The Politics of Relics: The Charisma of Rulers and Martyrs in the Middle Ages

Abstract

Among the symbols used for representing power in the Middle Ages were the relics of saints and martyrs. When it came to political power, relics were one of the most cherished symbolic instruments to achieve legitimation of political power. However, no texts from the Middle Ages can be found that reflect the practice of associating relics with power. Rather, we have to assume or derive that reflection indirectly through narratives and stories around the relics present in the culture and religion of the time. This article reflects on the symbolic use of relics from a theological–political perspective: What kind of power acts through relics? What meaning of power is embodied in their political use of them? The thesis that the article will defend is that reflection on the politics of relics leads to a resignification of the idea of power in the Middle Ages, which is closely connected to the idea of charisma originating in the writings of the Apostle Paul.

1. Relics in Middle Ages: Methodology, Research Questions and Hypothesis

Relics are a particular case of representing the commerce between life and death. As Schmitt states: “The lasting solidarity of the living and the dead is not just an abstract structure of human societies: it is specifically confirmed in historical situations” (Schmitt 1999, p. 11).

Relics are sacred remains: they may be literal body parts or objects which the holy person used or touched. As Bozóky asserts, the word “relic” (Latin plural “reliquiae”; Greek “lipsana”) appears in this usage of sacred remains at the end of the fourth century in Africa. It is used by St Augustine, by the Council of Carthage in 397, and later in an inscription in Setif in 452. The spread of confidence in the extraordinary power of relics attracted the faithful to the tombs of the martyrs, and the regions and cities without such saints wanted to have relics. This is the main reason for the inventions, translations and rise of the relics policy.1

Indeed, we find numerous primary sources on the invention of relics, their transfer and the use made of them, first and foremost by Christian communities, but also by monarchs and princes. However, there is no reflection in the literature on the reason for the political use of relics. Hence, the specific methodology of this article is not historical. That is to say, it does not start from primary sources in order to attest to these practices but is philosophical–hermeneutical. In particular, it attempts to ascertain the possible transfer of meaning from the theological to the political sphere. This radical conceptualisation has been called political theology (Herrero 2017)2. This is the specific methodology used in the following analyses. Given the fact that relics and politics are linked, the article addresses a theological–political question, namely, why it is possible to use relics to legitimise a certain way of exercising power. In other words, the research questions posed in this article include: What idea of power is behind the political use of relics? Why is it possible for their symbolic use to function as an element of legitimisation for kings and princes? We do not find any such reflection in medieval sources. We only find medieval praxis; the meaning is assumed. It is this assumption that this article explores, launching a plausible hypothesis, which allows us to reflect on the conception of medieval power and its relation to charisma.

The hypothesis that the article will explore is that reflection on the politics of relics leads to a resignification of the idea of power in the Middle Ages, which is closely connected to the idea of charisma originating in the writings of the Apostle Paul.

2. The Power of Resurrected Bodies

How does the practice of separating certain parts of the body of saints or martyrs from the rest of the body, which is otherwise buried, begin? It seems that around the middle of the second century, particularly in the accounts of the martyrdom of Polycarp, we can find traces of this practice. The first use given to these remains is the commemoration of the death of those special people in the annual celebrations. The liturgy around the relics was probably intended to build up a nucleus of Christian brotherhood. The great family of Christ’s disciples is associated with a supernatural bond that transcends spatial and temporal boundaries. Those who take part in the celebration of a saint or martyr generate an affective link to what his life was like and, in particular, to what it was like to follow Christ, their saviour. Now, we can say that this practice is still far from being a political practice as such.

