guilty by a Church court for sexual offences, he very often got off very lightly,
with a just a penance or a fine. Walter Ramsey was sentenced to be whipped
three times round Dartford church, and twice round Rochester and Dartford
markets, for the sin of fornication, in 1445. The sentence was waived when he
agreed to pay a fine and maintenance for the lady and her bastard child.
The selling of relics was a major industry during the medieval period. The
vast majority of these were fakes, if not all. Possession of a relic of a saint, or
better still of Christ or the Virgin Mary, ensured that a church or abbey could
rely on a steady patronage by pilgrims. Relics were believed to be able to
effect miracles–such as healing, granting pleas and so on. The pilgrim trade
was the medieval equivalent of today’s tourist industry, a major source of
income for the town or religious institution that held a good selection of relics.
Towns and churches purchased relics, had them donated by citizens
demonstrating their piety or looking for favours, or they simply stole them
from other towns and churches. Whole gangs operated these raids on
occasion. The reformer John Calvin was particularly incensed by the relic
trade. He pointed out cogently that if all the relics were real, every saint was
made up of several bodies, and that the various pieces of the True Cross would
fill a ship. He was very sceptical about a board known as the Titulus Crucis,
allegedly the board nailed to Christ’s cross naming him king of the Jews
(Figure 17). There were several relics claiming to be this piece, but the one
that survives is kept in the Church of the Holy Cross in Rome. Modern
investigations have noted that in fact the inscription is written incorrectly, and
carbon dating of the wood puts its origin in the eleventh or twelfth century.
The Turin Shroud was regarded as a fake as early as 1389 by the bishop of
Troyes, and carbon dating gives us a fourteenth century date, but it is still
claimed as genuine by the church authorities. Other remarkable relics included
numerous crowns of thorns, leftovers from the feeding of the five thousand,
three of John the Baptist’s heads (one from when he was a boy), very large
quantities of the Virgin’s milk, and lots of baby bones from the Massacre of
the Innocents. Chaucer also makes fun of the relic seller’s claims in the
Canterbury Tales, listing many unlikely items in his stock. One relic collector
of note was Bishop Odo of Bayeux, half brother to William the Conqueror. He
wanted to acquire the relics of Saint Exuperius, and paid a vast sum to the
sacristan of the church in which they were kept to dig them up and bring them
to him. The sacristan, the story goes, dug up the remains of a peasant who was
also named Exuperius, and when challenged by the bishop, swore that these
were indeed Exuperius’bones, although he was not qualified to judge their
holiness! The bishop, it seems, was satisfied.
MEDIEVAL CRIME