renaissance and revivals in art and culture 619Relics in the East and the West were also owned by
private individuals, who honored them at home or wore
them as CHARMS. The reliquaries to hold relics multiplied,
along with rings, bracelets, and necklaces containing holy
fragments. When others were found in the central Middle
Ages, their spiritual and economic value was recognized
by the ecclesiastical and secular authorities. They could
be related to both the Old and the New Testament. These
included the rim of the Samaritans’ well, the trumpets
used to knock down the walls of Jericho, Christ’s
swaddling clothes, fragments of the cross, nails from the
Crucifixion, the crown of thorns, baskets from the multi-
plication of loaves, Noah’s ax, the crosses of the two
thieves crucified with Christ, Mary Magdalene’s vase of
perfume, Moses’ rod, and Saint Stephen’s right hand.
See alsoRELIQUARY.
Further reading: John R. Butler, The Quest for
Becket’s Bones: The Mystery of the Relics of St. Thomas
Becket of Canterbury(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1995); Bernard Flusin, “Relics: Byzantium,” EMA
2.1,224; Marie-Madeleine Gauthier, Medieval Enamels:
Masterpieces from the Keir Collection,ed. and trans. Neil
Stratford (London: British Museum Publications, 1981);
Patrick J. Geary, Furta sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central
Middle Ages(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1978); D. W. Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon
England(Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1989); G. J. C. Snoek,
Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist: A Process of
Mutual Interaction(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995); H. W. van
Os, The Way to Heaven: Relic Veneration in the Middle Ages
(Baarn: de Prom, 2000).
religious instruction See EXEMPLUM;PREACHING; SER-
MONS AND HOMILIES; SEVEN DEADLY OR CAPITAL SINS; SEVEN
SACRAMENTS.
reliquary Reliquaries were containers that held RELICS.
The earliest were the tomb or shrine containing a holy
body of a martyr. Altars enclosed relics. The function of
reliquaries was to promote, by the beauty of their artistic
work, the potency of the relics they contained. No partic-
ular form was fixed for them: They could be decorated by
an iconographical statement about their contents. They
could be caskets decorated with ENAMELSor statues or
could have the form of what they contained, such as an
arm. The tendency to divide up the bodies of the saints
and the spread of relics from the crusading expeditions to
the East and the Holy Land led from the early Middle
Ages to the creation of movable reliquaries for transport
or ritual procession. Buildings such as the SAINTE-
CHAPELLE OFPARISbuilt by LOUIS IX to house relics
including the Crown of Thorns can be seen as similar to
reliquaries. The smaller variety were kept in church trea-
suries, exposed to the faithful, or borne in PROCESSIONS.
See alsoIVORY.
Further reading: Marie-Madeleine Gauthier, High-
ways of the Faith: Relics and Reliquaries from Jerusalem to
Compostela, trans. J. A. Underwood. (Secaucus, N.J.:
Wellfleet, 1986); Raghnall Ó Floinn, Irish Shrines and
Reliquaries of the Middle Ages(Dublin: Country House, in
association with the National Museum of Ireland, 1994).renaissance and revivals in art and culture The
concept of a renaissance or rebirth is essentially a modern
idea devised to describe and understand the objectives and
driving forces for reform or change in various cultures in
the past. Particular periods were designated as eras of
renaissance and given such a label. They were deemed as
being highly concerned about integrating the ideas, art,
styles, practices, traditions, and literature of the classical
Greek and Roman worlds into the culture of their own
time. Intellectuals around 1400 in Italy were highly con-
cerned with doing just that. The term was applied to sev-
eral periods in European history from the ninth to the 15th
century in particular. The 19th-century historians Jules
Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt were especially instrumen-
tal in the introduction and evolution of that word and con-
cept; they considered renaissances progressive evolutions
toward better, more rational, and more modern ideas and
practices, especially in intellectual and artistic matters.
Over the next century and a half, scholars discerned
them in the ninth century (known as the CAROLINGIAN
RENAISSANCE), in the 12th century, and archetypically in
Italy in the late 14th and 15th centuries. The emergence
of the individual and the state were considered the hall-
marks of the most recent era, the classic Renaissance of
the 15th and 16th centuries. Other periods were added
by scholars of the Middle Ages to combat the stereotype
of the “Dark Ages” sometimes applied to that period and
to minimize the uniqueness and originality associated so
strongly with the Italian and later northern Renaissances.
There were clear changes in educational ideals and
styles of art, at the very least, during several periods
before 1500. Certainly some intellectuals, in the midst of
this change or in the effort to promote it, were highly
aware of their actions and were consciously promoting a
rebirth of culture and religion. This way of conceptualiz-
ing cultural changes and explaining creativity in certain
periods can lead to oversimplification, to overemphasis
on particular individuals, and to misunderstandings
about the originality, roots, and context of change. The
renaissance as a concept has not been much applied by
scholars to creative eras in Jewish or Islamic history, per-
haps because of preconceptions about the lack of change
in those cultures and religious beliefs and practices.
See also MIDDLE AGES, CONCEPT OF;PETRARCH,
FRANCESCO; REFORM, IDEA OF.
Further reading:Robert Benson and Giles Constable
with Carol D. Lanham, eds. Renaissance and Renewal in
the Twelfth Century(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University