How does it become possible to transfer this type of ceremony to a political practice? It is the certainty in the power of those objects that were part of the body of the saints or of those objects associated with them that seems to make relics attractive to kings and princes. Indeed, so far, we can say that the possibility that relics were associated with political power depends primarily on the supernatural nature of the object: its power to heal, to secure a favour of any kind. It is the miracles which first spoke of the power of these material objects. If there had been no miracles assigned to such material items, no other political significance could have been associated with them. But precisely because of this supernatural allure, according to Bozóky, political power also began to benefit from relics. Indeed, they were placed by the rulers as witnesses to pacts and oaths; as defendants of the territoriality of the community, for which they travelled itinerantly; they were held responsible for military victories; finally, they were undoubtedly a sign of healing and salvation. In any case, they were always associated with the community. The relic was not something to be kept in one’s own house for personal profit, but something belonging to the people as a whole. The practice of associating relics with centres of power began in the east and spread. Its growth can be dated to the end of the Middle Ages. Indeed, relics begin to be associated with temporal power from the fourth century to the early modern period (Bozóky 2006).

However, political functions could not have been attributed to relics without there being a meaning added to them by multiple accounts of very different types and levels. In other words, the political use of these objects depends not only on the miracles that were performed through them but also on other meanings that were added over time, belonging to different temporal strata. Firstly, the stories about the resurrection of the dead, which had been handed down in different texts of the Church Fathers.3 This belief means for the materiality of the corpse, its belonging to a living person beyond death. The body of the martyr or saint who is called to live again in a glorious way in an eschatological future is what has power; that is, what has power is a life that has somehow not ceased to be lived. Indeed, it is the victory over the death of a saint or martyr that is its greatest power.

Moreover, the possible political use of relics also depends on a second type of narrative, namely the narratives associated with the lives of saints and martyrs. The knowledge of the Gesta martyrum by the communities is a fundamental element for the relics to become politically active. Many stories of saints and martyrs have been handed down from generation to generation, usually linked to the specific history of the communities in which they were born, lived, or were in some way considered benefactors.4

But we can even speak of a third type of stories, which connect the martyr or saint to a city or royal lineage. The power of a relic within the community was easily transferable to political legitimation through the credit given to God’s possible favour on a particular people or community. Scripture confirms this idea with the election of Israel as the chosen people. The fact of a relic’s arrival in a community also came to signify this election in some way. Brown shows how the cult of relics is modelled on the adventus of the emperor on the official arrival in a city (Brown 1981, pp. 69–86). The presence of relics was a way of generating unity. For example, Christian communities in the Mediterranean turned the celebration of the memory of martyrs into a reassuring scenario in which a good power, associated with God’s forgiveness and the presence of the martyr, defeated an evil power. In particular, Brown mentions the example of Stephen’s patronage of Minorca in 417, which was used by Bishop Severus to eradicate the Jews. The arrival on the island of Stephen’s relics became an opportunity to transform the reality of a divided community into a Christian community established on new and pure foundations (Brown 1981, pp. 104–6; Brown 1971, pp. 80–101). What happened is that the “impure” power was converted to Christianity and found its place under Stephen’s patronage. In other words, in addition to the stories that bring meaning and enhance the power of miracles, there is still the ritual aspect with which the kings endowed the relics: how they were accompanied at the moment of entry into a city, the magnificence with which they were displayed, and the cult they were given.

3. Which Meaning of Power Is Embedded in Relics? Martyrs and Saints

We have considered in what terms the efficacy of an object corresponding to the remains of people who had a special life and death can be thought of. However, let us now ask ourselves what public or political meanings can be attributed to the life and death of these exceptional people of which those remains were a part; in other words, not only how powerful relics are, but how powerful the lives and deaths of those to whom the relics belonged were.

The common aspect of these special lives is that they lived or died for confessing the true faith that designates Christ as the only saviour of the human race; this is the special character of saints and martyrs. However, in addition, from the earliest days of Christianity, these distinguished lives have had a public dimension.

