Furta sacra

Furta sacra (Latin, "holy theft") refers to the medieval Christian practice of stealing saints' relics and moving them to a new shrine.[1] Trade in and thefts of relics led to the creation of a new genre of hagiography that aimed to legitimize the actions that brought relics to their new homes; in these writings, the translation of the relics is often portrayed as morally necessary, or even requested directly by God.[2] Sometimes, hagiographers would try to downplay the theft, but in general it was believed that a relic could not be stolen without the permission of the saint; a successful theft thus indicated saintly approval of the action.[3] Saints Marcellinus and Peter are a famous example. Saint Faith is another. A monk from Conques brought her relics to the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy after spending ten years undercover as a secular priest in Agen, where her relics had previously been housed.[4]

References

  1. Geary, Patrick J. (2011). Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages - Revised Edition. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-2020-7.
  2. Galdi, Amalia (2020). "Furta sacra in southern Italy in the Middle Ages". In Pazos, Antón M. (ed.). Relics, Shrines and Pilgrimages: Sanctity in Europe from Late Antiquity (1 ed.). Routledge. 146-163 at 147. doi:10.4324/9780429198908-11. ISBN 978-0-429-19890-8. S2CID 216219413.
  3. Weakland, John E. (1994). "Furta Sacra". History of European Ideas. 18 (1): 107–109. doi:10.1016/0191-6599(94)90155-4. ISSN 0191-6599.
  4. Ashley, Kathleen; Sheingorn, Pamela (1992). "An Unsentimental View of Ritual in the Middle Ages Or, Sainte Foy was no Snow White". Journal of Ritual Studies. 6 (1). pp. 63–85, at p. 69. ISSN 0890-1112. JSTOR 44398527.

Further reading

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