Relics And Reliquaries Of Romanesque Period

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During the Romanesque period and lasting through the medieval age, the Christian religion began to look towards individual saints to speak to God for the people. They believed that this saint could convey the people’s thoughts and prayers to God for them, and began to pray directly to saints hoping they could relay the message for them. The churches began to, for lack of a better word; adopt a saint that would be reliable and fit their needs. The people went to drastic measures to ensure that the saint of choice was listening to their prayers. They began to create idols and statues of the exalted person, starting from simple figurines and eventually ending with statues, or relics as they now called them, of gold and the most precious gems they could obtain. They also began to become more exquisite and detailed at a very rapid rate, thinking that they could win the saints’ favor and ear by portraying them in more sophisticated ways. The Reliquary Statue of Sainte Foy (Saint Faith) is one of the more richly decorated relics, made of silver molded over a wooden core with many gems that help to display the significance and value that the people put into these crafts of art. Because of the extreme monetary and spiritual value, many of the relics that could not be bought were stolen from the church; Sainte Foy’s relic was stolen by a group of monks in Conques and moved to their monastery, where they gradually enhanced the statue, putting more jewelry, gold, adding a crown, and even made a case for it. Two other famous relics were stolen in this time, Saint Mark in Venice, Saint Nicholas in Bari on the Adriatic coast. The Church began to require each church to display a relic on the altar, which gave each church an opportunity to be uniquely distinguished from the others. They began to make the relics in the image of body parts of the saint, many were hands or arms

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