UC Berkeley

In 1106, as Cologne was expanding its city walls, a group of masons discovered the purported mass grave of St. Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins. Under the supervision of neighboring religious houses, the martyrs’ bodies were excavated and exported on what we might call a commercial scale. At least 1,800 skulls were distributed among Cologne’s twelve parish churches, and countless others were translated as ecclesiastical gifts across the archdiocese. By the fourteenth century, as the Rhineland became increasingly urbanized, the relics began figuring in the local economy. Some went into the hands of secular elites and others moved along Hanseatic trade routes. Churches that had long possessed relics of the 11,000 Virgins commissioned new types of sumptuous containers atypical of traditional treasury arts. Rather than being made from precious metals and stones, they were fashioned by local craft industries and secular laborers. Wooden busts were produced in the Rhineland, painted boxes were made in Cologne, and silk veils were sewn and embroidered for skull relics in the Low Countries. Ursula and her companions came to be patrons of economic activity and products of it.

This dissertation explores the ways in which relics, defined as priceless according to canon law, became intertwined with the market. On the one hand, this is a study of mercantile culture affecting understandings of sacred objects and their value: the commoditization of religion, as it were. On the other hand, it puts pressure on such a secularization narrative and considers the persistent role of holy patrimony in conceptualizations of urbanism. Relics’ and reliquaries’ proximity to the market raised vital questions about the ethics of sacred and secular city life and its administration. How could the sacred be valued, and who had the power to decide? Did mercantilism stem from commercialism or saintly patronage? Who should manage marketplaces: temporal or religious powers?