposed a new solution of the problem, drawing attention to the word hic
(‘here’), which in his opinion refers to Rome in general and not to the specific
place in which the inscription was written, thus dissociating the Catacombs
and the physical presence of Peter and Paul, dead or alive.²¹ This hypothesis is
difficult to prove, but even if it is so, the Damasan inscription shows at best
what some people in the fourth century thought about the history of this place.
The fourth piece of evidence is the Martyrdom of St Sebastian, dating
probably from the mid-fifth century, in which the martyr, who died in 258,
expresses his wish to be buried ‘at the Catacombs, next to the vestiges of the
Apostles’ (ad catacumbas . . . iuxta vestigia apostolorum), which may suggest
that in the mid-third century the bodies of Peter and Paul rested by the
Via Appia.²²
The fifth piece of evidence is the ending of the fifth-century Syriac Acts of
Sharbel, a martyr at Edessa. Its author sets Sharbel’s martyrdom in the times of
Fabian, bishop of Rome (AD 250), and describes an episode from his episcopate
strangely unrelated to the main storyline. He claims that when Rome was
affected by famine, its inhabitants decided to expel all the foreigners from the
city, but allowed them to take their dead away with them. The foreigners
declared that they would depart, but with the bodies of Peter and Paul, for the
Apostles had also been foreigners in Rome.
And when the people of Rome knew that this matter was so, then they left them
[to do it]. And when they had taken them [i.e. the Apostles’ relics] up and were
removing them from their places, immediately there was a great earthquake, and
the buildings of the city were on the point of falling down, and the city was near
being overthrown. And when the people of Rome saw it, they turned and
besought the strangers to remain in their city, and that the bones might be laid
in their places. And when the bones of the Apostles were returned to their places,
there was quiet, and the earthquakes ceased, and the winds became still, and the
air became bright, and that whole city became cheerful.²³
This is the earliest source which mentions an aborted transfer of the relics of
the Apostles in Rome, placing it around the middle of the third century. It does
not say from where exactly the bodies were removed.
The sixth piece of evidence is a letter of Pope Gregory the Great to the
Empress Constantina. It refuses to comply with her request to send to Con-
stantinople the ‘head of saint Paul or some other part of his body’.²⁴ When
explaining his position, Gregory says that some Greeks already tried to transfer
the bodies of the Apostles directly after their death, and went with them as far
as to the Catacombs. There they were stopped by a thunderstorm, and the
²¹ Eastman 2011, 94–109, with references to the earlier discussion.

²² Passio S. Sebastiani 88; see Cooper 1999, 310–13.
²³ Martyrdom of Sharbel (trans. B. P. Pratten, pp. 61–2; modified by S. Minov: CSLA E01943).
²⁴ Gregory the Great, Epistula IV 30 (trans. J. Barmby).

bodies were carried back to Rome. This supposedly took place in a period
much earlier than the mid-third century, but Gregory mentions the very
place named in the Depositio Martyrum and where the inscriptions invoking
the Apostles were found, namely the Catacombs of St Sebastian.
On the basis of this evidence, at the end of the nineteenth century, Louis
Duchesne hypothesized that around the middle of the third century the bodies
of the Apostles were taken out of their tombs and transferred to the Cata-
combs. Duchesne thought that this was done in order to protect them in the
midst of the persecutions of Valerian, which started in 257.²⁵ This claim is not
substantiated in an explicit manner by any single source on its own, but it is
indeed striking that our evidence attests to some movement of the relics of the
Apostles, signals an event connected with their cult in the 250s, and points to
the Catacombs of St Sebastian. The supposition that the transfer indeed took
place and was prompted by the edict of Valerian, who forbade Christians from
‘assembling or entering what are called koimētēria’, cannot be dismissed as
absurd. Éric Rebillard convincingly argues that the word koimētēria referred
not to the Christian cemeteries in general, but specifically to the tombs of the
martyrs.²⁶ Still, no source mentions any acts of destruction or desecration of
Christian burial places during that persecution, and so the decision to transfer
the bones of the Apostles looks somewhat overdramatic, all the more so as it is
not clear why the Catacombs would have been safer than the Vatican and the
cemetery on the Via Ostiense. In all, it is not possible to determine whether
any transfer of the relics took place in the 250s. Indeed, another solution to
this problem has been proposed. Henry Chadwick turned attention to yet
another piece of literary evidence, namely a passage from the Liber Pontificalis
according to which ‘at the request of a certain lady Lucina, he [Bishop
Cornelius] took up the bodies of the Apostles saints Peter and Paul from the
Catacombs at night’ and deposited them respectively on the Vatican and the
Via Ostiense.²⁷ This may be a late testimony to a tradition of the Catacombs as
the original place of the burial of the Apostles. This tradition, which is also
attested in later itineraria, did not have to date back to the first century.
Chadwick argues that the competing localization of Peter’s and Paul’s burials
on the Via Appia might have emerged as late as the third century in a
dissenting group in the Church of Rome.
In all, the transfer of the bodies of the Apostles is only one of the possible
explanations of the puzzling dossier of the shrine Ad Catacumbas. Even more
importantly, if the transfer indeed took place, it probably did not aim to
bring the sacred objects to a specific place. The relics were to be given
²⁵ Duchesne in the Liber Pontificalis, vol. 1, pp. civ–cvii.

²⁶ Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 7.13.3; Rebillard 2009, 3–6.
²⁷ Liber Pontificalis 22.4 (trans. R. Davis); Chadwick 1957.

protection; they were not supposed to be a means of protection. Interestingly,
in Rome, a vague memory of this transfer, true or false, was used to promote
the idea of the non-transferability of relics: both texts which mention the
transfer claim that it was an intervention of God that put an end to it. Thus,
the dossier quoted above cannot attest to a cult of relics at such an early date.
However, its epigraphical part, datable to the 250s and 260s, is the earliest
attestation of the phenomenon which was essential for its development,
namely the belief in the intercession of the Apostles. We are not dealing
here with a cult of relics, but we are probably witnessing the early beginnings
of the cult of saints.
The last episode appearing in scholarly debates about the beginnings of the
cult of relics is the story of Lucilla of Carthage, a devout and wealthy lady who
played a significant role in the emergence of the Donatist schism after the end
of the Diocletianic persecution.²⁸ Using her money and influence, she sup-
posedly induced a group of African bishops to reject the election of the
archdeacon Caecilian as bishop of Carthage, and to entrust this office to a
certain Maiorinus, a member of her own household. Optatus of Milevis, when
describing these events in his anti-Donatist treatise, explained Lucilla’s aver-
sion to Caecilian thus:
No-one is unaware that this took place in Carthage after the ordination of
Caecilian, and indeed through some factious woman or other called Lucilla,
who, while the Church was still tranquil and the peace had not yet been shattered
by the whirlwinds of persecution, was unable to bear the rebuke of the archdeacon
Caecilian. She was said to kiss (libare) the bone of some martyr or other—if, that
is, he was a martyr—before the spiritual food and drink, and, since she preferred to
the saving cup the bone of some dead man, who if he was a martyr had not yet
been confirmed as one, she was rebuked, and went away in angry humiliation.²⁹
Scholars dealing with the history of the cult of relics usually considered this
passage to be a testimony of a real, if uncommon practice.³⁰ This testimony is,
however, misleading, and its sense can be grasped only if we study the context
in which it was written. We know that Optatus composed his treatise after the
death of the Emperor Julian (363), which is referred to in the text, and the
analysis of its content suggests that it must have been re-edited in the 380s.³¹
Therefore, the passage quoted above was written over sixty years after the
²⁸ What follows is based on Wiśniewski 2011.

