Beyond belief | 27 August 2011

The subtitle of Treasures of Heaven is ‘saints, relics and devotion in medieval Europe’. The key words here are medieval and Europe.

The subtitle of Treasures of Heaven is ‘saints, relics and devotion in medieval Europe’. The key words here are medieval and Europe. There’s not much from England because we suffered the autocratic cleansing of the Reformation in the 16th century, and much of our native tradition of what was then dubbed idolatry was destroyed or swept away. And because our Church was reformed in this way, those of a C of E persuasion tend to be suspicious of relics and devotional aids. Our unadorned worship does not encourage the ritual veneration of bits of people, and our rational selves discredit the endless fragments of the True Cross (just how big was it?) or the numberless thorns that supposedly came from Our Lord’s crown. So it was in a spirit of healthy scepticism that I set foot inside the latest British Museum exhibition under Smirke’s great Reading Room ceiling.

 If it’s possible to divorce religious belief from aesthetic appreciation — and that does not involve disparaging the strongly held convictions of the craftsmen who made these objects or the Church that commissioned them; it means keeping an open mind — then a great deal of pleasure can be obtained from the artistry on display. The exhibition opens with a copper-gilt reliquary bust of St Baudime, a missionary from Rome to France, his hand raised to bless the pilgrim. The precious stones that once adorned this magnificent sculpture have mostly been stripped off, but there is great and benign dignity still present.

Most popular

Douglas Murray

Why were the Abedis here in the first place?

There are cabinets of tokens and badges, a mosaic roundel from Dorset, sarcophagi, ivory and alabaster panels, shrines and great amounts of gold and gilt; even a panel painted by Gentile Bellini (1429–1507), more a Renaissance figure than a medieval one.