In fact, it seems to be commonly assumed that the rituals of martyrdom were constructed by sacralising the pagan games in the circus in which someone had to die for the good of the people (Buc 1997). Those condemned became an occasion for dialogue between the people and their leaders. From an objective point of view, the martyr’s death is not special; it is nothing more than another death within the death rituals of the pagan world. For some historians, the added significance to the martyrs’ lives and deaths was the work of Christian propaganda insofar as, by publishing either the martyrs’ acts or hagiographies, Christians sought to establish a sublimated interpretation of what actually happened: a mere death. The discourses that are constructed about these deaths elevate the event to the level of significance. Hence Buc argues: “The Christians wrote Passiones and Acta in an attempt to impose their partisan interpretation on a public event over which they had no control. Suggesting a transcendental meaning to which their blind opponents had no access was good and effective warfare. For the hagiographers (and perhaps for the martyrs themselves, insofar as imaginary transgressions provided a virtual repertoire for the actors of the real political game) death in the arena did not reinstate the disciplina romana and sacralise the civic community. It was much more an instrument willed by God in the making of their community”.5

It is precisely this re-signification that interests us now to understand what meaning of power the rulers intended to associate themselves with when they used the relics as an instrument of enhancement of their power.

It seems clear that in the Christian historiographical, hagiographical, and theological tradition, there is a resignification of these special lives and deaths. A special testimony is to be found in the Exhortatio ad martyres that have been passed down to us, in particular, those of Tertullian, Origen and Cyprian. These testimonies reveal the unappealable public character of martyrdom. In fact, martyrdom is not a requirement of faith as such, but the response of the saints to a historical circumstance that is a scandal for history itself, namely, the persecutions. Confession and witnessing are the only commands of the gospel.6 The fundamental testimony to be given is the revelation of Jesus Christ, his perennial life, and his definitive triumph over death by his resurrection, which implied the confession of his divinity and, therefore, the authenticity of his life and his doctrine.7 The blood together with the testimony appears for the first time in the gospel in Acts 22, 19-10 and in the Book of the Revelation of St. John Rv 1, 9 and Rv 2, 12–13: “the souls of those who have been slain for the word’s sake”.

As Boissier points out, the scandal of the persecutions was so great that there has been no lack of those who deny its reality (Boissier 1903, p. 353; Engberg 2007). It seems hardly credible that princes such as Trajan or Marcus Aurelius would have ordered the horrors that have been recounted and which seem more credible in the time of Nero or Domitian. However, the trials were legal, and who became martyrs were considered public enemies. Tertullian accounts that there was an “institutum Neronianum” that said: “non licet esse vos”. In the 2nd century, all the jurisprudence concerning Christians was based on Trajan’s rescript in response to a query by Pliny the Younger around 112, who was his legate in Bithynia: Christianity is a crime, but a crime sui generis. The authorities should not search for Christians ex officio, but if they are duly denounced, they must be punished (Lebreton 1946, p. 297; Barnes 1968). Anti-Christian propaganda led to the people themselves calling for the Christians to be tortured in the circus (Boissier 1903, p. 378). That is why there are processes and there are acts of the martyrs (although it is possible that, as mentioned above, many were destroyed). Allard points out that there were a large number of martyrs is the exact tradition of historical truth (Allard 1913). Ruinart, in his compilation, considered acts to be all the more or less extensive accounts containing authentic news of the martyrs (Ruinart 1732; Musurillo 1972). Harnack himself speaks of an unbroken series of testimonies.8 A different account is that of Moss: “The paucity of evidence for the formal persecution of Christians during our period means that a historical narrative of legal persecution and prosecution cannot be recreated. Before the decree of Decius around 250 CE—which itself may have stemmed from a desire to unify the Roman empire rather than from a decision to root out Christians—the persecution of Christians was largely the product of the inclinations of individual Roman administrators. Roman governors could exercise magnanimity as well as cruelty. While the sporadic nature of persecution is frequently cited as evidence of the early Christians’ tendency to exaggerate the dangers that they experienced, the unpredictability of persecution was itself destabilizing. Isolated experiences of exceptional cruelty no doubt reverberated in the Christian unconscious long after the events themselves. In fact, one of the functions of early Christian martyrdom literature was to perpetuate this process and amplify the echoes of earlier struggles” (Moss 2012, p. 12).