²⁹ Optatus, Contra Parmenianum 1.16.1 (trans. M. Edwards).
³⁰ See Dölger 1932; Delehaye 1933, 60; and among more recent scholars, Saxer 1980, 233–5;
Brown 1981, 34; Shaw 1992, 25–6 (although the last remarks that the account may have a
rhetorical character); Miller 1998, 121–3.
³¹ Julian: Optatus, Contra Parmenianum 2.16; according to Jerome Optatus flourished during
the reign of Valens and Valentinian (Gratian is not mentioned: Jerome, De viris inlustribus 110).
Thus, the treatise should have been written in the years 364–7, but these dates do not refer to
Book 7, which was composed later: M. Labrousse, in her introduction (SC 412, 12–14).

event it tells us about and, as we will see, at least a few years after the first safely
attested movements of the saints’ relics through the Mediterranean. When
Optatus described the case of Lucilla, the opening of saints’ graves and
transferring of their bodies had already become a familiar phenomenon,
even if it still had an aura of novelty.
The aim of Optatus’ work is no less important than the date of its compos-
ition. The treatise is a polemic against the Donatists and an essential element
of its argument is an account of the early history of the schism. It is evident
that this story cannot be taken as a faithful and unbiased record of what had
happened.³² According to Optatus, the rupture resulted from the resentments
and desires of various individuals. The first group were the greedy senior
laymen of the Church of Carthage from whom Caecilian demanded that they
return the treasure of the Church which they had appropriated. The second
group consisted of the clerics Botrus and Caelestius: they each hoped to
become bishop of Carthage, but their hopes had been dashed (Optatus does
not explain how they both could aspire to be elected for the same office and
still remain allies). The third contentious individual was Lucilla, who declared
against Caecilian for of the reasons presented in the passage quoted above.³³
Briefly put, Optatus portrays the schism as a result of actions taken by a group
of dishonest nobles, two ambitious and deceitful clerics, and a woman who, as
the sequel to the story demonstrates, played the crucial role: it was a member
of her household who would become the first ‘Donatist’ bishop of Carthage,
elected to that office owing to her active support.
The mere fact that it was a woman who was the actual founder of Donatism
was supposed to discredit this movement in the eyes of Optatus’ audience.³⁴
However, the author was not satisfied with this and went out of his way to
paint an unfavourable picture of her. He mentions Lucilla twice in the
narrative, qualifying her first as seditious (factiosa), and then as ‘powerful
and seditious’ (potens et factiosa). In Latin literature, factiosus is a rare but
well-known word, used several times by Sallust. Lucilla, potens et factiosa, was
certainly to be associated by Optatus’ readers with the repulsive nobiles factiosi
described in De bello Iugurthino.³⁵ What is more, Lucilla is a vengeful woman
and does not submit to the rules of the Church. It seems that the short
description of her religious practices aims to discredit her even further. First
³² Barnes 1975, 15, justly says that modern scholars tend to believe the Catholic version of the
beginnings of the controversy. A good example is Saxer 1980, 233–5, who takes for granted not
only the practice mentioned above, but also the description of the state of Lucilla’s emotions
when rebuked by Caecilian (correpta cum confusione irata discessit).
³³ The entire story is told in Optatus, Contra Parmenianum 1.16–18.
³⁴ In the sixth century Primasius of Hadrumetum equates Donatism with Montanism—both
movements were supported by women: Primasius, In Apocalypsin 3.9.
³⁵ Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum 8.1; 15.3; 27.2; 28.4; 77.1; 85.3; De coniuratione Catilinae 18.4;
51.32; 54.5.

of all, the verb depicting Lucilla’s behaviour is very telling. Whatever Optatus
meant exactly by libare (to ‘kiss’ or ‘touch’), the word was strongly associated
with pagan cult, and Christian authors used it in reference to heathen or,
rarely, biblical sacrifices—it was never used to describe contemporary mani-
festations of piety.³⁶ Secondly, the very object of veneration is shocking: it is a
bone (!), of a presumed martyr (!!), taken out of the grave (!!!). Thirdly, Lucilla
would kiss this bone just before approaching the Eucharist, which suggests
that she preferred it to the ‘saving cup’. All of this would have filled readers
with disgust for that rebellious, resentful, and extremely superstitious ‘found-
ress’ of Donatism. If the text was to meet its goal, the custom presented in it
had to present her as an off-putting person for all potential readers of
his treatise. Therefore, the story of Lucilla cannot be considered a truthful
description of an actual practice, but a rhetorical picture intended to make the
reader boil with pious indignation.
Of course, one may ask whether Lucilla, who was undoubtedly a real
person, could not have been in fact addicted to practices fitting quite well
with Optatus’ picture.³⁷ This, however, is highly improbable for two reasons.
First, as has been already pointed out, the earliest authors mentioning the cult
of relics wrote in the time of Optatus, not of Lucilla. It is thus difficult to
imagine that the latter ostentatiously venerated a part of a dead body at the
time when the tombs of the martyrs were inviolable and the very idea of
reverence towards bodily remains did not yet exist. Secondly, the episode
of Lucilla is not the only passage in which Optatus describes the partisans of
Donatus as people who break the most fundamental rules and violate sacred
customs: not only did they massacre Catholics, rape women, and kill children,
but they also tore out foetuses from the wombs of their mothers. The Donatist
bishop Felix fornicates with a virgin to whom he himself had given the veil.
Other Donatists cast the Eucharist to the dogs.³⁸ If some elements of this
picture may be true, the whole presentation is a rhetorical device which cannot
be taken at face value. The image of an influential widow kissing a bone of an
alleged martyr before receiving Communion belongs to the same category.
Optatus is not the only author to mention Lucilla and her role in the rise of
the Donatist schism. Her name appears for the first time in the record of the
inquiry conducted by the consularis Zenophilus in 320, whose goal was to find
out which bishops of the two feuding camps in the African Church were guilty
of traditio, or handing over sacred books during the persecution. In this text,
Lucilla is accused of bribing the bishops who deposed Caecilian and elected
³⁶ The only exception in the cult of relics is Victricius, De laude sanctorum 5, but he uses the
verb in a figurative sense.
³⁷ So e.g. De Veer 1968.
³⁸ Foetuses torn out: Optatus, Contra Parmenianum 2.18.3; Felix: 2.19.4; Eucharist cast to the
dogs: 2.19.1 and 2.21.6; the phial with the oil for Chrismation thrown by Donatists through the
window: 2.19.2.

Maiorinus in his place, but the episode with the bone is not mentioned.³⁹
Augustine also makes Lucilla guilty of bribing the bishops gathered in Car-
thage, and even of organizing their synod. In Contra Cresconium he calls her a
most rich, very powerful, and extremely seditious woman; he asserts that she
supported Donatus with her money, and says that her hatred of Caecilian
began when the archdeacon rebuked her ‘for ecclesiastical discipline’.⁴⁰ It is
interesting to note that Augustine does not specify what exactly led Caecilian
to reprimand the rich lady. He emphasizes in stronger terms than Optatus the
serious defect of Lucilla’s character (factiosissima!), but clearly thinks that the
most discrediting aspect of the whole affair is the fact that this most wealthy
woman bribed the bishops. Augustine was familiar with Optatus’ work, so he
knew about Lucilla’s veneration of the relic. And yet he did not mention it.
I suppose that the reason for this could have been the change of customs which
had occurred between the 360s and the 410s, when Augustine wrote Contra
Cresconium. As we will see in Chapter 7, during these fifty years, physical
contact with relics became more common. This is not to say that kissing or
touching a martyr’s bone was an entirely normal practice at the beginning of
the fifth century, but a description of such an act would not have filled the
reader with the kind of disgust Optatus hoped to evoke. The custom of kissing
relics is attested in the West already at the turn of the fourth and the fifth
centuries.⁴¹ At that time it still could give rise to controversy, but it would no
longer seem to be totally outrageous and as a result it was not so obviously
useful as a way to attack the Donatists as it had been fifty years earlier.
In all, the episode of Lucilla is of little use for studying customs related to the
corporeal remains of the saints at the turn of the third and fourth centuries,
but it shows quite well how, more than half a century later, Christians
imagined a caricature of the cult of relics, and therefore it allows us to find
out what the acceptable practices looked like in this period. It may also suggest
that, another half-century later, the picture painted by Optatus had lost its
grotesque features because by that time other people started to venerate relics
in a similar fashion.
In all, there is no evidence of the veneration of relics of saints which can
be safely dated to the second or third centuries. Before the Diocletianic
³⁹ Gesta Apud Zenophilum, pp. 195–6. The passage is referred to also by Augustine, Contra
Cresconium 3.29.33.
⁴⁰ Bribery: Augustine, Epistula 43.6 and 9; Enarrationes in Psalmum 36.2.19; Contra Cresco-
nium 3.28.32 (praepotens et pecuniosissima femina); Contra Epistulam Parmeniani 1.3.5
(pecuniosissima et factiosissima femina); supporting Donatus and his party: Epistula 133.4;
Sermo 46.39; reprimand: Epistula 43.6.
⁴¹ Victricius, De laude sanctorum 6 (written c.396). In the East it was probably known already
in the 370s: Gregory of Nyssa, De sancto Theodoro, p. 62. See also Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium
4 and Epistula 108.9; Theodoret, Historia religiosa 21.20; Egeria, Itinerarium 37.1–2; Prudentius,
Peristephanon 2.517–20; 5.337–40; 9.99–100; 11.193–4; Augustine, Sermo 277A.1; more on this
subject: Penn 2005, 78–9 and nn. 54–5.

