Reliquary - Definition and Overview

A reliquary is a container for holy relics. These relics may be the physical remains of saints (such as bones or shreds of clothing) or some object associated with the saints or other holy figures. (The authenticity of any given relic is often a matter of some scholarly debate).

Reliquaries range from small boxes to coffin-like containers to very elaborate ossuaries. They are often decorated in elaborate fashions.

Most churches and shrines dating from the Middle Ages have some colection of relics in reliquaries; pilgrimages often centered around the visitation of holy relics in reliquaries.

Reliquaries in literature

In A Morbid Taste for Bones, the first of the Brother Cadfael mysteries written by Edith Pargeter writing as Ellis Peters, she fictionalizes the real-life exhumation of the bones of St. Winifred. Winifred's bones are then placed into a reliquary which is later brought back from the saint's home in Gwytherin, Wales to the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Shrewsbury, England. The reliquary then occasionally figures into the remainder of the Cadfael mysteries.

See also

• James Ossuary