We can say that it is the very political action of persecution of those first centuries of Christianity and the discursive interpretation of that experience that constructs the figure of the martyr as a counter-sovereignty.9 Hence the interest of the martyr over the mere saint for theological–political hermeneutics. Foucault draws a distinction between the martyr and other types of saints who founded their asceticism on a rule and, therefore, instead of seeking face-to-face surrender to God, subsumed themselves in obedience. In his opinion, Christianity is played between these two poles: the pole of mysticism and audacity and the pole of obedience and pastoral power (Foucault 2011, pp. 336–38).

Foucault signals this point by quoting Gregory of Nazianz (Oration 25 in Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations, Catholic University of America Press, 2003), who praises Maximus for being “the best and most perfect philosopher, the martyr, the witness of the truth (…) in Gregory’s mouth, it is not a question of just the verbal testimony of someone who speaks the truth. It involves someone who, in his very life, his dog’s life, from the moment of embracing asceticism until the present, in his body, his life, his acts, his frugality, his renunciations, and his ascesis, has never ceased being the living witness of the truth. He has suffered, endured, and deprived himself so that the truth takes shape in his own life, as it were, in his own existence, his own body” (Foucault 2011, p. 173). In his view, two types of veridiction, confession and parrhesia, come together in the martyr’s sacrifice. A significant difference between martyrs and other kinds of Parrhesiastes is the appearance of the transcendent axis: “What distinguishes the courage of someone like Socrates, or Diogenes, for example, from the martyr’s courage—I think it is Saint Jerome who says this—is precisely that the former is only the courage of man addressing other men, whereas the courage of the Christian martyrs rests on this other aspect, this other dimension of the same parrhesia, which is trust in God; confidence in salvation, in God’s goodness, and also in His listening. And here a whole set of texts show that the theme of parrhesia joins up with the theme of faith and trust in God” (Foucault 2011, p. 332).

As a matter of fact, three aspects of the figure of the martyr are significant from a theological–political point of view. The first is the public character of the figure of the martyr over that of the saint; the second is the liminal place that the martyr occupies between life and death; and the third is the existential character of his heroism. Let us look at each of these aspects.

The martyr highlights the break with the political order by representing an exception to an entire order of domination—an exception that, in a way, however, is produced by the order itself. Their actions imply a pact of frankness. They become heroes of a freedom that is above and beyond all earthly power because it knows no definitive dominion over death. Indeed, it is precisely royal power that was understood as a power over life and death. Sending soldiers to their deaths is the power of the highest authority in the community. The tradition goes back to Antiquity. It derives from the ancient patria potestas which gave the father of the Roman family the right to “dispose” of the lives of his children and slaves. In any case, the right to life and death could not be exercised absolutely and unconditionally, but only in cases where the sovereign’s very existence was at stake. If external enemies wanted to overthrow him or challenge his rights, he could then legitimately demand that his subjects take part in the war. In this case, without directly proposing their death, he was empowered to “expose” their lives. The ruler exercised indirect power over their lives and deaths.10 The martyrs contravene this sovereign power insofar as they are the ones who translocate life and death, disregarding the life that renounces the confession of the true saviour according to the words of Matthew 10, 28: “do not fear those who can kill the body”. The death that gives them political power does not have the power to make them renounce their confession. Truth and power meet face to face in the legal processes of martyrdom. The confession, which is the central part of the martyrium, is proved in martyrdom by existence, and it is just this proof of the truth by the shedding of blood that merits the “crown”. The church fathers rightly use this expression: “the crown of martyrdom”.11

In fact, as Hummel states, originally, “confessores et martyres” (Hummel 1946) (in Tertullian’s language) were not two categories of persons, but one and the same, although it cannot be said that he does not distinguish the two aspects. When he refers to confessor, he is referring to the confession of faith before a pagan magistrate which will be confirmed by death; and when he refers to a martyr, he stresses the aspect of the torments and death suffered, the passio as a consequence of the confession of faith. However, Cyprian never uses the term “confessor” for one who has given his life for the faith; he uses “martyr”.12 Holiness is indeed a perennial testimony, but the testimony that is sealed by death is the testimony of blood, which is a supreme measure. This is how Clement of Alexandria understands it.13 Augustine, who writes in a time when persecutions were not commonplace, although he died as a martyr, focuses the idea of martyrdom in times of peace in the Sermo 6 (Cailleau) on new persecution which is the persecution for defending the truth. This is the reason, Augustine argues, why we can call St. John the Baptist a martyr. He died for the truth rather than for the confession of his faith in the life and resurrection of Christ, since his death took place before that of Christ. Therefore, Augustin concludes, “all times are times of martyrdom”. Furthermore, he urges us to fight for the truth and to flee from the false witness, even unto death. He who overcomes will receive the “crown”—again, he uses the expression of kingship. That is to say, he has exercised the greatest power.

