1 - Kiss the Reliquary

Summary

The authority of canon and its structure is not to be found in a study either of the final textual form or the community, but in both, through the dialog between them.

— Donn F. Morgan

The gods of the hearth exist for us still; and let all new faith be tolerant of that fetishism, lest it bruise its own roots.

— George Eliot

Abstract

In Romola George Eliot elucidates the morality of Comtean attitudes to relics and reliquaries. Devotees of Comte’s Religion of Humanity, led by Frederic Harrison, experienced every reliquarian thrill sacramentally, as a sign of grace. Harrison expertly orchestrated the 1901 Millenary of Alfred’s Death to help us all experience these fetishistic thrills unashamedly, collectively, in public. During the 1849 Jubilee of Alfred’s Birth, the thrill of translating Alfred’s burning words into a modern reliquary healed Martin Tupper’s notorious stammer. Can we who today still love Alfred afford to sacrifice such devout thrills of emotion felt by those who locked, kissed, and unlocked the Victorian reliquaries — the Chronicle, the Life, the Works — in which Alfred’s relics, we hope and trust, still lie enshrined?

Keywords: George Eliot, John Allen Giles, John Henry Newman, Reliquary, Nineteenth-century medievalism

One can start with a thrill of emotion.

A thrill that one has experienced oneself.

If this thrill has been experienced by others it can be publicly named.

Naming the thrill allows me to open this book.

The thrill of holding in your own hands material remains of a dearly beloved person. Proof that the one you adore, though now absent, was once present. The exquisite thrill of believing that your love is not unrequited: that what you hold in your hands was destined by your beloved to thrill you here and now.

I wear a locket around my neck. The locket contains a lock of hair. I know that this lock of hair once grew out of my beloved’s living body. This knowledge triggers a thrill of emotion. I take the locket in my hands. I gaze on it. I kiss it.

The lock of hair is a first-class relic. But if not a lock of hair, something else will do.