A look at one of the most important relics of the Middle Ages: the hair of the Virgin Mary.
After Mary, the mother of Jesus, died, or rather fell asleep (dormition) according to the Eastern Catholic tradition, the blessed body was prepared and embalmed according to Jewish custom, according to the visions of the Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824). They placed her white, almost glowing body, in a long basket, and the women cut off some locks of hair to keep as relics. Peter celebrated the Mass on the altar of the oratory temporarily built in Mary’s home and anointed her body, placing on her head a wreath of red, white, and sky-blue flowers as a symbol of Mary’s virginity. While cutting of her hair is common among many cultures to preserve a person’s memory in mourning or friendship, this hair trimming set off a tradition of Marian hair relics that would blossom during the medieval cult of Mary.
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According to Emmerich’s visions and to Church doctrine, Thomas the Apostle arrived after Mary had already been buried, and persuaded the party to reopen Mary’s tomb, only to find it completely empty, save her burial garments and in her place, lilies and roses blooming from the ground. Mary’s assumption into heaven, body and soul, was solidified as one of Marian dogmas by Pope Pius XII in 1950, and thus, on the surface, it seems that no bodily, or first-class relics, remain until we recall that burial tradition (and the tradition of collecting and preserving Mary’s breastmilk in phials and metal containers). In fact, the Church casts doubt on the legitimacy of hair relics that have proliferated around the world—from Byzantine Constantinople to Independence, Missouri. This is the story of how and why Marian ex Capillis (of the hair) relics came to be, their medieval history, and their social and sexual significance.
Once Mary’s hair was shorn during burial preparations, it was held by the Patriarchs of Jerusalem until the 5th century, when according to legend, the Blessed Empress Pulcheria, sister of Theodosius II and wife of Marcia (co-ruler with both), requested the Marian relics be brought directly from Jerusalem to Constantinople, and via her sister-in-law Athenaïs-Eudocia, received some of Mary’s milk, her spindle, and her swaddle-bands (spargana) or girdle. For more than 600 years, Mary’s locks and other Marian relics were held together with the Wood from the True Cross of Jesus and considered the “Palladium of the City” of Constantinople, until Crusaders sacked the city in 1204 and brought them to Europe.
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From there, the relics were taken to Sicily, where the hair was placed in a reliquary at the Duomo di Messina, Sicily, although various other locations said that they received Mary’s hair relics directly from the Crusaders. For example, the provenance of one relic indicates that the bundle of Mary’s hair was brought by the Crusaders to Venice, where it is venerated in the Basilica of Saint Mark, where the reliquary bears the personal seal of Pope Pius VI. Other popes, including Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) and Pope Sergius II (papacy from 844-847), allegedly had relics of Mary’s hair, the latter’s are now housed in Emmerich, Germany. Other sites that reported housed Marian relics include Saint Eucharius-Matthias in 1148, Saint Mary of the Martyrs in Trier in 1209, the Cistercian Abbey of Himmerrode in 1170, and the Benedictine Monastery of Prüfening in 1282. In 1283 some of Mary’s hair was deposited in a reliquary at the Augustinian Monastery in Ranshofen, Austria as well as in Linköping, Sweden.
Charlemagne was even rumored to possess a Marian hair relic, the “Talisman of Charlemayne,” containing Mary’s hair in a reliquary encrusted with gold, precious gemstones, and pearls.
Talisman of Charlemagne, Musée du Palais du Tau – Wikimedia Commons
Before delving into this interesting medieval tradition, it’s critical to understand how and why relics of saints, Mary, and Christ’s crucifixion were collected and venerated. According to the decree of the 25th Session of the Council of Trent (1563), bishops and other church leaders are responsible for educating their parishioners that:
holy bodies of holy martyrs and of others now living with Christ [—whose bodies were the living members of Christ and ‘the temple of the Holy Spirit (I Cor 6:19) and who are by Him to be raised to eternal life and to be glorified] are to be venerated by the faithful, for through these [bodies] many benefits are bestowed by God on men.
