A History of the Crusades-Vol 1 by Steven Runciman Page A

Value of
Relics
    Her example was followed by pilgrims from the
West as well as from Constantinople. From immemorial ages the material luxuries
of the world came from the East. Now religious luxuries too went westward.
Christianity was at first an eastern religion. The majority of the early
Christian saints and martyrs had been easterners. There was a spreading
tendency to venerate the saints. Authorities such as Prudentius and Ennodius
taught that divine succour could be found at their graves and that their bodies
should be able to work miracles. Men and women would now travel far to see a
holy relic. Still more, they would try to acquire one, to take it home and to
set it in their local sanctuary. The chief relics remained in the East, those
of Christ at Jerusalem till they were moved to Constantinople, and those of the
saints for the most part at their native places. But minor relics began to
penetrate to the West, brought by some lucky pilgrim or some enterprising
merchant, or sent as a gift to some potentate. Soon there followed small
portions of major relics, then major relics in their entirety. All this helped
to draw the attention of the West to the East. The citizens of Langres, proud
possessors of a finger of Saint Mamas, would inevitably wish to visit Caesarea
in Cappadocia where the saint had lived. The nuns of Chamalieres, with the
bones of Thecla in their chapel, would take a personal interest in her
birthplace at Isaurian Seleucia. When a lady of Maurienne brought back from her
travels the thumb of Saint John the Baptist, her friends were all inspired to
journey out to see his body at Samaria and his head at Damascus. Whole
embassies would be sent in the hope of securing some such treasure, maybe even
a phial of the Holy Blood or a fragment of the true Cross itself. Churches were
built in the West called after eastern saints or after the Holy Sepulchre; and
often a portion of their revenues was set aside to be sent to the holy places
from which they took their names.
    This interconnection was helped by the commerce
that was still kept up round the coasts of the Mediterranean. It was slowly declining,
owing to the growing impoverishment of the West; and at times it was
interrupted, as when the Vandal pirates in the mid-fifth century made the seas
no longer safe for unarmed traders; and discontent and heresy in the East added
further difficulties. But there are many itineraries written in the sixth
century by western pilgrims who had travelled eastward in Greek or Syrian
merchant ships; and the merchants themselves carried religious news and gossip
as well as passengers and merchandise. Thanks to the travellers and the
traders, the historian Gregory of Tours was well informed on Oriental affairs.
There exists the record of a conversation between Saint Symeon Stylites and a
Syrian merchant who saw him on his pillar near Aleppo, in which Saint Symeon
asked for news of Saint Genevieve of Paris and sent her a personal message. In
spite of the religious and political quarrels of the higher authorities, the
relations between eastern and western Christians remained very cordial and
close.
    With the Arab conquests this era came to an
end. Syrian merchants no longer came to the coasts of France and Italy, bringing
their wares and their news. There were pirates again in the Mediterranean. The
Moslem rulers of Palestine were suspicious of Christian travellers from abroad.
The journey was expensive and difficult; and there was little wealth left in
western Christendom. But intercourse was not entirely broken off. Western
Christians still thought of the eastern holy places with sympathy and longing.
When, in 682, Pope Martin I was accused of friendly dealings with the Moslems,
he explained that his motive was to seek permission to send alms to Jerusalem.
In 670 the Frankish bishop Arculf set out for the East and managed to make a
complete tour of Egypt, Syria and Palestine, and to return through
Constantinople; but the journey