Thefts of Relics in Italy

From Late Antiquity to the Central Middle Ages, 300-1150
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-94-6372-387-9
Verlag: Amsterdam University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 5, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: Italy in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

With the birth of the cult of the saints, their relics became valuables whose possession would guarantee prestige, protection, and spiritual benefits to a town, church, or monastery. For this reason—at first with the aim of preserving the bodies of newly-executed martyrs from destruction and later of increasing the power of a particular faction or community—, the relics began to be stolen, with numerous cases documented throughout Europe. At the same time, a rich hagiographic literature flourished to describe the contexts in which the thefts occurred and to demonstrate their authenticity. Justifications, legitimations, ordeals, and supernatural interventions are dotted throughout the stories of hagiographers over the centuries. This book seeks to reconstruct the cultural history of the theft of relics in the specific context of Italy, from Late Antiquity to the Central Middle Ages, availing itself of an interdisciplinary perspective.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Papasidero, Marco

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Vor- und Frühgeschichte, prähistorische Archäologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

List of figures

Introduction

1. Relics and Thefts: A Preliminary Approach

2. Thefts of relics in Late Antiquity (300–600)

3. Thefts of relics in the Early Middle Ages (600–950)

4. Thefts of relics in the Central Middle Ages (950–1150)

5. The accounts of translation: historical, literary, and visual representations

6. Anthropology of the thefts of relics

7. Dreams, Rituals, and Spaces

Conclusions. Thefts of relics: a never-ending story

Appendix

Map of the thefts of relics

Bibliography

Primary sources

Secoundary sources

Über Autor(innen)

Papasidero, Marco
Marco Papasidero is Assistant Professor in History of Christianity and Churches at the University of Palermo, Italy. From 2019 to 2023, he was a Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Turin, as part of the ERC StG project NeMoSanctI. He has also been Research Fellow at the Edward Worth Library in Dublin and at the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris, and Visiting Professor at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense.