translation

The tradition & historical record

In Christianity, the translation of relics is the ceremonial removal of holy objects from one place to another (usually a higher-status location). Usually only the movement of the remains of a saint's body would be treated so formally, with secondary relics such as items of clothing treated with less ceremony. Translations could be accompanied by many acts, including all-night vigils and processions, often involving entire communities. The solemn translation (in Latin, translatio) of relics is not treated as the outward recognition of sanctity. Rather, miracles confirmed a saint's sanctity, as evinced by the fact that when the papacy attempted to make canonization an official process in the twelfth century, many collections of miracles were written in the hope of providing proof of the saint-in-question's status. In the early Middle Ages, the solemn translation marked the moment at which, the saint's miracles having been recognized, the relic was moved by a bishop or abbot to a prominent position within the church. Local veneration was then permitted. This process is known as local canonization. The date of a translation of a saint's relics was often celebrated as a feast day in its own right. For example, on January 27 is celebrated the translation of the relics of St. John Chrysostom from the Armenian village of Comana (where he died in exile in 407) to Constantinople. ¹

In the early church, the disturbance, let alone the division, of the remains of martyrs and other saints, was not of concern or interest, much less practised. It was assumed that they would remain permanently in their often-unidentified resting places in cemeteries and the catacombs of Rome (but always outside the walls of the city, continuing a pagan taboo). Then, martyriums began to be built over the site of the burial of saints. It came to be considered beneficial to the soul to be buried close to saintly remains, and as such, several large "funerary halls" were built over the sites of martyr's graves, the primary example being the Old Saint Peter's Basilica. The earliest recorded removal of saintly remains was that of Saint Babylas at Antioch in 354. Perhaps partly because Constantinople lacked the many saintly graves of Rome, translations soon became common in the Eastern Empire, even though it was still prohibited in the West. The Eastern capital was able to acquire the remains of Saints Timothy, Andrew and Luke. The division of bodies also began; the 5th-century theologian Theodoretus declaring that "Grace remains entire with every part". An altar slab dated 357, found in North Africa but now in the Louvre, records the deposit beneath it of relics from several prominent saints. Non-anatomical relics, above all that of the True Cross, were divided and widely distributed from the 4th century. ¹

Among the most famous translations is that of Saint Benedict of Nursia, author of the "Regula S. Benedicti", from Cassino to Fleury, which Adrevald memorialized. In England, the lengthy travels of St Cuthbert's remains to escape the Vikings, and then his less respectful treatment after the English Reformation, have been much studied, as his coffin, gospel book and other items buried with him are now very rare representatives of Anglo-Saxon art. Some well-known translations of relics include the removal of the body of Saint Nicholas from Myra in Asia Minor to Bari, Italy in 1087. Tradesmen of Bari visited the relics of Saint Nicholas in 1087 after finding out their resting-place from the monks who guarded them. According to one account, the monks showed the resting-place but then became immediately suspicious: "Why you men, do you make such a request? You haven't planned to carry off the remains of the holy saint from here? You don't intend to remove it to your own region? If that is your purpose, then let it be clearly known to you that you parley with unyielding men, even if it mean our death." The tradesmen tried different tactics, including force, and manage to take hold of the relics. An anonymous chronicler writes about what happened when the inhabitants of Myra found out: ¹

Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the city learned of all that had happened from the monks who had been set free. Therefore, they proceeded in a body, a multitude of men and women, to the wharves, all of them filled and heavy with affliction. And they wept for themselves and their children, that they had been left bereft of so great a blessing... ¹

A famous and recent example is the return of the relics of John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus to the See of Constantinople (Greek Orthodox Church) by Pope John Paul II in November 2004. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Translation (relics)”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

translation is movement of a holy relic from one location to another, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 6 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²