(May 7, 2010 at 12:26 pm)Minimalist Wrote: and the monks who forged them!
http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/forge357905.shtml
Fascinating.I've always had my doubts about some relics; Eg the pieces of the true cross and nails from the true cross. During the middle ages there were enough floating around Europe build a small house. Plus of course straw from the manger and several gallons of the Virgin's breast milk.
One of my favourites is 'The Spear of Loginus' , a famous myth about the spear (the head actually not the shaft) which pierced the side of Jesus on the cross. It was a claimed at one point that Hitler had gotten hold of it---and a fat lot of good it did him.Obviously a fake or the Nazis would have won..
Quote:The Holy Lance (also known as the Spear of Destiny, Holy Spear, Lance of Longinus, Spear of Longinus or Spear of Christ) is the name given to the lance that pierced Jesus's side as he hung on the cross in John's account of the Crucifixion.
Quote:This lance-point, embedded in an icon, was obtained in 1244 from the Latin emperor at Constantinople, Baldwin II, by Louis IX of France, who enshrined it with his relic of the Crown of Thorns in the Sainte Chapelle, Paris.
During the French Revolution these relics were removed to the Bibliothèque Nationale and then disappeared.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear_of_Longinus
Each of two Italian churches has the head of John the Baptist. Obviously one is his head as a younger man
Visiting Italy,the relics in churches creeped me out a bit. It wasn't so much the odd body part,but I found seeing entire cadavers rotting away in glass cases tended to elicit my disgust rather than my reverence.
