Relics: Why the Orthodox Venerate Bones

What you'll notice

On a saint's feast, or when relics come visiting, a small table appears near the front with a reliquary on it: a metal box, or an icon with a little glass window set into it. A line forms. People cross themselves, bow, kiss the glass, and step aside. Behind the glass there's a fragment of bone wrapped in cloth, or sometimes not a bone at all: a saint's clothing or a piece of cloth can be kept and honored the same way.¹

What you won't see is the relic in the altar, sealed under the Holy Table, and in many churches another sewn into the cloth the Liturgy is served on.

For a lot of Protestant visitors this is the moment a small voice says, "All right, this is where I get off." That's a fair reaction. Many Protestants have never seen a body honored after death except at a funeral. So let's walk through it.

What it's called

Relics (Greek leipsana, "remains"; Slavonic moshchi; Arabic dhakhīra) are the bodies or belongings of saints, kept and honored. A saint's body that hasn't decayed is called incorrupt; relics that give off fragrant oil are myrrh-streaming, and Saint John of Damascus already speaks of remains "abounding in oil of sweet fragrance."² The cloth on the Holy Table is the antimension (the cloth the Liturgy is served on), which Hapgood calls the "Corporal (Antimins), or Vice-Altar."³

What's actually happening

At an altar's consecration. When a bishop consecrates a church, relics of martyrs are prepared on a paten the evening before.⁴ The next day he carries them in procession around the church while the choir sings "O holy Martyrs,"⁵ sets them on the altar and censes them,⁶ and prays that the relics, "sown abroad in all the earth," would "bring forth fruits of healing."⁷ They're anointed with holy chrism and sealed in a reliquary under the Holy Table; the canonical tradition and the service books insist they be relics of martyrs.⁸ Hapgood's own note adds that relics go into the altar "only in case a Bishop consecrates the church."⁹

In the antimension. Hapgood says that in the antimension "are placed relics of the Saints,"¹⁰ and an antimension consecrated together with a new church receives a fragment of martyrs' relics in a small pocket sewn on the back, along with the bishop's signature. Historically antimensia went only to altars that hadn't been consecrated; today an antimension is used even on a consecrated altar, and in that case it is "usually without relics."¹¹ So practice differs: an antimension on an unconsecrated altar carries a relic, while one used on an altar already consecrated with relics usually has none. Either way the Liturgy is served over relics, in the altar, in the cloth, or both.

The canon behind it. The Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea II, 787) ordered relics placed "with the accustomed service" in any church consecrated without them, and ruled that a bishop who consecrates a temple without holy relics "shall be deposed, as a transgressor of the ecclesiastical traditions."¹² It deposes; it excommunicates no one. It's a mandate for relics, and the twelfth-century canonist Balsamon connected it to antimensia.¹³

Why it matters

The Orthodox reasoning runs in a short chain.

The body isn't thrown away. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, lecturing on the resurrection of the body around 350, uses Elisha's bones as his proof: they raised a dead man "to show, that even though the soul is not present, a virtue resides in the body of the saints, because of the righteous soul which has for so many years dwelt in it."¹⁴ Relics are his supporting example, and the lecture is about the resurrection of the body.

The body was a temple. "Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you?" (1 Corinthians 6:19). Saint John of Damascus draws the conclusion: "we must ascribe honour to the living temples of God," and "we do not call those dead who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection."¹⁵

The power is God's. What heals is the grace of God at work through the matter, not the matter on its own.¹⁶ Nobody is claiming bones are magic.

It's honor. Saint Jerome, who was not a gentle debater, put the question bluntly to a critic in 406: "who in the world ever adored the martyrs? Who ever thought man was God?"¹⁷ The difference between worship and honor is laid out in Icons.

The martyrs belong under the altar. "I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God" (Revelation 6:9). Saint Ambrose, burying two martyrs beneath a new altar in Milan, put it in one line: "He upon the altar, Who suffered for all; they beneath the altar, who were redeemed by His Passion."¹⁸

Where it came from

It starts in Scripture. "And when the man was let down and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet" (2 Kings 13:21 (4 Kingdoms 13:21 in the Septuagint)). A woman touched the hem of Christ's garment and was healed (Matthew 9:20–21); the sick were laid where Peter's shadow would fall on them (Acts 5:15); and "even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them" (Acts 19:12).

The first Christian account is sober. After Polycarp was martyred, traditionally around 155, his church "took up his bones, as being more precious than the most exquisite jewels, and more purified than gold, and deposited them in a fitting place," to keep "the anniversary of his martyrdom" there.¹⁹ No miracles claimed: just a church that loved its bishop and gathered at his grave.

By the fourth century the practice was everywhere. Cyril argued from it (c. 350). Ambrose found the relics of Saints Gervasius and Protasius in 386, a blind man was healed as they were carried in, and he laid them under the altar.²⁰ From the fourth through the sixth centuries relics were translated into new churches with psalm-singing processions, and the East divided relics early, a habit that surprised the Romans, who kept bodies whole; in 519 Pope Hormisdas refused the fragments Justinian asked for.²¹ Jerome defended relics against Vigilantius in 406; Augustine recorded miracles "which have not ceased since the world believed";²² John of Damascus wrote the theology down in the eighth century; and Nicaea II made relics a requirement in 787.

The Church isn't naive about how this developed. Father Alexander Schmemann, following the scholar Hippolyte Delehaye, notes that the earliest honor paid to relics didn't ascribe special power to them, that by the end of the fourth century believers had come to feel that power flowed from the relics themselves, and he's openly critical of the piety that grew from it.²³ Fakes and excess happened; Vigilantius wasn't inventing them.²⁴ Orthodoxy keeps the practice without vouching for every claim.

Field Note: what we can't tell you. Saint John of Damascus asks, "is it incredible that fragrant oil should burst forth from the martyrs' remains?"²⁵ Hapgood's note says incorrupt relics "assure us of the special prayers for us" of those saints.²⁶ Fragrance can be one sign of holiness, recognized by the people first, but incorruption isn't required for sainthood; many saints' bodies decayed, burned, or were lost.²⁷ Beyond that, the Church's sources say little. They give no account of why a fragment carries the same grace as a whole body, and no council has ruled on incorruption. Nobody is asked to believe a particular claim about a particular body.

What you do

If you're Orthodox: many people venerate a relic the way they venerate an icon: cross yourself and bow twice, kiss the glass or the reliquary (not the relic itself), bow a third time, and step aside. Local customs differ, so watch the line ahead of you.

If you're visiting: nobody has to kiss anything. Stand and watch, bow if you like, or skip the line. Don't open a reliquary, touch a relic directly, or take pictures without asking whoever's keeping it.

Field Note: "isn't this a little creepy?" Fair question, and here's the short answer. Scripture already has it: Elisha's bones, the hem of a garment, Paul's handkerchiefs. The earliest Christians did it, within living memory of the apostles: Polycarp's bones. It's about the resurrection of the body; Cyril's argument is literally a lecture on the resurrection of the body. It's honor, the power is God's, and it's built into the altar rather than tucked away as a fringe devotion. And abuses happened, which the Church admits.

Go deeper

• Martyrdom of Polycarp 18 (ANF 1).
• Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 18.16 (NPNF2 7), and Saint John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith IV.15 (NPNF2 9).
• Go to a saint's feast where relics are brought out for veneration.
• Mary and the Saints and Memory Eternal.

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