The Divine Canine: Cults And Idols From The Middle Ages To Nowadays.
Medieval people worshipped nails, bones and even dogs. Centuries later, has something really changed?
(first published at Exzibit.net on 17 May 2005)
Man has this vital necessity to believe in something. There are simple superstitions, like the number thirteen or a black cat. There is also an age-long tradition of searching for an idol and worshipping it. All the pagan deities and gods had their cults, festivities, temples and relics.
Christianity did not change much, albeit, God knows, it tried hard. The holy groves and temples were cut down or burnt, as were the heretics. And yet over the centuries the Church has created its pantheon of saints, who had their own cults, in whose names the religious festivities were held, to whom cathedrals and chapels were dedicated, where the relics of these saints were preserved. Christianity failed to suppress paganism, but that is not an insult. It simply proves that this burning desire to collect, to own or at the very least to contemplate a part of your idol is deeply imprinted in the collective memory of the mankind.
By the 20th century, very little has changed. There were Elvis and The Beatles, with their icon-like posters glowing on the walls in every teenager’s bedroom. Boys wanted to be like them to be adored by the girls. Girls wanted their boys to look like those idols, so they could adore them. At that point, guys and girls were commonly idolising men. Now we tend to idolise females. Men undergo plastic surgery to look like J. Lo, the bootilicious craze is going over the top, while Britney is still toxic, despite all style and behaviour flops. There are no more sacrifices as such, but there still are prayers and icons.
Having been tarnished by cynicism, nihilism, atheism, etc., society has now left the Church behind. Looking at how celebrities make their money is far more beneficial, and we therefore have religious cults that spring up and subsist strictly within the society, and never in the Church. So, the “saints” do exist, but they are no longer poor or sick. It is nonetheless valid to compare the Middle Ages to the 21st century. Firstly, now, as then, these cults are supported by the multitudes of people, who do not tend to exhaust themselves in separating the wheat from the chaff. A big name is often worshipped alongside something pathetic. Secondly, having found an object of reverence, people fall into a frantic accumulation of the ‘relics’, create outrageous cults or myths, or even zealously follow the path of the idol. In total, there are fantastic, intriguing and oftentimes hilarious examples that link medieval naivety to our post-industrial quest for a hero.
For instance, Robert Torkington went on a pilgrimage in 1516. In his account, which is one of the earliest English travel diaries, he jots down the shrines and relics he had seen on his way. Venice was stocked with ‘the holy bodies and arms’, ‘the faces, the fingers, the teeth’ of the saints, and, quite correctly, he concludes that all this ‘is a great marvel to see’. One of the Cistercian monasteries there preserved a bone of St. Mary Magdalene, and the Benedictine monks stored one of the pots, in which Christ turned water into wine. Some of the most fascinating relics were located in Padua: the rib of St. Bonaventure, the tongue of St. Anthony, ‘yet fair and fresh’”, and the finger of St. Luke ‘that he wrote the gospel with’. And St. John the Baptist’s finger, with which he pointed to Jesus, was preserved both in France and on the Isle of Rhodes.
Fingers and bones were not the only collectables in pious medieval Europe. There were an enormous number of places that claimed to have a chalice, in which Joseph of Arimathea had collected Christ’s blood. Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland was erected especially for the Holy Grail. The oddity of the story is in that a benefactor of the chapel had received the Grail from a Templar a hundred years after the last Templar had died. The quantity of nails from the Cross that was kept in reliquaries across Europe could build a house. And some sites have boasted to have exceptionally rare relics: at one, a faithful could see hay from Jesus’s cradle; at another, he would see the milk of the Holy Virgin.
In the 21st century we still thrive to possess something tangible of our idol. Of course, if someone auctions off a finger of “Freddie Mercury”, he will be put into a lunatic asylum. But why seek for something, which you cannot use to your advantage? The idols are there to fill us with strength, luck, money, and power. So, instead of collecting fingers, try and do what the paparazzi for the National Enquirer have been doing. Say, take a photo of Elvis in his casket. The photo will become an icon itself, but it will also make you an icon for all aspiring paparazzi. And will you live in a place of your dreams, no less known or credited, than Elvis himself.
The exercise of the cults became extremely individual and largely depends on our financial abilities. A character of Christopher Lambert from the film Janis and John (2003) was heavily drugged and drunk, when he “saw” Janis Joplin and John Lennon coming together in to the lavatory, to wash hands. They exchanged glances, and the duo promised to return. Since then Lambert’s character devoted himself and his fortune to creating The Joplin and Lennon Museum, to make them feel at home when they eventually come back. The story may be satirical, yet quite credible.
Then and now, the cults were invented and legends were spread. One of the best known myths of medieval times is related to St. Ursula’s pilgrimage, on which she was accompanied by her servants. A medieval misreading of Latin “XI MV” as ‘11 thousand virgins’ instead of ‘11 virgin martyrs’ has led to a long-lasted mistake, widely commemorated in art. The strangest cult of Saint Guinefort flourished in a village, where the worshippers sent their prayers to none other, but a greyhound.
These days the possibility of such mistakes is dramatically low. The advent of the paparazzi and of the internet meant that there would be no confusion as to what the idol is. Centuries back, the papal inquisitors were frightened to hear that the villagers worship someone hairy, with a tail. Today no-one would have time to get perplexed, because Saint Guinefort would make it in the news before the inquisitors could reach the village. However, it does not mean that there are no longer any myths. Is Elvis alive or not? Films like “The Velvet Goldmine” seem only to support the view that fame can bore a person to the extent that he stages his own death. If we presume that Elvis had not died, aren’t we waiting then for his Second Coming? The bigger the idol, the less people believe that he can perform a human act of death. And it is quite logical, because the gods and kings do not die, do they?
And, finally, we use our idols for deeply humanitarian ends. Once charity has ceased to be an exclusively religious activity, it does sometimes get its money from using celebrities in the most outrageous ways. Even five years ago, celebrity’s pregnant bliss could not be threatened by indiscreet invasion. This time Sky reports that Britney Spears’s pregnancy test was snitched from a bin in her hotel room. It was sent to an auction, and money will go to help disabled and cancer-affected children. Doesn’t it remind you of the milk of Our Lady, a tongue of St. Anthony, or a finger of St. John? The question to ask next is how can this piece of your idol possibly help improve YOUR life? Well, the effects may not be tangible, but at the very least you are making a story for the headlines. And that may only be the beginning…
All these examples prove that people did not change in their basic desires. They still aspire for well-being, money, power, strength, fame, love, all of which incidentally are being idolised, too. And so we use idols to worship idols; we strive to create the Brave New World, locking humanity into a reservation. And whether a bone or a dog, a man will trust in them to make him ever mightier. Is this inability to be strong on your own is also imprinted in our collective memory? I do hope this is just another erroneous belief.
