PAST CRIMESReliquaries could travel quite a lot. They could be carried to places where
oaths were being administered, or to the homes of the sick, or in liturgical
processions. In the case of the Winchester reliquary, it was noted that the front
metal covering had been torn off, although it had then been folded up and
placed in the pit alongside the rest of the object. It does not appear that
anything was taken from inside. So, was the reliquary stolen, perhaps by
someone who mistook the gilded casing for real gold? When he discovered his
mistake, did he try to hide the evidence in the cesspit? Why did he not remove
the relics, which would have had a value for traders and collectors of such
items? Perhaps the enormity of the crime hit him–for this was a crime of
blasphemy as much as a crime of property. But perhaps this is just speculation,
and the real story was quite different. We can never know for sure.
In 1204, during the Fourth Crusade, the Church of the Holy Apostles in
Byzantium, then called Constantinople, was ransacked. The holy reliquaries
were stolen, the sacred vessels, icons, imperial regalia, vestments, and
contents of the imperial tombs were seized and carried off–not by the Turks,
Figure 19. The Winchester reliquary