In 1215, the sixty-second decree of the Fourth Lateran Council required that relics not be displayed outside their containers ("reliquaiae amodo extra capsam non ostendantur"). This was presumably in response to heightened lay interest in seeing relics and the resultant need to secure the relics from the excesses of this increasingly visual (and tactile) veneration. The ecclesiastical need to safeguard relics, coupled with the popular clamor for greater access to them, fostered the creation of new forms of reliquaries that could simultaneously secure and display their contents. The development and proliferation of more diversified types of reliquaries from the thirteenth century onward has often been seen as a result of this post-1215 dilemma as increasingly varied demands were put upon these containers of the sacred. Christof Diedrichs challenges this view, noting that the rise of visibility of relics within their reliquaries can largely be traced to the twelfth century. Therefore, we need to understand the Fourth Lateran Council's decree as codifying a well-established tradition, rather than promulgating a new practice. While this is not an entirely new insight, Diedrichs is to be credited with mustering an impressive amount of evidence, soundly articulating his point, and more fully formulating the idea than had previously been forwarded.
Diedrichs' study on the practice of making relics visible within their reliquaries provides an interesting chapter in this fascinating and dynamic history of the development and function of reliquary types. As this occurrence both shapes and mirrors changes in the history of piety and art, the topic is one of great interest to both art historians and historians of the cult of relics. This book is essentially a history of relic visibility before the Fourth Lateran Council, as Diedrich focuses on the rise of this phenomenon during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Initially surveying the early history of such reliquaries from the so-called Talisman of Charlemagne in the Treasury of Reims Cathedral to a series of mid-eleventh century reliquaries (Reliquary Cross from the abbey church of St. Nikomedes in Steinfurt-Borghorst and the Reliquary of the Holy Nail from the Treasury of Essen Cathedral), Diedrichs notes the origins of the phenomenon as dating back to at least the eleventh century. He underscores the lack of certainty in the early history of reliquaries that visually display their contents. Where he uncovers more secure documentation is in the twelfth century formulation of the "display-reliquary" (Schaureliquare). The adumbration and analysis of twelfth century examples, forming Part I, constitutes the book's principal contribution. In articulating and illustrating his thesis that unencumbered visual access to relics secured within reliquaries antedated the Fourth Lateral Council, Diedrich is successful and thoroughly convincing.
The book is derived from the author's dissertation, completed at Humboldt University in Berlin in 2000. Thankfully, its publication makes this otherwise difficult-to-obtain material more readily available. Like so many dissertations, this book can be mined for information and references aplenty--a fact that will make it useful to scholars continuing research in this fruitful area of inquiry. However, the organization of the book's chapters is rather perplexing. Following a brief introduction, the author provides a general background, laying out his central thesis and discussing the earliest examples of reliquaries that enable the showing of their relics. Part I consists of four chapters detailing particular examples of the twelfth century development of forms of display reliquary. While interesting, these chapters come across as somewhat disparate case studies (Chapter 1: Bernward Cross, Triptych of the True Cross from Liege, Plate Reliquary from St. Albans; Chapter 2: Arm Reliquary of Charlemage and Shrine of the Three Magi; Chapter 3: Rock Crystal and Cabochon Reliquaries; Chapter 4: Early Ostensories and Display Reliquaries of the Early 13th century). Though a general chronological framework supporting the author's thesis that the development of reliquaries with clearly visible relics was a well-established phenomenon before the Fourth Lateran Council is established, these case studies are not neatly tied together in a clearly articulated assessment of this phenomenon.
Part II outlines the conditions, parallels and background relating to the development of display-reliquaries. Much of the information included here is general and cursory, establishing the conditions for the development of these reliquaries as outlined in Part I, but not fully developing the phenomenon into a comprehensive account. It strikes this reviewer that much of this material could be more effectively integrated into earlier portions of the book. The outlining of the belief in the presence of the saints in their relics is important in the context of this study as it sets up the very reason for the popular demand for greater contact with the relics--it is the sine qua non of relic veneration. This crucial background could be far more effectively incorporated into a discussion that outlines the devotional reasons for the evolution of reliquary types. Instead, it appears to have been appended to the rest of the study. In many ways Part II comes across as a series of appendices, as does the tantalizing epilogue on the history of sight. The discussion of the visual elements of medieval devotion and liturgy is interesting, particularly in terms of the "culture of sight" and the "optical communion" experienced at the elevation of the Host. However, these ideas could be more fully developed and incorporated into the body of the text, rather than appended as an afterword. Indeed, the relationship between the cult of the Corpus Christi and the cult of relics, with its paralleling of forms of display in the monstrance and ostensory reliquary, seems far more cogent to this discussion than would appear from the somewhat tangential discussion given here. As such, it is a rather disjointed book, consisting of a general introduction of an interesting thesis, several individual studies linked by a broad theme, background on relics and reliquaries, followed by a theoretical afterword. One wonders if the publication of the book version was perhaps a bit premature. Had more time elapsed between the completion of the dissertation and its publication, the author might have been able to further develop his ideas, thereby making the volume all the more cohesive and thorough.
