Ship of Fools: Weird and wonderful relics

Thread: Weird and wonderful relics Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Conchubhar (# 17602) on :

I was recently told by a rather high priest that at the church of St. Mary Magdalene in Oxford on the high altar they had two relics. The first was a tiny piece of hem that had been torn off by the apostles at the assumption BVM as they tried to hold her body down! The second reliquary was completely empty and was believed to hold a breath of the Holy Spirit.
I wonder if any other shipmates know of any bizarre, preposterous or just plain weird relics?

[deleted duplicate thread]

[ 17. March 2013, 08:27: Message edited by: seasick ]

Posted by american piskie (# 593) on :

Just setting off there now, so I'll have a look.

But it seems to me a fantasy on the same level as the Great Crypt (actually the city's former Ladies lavatories). There are a couple of reliquaries either side of the altar, with nicely labelled fragments of this and that, but nothing notable.

Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :

There is s church in County Cork that during Medieval times had the Virgin Mary's knitting. Needless to say, Cromwell burnt it.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

Now where was it that was supposed to have one of the stones that Our Lord said would cry out if they could (Lk 19:40)?

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

From what I know of 'Maggers' in oxford, the priest was having you on.

Posted by american piskie (# 593) on :

Of course he was.

Plenty of Holy Spirit today, but fresh, not tinned.

And the relics out of sight for passiontide, behind their rather twee little embroidered covers.

Posted by anne (# 73) on :

One of our churches was dedicated to Thomas the Martyr when it was built but after a little local difficulty around the reformation* it has been known as St Thomas the Apostle since the Civil War. I have dreams of a sort of conceptual reliquary, which would contain the Doubts of Thomas the Apostle and the Turbulence of Thomas Beckett.

Anne

* Church damaged during the Prayer Book rebellion, Vicar hung for taking 'wrong' side during Prayer Book rebellion, Church destroyed during Civil War, rebuilt during Commonwealth. That kind of difficulty.

Posted by american piskie (# 593) on :

The late George Macleod was a master of the almost-relic. From London he obtained for Iona "Was this the bell that called Oliver Cromwell to prayer?" and from the enormous hoard of nails buried at the Roman Camp at Inchtuthil he obtained enough to furnish many a church with "Was it with nails like these that Our Blessed Lord was crucified?"

Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :

quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
There is s church in County Cork that during Medieval times had the Virgin Mary's knitting. Needless to say, Cromwell burnt it.

He burned Out Lady's knitting? Jesus's little woolly bootees? The bounder!

So ... were we wanting weird? (Warning to the faint-stomached: not so much weird as seriously flaming creepy. And there are ones like it all over Bavaria.)

Posted by dj_ordinaire (# 4643) on :

Well indeed, St. Ambrose isn't looking so well either...

Posted by Amos (# 44) on :

Returning to the OP: What was he high on?
They have no such relics at Mary Mags.

(But my avatar is a photo of a rather nice one somewhere in Ireland)

[ 17. March 2013, 19:54: Message edited by: Amos ]

Posted by Qoheleth. (# 9265) on :

Welcome to the Ship, Conchubhar. Eccles is an excellent place to make your first post. No doubt a host will be along shortly with the customary preliminaries.

Is your Alton in Staffs or Hants?

Posted by Conchubhar (# 17602) on :

The priest is a bit of an odd one, he comes and concelebrates at our church most Sundays and we are quite low down the candle and yet after mass he always makes references to how high he is, making comments such as: ASMS is too low for me or that the poem 'ultra-catholic' describes him.

Posted by Conchubhar (# 17602) on :

It's Aton, Hampshire and my usual place is Alton Abbey and I see you advertise their incense and wafer breads. Thank you for the welcome.

Posted by Qoheleth. (# 9265) on :

I'm an oblate of Alton, so we may have met ...

Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :

Posted by Amos:

quote:

(But my avatar is a photo of a rather nice one somewhere in Ireland)

A potato?

Posted by Amos (# 44) on :

[Killing me]

St Oliver Plunkett

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

My father frequently brags about seeing one of Jesus' diapers in the Cathedral of the Assumption in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It doesn't get much more international than that.

Posted by The Silent Acolyte (# 1158) on :

My two favs are Jesus' umbilical cord and his foreskin.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
So ... were we wanting weird? (Warning to the faint-stomached: not so much weird as seriously flaming creepy. And there are ones like it all over Bavaria.)

Hell a skeleton is nothing. It's the mummified ones that are freaky.

We have a piece of the True Cross™ at our parish, or at least the Pope (forget which) said so when he gave it to whoever gave it to whoever gave it to whoever gave it to us. Was it Voltaire that said if you added up all the pieces of the True Cross it would need a forest's worth of trees to make them? Or something like that.

A lot of the relics that used to be in Constantinople were scattered to the four winds in the Fourth Crusade, and then many were destroyed in the Reformation (as were a third of the books in Britain).

Posted by Conchubhar (# 17602) on :

The same priest that informed me of the relics that started this thread said that to say that there were enough pieces of the true cross to make a ship was only a cruel Protestant taunt. Apparently all known fragments were gathered together in the late 19th century and there was only enough to make up the board at the top above Jesus' head

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Silent Acolyte:
My two favs are Jesus' umbilical cord and his foreskin.