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The key word here is ‘venerated” because according to the Catholic Church—and this has been a major point of tension—Catholics do not worship Mary as a divine being. Instead, the mother of God serves as Mediatrix between God’s children and God.
There are three different classes of relics, the first two considered significant. Significant or first-class relics refer to the body or notable parts of the body or the sum total of the ashes of a saint. Non-significant or second-class relics are small fragments of a person’s body, such as a finger bone or section of skin, along with objects which have come into direct contact with significant relics, such as a section of cloth that has touched said finger or skin. The most well-known Marian relics are entirely secondary, or non-significant, particularly Mary’s girdle—legend has Mary herself tossed down to Thomas the Apostle as evidence of her assumption or her robe, both of which resided in Byzantine Constantinople where she was a central figure in Byzantine spirituality and viewed as the protectress of Constantine.
Many other secondary Marian relics exist, including her engagement ring located at the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, veils (split into many pieces but the best known residing in the cathedral of Chartres in France), shoes previously held at the Cistercian Abbey Maria Ophoven (but which were stolen in 1826), casket, and burial clothes. During the early medieval era, specifically the Romanesque period (c. 1000-1200), the cult of the relic—or the spiritual tourism of pilgrims traveling far to visit churches with relic collections and spending money on the journey, in the specific town, and at the church—was at its peak, right after the Council of Ephesus (431) sanctioned the cult of the Virgin as Mother of God, and the creation and distribution of images of Mary and Jesus. Less than four centuries later, the Second Council of Nicaea (787) declared that no church should be dedicated without relics.
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A gold reliquary containing relics of St. Mary’s hair and veil located at the Saint Mary of Sorrows Church in Fairfax, Virginia. Photo by Nheyob / Wikimedia Commons
During the cult of relics, hair was often the determining factor in whether the body of a saint was deemed incorruptible (1 Cor 15:42). If the hair of an exhumed saint was perfectly preserved, it served as evidence of the saint’s holiness and challenged doubters. At the same time, Mary’s hair (just like her breastmilk) was said to have apotropaic powers, the best example being the hair of Hildegard of Bingen upset a demon possessing a woman.
At the time, first-class saint relics were in high demand, especially first-class relics of the mother of God or remains of the body of the woman who carried Jesus (Mary’s breastmilk played a key role in medieval alchemy and medicine as a fertility treatment). In medieval Europe, hair—as it was during Mary’s time—was a marker of status, maturity, and virility and as such, was used to communicate marital status and sexuality in hagiography depicting female saints in triptychs, illustrated manuscripts, and icons. Saints deemed guilty of sexual wrongs, such as Mary of Egypt and Mary Magdalene, were shown covered in long, wild hair mimicking hirsutism. Mary’s hair was notably tidy and veiled, whereas Mary Magdalene’s hair was depicted wild, long and curly, and in explicit portraits reinforcing this sexual “sinhood,” draped over her torso, breasts still showing. But there were exceptions to this rule, such as Giovanni Baronzio’s The Crucifixion, depicting Mary with long wavy hair caressing her gown, which one scholar argued emphasized a virginal, yet motherly Mary in a chapel surrounded by iconography representing human fertility.
Traditionally as a Jewish woman, Mary would have worn a veil in public, when she was betrothed, married, and a mother, which significantly influenced Christian and Catholic veiling customs. Identified as the first consecrated Christian virgin, a woman who herself was said to become a tabernacle for the living body of Jesus influencing twenty-first-century women readopting veiling, she was and is depicted in the color of purity, blue, or white.