The book's bibliography is largely in German, an indication that this material has long been dominated by German scholarship. This is underscored by Deidrichs' historiographic essay in the book's introduction, where he traces the study of relics and reliquaries from Stephan Beissel's groundbreaking work in the 1880s to the excellent studies by Anton Legner and Arnold Angenendt in the 1990s. However, there are striking lacunae in Diedrich's bibliography, particularly in regard to recent North American scholarship. This is unfortunate, as reliquaries, and figural reliquaries in particular, have been the subject of much interesting work of late. When discussing figural reliquaries, there is no reference to the 1997 volume of Gesta that focused on body part reliquaries. This is particularly surprising, in that Deidrichs mentions the use of arm reliquaries for liturgical benedictions, but makes no note of Cynthia Hahn's superb study of this very practice. Were the author to have incorporated recent North American scholarship that examines the dynamics of the use of reliquaries and their interaction with the faithful, he might have been more successful in developing his exciting topic to its fullest potential. Diedrichs seems to base much of his argument on an essentially formalist premise in regard to the function of reliquaries, which he defines as "mobile containers of metal, stone, crystal, wood, ivory, textiles or other material, that hold relics." (p. 27). Indeed, he is correct to note that this is a primary function (Haupt-funktion) of reliquaries, but it seems to dismiss the ways in which reliquaries give shape, meaning, and life to their contents, often fleshing-out and making more palpable those things that are not immediately apparent to the bodily eyes. To be sure, Diedrichs uses this functional premise of reliquary as container to forward his thesis that it was the desire to see the contained that led to the development of the ostensory and display-reliquary. I believe that he is correct in this analysis, but that it is only part of the complex interaction between relic, reliquary, and faithful that precipitated the development and proliferation of tremendously diverse reliquary types in the later Middle Ages.
In tracing the rise of the genus of display-reliquaries, Diedrichs augments the established foundation for future study. While he does not trace the more varied and dynamic later history of these forms, it not being in his chronological purview, the author invites us to further examine the relationship between relic and reliquary, saint and viewer. He seems to posit something of a mid-wife role for figural reliquaries, as a step in the progression of increased visual access to the relic, from bursa to ostensory. Astutely noting that figural reliquaries visually flesh-out the real presence of the saints, Diedrichs articulates the connection between seeing and believing that was a key impetus to the creation of figural reliquaries. However, the power of the figural reliquary to give concrete form to the saint's presence was not superceded by the more direct visual access to relics, as facilitated by display-reliquaries. It would be interesting to develop this study by exploring the ways in which these two trends in reliquary development both overlap and diverge in their common goal of making accessible on a sensory level that which is not immediately palpable. Continued study of the evolution of vitrines within figural reliquaries might help further this line of inquiry, as these forms simultaneously reveal and refashion their relic contents. The abundance of fourteenth-century head and arm reliquaries with vitrines, as well as altarpieces that combine glazed (or unglazed) relic compartments with reliquary busts, underscores the need to more fully explore the later manifestations of relic display.
It is not my purpose here to enumerate all my concurrences and quibbles with this interesting book. Despite its shortcomings, there is much to recommend here. Given the quality of Diedrich's work manifest in this dissertation, with its meticulous research, we can expect to enjoy the fruits of his further study and rumination on this extremely fascinating and important topic. This book tells part of a much larger, more complicated story. It does a laudable job in presenting this portion of the history of relic display. In doing so, it should prove to be an important contribution to the study of relic veneration and display, as well as the development of reliquary forms. One only hopes that the rest of the story will be told in the future.