What does this tell us about the Crusades?
This priest and his reliquary teach us two important things about the Crusades: it shows the importance of relics as proof of successful trips to the East and stands as a reminder that the Christian side of the Crusade was not all white.
As discussed, the cult of relics dates all the way back to the dawn of Christianity. Through relics, believers could connect to the inspirational figures they had lost and preserve their holiness through veneration. This core to the practice never changed. Though the definition of who left relics, what constituted a relic (primary, secondary, tertiary), and how exactly they were displayed changed slowly over time, the core ideal of saintly veneration through Earthly remains lives on. During the Crusades, relics were more mobile than ever before, with a flood of them making their way into Western Europe. There, they were either preserved in their highly valued original reliquaries or, if they were brought back loose, lovingly made new ones of the finest materials. Yes, over time they earned the new connotation as a status symbol for the elite. Yes, they were stolen and sold on the black market. However, this does not devalue their use as important and salient tools of celebration of the Christian faith.
It is also extremely important to remember that Christianity is not limited to Europe; it originated in the Middle East and North Africa. The mummy portraits of Roman Egypt bear strong resemblance to Byzantine icons and could be seen as a predecessor to them. Many trends in the way Mary is depicted resemble depictions of the Egyptian Goddess Isis. St Macarius was from Shabsheer, a village not too far northwest of modern-day Cairo. He is considered one of the fathers of monasticism and his monastery still stands to this day, populated by monks. He is a saint in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox Churches, with icons of him around even today. While he may not be at the forefront of current Western Catholic education, he was important enough to Crusaders or traders to get a sliver of his fabric wrapped arm bone back to France to be venerated. Even so, documentation shows that many crusaders slaughtered whoever they saw as "other", including non-white Christians. If that level of cognitive dissonance was easy for them, neglecting the figures of color present throughout Christian history cannot be too difficult today. This reliquary reminds us of the forgotten figures and believers in the wider Christian doctrine.