For consecrated women in Mary’s time and during the Middle Ages, a woman cutting her hair was seen as an anticipated sacrifice for God, symbolizing their chastity (in parallel to Mary’s continued virginity) and although likely part of hair collection practices at the time, revisiting pieces of Mary’s hair (on public display) was a way to reinforce her virginity and consecration, and thus how Mary’s hair (as was medieval social custom) reflected her spiritual status. Some scholars even argue that when medieval women ascetics cut their hair, and like Mary turned their back on sexual procreation, they took on the social and spiritual role of men.
Advertisement
Thus, the gender-bending power of cutting and viewing hair also complicated Mary’s role at the same time that the church was still cementing that both relics and Mary herself were only to be venerated, not worshipped—a hot topic from the fourth century onward as the Church debated the orthodoxy or idolatry of relics veneration. As Catholic scholar Andrew Greeley writes in his book The Mary Myth, Mary references what many goddesses throughout time have provided—that divinity has both male and female attributes. As Christian writer Elizabeth Morgan reflects:
Mary, being the God-bearer, embodies the importance of sexual differentiation, that which signifies both our identity limitations and the range of possibilities to which humans are heir.
As a representative of the best, or rather most holy human existence, she showcases godliness through traditional feminine roles.
Thus, relics of her hair, as a symbol of her womanhood and sexuality, represented material evidence for Mary’s divine femininity, right during a period when Catholicism was subsuming localized gods and goddesses during its spread across Europe. To expel pagan feminine celebrations, Jesuits conflated Mary with other figures of divine womanhood, replacing pagan may festivals with spring pageants for the queen of Heaven. During the medieval era, as today, there was a need for a divine feminine, and Mary at the peak of her cult (and today with the rise of Goddess Worship in western Europe and the Americas) fulfilled this role. New Marian cults have even begun developing around the world, including the Temple of Mary founded by Sri Hettienne BhaktyMayi Maria Ma who creates box relics holding soil, insects, water, and dust collected from sites of Marian apparitions around the world.
Thus, medieval relics of Mary’s hair continue to influence Marian veneration and devotion and still exist around the world to this day, albeit not widely known even by current members of the Catholic Church. In fact, in 2020, eBay came under fire when someone listed a silver-plated reliquary containing locks of Mary’s hair for just over $2,000. The small, miniscule relic encased in a highly decorative reliquary is strikingly similar to many others on the market, such as one that exists in the collection of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the University of Notre Dame’s campus and of Leila’s Hair Museum in Independence, Missouri. Trading and selling relics is not new (although it is not allowed by the Church, according to the “Relics in the Church” published by the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints —medieval popes were known to distribute relics of Mary’s hair to European noble families, but as sales skyrocket in recent years, people around the world are re-encountering the strange yet fascinating medieval cult of Mary’s hair.
Emma Cieslik is a religious scholar and museum worker based in Washington, DC. She is particularly interested in the intersections of gender, sexuality, and religion, especially in the context of material culture.
Top Image: British Library MS Add. 18193, fol. 48v
By Emma Cieslik
A look at one of the most important relics of the Middle Ages: the hair of the Virgin Mary.
After Mary, the mother of Jesus, died, or rather fell asleep (dormition) according to the Eastern Catholic tradition, the blessed body was prepared and embalmed according to Jewish custom, according to the visions of the Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824). They placed her white, almost glowing body, in a long basket, and the women cut off some locks of hair to keep as relics. Peter celebrated the Mass on the altar of the oratory temporarily built in Mary’s home and anointed her body, placing on her head a wreath of red, white, and sky-blue flowers as a symbol of Mary’s virginity. While cutting of her hair is common among many cultures to preserve a person’s memory in mourning or friendship, this hair trimming set off a tradition of Marian hair relics that would blossom during the medieval cult of Mary.