persecution the dead remained in their graves and the graves do not seem to
have been considered places in which any power dwelt. At the same time,
however, some of those graves, and possibly also other artefacts connected
with their death,⁴² probably came to be important for Christian communities,
important enough to attract the attention of the Roman administration—
otherwise, it would be difficult to explain why as early as in 257 the decree
of Valerian forbade access to koimētēria. Also, in the second half of the third
century, after the persecutions of Decius and Valerian, we can see the first
signs of the emerging belief in the intercession of saints. The graffiti from the
Catacombs of St Sebastian show that people expected their prayers to be heard
by the Apostles. This belief, however, was probably not yet connected with
their physical remains.
T H E FO U R T H CE N T U R Y : THE VE RY BE G I NNI NGS
At the beginning of the fourth century still nothing suggests that the tombs of
the martyrs and Apostles were sought after, visited by people from outside the
local community, or considered to hold a special power. Eusebius of Caesarea,
who wrote the final version of his Church History just before 325, mentions
only a few burial places of the New Testament saints, namely James, the Lord’s
brother, Peter, Paul, Philip, and John the Evangelist, and does not attribute to
them any special significance.⁴³ The situation begins to change in the decades
that followed, as can be seen in the descriptions of early pilgrimages which
started when Helena, Constantine’s mother, visited Palestine in 327.⁴⁴ But the
change in question did not take place immediately.
The earliest list of places visited by a pilgrim to the Holy Land comes from
the Itinerary of the anonymous Pilgrim of Bordeaux and is dated to AD 333.
This list is already quite extensive. The Pilgrim visited a number of places
connected with both major and very secondary biblical personages, and saw,
among other things, the ‘cornerstone rejected by the builders’, the plane trees
planted in Sychar by the patriarch Jacob, the sycamore tree which Zacchaeus
climbed to see Jesus, and two healing springs.⁴⁵ In all, the Itinerary shows an
already flourishing interest in places and material objects which either
⁴² These objects are always covered with martyrs’ blood; see Passio Perpetuae 21.5 (a ring
stained with blood of the martyr is offered to a Christian soldier assisting in the execution);
Pontius, Vita Cypriani 16.6 (Cyprian’s cloths covered with bloody sweat are collected by the
faithful).
⁴³ Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 2.23.18 (James, brother of the Lord, in Jerusalem), 2.25.5–8
(Peter and Paul in Rome), 3.31.3 (Philip in Hierapolis and John in Ephesus).
⁴⁴ Drijvers 1992, 55–72.
⁴⁵ Itinerarium Burdigalense 588 (plane trees), 590 (cornerstone), 596 (sycamore).

commemorated the sacred history or, in some cases, were vehicles for divine
power.⁴⁶ But it does not say anything about relics of saints. True, the Pilgrim of
Bordeaux visited several tombs of Old Testament figures—Joseph, Isaiah,
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel—but they are referred to in
the same way as the tombs of two personages from classical history, Euripides
and Hannibal. Importantly, no tomb of a martyr or a New Testament saint is
mentioned, if we put aside the very specific cases of the empty tombs of Christ
and Lazarus.⁴⁷
Fifty years later, however, in 384, another Western pilgrim to the Holy
Land, Egeria, paid visits to several tombs and sanctuaries of saints in Palestine
and other regions. She lists the martyr-shrine (martyrium) of St Thecla in
Seleucia in Isauria, St Euphemia’s in Chalcedon (famosissimum martyrium),
St John’s in Ephesus, St Thomas’ in Edessa, monk and martyr St Helpidius
in Haran, various martyria in Heroonpolis, and the church of the Holy
Apostles and a number of other martyria in Constantinople.⁴⁸ Thus, interest
in the tombs of the martyrs appeared between 333 and 384. When exactly did
it occur?
The new attitude toward the bodies of the saints is attested for the first time
shortly after the middle of the fourth century. In the 350s, we can see the first
translations, or transfers of relics, to new resting places. First, between 351 and
354, Caesar Gallus brought the coffin of St Babylas, bishop and martyr at
Antioch, from a cemetery to a new-built martyrium in the suburban resort of
Daphne. John Chrysostom and the church historian Sozomen, writing
respectively a generation and two generations later, explain that Gallus wished
to chase away superstition and licentiousness from Daphne, but it is difficult
to say whether this was his actual intention.⁴⁹ A few years later, the remains of
Timothy, a disciple of Paul the Apostle, and later those of Luke the Evangelist
and Andrew the Apostle arrived in Constantinople. These transfers are attest-
ed by several sources, the earliest of which is Jerome’s Chronicle, published in
the early 390s. It says that in 356 ‘the relics of the Apostle Timothy were
transferred to Constantinople’, and, in the following year, ‘the bones of
Andrew the Apostle and Luke the Evangelist were welcomed by the
⁴⁶ Healing springs: Itinerarium Burdigalense 585, 586, and 596. For the power of earth from
the Holy Land, see also Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.8.192–214. Stones from the Holy Land can
be found in early collections of relics (Smith 2015).
⁴⁷ Itinerarium Burdigalense 587 (Joseph), 595 (Isaiah), 598 (Rachel), 599 (Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca), 604 (Euripides), 572 (Hannibal, confused with the still living nephew of
Constantine, Hannibalianus), 596 (Lazarus). The absence of the tombs of martyrs from the
Itinerarium Burdigalense is in my opinion a serious argument against the thesis of Markus 1994
claiming that it is their veneration which gave a start to the very idea of holy places.
⁴⁸ Egeria, Itinerarium 7.7 (Heroonpolis), 20.5 (Helpidius), 22.2–23.5 (Thecla), 23.7 (Euphemia),
23.9 (Constantinople), 23.10 (John).
⁴⁹ John Chrysostom, In Babylam 67–9; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 5.19.12.

inhabitants of Constantinople with much enthusiasm’.⁵⁰ This last date has
been put in doubt by Richard Burgess, who suggested that the transfer of
Andrew and Luke must have taken place twenty years earlier, as dated by
chronicles based on a now lost set of Latin consular fasti.⁵¹ Yet even if this was
so, this particular event did not have any immediate impact on the movement
of relics before the 350s.
In the same decade, in 356, in Egypt, St Antony, the man who gave rise to
the monastic movement in Egypt, died.⁵² In his Vita, written shortly after,
most probably in the 360s, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, presents a
curious custom of privatizing the bodies of martyrs:
The Egyptians are wont to honour with funeral rites, and to wrap in linen cloths
at death the bodies of zealous men, and especially of the holy martyrs; and not to
bury them underground, but to place them on couches, and to keep them in their
houses (παρ’ ἑαυτοῖς), thinking in this to honour the departed.⁵³
Athanasius puts in Antony’s mouth a strong disapproval of this custom and
claims that the latter ordered that his body should be buried in secret for fear
that it could become an object of veneration. This interesting passage, how-
ever, presents some difficulties in interpretation. The fact that Athanasius
refers to those who honour the dead in this particular way as ‘Egyptians’
suggests that he is thinking of an old indigenous custom.⁵⁴ But the fact that he
singles out the burials of the martyrs indicates that the practice was already
Christianized. It is possible that some Egyptians actually kept the sarcophagi
of their dead in their houses.⁵⁵ But it is highly unlikely that in this particular
instance Athanasius had in mind the custom of keeping the relics of the
martyrs in houses directly after their death, for the last persecutions ended
long before the Life of Antony was written. Rather, he refers to the practice of
transferring martyrs’ bodies from cemeteries. Such transfers are also attested
and vigorously condemned in his festal letters 40 and 41, written in the early
370s. By that time the bodies of martyrs were evidently looked for.
The reason why they were looked for can be first seen in two pieces of
evidence contemporary with the Life of Antony. At the very end of the 350s,
Hilary of Poitiers, who was exiled from Gaul in 356 and stayed in Constan-
tinople and Asia Minor, refers, in two different treatises, to the tortures which
are inflicted upon demons by a power dwelling in the tombs of the Apostles
and martyrs. These testimonies will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2, but it is
⁵⁰ Jerome, Chronicon XXXV 19 (AD 356/357: Timothy) and XXXV 20 (357/8: Andrew
and Luke).
⁵¹ Burgess 2003. ⁵² Jerome, Chronicon XXXV 19 (AD 356/7).
⁵³ Athanasius, Vita Antonii 90.2; trans. Robertson; see also 91.6; for the dating of this text, see
Brennan 1976.
⁵⁴ This is the sense of Egyptian practices in the Vita Antonii 79. ⁵⁵ See p. 126.

