Hand Reliquary
< Table of Contents For many reasons, I was probably not destined for the religious life. Not the least of these is that on hearing of the passing of a pious and respected elder, my first response isn’t ‘Where did I put that saw?’ However, there is a long tradition in Christianity of chopping off bits of departed clerics to preserve as relics. And when it comes to reliquaries, you’ve just got to hand it to this example! The saintly bits and bobs are long gone, but the reliquary itself survives in amazing condition, even if it was originally intended to be a full arm, rather than just the hand. It was made in the second half of the 13th century, possibly in Belgium. The relics would have been visible through the little ‘windows’ on the fingers. Initially, I thought that these were intended to simulate large, ornamental bezels and stones of finger rings, but their hoops are not continued on the palm side of the hand. This is in contrast to the delicate ring encir...