Pilgrim flasks from the Holy Land were some of the most prized glass objects to enter the Latin West, not necessarily for their material value, but rather for their sacred contents.8 Despite changing political fortunes and increased expense and danger, Christians continually made pilgrimages to the Holy Land from the fourth century onwards.9 Spiritual tourists to the loca sancta were interested in making physical contact with the Biblical landscape and, if possible, bringing back a tangi-ble reminder of this experience, a practice that was well established at least by the sixth century.10 Christians venerated the remains of saints throughout the medieval and Renaissance periods and found them a powerful source of devotional inspira-tion. The most valuable object a Christian could encounter was a primary relic, that is, a fragment of a holy person’s body. Because primary relics were such exceptional cases they were oftentimes controlled by their elite owners or highly regulated by church officials and thus not readily accessible to the average pilgrim. The same was true for secondary relics, objects owned by a saint or objects that had made extensive physical contact with a saint. Much more available to the average pilgrim were tertiary relics, objects or liquids that had been placed in close proximity to a relic thereby obtaining some of the relic’s virtue. These sometimes took the form of brandea (strips of cloth temporarily placed near a relic) or eulogia (term meaning
“blessing” and used to describe other substances placed near relics).
Some of the most coveted eulogia included oil from the Holy Sepulcher; bal-sam from Matarieh, which marked the spot where the Holy Family had spent time on their flight into Egypt; oil-like “tears” cried by an icon of St. Mary at Serdinale; oil from lamps in sacred settings; wax from candles in significant shrines or locations; and water and soil from holy sites.11 Another type was oil that was imbued with the sanctity of relics by way of contact with primary relics. At many sites throughout the Holy Land liquid substances such as oil were used to anoint holy remains and, after the ritual, the oil was gathered into small vessels and dis-tributed to pilgrims. Or in other cases vessels prefilled with oil were placed near the primary relic during the ceremony and given to visitors afterwards.12 These containers could be made from a variety of materials such as terracotta or metal but those of greatest interest to this study were the ones made from glass.
One of the earliest documented records of a glass reliquary obtained in the Holy Land and brought to the West comes from the account of the Franciscan friar Salimbene, who records how his Franciscan brother served as a missionary in Egypt during the second crusade of King Louis IX in 1270 and “brought home Manna in a vessel of glass” along with other important relics such as water from
the well at Matarieh and balsam wood.13 Salimbene does not specify the material of the containers used to store the water or wood but he does specifically describe that the vessel containing the manna was made from glass. Although he does not elaborate on the appearance of glass vessel, it is tempting to think that Salimbene mentioned the glass object because it caught his attention for some reason. Per-haps it was because, as will be argued later in this chapter, glass—especially trans-parent or highly translucent glass—was ripe with potential Christian symbolism by the late thirteenth century and throughout the fourteenth century and its use as a vehicle for eulogia made it all the more captivating.
A later pilgrimage account from ca. 1350 provides a description of the dis-tribution of glass jars at a holy site. When making a visit to the holy image of the Virgin near Damascus an anonymous pilgrim records how the sacred painting was “entirely converted into a fleshy substance, so that it ceases not night and day to emit a sacred oil, which the pilgrims who come there from every quarter carry away in little glass jars.”14 This account is especially informative because the pilgrim does not mention a variety of different types of vessels available at the site. Rather his comment suggests that the flasks were made exclusively, or at least primarily, from glass. Such a situation is not surprising considering that Syria was well known for its glass production and therefore glass would have been readily available in this region. It is also possible that Christian pilgrims made connections between their glass reliquaries and the local glass industry, a theory supported by another pilgrimage account by Lionardo Frescobaldi.
During his trip to Hebron in 1382 Frescobaldi recorded that he observed many people gathering sacred oil from the tomb of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As he writes,
“From the grave of the said patriarch a certain oil is got, in which the Saracens, the Jews and all the Christians of these parts, as we also, have great faith, and some of us got some of it.”15 Though he does not specify the material of the jars, immediately after making this comment he notes that Hebron “is a very beautiful city and a beau-tiful country, and very industrious and they do there the finest work in glass, and more than in any place I have been.”16 Thus it is possible that some, if not most, of the containers here were made from glass. That Frescobaldi connects his experience obtaining relics to the area’s glass production suggests that this pilgrim, and perhaps others, may have been conscious of the correlation between the objects and their method of production, a theory considered in more detail below.
The large number of extant glass pilgrim flasks of eastern origin now found in western collections attests to their popularity, especially considering the decreased chance of survival of such fragile objects. Generally speaking two main types of vessels were used as pilgrim reliquaries: flasks and bottles. Pilgrim flasks, called
ampullae, are usually small, somewhat flat, rounded vessels with handles con-necting the neck to the body. Fine examples of glass ampullae can be found in the Cleveland Museum of Art (inventory no. 1999.235), Smith College Museum (inventory no. 1954:68–97, 1954:68–98, 1954:68–17), and Brooklyn Museum (Figure 4.2). While many surviving examples are also made from clay and metal, this study will focus on those made of transparent and relatively colorless glass because, as I argue, these objects had certain advantages over other materials.
Figure 4.2: Roman Workshop, Pilgrim Flask, 1st−5th century, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Gift of the executors of the Estate of Colonel Michael Friedsam (32.739). Source: Brooklyn Museum (CC BY).
Examples of the second category of container, typically cataloged as a bottle or jug, are found in museum collections throughout the world with particularly good examples found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Figure 4.3).17 Dan Barag’s research on this type analyzed the Christian and Jewish iconography fea-tured on the bottles, established their method of production, and described their function as reliquaries.18 The vessels in Barag’s group were all made with similar molds and workshop practices and typically feature hexagonal bases, long necks, tubular handles, and widening lips.19
Figure 4.3: Roman-Syrian Workshop, Glass Hexagonal Jug, 6th−early 7th century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (X.243). Source: Public Domain, The Metro-politan Museum of Art (CC0).
Other, more lavish examples of glass reliquaries brought from the Holy Land into the Latin West include a group studied by Avinoam Shalem that consists of four clear glass vessels used as reliquaries or as decoration for reliquaries.20 The first beaker, now in the treasury of the Cathedral of St. Paulus in Münster, was incor-porated into a turriform reliquary during the thirteenth century while the second example, now in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, was treated in a simi-lar manner sometime in the following century.21 Shalem’s other two case studies, enameled bottles now in the Cathedral of St. Stephen in Vienna, were thought to have arrived in Vienna in 1363 containing earth stained with blood from the massacre of the innocents and may have been carried by Rudolf IV upon his return from Constantinople.22 Though not all glass reliquaries were displayed in such sumptuous ways as these, if a vessel had been used to transport relics it would have certainly been imbued with sacred associations by virtue of contact with relics.
The numerous extant glass reliquaries and references to them in pilgrimage accounts raise important questions about the reception of glass and its relation-ship to relics. It seems counterintuitive to use such a fragile medium to trans-port something as precious as a holy relic and yet the evidence suggests it was commonly the case. This leads one to consider that perhaps these glass ampullae offered something even more important than durability. Transparent or highly translucent glass vessels provided a visual affirmation of and connection to the holy relic. They could simultaneously reveal and protect their contents in a way most other materials could not. As will be discussed shortly, rock crystal also had this capability but glass may have been better suited to this specific task, as Isidore of Seville suggests when he observes, “Anything contained inside other materials is hidden, but any sort of liquid or visible thing contained in glass is displayed to the outside; although closed up, in a certain way the contents are revealed.”23