worth emphasizing at this point that this is the very first safely dated evidence
for the belief in the power of relics.
From this moment on the evidence becomes abundant. According to
Ammianus Marcellinus, in 359, Sabinianus, the Christian commander of the
Roman army in the East, instead of making preparations for the war against
Persia, was wasting time ‘amid the tombs of Edessa as if he had nothing to fear
when he had made his peace with the dead’.⁵⁶ Ammianus is not specific what
kind of tombs he has in mind, but suggests that Sabinianus believed in the help
of those who were buried in them.
Also in the 350s, or at the very beginning of the 360s, young Jerome of
Stridon and his friends from school used to visit on Sundays the tombs of the
Apostles and martyrs in Rome.⁵⁷ The tombs of the Apostles are obviously
those of Peter and Paul. It is not clear when exactly the basilica of St Peter was
completed, but it certainly happened after 354; the first basilica of St Paul
was constructed at about the same time.⁵⁸ Also in 354 Constantine’s daughter
was buried in a mausoleum close to the tomb of St Agnes, although this was
probably an impulse rather than a result of the development of this saint’s
cult.⁵⁹ In all, from the 350s we can see a growing interest in the tombs of the
Apostles and martyrs, a belief in the power of their bones, the custom of
visiting them, and the practice of transferring them from cemeteries to new
resting places.
The strength of this emerging phenomenon is even better attested during
the short reign of the Emperor Julian, called the Apostate, when it evidently
provoked the extreme hostility of the ‘pagan’ population. In 362 Bishop
George of Alexandria and one of his companions were killed by a street
mob in the city. According to Ammianus, this is what happened then:
the inhuman mob loaded the mutilated bodies of the slain men upon camels and
carried them to the shore; there they burned them on a fire and threw the ashes
into the sea, fearing, as they shouted, that their remains (reliquiae) might be
collected and a shrine (aedes) built for them, as for others who, when urged to
abandon their religion, endured terrible tortures, even going so far as to meet a
glorious death with unsullied faith; whence they are now called martyrs.⁶⁰
Admittedly, for Ammianus the word reliquiae did not have a technical sense: it
meant simply ‘remains’. Still, if he did not confuse the image of Christian
practices in the 360s with that of the 390s (i.e. of the time when he was writing
his book), this passage, like the episode of Sabinianus quoted above, suggests
that already at the beginning of the second half of the fourth century those
⁵⁶ Ammianus, Res gestae 18.7.7. For Sabinianus, see Sabinianus (3) in PLRE 1, 789.
⁵⁷ Jerome, In Ezechielem 12.40.243–9. ⁵⁸ Gem 2013; Trout 2003 and Sághy 2000.
⁵⁹ Thacker 2014, 138. ⁶⁰ Ammianus, Res gestae 22.11.10; trans. Rolfe.

who adhered to the old ‘pagan’ cults strongly associated Christianity with the
cult of the martyrs and found this phenomenon irritating.
I suppose that Ammianus was right in dating this sentiment to the 360s, for
there is more evidence of pagan hostility toward the tombs of the saints in this
period. In 362, Julian, anxious about the silence of the oracle of Apollo at
Daphne, ordered the removal the body of St Babylas from there lest it continue
to sully the sacred area.⁶¹ This was obviously a special case, as Babylas’ remains
were installed in Daphne only a few years earlier, but it was not unique. Julian
ordered the same to be done with the tombs of the martyrs in Didyma in Asia
Minor.⁶² Local attacks on Christian tombs also took place in Palestine and
Syria. In Sebaste, the tomb of John the Baptist was destroyed, his bones burnt
and dispersed over the fields.⁶³ Julian himself claims that the inhabitants of
Emesa set fire to the tombs of the ‘Galileans’, that is, Christians, and similar
events also took place around Antioch.⁶⁴ Certainly, one should not overesti-
mate the significance of those events. The attacks on the tombs could have
resulted partly from the fact that, unlike churches, they were easily accessible
and unprotected. Even in modern Europe tombs have fallen victim to aggres-
sion more frequently than buildings or monuments which were more import-
ant, but more guarded. Moreover, the burning of the martyrs’ corpses is
attested already in the second century, when it was simply an additional
punishment and not a reaction to the cult of relics.⁶⁵ Also, as we have already
seen, during the persecutions of Valerian in the 250s Christians were forbid-
den not only to assemble, but also to approach tombs, presumably those of the
martyrs.⁶⁶ But it seems that in 362 those tombs were more important than in
the third century, for that was the first time that they were directly attacked
and destroyed, not only on the initiative of Julian.
Even though these three pieces of evidence coincide in time—the transfer of
relics by Gallus and Constantius, the remarks of Hilary of Poitiers about the
power of the tombs of the saints, and the acts of hostility against Christian
martyria—one still has to ask the question whether they are not symptoms of
an older phenomenon which simply did not have an occasion to appear in the
evidence earlier, for the literary evidence of Christian practices becomes in
general more abundant in the second half of the fourth century. This, however,
does not seem to be the case. It is symptomatic that the writings of Eusebius
and those early martyrial stories which can be safely dated to the period
preceding the fourth century show little interest in the physical remains of
the saints. There is no archaeological, papyrological, or epigraphical evidence
⁶¹ John Chrysostom, In Babylam 80–91 and Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 5.19.16–19.

⁶² Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 5.20.7.
⁶³ Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica 11.28 and Philostorgius, Historia ecclesiastica 7.4a.
⁶⁴ Julian, Misopogon 357C and 361A–B; also Epistula 41.438C; see Torres 2009.
⁶⁵ Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 4.15.40–3 (Polycarp) and 5.1.62 (the martyrs of Lyons).
⁶⁶ Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 7.11.10 and 7.13.

which would attest to such interest before the later fourth century.⁶⁷ We are
most probably dealing then with a truly new phenomenon.
All this suggests that the transfers of the bodies of Babylas, Andrew,
Luke, and Timothy did not result from a pre-existing veneration of relics.
It is more probable that those transfers and the construction of their monu-
mental martyria gave a momentum to the emerging cult of relics rather than
expressed it. But the rise of the new phenomenon certainly did not owe its
success uniquely to the solemn imperial ‘translations’. In Chapter 2 I will argue
that the surge of popular enthusiasm for the cult of relics resulted above all
from a growing belief in the miraculous power of relics which is attested for
the first time in the two treatises of Hilary of Poitiers referred to above.
⁶⁷ Papaconstantinou 2001, 370.

The First Miracles
In Late Antiquity many relics, though by no means all, were famous for the
miracles they performed. These miracles were not just proofs of the authen-
ticity of the bodily remains of saints. They were paving the way for the success
of the cult of relics and constituted the distinctive feature which set this cult
apart from the earlier forms of veneration of the martyrs’ graves. The thauma-
turgical (miracle-working) power of relics manifested itself in a number of
ways: they were believed capable of expelling demons, curing diseases, reveal-
ing hidden things, and defending cities from enemies. They also brought
help in the other world to the dead buried ad sanctos. All these aspects of
the belief in the power of relics will be addressed in the chapters that follow.
I will focus first on how people came to expect relics to exorcize evil spirits and
heal the sick.
Historians usually find it awkward to talk about ‘real’ miracles. Admittedly,
the only miracles that are wholly accessible to our inquiry are literary miracles,
episodes which served authors to express their vision of the world, history,
man, and God,¹ and we certainly should not yield too easily to the temptation
to explain what really happened during exorcisms and healings described in
hagiography. Yet this question cannot be entirely evaded in any study on the
origins of the cult of relics, because the miracles featuring in late antique
sources cannot be dismissed as mere literary phenomena. Of course, the
explosion of the miraculous in the second half of the fourth and in the fifth
century results, up to a point, from the emergence of the new literary genre,
namely the lives of saints. Still, the evidence of the belief in miracles found in
non-hagiographical sources is ample enough to prove that people actually
came to believe in the healings obtained through the agency of saints, dead or
alive. Nor can the surge in miracles, noticeable in our sources from the second
half of the fourth century, be explained as merely one aspect of the wider
phenomenon, namely an evolution of the religious vision of the world which
took place in the post-Constantinian period. It is not only a change in the
¹ See e.g. Flusin 1983.


