Archaeology and the Invention of Holy Bodies in Post-Tridentine Rome

Abstract

AbstractNostalgia for Christian antiquity drove patrons in the post-Tridentine period to search for the bodies of ancient Christian martyrs under Rome’s churches. This chapter examines the strategies used to authenticate the relics discovered at five churches between 1599 and 1634. Through this period, antiquarians increasingly sought to show that their relics were authentic by appealing to current empirical shifts in intellectual culture; the grounds for identification, they said, came not from inherited histories but rather from carefully examining the antiquity of the burial site, fragility of bones, and subterranean objects. Archival records, however, reveal that the certainty of these identifications was forged, and discoveries were often motivated by the desire to dispel rival claims to the same relics in order to bolster devotion at the given church. The forging of relic-hood outlined in the case studies of this chapter provides a lens into how the Catholic church negotiated confessional polemics by appealing to shifting conceptions of truth and authority in early modern Europe.