Bringing Out the Saints: Journeys of Relics in Tenth to Twelfth Century Northern France and Flanders

The social importance of saints’ relics during the European Middle Ages is well documented, yet relics have rarely been treated as mobile objects beyond discussions of their transportation from one permanent location to another (a “translation”). This dissertation examines the practice of taking relics on out-and-back journeys to explore the consequences of temporarily removing these objects from the churches in which they were housed and displayed, focusing on northern France and the Low Countries during the high Middle Ages. Medieval relics were considered direct conduits to the supernatural... Mehr ...