Ever wonder what happened to all the altars, altar rails, ambos, reredos and things that they pulled out of the churches in the 1960's? Many of them have been located, salvaged and are for sale on the Internet now. Check out this website for some amazing architectural items that would help spice up our iconoclastic-modernist parishes (they're a bit pricy, however).
I can do you one better, I'm afraid: Just take a stroll through eBay's "saints relics" (no apostrophe). Behold the treasures of Christendom bought and sold to the highest bidder!
ReplyDelete(I have contacted eBay about the sale of relics, seeing as their policy is to forbid the sale of "human remains." I was e-mailed back a form letter saying that, essentially, if the seller doesn't list them as "human remains," there is nothing eBay can [read: WILL] do. These are all, to be sure, listed as second- or third-class relics, no doubt to largely avoid any entanglements with eBay...)
THIS* trafficker is especially offensive; his store isn't impressive at the moment, but I've seen him auction off relics of apostles, martyrs (one of St. Joan of Arc sold for thousands of dollars around Thanksgiving), confessors, popes, etc. He and his supplier should be drawn-and-quartered....
ReplyDeletehttp://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZreligiousstatue
I'd say if he claims to have relics of Joan of Arc, they are false. Remember, Joan died among enemies who would not have wanted to save any of her ashes.
ReplyDeleteHer other stuff (banner, sword, armor, etc.) were systematically destroyed at the time of the Revolution by the atheist revolutionaries who hated her legacy. This is documented in Mark Twain's historically accurate novel on her. He puts it quite succinctly (and sadly) when he says, "There now remains nothing on ths earth that was touched by the Maid."
Boniface
No doubt Mark Twain is right, and the trafficker is also a huckster.
ReplyDeleteHave you nonetheless heard of the St. Joan Chapel at Marquette University? It was shipped stone-by-stone from France in 1927, and claims to have a "St Joan Stone":
"Added to the Chapel were two important and priceless treasures...with which numerous legends are associated: the early Gothic altar and the famous Joan of Arc Stone. The stories surrounding the latter are especially interesting. They tell of how Joan of Arc (1412-31) prayed before a statue of Our Lady standing on this stone and at the end of her petition kissed the stone which ever since has been colder than the stones surrounding it. What seems certain is that the niche, of which it is a part, is of the same period as Joan of Arc and as the Chapel."
--from: http://www.mu.edu/chapel/history/index.shtml
A great website to learn the history of Joan of Arc is MaidofHeaven.com It even contains the complete book about Joan of Arc by Mark Twain.
ReplyDelete