vision of reality that we see in that period; it is reality itself that changed:
I think that the abundance of miracles in late antique Christian literature
results, at least in part, from the fact that something actually began to happen
at the tombs of the saints. This change is well illustrated by the case of
Augustine. In the 380s, he wrote that the era of miracles had ended and that
at present one could admire only the marvels of nature.² But thirty years later,
in Book 22 of The City of God, as well as in a number of sermons from the
same period, he argues that healings happen hic et nunc, in the shrines of
martyrs, and suggests that the testimonies of the healed should be collected so
that they can be made widely known.³ The reason for the evolution of
Augustine’s opinion was not his readings, reflections, or pastoral consider-
ations; it was rather the observation of what was happening in Africa in the
early fifth century, especially in Hippo and Uzalis, after the arrival of the relics
of Gervasius and Protasius and those of St Stephen.⁴
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES (OR ALMOST)
It may seem understandable that the miracles enumerated by Augustine or the

anonymous contemporary author of the Book of the Miracles of St Stephen
somehow reflect what really happened in the cities of Hippo and Uzalis.
Where hundreds of people, many of whom are sick, are expecting a miracle
to happen, a miracle probably will happen sooner or later. Of course, the
nature of this phenomenon is not easy to grasp and, as I have already pointed
out, historians feel somewhat uneasy about approaching it. Miraculous heal-
ings used to be explained in one of two ways: either quite simply as the healing
of a psychosomatic disease or, when considered in a more sophisticated
manner, as a ritual of reintegration of people excluded from the community
due to their illness (or rather because of their sins which were believed to have
led to that illness).⁵ In both cases, however, the healing implies the belief that
there is a power residing in the sanctuary, capable of bringing help to the sick.
Therefore, the belief in the power of relics must precede the healing. Interest-
ingly, in the middle of the fourth century such a belief was not evident.
There is no doubt that the belief in miracles was strong and important in
primitive Christianity. Suffice it to mention the New Testament narratives
² Augustine, De vera religione 25/47 (written in 387–91); De utilitate credendi 34–5 (391–2);
Sermo 126.3–4. See Van Uytfanghe 1981, esp. 211.
³ For the written testimonies (libelli), see Augustine, Sermones 94; 286.5–7; 319.6; De civitate
Dei 22.8–10.
⁴ See above and the Liber de miraculis s. Stephani 1.1.
⁵ For the former approach, see Stancliffe 1983, 250–4; for the latter, Van Dam 1993, 84–6, and
his discussion of specific miracles described by Gregory of Tours on the pages that follow.
The First Miracles 29

describing the healings performed by Christ and the Apostles, and, even more
importantly, the Pauline letters and various second-century writings suggest-
ing that miracle-workers were normally expected to be found in Christian
communities.⁶ Yet it seems that this belief had dramatically weakened over the
course of the third century.⁷ The reasons for this are not entirely clear,
although it is possible that the essential role was played by the process of the
‘rationalization’ and professionalization of the Christian leadership. In the
Church, bishops and exegetes displaced miracle-workers and prophets. This
process was probably reinforced by the anti-Montanist reaction, which made
all charismatic activity look suspicious, and, even more importantly, by the
accusation of sorcery made against Christians from the second half of the
second century on.⁸
Be that as it may, the Christian authors of the third and early fourth
centuries seem to regard miracles as belonging rather to the distant past of
biblical Israel and the history of the early Church. They do not doubt the signs
and the wonders performed by Moses, Christ, the Apostles, and their imme-
diate followers. Indeed, the apocryphal acts of the Apostles abound in wonders
far more spectacular than those that can be found in the New Testament. But
several authors of this period maintain that the era of spectacular miracles has
ended, and that no extraordinary manifestations of God’s power can be
expected any longer. Such things will no longer happen, because they are
not necessary. This conviction was to change once again over the course of the
fourth century, but still in the 380s Augustine wrote that, as far as miracles
were concerned, his contemporaries had to content themselves with the
wonderful rising and setting of the sun.⁹ Ambrose, according to whom the
miracles of Gervasius and Protasius re-enacted those of ancient times, seems
to think that before the discovery of the Milanese relics there was a time when
such marvels did not happen.¹⁰ That is what other writers too, such as
Victorinus of Poetovio or Eusebius of Caesarea, had asserted before. Certainly,
it would be rash to attach too much weight to the opinions of those intellec-
tuals. The simple people, not necessarily all that simple, could still have
believed in God’s direct interventions in the course of human lives. Christians,
after all, did not live in a bubble and we know that the belief that miracles were
happening ‘here and now’ is well attested in the Roman world in the second
and third centuries. Suffice it to mention Lucian of Samosata’s mockery of
people’s credulousness, the testimonies of healings happening in Asklepieia, or
⁶ Kee 1983.
⁷ Van Uytfanghe 1981, 210. See also the evidence collected by Daunton-Fear 2009, 68–131.
The material presented in his book supports the thesis of the direct continuation of exorcistic
practices and beliefs from apostolic times to Late Antiquity, but at the same time shows that the
belief in bodily healings at least radically diminished in the third and early fourth centuries.
⁸ Carleton Paget 2011, 138–42. ⁹ Augustine, De utilitate credendi 34.
¹⁰ Ambrose, Epistula 77.9.

the miraculous stories told in the earliest Neoplatonic biographies.¹¹ We
should also remember that results very similar to those which people associ-
ated with the agency of saints were associated with the power of magic—and it
does not seem that the belief in magic weakened in any way in the third or
early fourth century. Moreover, given that health is one of the most basic
human needs and that it can deteriorate so rapidly, one can suppose that even
people who did not expect to see anything like the parting of the Rea Sea in
their lifetimes did not altogether give up hope for a God-sent restoration
to health. The tradition of miraculous healing certainly did not disappear
altogether from the Church directly after apostolic times; it was still quite
vigorous in the second century. Later on, however, testimonies to the belief in
healing miracles become very scattered. To be exact, the available sources—
narrative, theological, and polemical writings—still give evidence of the belief
that the possessed could be exorcized; they even describe, although rarely,
specific exorcisms and give the names of those who were healed. But healings
of bodily diseases, if mentioned at all, are presented in very vague terms and it
is difficult to say whether those who refer to them are thinking about con-
temporary or biblical miracles.
No doubt, it is possible that, contrary to what Eusebius and other learned
authors say or fail to mention, there were, in the very same period, Christians
who believed that miracles still happened in their days. But even if this was the
case, they certainly did not believe in the thaumaturgical power of the bodies
or graves of the saints until as late as the second half of the fourth century.¹² It
is symptomatic that Eusebius of Caesarea does not attribute any special power
to the remains of the martyrs that he admired, and that in AD 333 the only
healing places found in Palestine by the anonymous pilgrim from Bordeaux
were miraculous springs.¹³
When did this attitude change? What gave rise to the new belief, which,
once it became firmly established, fuelled a massive increase in the phenom-
enon? Certainly, we are facing here a wider problem, because in Late Antiquity
miracles were believed to occur not only at the tombs of the martyrs, but also
in the cells of monks and in other special places, and relics were not the only
objects whose power could be transmitted in a physical way. The aim of this
chapter, however, is not to explain the general phenomenon of the emergence
of Christian thaumaturgy in Late Antiquity, but to answer the more specific
questions of why, when, and how relics began to perform miracles, or rather
came to be expected to do so.
¹¹ Lucian, Philopseudes 16; Philostratus, Vita Apollonii 3.39, 4.45, 6.43; healing in Asklepieia:
Edelstein 1945, testimonia 382–442.
¹² For the puzzling, but isolated testimony of the Acts of Thomas 170, see pp. 12–13.
¹³ Itinerarium Burdigalense 585, 589, 596; see also 592. Incidentally, it has to be noted that the
belief in the power of these springs most probably was not of Christian origin.
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guide a tool. The slide-rest, while it had been invented, had not been
put into practical form or come into general use. There were a few
rude drilling and boring machines, but no planing machines, either
for metal or wood. The tool equipment of the machinist, or
“millwright,” as he was called, consisted chiefly of a hammer, chisel
and file. The only measuring devices were calipers and a wooden
rule, with occasional reference perhaps to “the thickness of an old
shilling,” as above. Hand forging was probably as good as or better
than that of today. Foundry work had come up to at least the needs
of the time. But the appliances for cutting metal were little better than
those of the Middle Ages.
Such was the mechanical equipment in 1775; practically what it
had been for generations. By 1850 it was substantially that of today.
In fact, most of this change came in one generation, from about 1800
to 1840. Since that time there have been many improvements and
refinements, but the general principles remain little changed. With so
wonderful a transformation in so short a time, several questions arise
almost inevitably: Where did this development take place, who
brought it about, and why was it so rapid?
The first question is fairly simple. England and America produced
the modern machine tool. In the period mentioned, England
developed most of the general machine tools of the present day; the
boring machine, engine lathe, planer, shaper, the steam hammer and
standard taps and dies. Somewhat later, but partially coincident with
this, America developed the special machine tool, the drop hammer,
automatic lathes, the widespread commercial use of limit gauges,
and the interchangeable system of manufacture.
In a generalization such as this, the broad lines of influence must
be given the chief consideration. Some of the most valuable general
tools, such as the universal miller and the grinder, and parts of the
standard tools, as the apron in the lathe, are of American origin. But,
with all allowances, most of the general machine tools were
developed in England and spread from there throughout the world
either by utilization of their design or by actual sale. On the other
hand, the interchangeable system of manufacture, in a well-
developed form, was in operation in England in the manufacture of
ships’ blocks at Portsmouth shortly after 1800; and yet this block-
making machinery had been running for two generations with little or
no influence on the general manufacturing of the country, when
England, in 1855, imported from America the Enfield gun machinery
and adopted what they themselves styled the “American”
interchangeable system of gun making.[7]
[7] See page 139.
The second question as to who brought this change about is not

