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At the same time as this extra regulation, the Counter-
Reformation acknowledged that the cult of relics was one of the dis-
tinctive marks of Catholicism, a key point of di?erence from the Prot-
estants. As the Jesuit Cardinal Bellarmine put it, “there is nothing they
shudder at and abhor more”22 than relics. And if relics were a sign that
distinguished you from Protestantism, you wanted as many as possible.
This was the age of the baroque, of demonstrative piety and extrava-
gant ornamentation. It was no longer enough for churches simply to
have relics, buried invisibly beneath the altar; seeing was believing, and
ostentation was the order of the day. Displays of relics became a point
of pride, and important Catholic churches were enriched with glass
cases displaying dozens or hundreds of relics, even whole saintly skele-
tons.

But large displays of relics introduced a problem of supply and
demand. There just weren’t enough saints to go round, especially in
those countries where relics had been lost in outbursts of protestant
zeal. So the rediscovery of the catacombs must have seemed like provi-
dence.

Incredible as it may seem, the Roman catacombs, hundreds of
miles of galleries lined with burial niches, had been almost completely
lost for centuries. It wasn’t until 1578 that they were found again when
workers in a vineyard came across a collapsed area of ground leading
down to mysterious underground chambers. This was just after the
Council of Trent, and when excavators began to discover bodies dating
back to the early years of Christianity it was all too easy to imagine that
they were handling relics of martyrs. Soon whole skeletons were being
exhumed, identi?ed as martyrs on the basis of often quite ?imsy evi-
dence, issued with identity papers, and shipped to Catholic churches all
over Europe. Many of these can still be seen in splendid shrines; in Italy
it was the fashion to enclose the bones in recumbent models of the
saint’s body beneath an altar, but in Germany the skeletons themselves

22 Koudounaris, P., Heavenly Bodies – Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs, Thames
& Hudson, 2013, p 30

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