what where holy relics and why were they important to the cathedral & to the generl public? (13 centry_?

Question

frishmen history

Answer 1

'Relics' were artifacts and the remains from the persecutions of Jesus Christ, his apostles, and the early Christians.

So the relics would be the chains which held St. Peter, pieces of wood from the original cross on which Christ was crucified, or fragments of clothing from the various Saints, or a bit of bone from a Saint or a martyed Christian, etc.

The relics were important to the Church as important evidence for the existance of the individuals found in the Bible, they were important as Holy objects, they were important as objects of respect and, in some cases, worship, and relics gave grace to those in possession of them.

Don't forget that a Cathedral is just a Church for the worship of God.

Answer 2

Anything that could be connected to the early church was considered a holy relic, from the bones of saints to pieces of the true cross. Almost every church had some relics, but their authenticity is pretty questionable. St. Catherine, the mother of Constantine the Great, was the first one to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and she decided which sites were the ones we consider the holy sites now, from the birthplace of Jesus to where he was crucufied. But the way she decided this was by listening to legends, and torturing wise men of the area into telling her where the sites were, so I'd consider the authenticity of those sites to be a little questionable, too. She is the one who decided she'd found the true cross, even though she found it in the 4th century, 300 years after the crucifixion. She split it up into 4 pieces and sent them to 4 different churches, which would have had current archeologists howling, because it was believed that any part of the cross would be as holy as the whole thing.

Answer 3

Holy relics were bones of saints and peices of the "true cross." Every church had one relic. They were connections to saints and to the savior.