Business | 2009.09.27
Let the credulous kiss their relics. It's no weirder than idolising Beckham | Simon Jenkins
Sending the bones of St Thérèse to Wormwood Scrubs sounds ghoulish, but a test of tolerance is indulging the irrational
The bizarre Home Office decision to send the relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux to Wormwood Scrubs marks a new departure in penal policy. Given the failure of deterrence or rehabilitation to cut Britain\'s prison population, ministers are clearly seeking relief from the Little Flower of Jesus of the Discalced Carmelites.
St Thérèse\'s relics date from her death in 1897 at the age of just 24, and consist of a thigh and a foot. She is apparently in three parts, some in Lisieux and some on perpetual tour of France. Who conducted this gruesome dismemberment is not clear, but her penning of a best-selling autobiography made her patron saint, among others, of aviators, florists, Aids victims and "little things in life".
Now her pieces are in a casket of jacaranda wood inside a perspex case, on to which devotees may press their lips, beads, figurines and toys. The relics have been on a world tour for 12 years. They are currently in Portsmouth, and will be visiting some two dozen British locations, for some reason including Anglican York Minster, before their sojourn in the clink.
If the crowds queueing round the block in Portsmouth are any guide, thousands will be beating on the Scrubs\' door. It was the likelihood of just such scenes that deterred Cardinal Hume from allowing a tour in 1997. He was nervous of a manifestation of necrophilia in what he hoped was a modernising church. His successors are more indulgent. The bishop of Portsmouth, Crispian Hollis, ruminates that "England has been sceptical about relics in the past, but perhaps not now". A guardian of the show, Father Michael McGoldrick, asserts simply: "It\'s massive." There are St Thérèse keyrings, purses, figurines and fridge magnets – not mention reports of healings, cancer respites and even pregnancies.
Parallels have already been drawn with footballers, rock stars and Jade Goody , though they customarily went on show in one piece. The only time I saw a dismembered corpse was by the egregious pop artist, Gunter von Hagens , who conducted a public autopsy on a large dead German in Brick Lane in 2002 . That freak show was packed out and put me off meat for a month. But of the appeal of relics of the famous there is no doubt. I imagine bits of Michael Jackson would fetch a fortune.
When Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, the monks were shocked as locals rushed in, not to kneel by the body but to douse themselves in blood and steal any items they could remove. When Hugh of Lincoln visited Fécamp Abbey in Normandy and was shown the arm bone of St Mary Magdalene, he appalled the local abbot by seizing it and chewing it like a dog. Under the doctrine of transubstantiation, he pleaded health and safety.
Relics have always been good for business. The pilgrim cult of Saint Katherine of Alexandria grew in direct proportion to the multiplying number of strands of her hair. A window at Canterbury shows monks holding lengths of cord used to measure diseased bodies or limbs, the better to calculate the size of wax effigies or the length of candles to be burned near a relic, a classic among quack remedies.
In 1478 the canons of St George\'s Windsor, desperate for money to rebuild their church, stole the body of "Saint" John Schorne , from North Marston in Buckinghamshire. His celebrity as a healer was such as to attract thousands to his church, even long after his death in 1313. He claimed to "drive out the devil" of gout, probably by advising sufferers to clean themselves in his private chalybeate spring (which is still there). Schorne is said to have spawned the jack-in-the-box child\'s toy and pubs named The Boot. His was a strictly popular canonisation, his image appearing as a saint on a number of church screens.
The canons of Windsor – who sought permission from the pope for their theft – were not alone in body-snatching. The 10th-century monks of Ely stole the charmingly named St Withburga from her grave at East Dereham in Norfolk. Her claim to sanctity was that her body never decomposed, offering Ely long-term revenue from a non-wasting asset.
Most Catholics of my acquaintance find this whole business distasteful, and wish Hume\'s veto had remained in place. I find this odd. An authoritarian church surely requires adherents to take its theology table d\'hote, not a la carte. Saints are bona fide. They perform miracles not just when living but by their postmortem penumbra. The Vatican judges body parts to be first-class, clothes second and touched objects third.
The history of Catholicism is thus littered with saints\' bones, blood, teeth, hair, fingernails and shrouds, all offering short cuts, according to taste, to spiritual awakening, pregnancy, mobility or a better harvest. Hence the discarded crutches piled in the foyer of Holywell in Clwyd.
Though a signed-up Dawkins-ite, I long ago realised that, for all religion\'s unreason, I was unlikely to change people\'s minds on something so intimate to their sense of self. Courtesy was the best policy.
I once asked a devout and intelligent Roman Catholic, after a heated argument, if he still believed that he and I would meet after death. If so, would he be lodged first class while I was relegated to some easyHeaven? The best he could do in reply was, "Yes, in a manner of speaking." When I inquired what was this manner of speaking, he shifted uncomfortably and changed the subject. Such is the brainwashing of unreason.
I was left with a choice of whether to break off all conversation since he was clearly mad, or show him the same courtesy I would show a Hindu elephant worshipper or a Polynesian medicine man. The latter course has always stood me in good stead.
Which brings us back to St Thérèse and the Scrubs. We assume her limbs were lawfully separated from her body and that they pass muster with the health authorities. We assume the regulators approve the hearse in which they travelled under the Channel, saintly levitation and translation being out of service. We also assume that inspectors will see no hanky-panky takes place on the miracle front.
We then confront the central fact, that tens of thousands will visit the relics, to press their lips and possessions desperately against the perspex and come away feeling better. They will experience what the relic pundit and Catholic historian, Eamon Duffy, calls "the window of hope on a daunting world of sickness, pain and natural calamity". His relics hint at "the triumph of life in a world which must often have seemed dominated by suffering and death".
Relics are jujus, religious placebos for the credulous classes, which presumably includes the inmates of Wormwood Scrubs. Most of us find them ghoulish. But other cultures think the same of our eating meat or worshipping football or reading the stars or anthropomorphising animals. In the hierarchy of weird pastimes, relic worship must be among the most harmless. We do best to regard it as a test, not of our power of reason but of our power of tolerance.
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