I thought they had lost all of the foreskins claimed as relics.

Posted by Augustine the Aleut (# 1472) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:

quote:
Originally posted by The Silent Acolyte:
My two favs are Jesus' umbilical cord and his foreskin.
I thought they had lost all of the foreskins claimed as relics.

No, but they've all been locked away on papal direction, under Piux IX, if memory serves me well.

Posted by Leaf (# 14169) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Conchubhar:
The second reliquary was completely empty and was believed to hold a breath of the Holy Spirit.

This is awesome: Schroedinger's reliquary.

I also really liked the conceptual reliquary.

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

Then there's always the weird and wonderful relics who volunteer to celebrate at weekday Mass, God bless 'em. [Biased]

I'm sure it's on the Ship I've heard of the "relic" of the BVM's morningsickness and some of her milk.

Amos, I always thought your avatar was just some nice abstraction of colors...till you said that, and naturally, I googled for a larger image. [Eek!]

RE: the OP, at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Thomas Edison's last breath is on display in a bottle. (Edison and Ford were good friends.) Am I the only one, though, who read the OP and thought, "The Breath of God has a breath of its own, and someone thought they could capture it?" That's a nice way to explain an empty reliquary, I guess.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

Alas, the relic offered to Lichfield Cathedral by the immortal Francis Wagstaffe (see p75) appears not to have been accepted for the veneration of the faithful.

Posted by seasick (# 48) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Alas, the relic offered to Lichfield Cathedral by the immortal Francis Wagstaffe (see p75) appears not to have been accepted for the veneration of the faithful.

I thought it was a sin to sell relics?

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

More of a sin than it is to tease a Bishop...

Posted by The Scrumpmeister (# 5638) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Conchubhar:
The same priest that informed me of the relics that started this thread said that to say that there were enough pieces of the true cross to make a ship was only a cruel Protestant taunt. Apparently all known fragments were gathered together in the late 19th century and there was only enough to make up the board at the top above Jesus' head

I don't doubt that those are the origins of the saying but the suggestion that various churches not in communion and regarding each other with suspicion at best would arrange a get-together to measure their relics sounds rather like a desperate attempt at claiming legitimacy. It would seem strange enough if the relics were all in possession of one church body.

[ 18. March 2013, 09:55: Message edited by: The Scrumpmeister ]

Posted by Hawk (# 14289) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Conchubhar:
The same priest that informed me of the relics that started this thread said that to say that there were enough pieces of the true cross to make a ship was only a cruel Protestant taunt. Apparently all known fragments were gathered together in the late 19th century and there was only enough to make up the board at the top above Jesus' head

The phrase dates from the middle ages when it seemed every parish church had one. By the 19th century, the fashion had died down and I'm sure thr Church was regulating it a bit better as well.

And of course, your priest's apocryphal tale of getting all the pieces together in one place sounds both ridiculous and impossible.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

Evelyn Waugh states, in the preface to his novel Helena, that some C19 scholar whose name I forget went to the trouble of measuring all the then known supposed fragments of the True Cross, presumably in situ: this sounds a bit more plausible.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Amos:
They have no...relics at Mary Mags.

Have you seen some of the old ladies of both genders and all ages who worship there?

Posted by Fëanor (# 14514) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Evelyn Waugh states, in the preface to his novel Helena, that some C19 scholar whose name I forget went to the trouble of measuring all the then known supposed fragments of the True Cross, presumably in situ: this sounds a bit more plausible.

After consulting various places on the internet, I believe the scholar was Charles Rohault de Fleury.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

Thank you.

Posted by Amos (# 44) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by Amos:
They have no...relics at Mary Mags.
Have you seen some of the old ladies of both genders and all ages who worship there?

I've been on placement at Mary Mags, if that is what you're asking. The old people at Mary Mags were a formidable bunch in my day, and no doubt still are. I'd speak respectfully of them if I were you.

Posted by Zappa (# 8433) on :

Neither rare nor at one level wonderful, but my 2 x former parish in OZ (wankydilla to shippies) had a relic, I dunno, a fibre of a toenail or something, of St Theresa d'Avila. Incongruous only because I'm not sure what she was doing in the Australian outback. Unsurprising because she has I think dissipated herself around the world 14 times over.

Can't compete with the breath of the holy sprit though. Tautology and all.

Posted by Devils Advocate (# 16484) on :

We have a relic supposedly of St John The Baptist in our shack. It lives in a reliquary set in a "throne" on the West side of the organ loft balustrade. Needless to say we have NO paperwork for it and it is never brought down to chancel level for veneration.
I believe one can't sell a relic only the Reliquary in which it lives
As far as gruesome relics are concerned the head of St Oliver Plunkett which lives in St Peter's Church in Drogheda has to be up there with the top ten.
I believe someone once played a joke on Father Hope-Patten and placed a feather in an empty reliquary with a notice on it saying " Feather from the Archangel Gabriel" Needless to say he was far from amused

[ 18. March 2013, 22:37: Message edited by: Devils Advocate ]

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

They ever recover the heart of poor St Whoosit in Ireland?

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