As Ingham has shown, the association between martyrs and kings is not embodied by the medieval ruler only by associating his kingdom to specific relics, but he notes that we can also speak of the “martyred ruler” as a general type in Middle Ages.14 He discovers a list of medieval martyr-kings, coming from the east and moving to the west, beginning with Princess Ludmila (ca 921), Prince Wenceslas (d. 929), Boris and Gleb (1015). Wenceslas and Boris had consciously practiced non-resistance, preferring to follow Christ by submitting voluntarily to death rather than to shed the blood of their attackers. The miracles they acted were additional proof of their martyrdom. He affirms that these cases are not confined to the Slavs, the Czech, and Russian rulers but have numerous counterparts in Britain and Scandinavia, such as the cases of Northumbrian king Oswald, Ethelbert of Hereford, Edmunt King of East Anglia, Canute IV King, and Protomartyr of Denmark, Magnus of Orkney, Olaf Haraldsson, and Eric, all of them meting violent deaths and claimed to be martyrs by their peoples. As Ingham points out, the accounts of martyr sovereigns make frequent use of the imitative aspect of the saints’ death. As the martyr re-enacted the passio he became identified and united with Christ, he fulfilled scriptural prophecies, and he revealed God’s design. This has been also the case in the hagiographies of the martyr’s rulers’ passions. Indeed, the symbolism embodied by the martyrs has at least three aspects, in Lehmann words: “There are three scripts, a mimetic script (that is, the script of imitatio Christi), a juridical script, and finally an agonistic script” (Lehmann 2019, p. 224). The script of the imitatio of Christ puts the focus on the martyr as another Christ (“alter Christus”). By contrast, the juridical script focuses on the trial situation. It concerns the confrontation with mundane sovereignty. They describe how the Christian defendants are first arrested and then brought before the imperial court, where they are asked to sacrifice to the Roman suprema potestas, either the state gods or the divinized emperor. However, the defendants refuse, thereby speaking the confessional formula: “I am a Christian”. Finally, there is the execution, where there is no drastic exhibition of suffering, but of triumph.

4. Special Deaths and Charismatic Power

Charisma is not a term that Paul initially associated with the idea of power. Rather this association is due to Weber, who makes the transfer from the biblical realm to the realm of sociology or political economy, characterising one of the types of political legitimacy as charismatic, distancing this term almost definitively from the Pauline meaning (Weber 1978).15 However, if we reinscribe Weberian charismatic legitimacy in the original Pauline sense of the term charisma, we may well characterise the power aspired to by medieval kings who use relics as a symbol of their power as charismatic (Herrero 2023, pp. 153–203).

Paul elaborates his conception of “charisma” and “charismata” primarily in his Epistle to the Romans and 1 Corinthians. In those references, a broad meaning of gifts is described: the more general one of service; and others more specific like government, prophecy, preaching, miracle, healing, tongues, revelation, giving, mercy, and interpretation between others. In Ephesians 4, 1 he designs all of them as gifts or as presents.16 There is not in Paul an interest in systematizing. To the Greek general meaning of charisma as a gift, Paul adds two more aspects: the given good is from God; the good is inscribed in the order of salvation. For him, as in the common use of the “koine”, the good was “objective”, that is something given to someone, like in the case of the gift of prophecy or the gift of tongues, and not “subjective”, like a personal state or a virtue, or a power for doing something.