so simple. It is not easy to assign the credit of an invention. Mere
priority of suggestion or even of experiment seems hardly sufficient.
Nearly every great improvement has been invented independently by
a number of men, sometimes almost simultaneously, but often in
widely separated times and places. Of these, the man who made it a
success is usually found to have united to the element of invention a
superior mechanical skill. He is the one who first embodied the
invention in such proportions and mechanical design as to make it
commercially available, and from him its permanent influence
spreads. The chief credit is due to him because he impressed it on
the world. Some examples may illustrate this point.
Leonardo da Vinci in the fifteenth century anticipated many of the
modern tools.[8] His sketches are fascinating and show a wonderful
and fertile ingenuity, but, while we wonder, we smile at their
proportions. Had not a later generation of mechanics arisen to re-
invent and re-design these tools, mechanical engineering would still
be as unknown as when he died.
[8] American Machinist, Vol. 32, Part 2, pp. 821 and 868.
Take the slide-rest. It is clearly shown in the French encyclopedia

of 1772, see Fig. 3, and even in an edition of 1717. Bramah,
Bentham and Brunel, in England, and Sylvanus Brown,[9] in America,
are all said to have invented it. David Wilkinson, of Pawtucket, R. I.,
was granted a patent for it in 1798.[10] But the invention has been,
and will always be, credited to Henry Maudslay, of London. It is right
that it should be, for he first designed and built it properly, developed
its possibilities, and made it generally useful. The modern slide-rest
is a lineal descendant from his.
[9] Goodrich: “History of Pawtucket,” pp. 47-48. Pawtucket, 1876.
[10] Ibid., p. 51.
Blanchard was by no means the first to turn irregular forms on a

lathe. The old French rose engine lathe, shown in Fig. 4, embodied
the idea, but Blanchard accomplished it in a way more mechanical,
of a far wider range of usefulness, and his machine is in general use
to this day.
Figure 3. French Slide-Rest, 1772
Figure 4. French Lathe for Turning Ovals, 1772
The spindle swings sidewise under the influence of the two cams which bear
against the upright stops
JOSEPH BRAMAH Sir SAMUEL Sir MARC I.
1748-1814 BENTHAM BRUNEL
Invented Lock, Hydraulic 1757-1831 1769-1849
press, 4-way cock, and 44 NEW MACHINES.
wood working machinery. BLOCK M’CHRY-1800-08
HENRY MAUDSLAY
1771-1831
Slide rest for metal work, Block machinery, Flour,
Sawmill and Mint mach’ry, Punches, Mill and Marine
Steam Engines, Fine screw cutting. Laid basis for
Lathe, Planer and Slotter
JOSEPH CLEMENT
1779-1844
Slide Lathe, Planer 1820 and 1824
Manufactured Taps and Dies Standard
Screw Threads
MATT. JAMES RICH’D. JOSEPH JAMES
MURRAY FOX ROBERTS WHITWORTH NASMYTH
1803-87 1808-90
Engines D- Index Versatile Std. Screw Index
Valve Cutting of Inventor, Threads Milling
Planer Gears Planer Foremost tool Shaper
Lathes, builder of the Steam
Planer 19th Century Hammer
Am. Machinist
Figure 5. Genealogy of the Early English Tool Builders
To the third question as to why this development when once begun

