Furta Sacra by Geary Patrick J

Author:Geary, Patrick J.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1978-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Justifications

SOME UNCERTAINTY is inescapable when trying to determine how or even if a thief carried off a saint’s remains. As we have seen in the above chapters, Electus, the English relic merchant, may never have existed; the alleged thief of Mary Magdalene’s remains certainly never did. Limited as we are by our sources, we are never quite sure whether or not a particular theft took place, much less how the thief, if he existed, might have viewed or justified his actions. But if we cannot evaluate the justifications and rationalizations of the thieves, we can analyze those of the hagiographers who recorded the thefts. Actually, these latter are of more interest to historians because they reflect quite accurately the moral horizons of their contemporaries. This accuracy is assured both by the intention of the authors (to codify the communal tradition concerning the acquisition of a new patron) and by the function of these texts (as we have seen, the translationes became formal parts of the public liturgy and as such were shared by the entire community).

It is possible, then, to understand how various communities of the central Middle Ages viewed theft as an appropriate means of relic acquisition. Were they in fact seen as true thefts, morally reprehensible and hence sinful, or were they but one more acceptable way of acquiring a saint? The answer to this question is that they were seen as both, sometimes simultaneously, and hence the translationes exhibit a certain tension which is the result of hagiographers’ efforts to justify and glorify a tradition with which they were not altogether comfortable.

Because of the ambivalent feelings of many hagiographers, historians have tended to emphasize only one side of the evidence, the one which implies that furtive translations were not even considered thefts. Heinrich Fichtenau has suggested that since people were convinced that saints were living powerful individuals, theft of their relics against their wills was inconceivable. If the saint did not wish to be removed then no power on earth could move him.1 Klaus Schreiner took this suggestion even further and argued that the term furtum did not necessarily imply a theft at all.2 Using the example of a properly conducted translation of Saint Eugene from St. Denis to Brogne by Gerhard of Brogne in the tenth century, he pointed out that this translation was called a laudabile furtum.3 Because any translation removed a wonder worker from a locality, it was a sort of “slipping away.” Schreiner also cited the sermon of Rather of Verona on the theft of the body of Saint Metro to show that, before the twelfth century, the good intention of the thief absolved him from guilt.4

Both of these examples in part justify Schreiner’s conclusions, and in part contradict them. True, Gerhard of Brogne had the right to remove Saint Eugene, but the translation was done secretly in order to avoid the wrath of the local populace. Thus the translation was done in a deceitful manner. This use of furtum is in

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