The relic treasure of S. Chiara

Relic box, second half of the 17th cent., Museo dell'Opera di Santa Chiara

Ever since the first centuries of the Christian era, the mortal remains of saints, as well as objects which through various forms of contact with saints had acquired their powers, became precious relics to be cherished and owned as tangible signs of the saint’s supernatural presence and, hence, his or her protection. Thus, hair, limbs, blood, fingers, and even the brain and viscera of saints, as well as their clothes or parts thereof, crucifixes, wreaths, and any other object connected to their life or martyrdom were placed in reliquaries of various makes to safeguard them, and entered into a vast circuit of donations. The corpus of relics and reliquaries of the monastery of St. Clare began to build up ever since its foundation thanks to the numerous gifts of its Angevine founders. With time, in an atmosphere of growing devoutness, the treasure increased through donations by private individuals and the professed nuns themselves, not to mention all that the monastery must certainly have received from nuns who moved in from other communities in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and after the suppressions of other monasteries in the nineteenth century (Donnaromita, Donnalbina, Donnaregina, Divino Amore, and La Sapienza). Unfortunately, however, very little remain of this treasure of art and devotion, mainly due to the historical vicissitudes of the religious complex. Some old descriptions and inventories, mostly of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, help us to understand what was there at the time. They mention, among other things, many relics (both body parts and objects) of St. Ludwig, bishop of Toulouse and brother of king Robert; precious reliquaries containing arms (of St. Stephan, St. Catherine, and St. Andrea), fingers (of St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. John the Baptist) and various bones and relics (of St. Ursula, St. Bartholomew, St. Anne, St. Elisabeth of Hungary, St. Thomas of Canterbury, St. Anthony the Abbot, etc.); St. Francis’ frock; the hair, a bone, and the dress of St. Clare; and even some hair and milk of the Virgin Mary, the baby Jesus’ “layette”, and objects of Christ’s passion, including a thorn, a rope, a column, and the Sindon. Among the earliest still preserved reliquaries on display in the Museo dell’Opera are a bust of St. Bartholomew (of 1470) and a reliquary with the arm of St. Andrew (earlier than 1440). There are also reliquaries which, although they allegedly hold the relics of saints mentioned in the earlier sources, have been dated to more recent times.