Blood Relics

We can't talk about my Medieval Noir series without talking about relics. And so I borrow this article from my other blog Exploring Relics.

Blood relics are prized relics indeed. When Catholics celebrate the mass and partake of the Eucharist, they are sharing in the promises of Jesus, that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” (John 6:53) The Communion bread, the Host becomes the flesh and blood of Jesus through Transubstantiation, with the priest as middle man. But there are places that are said to have the preserved blood of Jesus—and others—in their reliquaries.

Joseph of Aramathea plays an important role in most Christ blood relics, either capturing the blood in a cup while Jesus hung on the cross (and here is where the complicated grail history begins) or later keeping some as he cleaned the body before burial.

I must first explain the unlikelihood of such an event from the Jewish Pharisee that Joseph was. Surely he was aware of the blood prohibitions, of touching blood and bodies that would make him unclean to enter the temple. This would be a horrific situation for a priest of the temple, his being unable to enter it until he underwent many weeks of ritual bathing before he was declared clean again. The thought of even saving blood must have been completely foreign. But let us, for the sake of argument, assume that Joseph—for whatever reason—had the idea to preserve some of Jesus’ blood. What did he do with it from there?

If we were to follow the grail legend, then we would end up at Glastonbury in the southwest region of England, which gave rise to its co-mingling with the Arthurian legends. But if we were to follow other legends, we might end up in Constantinople. During the fourth crusade it is said that the Holy Blood of Christ made its way from Constantinople to the Basilius chapel in Bruges on April 7, 1150. The relic consists of coagulated blood kept in a 12th century style rock-crystal flask. Since 1303, the relic was carried around the city walls in procession, called the Holy Blood Procession which is still celebrated today.

Westminster Abbey was presented with Christ’s blood by King Henry III of England on October 3, 1247, that the king had received from the Masters of the Knights Templars and Hospitallers and the patriarch of Jerusalem. It was encased in a crystal vase. The Bishop of Norwich preached a sermon, promising an indulgence of six years and one hundred and sixteen days to anyone who venerated the relic (that is, six years and one hundred and sixteen days less in Purgatory). It never made Westminster the pilgrim stop that Henry had desired. In fact, it was not lost on the populace that Henry was desperately trying to compete with the French king who a year later, dedicated his Sainte Chapelle with relics from the holy land, among them the Crown of Thorns (which we’ll talk about in another post), the Holy Lance, a portion of the sponge soaked with vinegar, purple vestments with which Jesus was mocked, and a sepulchral stone.

In Hailes Abbey, not too far from Westminster, larger crowds came to see their vial of Christ’s blood. But when Hailes’ blood was scrutinized in the 16th century by Henry VIII’s examiners, it was reported that the vial consisted of not Christ’s blood but of honey mixed with saffron coloring. Yet another account says it contained oft replaced goose blood. Whatever was in it, this vial, along with the one at Westminster, was disposed of by the Reformation’s agents.

One of the more famous blood relics belongs to Saint Januarius or as he is known in Italy, San Gennaro. Born in Naples in 300 AD, he was a Bishop of Beneveto around the time of Emperor Diocletian who was particularly nasty to Christians. While offering spiritual support to imprisoned fellow Christians, Januarius was himself arrested. The prelate, Timoteo, put Januarius through several gruesome tortures—thrown into a furnace, tried to tear his limbs apart on the wheel—but he seemed to come out of them unscathed. Finally, Januarius and his fellow prisoners were condemned to be torn apart by wild beasts. When this also proved useless, Timoteo ordered Januarius to be beheaded, the favored way of getting rid of saints-to-be.

Januarius’ old wet-nurse Eusebia, gathered his blood into vials and his body and head were wrapped and hidden until the time that Christianity was no longer persecuted. It was on this occasion that Eusebia was free to display the glass vials of the martyr’s dried blood, and for the first time, they became liquid. Januarius was one of the many honored saints in Italy for many centuries, but there is no mention of his blood or it’s “liquefaction” until 1389. By then his skull and blood had come to rest at the Real Cappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro, located near Pozzuoli. And to this day, on September 19, the feast day of Saint Januarius, his blood relics are displayed with much praying, novenas, and other celebrations. If the blood liquefies, it is signaled by the firing off of canons. Sort of like the groundhog seeing his shadow.

The Catholic Church encourages the celebration of the saint but falls short of declaring the liquefaction event a miracle, opening it up to scientific study. We won’t debate it here, but as we constantly remind readers, that the relevancy of a relic is in its ability to inspire rather than its ability to run the gauntlet of scientific scrutiny.

*The picture above is the Christ blood relic from Bruges and is part of the Procession of the Holy Blood every May.