Peterson claims a charismatic status for the martyr in the Pauline sense, especially associated with the eschatological moment (Peterson 2011, p. 156). The martyr is a special witness to the truth associated with the suffering and death of Christ. It embodies the idea of power as a gift in the extreme form of the sacrifice of one’s own life. That is why the martyrs are present in John’s apocalyptic vision, participating in the reign of Christ in their white robes: those who washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. The supreme power over life and death belongs to God, but the sovereign also has this power to a certain extent. Hence, both powers can become associated in the figure of the martyr in a particular way. What the martyr indicates is that it is the proper life which must be put into question in the first place, and it is this existential disposition that legitimizes power in the most radical way.

Martyrdom appears for the king as a form of life, which puts self-sacrifice for the sake of the community at the centre of life. As Lehmann affirms: “Martyrdom, in general, refers to a self-sacrifice leading to death for the sake of a supra-individual concern that is placed above one’s own interest in life”.17 Martyrdom does not conform to classical models of sacrifice. As Fordhal explaines: “If martyrdom emerges from the unstable activity of collective grieving, it is unlikely to conform to Mauss and Hubert’s theory of sacrifice as the foundational activity in creating distinctions between the sacred and the profane. Across cases, the sacrifice of martyrs is juxtaposed not with the profane world, but with the desecrating violence that produces a corpse” (Fordhal 2018, p. 300).

By accepting to die for his confession, the martyr abolishes sovereignty’s ultimate instrument of power, the threat of death. The martyr reveals as the authentic sovereign in the confrontation of two different sovereignties: the political and the divine one. The martyr’s cause proves to be superior to the existing political sovereignty. It is this association with the most authentic and definitive sovereignty which guarantees life after death, that the political ruler can on exceptional occasions claim the life of his subjects—to make them die—and their unconditional obedience. From all that has been said, it does not seem difficult to conclude that the figure of the martyr appears in the Middle Ages as a certain sovereignty that can be transformed as a medium for speaking about the character of the ruler’s political power.

As Cerella has pointed out, “there is a close, structural, relationship between martyrdom and political power, that is, between the act of self-sacrifice and the dominant political and metaphysical systems in which this act is inscribed” (Cerella 2020, p. 179). A martyr’s power is of absolute renunciation. The moral example of the martyrs reshapes the vision of the individual and collective body. Cerella’s reflection leads us to Kantorowicz’s text Pro patria mori: “Once the corpus mysticum has been identified with the corpus morale et politicum of the people and has become synonymous with nation and ‘fatherland’, pro patria mori, in other words, for a mystical body corporate, regains its former nobility. Death for the fatherland now is viewed in a truly religious perspective; it appears as a sacrifice for the corpus mysticum of the state which is no less a reality than the corpus mysticum of the church. It all implies a recovery of certain ethical values and moral emotions which with regard to the secular state had been practically absent during the earlier Middle Ages, and yet so dominant in Greek and Roman antiquity. This, however, does not mean simply a paganization of the idea pro patria mori. Humanism had its effects, but the quasi-religious aspects of death for the fatherland clearly derived from the Christian faith, the forces of which were now activated for the service of the secular corpus mysticum of the state” (Kantorowicz 1951, pp. 487–88).

The same analogical exchange that takes place between the king and the martyr takes place between the corpus mysticum of the church, for whose faith the martyr dies, and the body of the community over which the king rules, for which the king himself is ready to give his life. The mimesis between the king and martyr dignifies the body politic. The king tries to put himself in the place of the most unprotected, the one who has suffered death at the hand of the ruling power, knowing that he too is subject to death at the hand of a superior ruler, which is namely God. “Bare life”, to use the expression made popular by Agamben (Agamben 1998), is the condition of all life, and placing the reliquary at the centre of the public space ritually manifests this fact.

Therefore, by placing the testimony of martyrs and saints in the reliquary as the centre of political devotion, kings resignify power in several directions: the life of the saints acts as an alternative to the mirrors for Princes; they embrace the power over the life and death of God; and finally, and consequently, they associate themselves with the most dangerous counter-sovereignty that could arise. Fordhal refers the case of Thomas Becket, the 12th century Archbishop of Canterbury: “The martyrdom of Becket also contained a critique of earthly sovereign violence not dissimilar from the early Christian martyrdom narratives; throughout the high Middle Ages, rebels would draw on the story of Becket in an attempt to legitimate revolt against the English crown” (Fordhal 2018, p. 306).