should have been so rapid, there are probably two answers. First, an
entirely new demand for accurate tools arose during these years,
springing from the inventions of Arkwright, Whitney, Watt, Fulton,
Stephenson and others. The textile industries, the steam engine,
railways, and the scores of industries they called into being, all called
for better and stronger means of production. While the rapidity of the
development was due partly to the pressure of this demand, a
second element, that of cumulative experience, was present, and
can be clearly traced. Wilkinson was somewhat of an exception, as
he was primarily an iron master and not a tool builder, so his
relationship to other tool builders is not so direct or clear. But the
connection between Bramah, Maudslay, Clement, Whitworth and
Nasmyth, is shown in the “genealogical” table in Fig. 5.
Bramah had a shop in London where, for many years, he
manufactured locks and built hydraulic machinery and woodworking
tools. Maudslay, probably the finest mechanician of his day, went to
work for Bramah when only eighteen years old and became his
foreman in less than a year. He left after a few years and started in
for himself, later taking Field into partnership, and Maudslay &
Field’s became one of the most famous shops in the world.
Sir Samuel Bentham, who was inspector general of the British
navy, began the design of a set of machines for manufacturing pulley
blocks at the Portsmouth navy yard. He soon met Marc Isambard
Brunel, a brilliant young Royalist officer, who had been driven out of
France during the Revolution, and had started working on block
machinery through a conversation held at Alexander Hamilton’s
dinner table while in America a few years before. Bentham saw the
superiority of Brunel’s plans, substituted them for his own, and
commissioned him to go ahead.
In his search for someone to build the machinery, Brunel was
referred to Maudslay, then just starting in for himself. Maudslay built
the machines, forty-four in all, and they were a brilliant success.
There has been considerable controversy as to whether Bentham or
Brunel designed them. While Maudslay’s skill appears in the
practical details, the general scheme was undoubtedly Brunel’s. In a
few of the machines Bentham’s designs seem to have been used,
but he was able enough and generous enough to set aside most of
his own designs for the better ones of Brunel.
Of the earlier tool builders, Maudslay was the greatest. He, more
than any other, developed the slide-rest and he laid the basis for the
lathe, planer and slotter. His powerful personality is brought out in
Nasmyth’s autobiography written many years later. Nasmyth was a
young boy, eager, with rare mechanical skill and one ambition, to go
to London and work for the great Mr. Maudslay. He tells of their
meeting, of the interest aroused in the older man, and of his being
taken into Maudslay’s personal office to work beside him. It is a
pleasing picture, the young man and the older one, two of the best
mechanics in all England, working side by side, equally proud of
each other.
Joseph Clement came to London and worked for Bramah as chief
draftsman and as superintendent of his works. After Bramah’s death
he went to Maudslay’s and later went into business for himself. He
was an exquisite draftsman, a fertile inventor, and had a very
important part in the development of the screw-cutting lathe and
planer. Joseph Whitworth, the most influential tool builder of the
nineteenth century, worked for Maudslay and for Clement and took
up their work at the point where they left off. Under his influence
machine tools were given a strength and precision which they had
never had before. Richard Roberts was another pupil of Maudslay’s
whose influence, though important, was not so great as that of the
others.
We have an excellent example of what this succession meant.
Nasmyth tells of the beautiful set of taps and dies which Maudslay
made for his own use, and that he standardized the screw-thread
practice of his own shop. Clement carried this further. He established
a definite number of threads per inch for each size, extended the
standardization of threads, and began the regular manufacture of
dies and taps. He fluted the taps by means of milling cutters and
made them with small shanks, so that they might drop through the
tapped hole. Whitworth, taking up Clement’s work, standardized the
screw threads for all England and brought order out of chaos.
Some account of the growth of machine tools in the hands of
these men will be given later. Enough has been said here to show
the cumulative effect of their experience, and its part in the industrial
advance of the first half of the nineteenth century. Similar
successions of American mechanics will be shown later.
Writing from the standpoint of fifty years ago, Smiles quotes Sir
William Fairbairn: “‘The mechanical operations of the present day
could not have been accomplished at any cost thirty years ago; and
what was then considered impossible is now performed with an
exactitude that never fails to accomplish the end in view.’ For this we
are mainly indebted to the almost creative power of modern machine
tools, and the facilities which they present for the production and
reproduction of other machines.”[11]
[11] Smiles: “Industrial Biography,” p. 399.
CHAPTER II
WILKINSON AND BRAMAH
In the previous chapter it was stated that John Wilkinson, of
Bersham, made the steam engine commercially possible by first
boring Watt’s cylinders with the degree of accuracy necessary, and
that his boring machine was probably the first metal-cutting tool
capable of doing large work with anything like modern accuracy.
Although Wilkinson was not primarily a tool builder but an iron
master, this achievement alone is sufficient to make him interesting
to the tool builders of today.
He was born in 1728. His father made his financial start by
manufacturing a crimping iron for ironing the fancy ruffles of the day.
John Wilkinson first started a blast furnace at Belston and later
joined his father in an iron works the latter had built at Bersham, near
Chester. By developing a method of smelting and puddling iron with
coal instead of wood-charcoal, he obtained an immense commercial
advantage over his rivals and soon became a powerful factor in the
iron industry. Later, he built other works, notably one at Broseley,
near Coalbrookdale on the Severn.
One of the important branches of his work was the casting and
finishing of cannon. It was in connection with this that he invented
the boring machine referred to. He bored the first cylinder for Boulton
& Watt in 1775. Farey, in his “History of the Steam Engine,” says:
In the old method, the borer for cutting the metal was not guided in its
progress,[12] and therefore followed the incorrect form given to the cylinder in
casting it; it was scarcely insured that every part of the cylinder should be circular;
and there was no certainty that the cylinder would be straight. This method was
thought sufficient for old engines; but Mr. Watt’s engines required greater
precision.
[12] See Fig. 1.
Mr. Wilkinson’s machine, which is now the common boring-machine, has a
straight central bar of great strength, which occupies the central axis of the
cylinder, during the operation of boring; and the borer, or cutting instrument, is
accurately fitted to slide along this bar, which, being made perfectly straight,
serves as a sort of ruler, to give a rectilinear direction to the borer in its progress,
so as to produce a cylinder equally straight in the length, and circular in the
circumference. This method insures all the accuracy the subject is capable of; for if
the cylinder is cast ever so crooked, the machine will bore it straight and true,
provided there is metal enough to form the required cylinder by cutting away the
superfluities.[13]
[13] Farey: “Treatise on the Steam Engine,” p. 326. 1827.
Wilkinson’s relations with Boulton & Watt became very intimate.

He showed his confidence in the new engine by ordering the first
one built at Soho to blow the bellows of his iron works at Broseley.
Great interest was felt in the success of this engine. Other iron
manufacturers suspended their building operations to see what the
engine could do and Watt himself superintended every detail of its
construction and erection. Before it was finished Boulton wrote to
Watt:
Pray tell Mr. Wilkinson to get a dozen cylinders cast and bored from 12 to 50
inches in diameter, and as many condensers of suitable sizes; the latter must be
sent here, as we will keep them ready fitted up, and then an engine can be turned
out of hand in two or three weeks. I have fixed my mind upon making from 12 to 15
reciprocating, and 50 rotative engines per annum.[14]
[14] Smiles: “Boulton & Watt,” p. 185. London, 1904.
This letter is interesting as showing Boulton’s clear grasp of the

principles of manufacturing. Later, when Boulton & Watt were hard
pressed financially, Wilkinson took a considerable share in their
business and when the rotative engine was developed he ordered
the first one. He consequently has the honor of being the purchaser
of the first reciprocating and the first rotary engine turned out by
Watt. Later, when Watt was educating his son to take up his work, he
sent him for a year to Wilkinson’s iron works at Bersham, to learn
their methods.
Fig. 7, taken from an old encyclopedia of manufacturing and
engineering, shows the boring machine used for boring Watt’s steam
cylinders.
On two oaken stringers SS, frames FF were mounted which
carried a hollow boring bar A driven from the end. The cylinder to be
bored was clamped to saddles, as shown. The cutters were carried
on a head which rotated with the bar and was fed along it by means
of an internal feed-rod and rack. In the machine shown the feeding
was done by a weight and lever which actuated a pinion gearing with
the rack R, but later a positive feed, through a train of gears
operated by the main boring-bar, was used. Two roughing cuts and a
finishing cut were used, and the average feed is given as ¹⁄₁₆ inch
per revolution. While this machine may seem crude, a comparison
with Smeaton’s boring machine, Fig. 1, will show how great an
advance it was over the best which preceded it.
Wilkinson was a pioneer in many lines. He built and launched the
first iron vessel and in a letter dated July 14, 1787, says:
Yesterday week my iron boat was launched. It answers all my expectations, and
has convinced the unbelievers who were 999 in a thousand. It will be only a nine
days wonder, and then be like Columbus’s egg.[15]
[15] “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Technik und Industrie,” 3. Band. S.
227. Berlin, 1911.
In another letter written a little over a year later, he says:

There have been launched two Iron Vessels in my service since Sept. 1st: one is
a canal boat for this [i.e., Birmingham] navigation, the other a barge of 40 tons for
the River Severn. The last was floated on Monday and is, I expect, at Stourport
with a loading of bar iron. My clerk at Broseley advises me that she swims
remarkably light and exceeds my expectations.[16]
[16] Ibid., 3. Band. S. 227.
In 1788 William Symington built and ran a steam-operated boat on

Dalswinton Loch in Scotland, which was a small, light craft with two
hulls, made of tinned sheet-iron plates.[17] It has been erroneously
claimed that this was the first iron boat. It was at best the second.
Although of no commercial importance, it is of very great historical
interest as it antedated Fulton’s “Clermont” by many years.
[17] Autobiography of James Nasmyth, p. 30. London, 1883.
Twenty-three years later, in 1810, Onions & Son of Broseley built
the next iron boats, also for use upon the Severn. Five years later
Mr. Jervons of Liverpool built a small iron boat for use on the Mersey.
In 1821 an iron vessel was built at the Horsley works in
Staffordshire, which sailed from London to Havre and went up the
Seine to Paris.[18] Iron vessels were built from time to time after that,
but it was fully twenty-five years before they came into general use.
[18] Smiles: “Men of Invention and Industry,” pp. 51-52. New York, 1885.
Figure 6. John Wilkinson
Figure 7. Wilkinson’s Boring Machine
Used for Machining the Cylinders of Watt Engines
With Abraham Darby, 3d, Wilkinson has the honor of having built,
in 1779, the first iron bridge, which spanned the Severn at Broseley.
This bridge had a span of 100 feet 6 inches, and a clear height of 48
feet, and is standing today as good as ever.[19] He invented also the
method of making continuous lead pipe.
[19] Smiles: “Industrial Biography,” p. 119. Boston, 1864. Also, Beiträge,
etc., 3. Band. S. 226.
He was a man of great ability, strong and masterful. Boulton wrote

of him to Watt:
I can’t say but that I admire John Wilkinson for his decisive, clear, and distinct
character, which is, I think, a first-rate one of its kind.[20]
[20] Smiles: “Boulton & Watt,” p. 438. London, 1904.
There is a note of qualification in the last clause. With all his

