Christianity is often manifested in popular culture through celebrations like Christmas and Easteror icons like lambs and fish. You see it less often associated with blood bottles and disembodied heads. Yet like The new Hochelaga video above reveals that the most famous Christian artefacts tend towards the horrible. Let us take a particularly renowned example, the turin shroud: listen to the name, and you imagine a cloth bearing the image of Jesus Christ. But think about it for a moment, and you remember that it is the packaging stained with a crucified body-that is to say if the tales told about this are true in the first place.
As with all religious relics, you have to decide for yourself what to believe in all this. If you visit the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua, you will see the exhibition jaw preserved Of this holy figure – which is at least like a real human jaw. In the south-east of France, at the Basilica of Saint-Maximin-la-Saite-Baume, you will find A skull claimed to be that of Marie Madeleine.
And we certainly cannot exclude that it is really speculative that evidence can be. The situation becomes a little more complicated with the head of Jean-Baptiste-or rather the heads of Jean-Baptiste, four of whom have been claimed so far in different places.
“In the Middle Ages, the relics were in great demand, and there were always people ready to provide them,” said Tommie Trelawny, creator of Hochelaga. “He often joked by saying that if you gathered all the alleged fragments of the real cross, you would have enough wood to build a small forest.” Even Turin's shroud has been the subject of ruthless control. Dating to the radiocarbon placed it in the middle of the fourth century, involving a counterfeit, but more recent X -ray tests suggest that its linen was done in the first century, between the years 55 and 74: quite close to what we understand as the time of the burial of Jesus. Debates on the authenticity of all these artefacts will continue for centuries – and most likely millennia – to come, but their powerful incarnation of “the” deeply disturbing and haunting beauty “will not disappear so early.
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Based in Seoul, Colin MArshall Written and broadcastTS on cities, language and culture. His projects include the substack newsletter Books on cities And the book The stateless city: a walk through Los Angeles from the 21st century. Follow it on the social network formerly known as Twitter in @ColinmArshall.
At Learnopoly, Finn has championed a mission to deliver unbiased, in-depth reviews of online courses that empower learners to make well-informed decisions. With over a decade of experience in financial services, he has honed his expertise in strategic partnerships and business development, cultivating both a sharp analytical perspective and a collaborative spirit. A lifelong learner, Finn’s commitment to creating a trusted guide for online education was ignited by a frustrating encounter with biased course reviews.