10 - Revitalising Antiquities

Summary

This chapter explores the post-Reformation afterlives of two rock crystal reliquaries. It examines the biographies of these material artefacts ejected from churches and monasteries in tandem with liturgical items manufactured for following the advent of Protestantism. It investigates how these reliquaries navigated the upheavals of the sixteenth century and were repurposed for the clandestine Catholic community. Such containers for sacred relics were converted into table salts for secular domestic use and continued to be cherished as antiquities long after the Dissolution. Some of these objects were later recycled again as vessels for preserving holy relics, bequeathed in memory of the deceased or presented to mark a life event such as birth, baptism or marriage. This further phase of reuse was enhanced by awareness of their previous purpose and proximity to relics. Some were later given by recusants to religious houses overseas in an effort to preserve the patrimony of the Catholic faith. Such sacred objects reflect the way in which symbolic and spiritual meaning was endorsed by the imaginative memory accrued by subsequent generations within Catholic families and institutions.