The symbolism of the relic held an idea of power as “charisma” in the Pauline sense of the expression; that is, as a gift for the community of the corpus mysticum. A power not based on dominion, but on the blood and water which flow from the side of Christ and which Christians, in particular martyrs, can appropriate by existentially participating in that same body of Christ. This is the root of power as a “charisma” that originates in the sacrificial figure.

Just as in Paul’s writings, the goods that the relics are able to procure were communal. They are visible traces of saving power. It is also the idea of power that operates in the exaltation of relics if the politics of relics makes any sense at all. We can affirm that when relics are used to add meaning to royal power, the medieval sovereign is expressing his desire—true or fake—that his own life imitate that of saints and martyrs; thus, he tries to place his power beyond earthly power.

5. Conclusive Remarks

The question we asked ourselves at the beginning of this article was the following: given that there are no texts in the Middle Ages that reflect on the practice of associating relics with power, what can we assume about the significance of this practice for the legitimation of political power? That is, what meanings are embodied in the political use of relics that reinforce political power?

Having unravelled the meanings attached to these material objects and to the lives of those to whom they belong, we are in a position to understand the coherence between the political practice of the use of relics and the fundamental theological–political analogy between royal and ecclesiastical power present in the Middle Ages, to which Ullmann has repeatedly alluded (Ullmann 1964, pp. 72–89).

Indeed, as Ullmann has pointed out, theocratic-descendant forms of government are typical of the Middle Ages. The reason for this, in his opinion, has biblical origins and does not only depend on forms of territorial or aristocratical organisation. In particular, he assumes that the introduction of the term “superioritas” in Jerome’s Vulgate had political consequences. However, medieval superioritas always operated with its counterpart, i.e., the subditus or subjectus. Ironically, this superioritas makes the ruler in a certain sense an ecclesiastical servant. Indeed, in the first place, in the medieval context making the king or the prince superior meant separating him from his people and promoting him to the clerical estate, which was contrary to the usage of traditional medieval societies, where the king or the prince always ruled with the estates. The people were not a mass of subjects deprived of their will, but a plural community that had political rights and acted with the king in judicial and military matters. All kinds of assemblies were held at that time. Secondly, making him superior presupposes that he receives from God the government of his people “rex Dei gratia”, in competition with the ecclesiastical officials, i.e., the bishops. In particular, it was the political theology of the Carolingians, from the 9th century onwards, that shaped the aura of the king in the image of the kings of the Old Testament. This idea became embedded in the ceremonies of the Crown. In fact, the anointing of the king was intentionally similar to that of the bishops, even if it never had an indelible character as in the case of holy orders; the coronation, however, was a secular affair.18 The position of the king as similar to the bishop in a certain sense placed the political community as similar to the ecclesiastical community. The charismatic configuration of the body of Christ which is the church also had its analogue in the political community—exactly as Kantorowicz pointed out in Pro Patria mori, as we have already mentioned. It is precisely this exchange of gifts between superiority and service that appears present through the symbolic use of relics.

By placing the liturgies around the relics at the centre of the symbolic representation of their power, the rulers also place the saint and the martyr—themselves exceptional builders of the ecclesiastical community and witnesses of the victory over the greatest enemy, death—at the centre of the meaning of their power. The figure of the ruler is thereby constructed as similar to the figure of the good shepherd who gives his life for his sheep, and who obtains gifts (charismata) for them in strict obedience to the faith that Paul preached about the church as the body of Christ. However, this figure is not just a symbol; in the lives of those who gave their lives for Christ, it was an existential reality. It is also this authenticity that is the great benefit of the political use of relics.

It is this central idea of early Christian reflection that medieval rulers seem to want to make their own in the repeated practice of the symbolic use of relics as a complement to their rituals of power.