The "Odour of Sanctity," and the Hebrew Origins of Christian Relic Veneration

Abstract

Most Christian saints achieved sainthood only after they died. This is true for every period of Church history. But in Antiquity and in early Middle Ages people sought first signs of deceased's sanctity in cemetery. Exhuming his body about a year after burial, people discovered in every case that a sweet fragrance rose from saint's tomb. The flesh largely vanished from his bones; and redolence that remained indicated absence of putrefaction. The pleasing aroma, called odour of sanctity , proved that saint, perceived to be a living person, miraculously exuviated his flesh. Possessed therefore of an excarnate form rendering him impervious both to desires and to sins of flesh, saint received divine power and full personality in every particle of his person just as, subsequently, doctrine of transubstantiation will declare each particle of consecrated Host to be entire body of Christ. According to Peter Brown, Christian cult of saints originated and flourished in great cemeteries on outskirts of Roman cities. Indeed, non-Christian contemporaries thought late antique Christianity... was shrines and relics. Especially important to cult was the digging up, moving, dismemberment quite apart from much avid touching and kissing of bones of dead, and frequently, placing of these in areas from which dead once been excluded. By about 600 graves of saints, virtually all situated in these suburban cemeteries, had become centres of ecclesiastical life of their region.1 Clearly relic worship and cult of saints was