Please join us at the next event in our Medieval Lecture Series. We are excited to welcome Dr. Siobhain Bly Calkin from Carleton University. Dr. Calkin will present her paper, “Rethinking Relic Power on the Borders of Christendom Narrating Passion Relic “Praesentia” in Chronicles of the Crusader Kingdoms.”

St. Jerome’s University, SJ2 2002
Thursday, March 13, 2o25

Matthew Paris, *Chronica Maiora.* Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, Parker Library, MS 26 fol. 140 r (1240-55). From Parker Library on the Web (https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/rf352tc5448).

Many important models of Christian relic agency, such as those elaborated by Peter Brown and Patrick Geary, rely on the human, animating saint to explain how relics manifest power. Brown, for example, defines the power of relic praesentia as “the physical presence of the holy” manifesting as “an invisible person” to protect Christians wherever they go.[1] This description, helpful as it is for thinking about corporeal relics, does not illuminate how relic praesentiamight have been felt and perceived by Christians devoted to the decidedly non-human wood, metal and plant Passion relics so central to late medieval western Christianity. Caroline Walker Bynum has done much to think through this thingly relic power by attending to theories of materiality and the ways in which powers of miraculous material change, or resistance to change, were ascribed to Passion Relics in late medieval Europe. What happens, however, when thingly relics do not change or resist change? And what do Christians write when they want to ascribe power to these relics in situations where not everyone is Christian, and where the special powers of bits of wood, metal, or plant that touched Christ are not universally accepted?

This presentation explores such questions in writings by twelfth-century Christians chronicling events in the Crusader Kingdoms, specifically their depictions of Passion Relic involvement in battles between Muslims and Christians. When narrating such inter-faith encounters, these writers do not draw on ideas of superhuman presence or miraculous material change. Instead, I contend, these writers’ understanding of Passion Relic power emerges most readily into view when one studies their depictions of relic agency in relation to models of the agency of everyday things outlined by theorists such as Bruno Latour and Andrew Pickering. Drawing on such models, I argue for a new model of thingly relic praesentia found on the borders between Islam and Christendom, one in which inert and decidedly nonhuman relic presence is celebrated. In these texts, relics lacking any anthropomorphic animation or material self-change are written about in ways that emphasize instead the power of Passion relics as thingly allyship, unpredictable but powerful affective influence, and consistent passive attendance at Muslim-Christian encounters over multiple generations.

[1] Peter Brown, “Praesentia.” The Object Reader, ed. Candlin and Guins (repr. London; Routledge, 2008), 177-94, p. 178.