admirable qualities Wilkinson was not always amiable and he was in
constant feud with the other members of his family. He became very
wealthy, but his large estate was dissipated in a famous lawsuit
between his heirs.
Forceful and able as Wilkinson was, another man, Joseph
Bramah, living in London about the same time, had a much more
direct influence on tool building. Bramah was a Yorkshire farmer’s
boy, born in 1748, and lame.[21] As he could not work on the farm he
learned the cabinet maker’s trade, went to London, and, in the
course of his work which took him into the well-to-do houses about
town, he made his first successful invention—the modern water-
closet. He patented it in 1778 and 1783, and it continues to this day
in substantially the same form. In 1784 he patented a lock, which
was an improvement on Barron’s, invented ten years before, and
was one of the most successful ever invented. For many years it had
the reputation of being absolutely unpickable. Confident of this,
Bramah placed a large padlock on a board in his shop window in
Piccadilly and posted beneath it the following notice:
“The artist who can make an instrument that will pick or open this lock shall
receive two hundred guineas the moment it is produced.”
[21] The best account of Bramah is given in Smiles’ “Industrial
Biography,” pp. 228-244. Boston, 1864.
Many tried to open it. In one attempt made in 1817, a clever

mechanic named Russell spent a week on it and gave it up in
despair. In 1851 Alfred C. Hobbs, an American, mastered it and won
the money. He was allowed a month in which to work and the
Committee of Referees in their report stated that he spent sixteen
days, and an actual working time of fifty-one hours, in doing it. This
gave Hobbs a great reputation, which he enhanced by picking every
other lock well known in England at that time, and then showing how
it was done.
This started up the liveliest kind of a controversy and gave
everyone a chance to write to the Times. They all began first picking,
then tearing each other’s locks. Headlines of “Love (Hobbs?) Laughs
at Locksmiths,” “Equivocator” and other like terms appeared.[22]
[22] Price: “Fire and Thief-proof Depositories, and Locks and Keys.”
It was finally recognized that any lock could be picked by a skillful

mechanic with a knowledge of locks, if he were given time enough.
The old Bramah lock, made, by the way, by Henry Maudslay himself,
did not fare so badly. Hobbs had unmolested access to it for days
with any tools he could bring or devise; and though he finally opened
it, a lock probably sixty years old which could stand such an assault
for fifty hours was secure for all ordinary purposes.[23]
[23] Anyone who is interested can find an account of the affair in Price’s
“Fire and Thief-proof Depositories, and Locks and Keys,” published in 1856,
and Mr. Hobbs has given his own personal account of it, explaining how the
work was done, in the Trans. of the A. S. M. E., Vol. VI, pp. 248-253.
When Bramah began manufacturing the locks he found almost

immediately that they called for a better quality of workmanship than
was available, with even the best manual skill about him. A series of
machine tools had to be devised if they were to be made in the
quantities and of the quality desired. He turned first to an old
German in Moodie’s shop who had the reputation of being the most
ingenious workman in London; but while he, with Bramah, saw the
need, he could not meet it. One of his shopmates, however,
suggested a young man at the Woolwich Arsenal named Henry
Maudslay, then only eighteen years old.
Bramah sent for him and Maudslay soon became his right-hand
man, and was made superintendent of the works at nineteen. The
work of these two men in developing the tools needed laid the
foundation for the standard metal-cutting tools of today. The most
important improvement was the slide-rest. Nasmyth later said that he
had seen the first one, made by Maudslay, running in Bramah’s shop
and that “in it were all those arrangements which are to be found in
the most modern slide-rest of our own day” (i.e., fifty years later).
Other parts of the metal-cutting lathe also began to take shape; it
has been said that parts of the lock were milled on a lathe with rotary
cutters, and that the beginnings of the planer were made. How much
of this work was Bramah’s and how much Maudslay’s it would be
hard to say. Bramah was a fertile, clever inventor; but Maudslay was
the better general mechanic, had a surer judgment and a greater
influence on subsequent tool design.
About this time Bramah invented the hydraulic press. As he first
built it, the ram was packed with a stuffing-box and gland. This
gripped the ram, retarded the return stroke, and gave him a lot of
trouble until Maudslay substituted the self-tightening cup-leather
packing for the stuffing-box, an improvement which made the device
a success.
Bramah’s restless ingenuity was continually at work. He invented a
very successful beer-pump in 1797, the four-way cock, a quill
sharpener which was in general use until quills were superseded by
steel pens, and he dabbled with the steam engine. He was a bitter
opponent of Watt and testified against him in the famous suit of
Boulton & Watt against Hornblower. He maintained the superiority of
the old Newcomen engines and said that the principle of the
separate condenser was fallacious, that Watt had added nothing
new which was not worthless, and that his so-called improvements
were “monstrous stupidity.”
In 1802 Bramah obtained a patent for woodworking machinery
second only in importance to that granted Bentham in 1791. Like
Bentham, he aimed to replace manual labor “for producing straight,
smooth, and parallel surfaces on wood and other materials requiring
truth, in a manner much more expeditious and perfect than can be
performed by the use of axes, saws, planes, and other cutting
instruments used by hand in the ordinary way.” His tools were
carried in fixed frames and driven by machinery. In his planing
machine, one of which was running in the Woolwich Arsenal for fifty
years, the cutter-head, which carried twenty-eight tools, was
mounted on a vertical shaft and swept across the work in a
horizontal plane. He used this same method in planing the metal
parts for his locks, which corresponds, of course, to our modern
face-milling. He provided for cutting spherical and concave surfaces
and used his device for making wooden bowls.
In 1806 he devised an automatic machine which the Bank of
England used many years in numbering their banknotes, eliminating
error and saving the labor of many clerks.
Maudslay was in his employ from 1789 to 1797. He was getting as
superintendent 30s. ($7.50) a week. A growing family and “the high
cost of living” rendered this insufficient and he applied for more. He
was refused so curtly that he gave up his position and started in for
himself in a small workshop on Oxford Street in London. Later he
took Field in as partner under the firm name of Maudslay & Field.
In 1813 Bramah engaged another man who later had a great
influence, Joseph Clement. Clement soon became his chief
draftsman and superintendent. Salaries had gone up somewhat by

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The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

The Beginnings of the

5.1 A tomb of unnamed saints in the church of the rue Malaval

AASS Acta Sanctorum (Brussels)

2 The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

4 The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

⁵ For the history of the Bollandists, see Godding et al. 2007.

6 The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Prehistory and Early Chronology

Prehistory and Early Chronology 9

THE BIBLICAL BACKGROUND

¹ 1 Kings 13:31–2. ² 2 Kings 23:15–18.

10 The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

P R E- C O N S T A N T I N I A N CHRI S TIANITY: FOU R C AS E S

For post-New Testament Christianity of the second and third centuries we

Prehistory and Early Chronology 11

12 The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

⁹ Pietri 1991. ¹⁰ Klijn 2003, 15.

Prehistory and Early Chronology 13

¹³ Thomas and Parthia: Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 3.1.1.

14 The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Prehistory and Early Chronology 15

²¹ Eastman 2011, 94–109, with references to the earlier discussion.

16 The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

²⁵ Duchesne in the Liber Pontiﬁcalis, vol. 1, pp. civ–cvii.

Prehistory and Early Chronology 17

²⁸ What follows is based on Wiśniewski 2011.

18 The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Prehistory and Early Chronology 19

20 The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Prehistory and Early Chronology 21

T H E FO U R T H CE N T U R Y : THE VE RY BE G I NNI NGS

22 The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Prehistory and Early Chronology 23

24 The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

Prehistory and Early Chronology 25

⁶¹ John Chrysostom, In Babylam 80–91 and Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 5.19.16–19.

26 The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

⁶⁷ Papaconstantinou 2001, 370.

The First Miracles

¹ See e.g. Flusin 1983.

28 The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES (OR ALMOST)

It may seem understandable that the miracles enumerated by Augustine or the

The First Miracles 29

30 The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

The second question as to who brought this change about is not

Take the slide-rest. It is clearly shown in the French encyclopedia

Blanchard was by no means the first to turn irregular forms on a

Figure 5. Genealogy of the Early English Tool Builders

To the third question as to why this development when once begun

Wilkinson’s relations with Boulton & Watt became very intimate.

This letter is interesting as showing Boulton’s clear grasp of the

In another letter written a little over a year later, he says:

In 1788 William Symington built and ran a steam-operated boat on

Used for Machining the Cylinders of Watt Engines

He was a man of great ability, strong and masterful. Boulton wrote

There is a note of qualification in the last clause. With all his

Many tried to open it. In one attempt made in 1817, a clever

It was finally recognized that any lock could be picked by a skillful

When Bramah began manufacturing the locks he found almost

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