According to Emmerich’s visions and to Church doctrine, Thomas the Apostle arrived after Mary had already been buried, and persuaded the party to reopen Mary’s tomb, only to find it completely empty, save her burial garments and in her place, lilies and roses blooming from the ground. Mary’s assumption into heaven, body and soul, was solidified as one of Marian dogmas by Pope Pius XII in 1950, and thus, on the surface, it seems that no bodily, or first-class relics, remain until we recall that burial tradition (and the tradition of collecting and preserving Mary’s breastmilk in phials and metal containers). In fact, the Church casts doubt on the legitimacy of hair relics that have proliferated around the world—from Byzantine Constantinople to Independence, Missouri. This is the story of how and why Marian ex Capillis (of the hair) relics came to be, their medieval history, and their social and sexual significance.
Once Mary’s hair was shorn during burial preparations, it was held by the Patriarchs of Jerusalem until the 5th century, when according to legend, the Blessed Empress Pulcheria, sister of Theodosius II and wife of Marcia (co-ruler with both), requested the Marian relics be brought directly from Jerusalem to Constantinople, and via her sister-in-law Athenaïs-Eudocia, received some of Mary’s milk, her spindle, and her swaddle-bands (spargana) or girdle. For more than 600 years, Mary’s locks and other Marian relics were held together with the Wood from the True Cross of Jesus and considered the “Palladium of the City” of Constantinople, until Crusaders sacked the city in 1204 and brought them to Europe.
From there, the relics were taken to Sicily, where the hair was placed in a reliquary at the Duomo di Messina, Sicily, although various other locations said that they received Mary’s hair relics directly from the Crusaders. For example, the provenance of one relic indicates that the bundle of Mary’s hair was brought by the Crusaders to Venice, where it is venerated in the Basilica of Saint Mark, where the reliquary bears the personal seal of Pope Pius VI. Other popes, including Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) and Pope Sergius II (papacy from 844-847), allegedly had relics of Mary’s hair, the latter’s are now housed in Emmerich, Germany. Other sites that reported housed Marian relics include Saint Eucharius-Matthias in 1148, Saint Mary of the Martyrs in Trier in 1209, the Cistercian Abbey of Himmerrode in 1170, and the Benedictine Monastery of Prüfening in 1282. In 1283 some of Mary’s hair was deposited in a reliquary at the Augustinian Monastery in Ranshofen, Austria as well as in Linköping, Sweden.
Charlemagne was even rumored to possess a Marian hair relic, the “Talisman of Charlemayne,” containing Mary’s hair in a reliquary encrusted with gold, precious gemstones, and pearls.
Before delving into this interesting medieval tradition, it’s critical to understand how and why relics of saints, Mary, and Christ’s crucifixion were collected and venerated. According to the decree of the 25th Session of the Council of Trent (1563), bishops and other church leaders are responsible for educating their parishioners that:
holy bodies of holy martyrs and of others now living with Christ [—whose bodies were the living members of Christ and ‘the temple of the Holy Spirit (I Cor 6:19) and who are by Him to be raised to eternal life and to be glorified] are to be venerated by the faithful, for through these [bodies] many benefits are bestowed by God on men.
The key word here is ‘venerated” because according to the Catholic Church—and this has been a major point of tension—Catholics do not worship Mary as a divine being. Instead, the mother of God serves as Mediatrix between God’s children and God.
There are three different classes of relics, the first two considered significant. Significant or first-class relics refer to the body or notable parts of the body or the sum total of the ashes of a saint. Non-significant or second-class relics are small fragments of a person’s body, such as a finger bone or section of skin, along with objects which have come into direct contact with significant relics, such as a section of cloth that has touched said finger or skin. The most well-known Marian relics are entirely secondary, or non-significant, particularly Mary’s girdle—legend has Mary herself tossed down to Thomas the Apostle as evidence of her assumption or her robe, both of which resided in Byzantine Constantinople where she was a central figure in Byzantine spirituality and viewed as the protectress of Constantine.
Many other secondary Marian relics exist, including her engagement ring located at the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, veils (split into many pieces but the best known residing in the cathedral of Chartres in France), shoes previously held at the Cistercian Abbey Maria Ophoven (but which were stolen in 1826), casket, and burial clothes. During the early medieval era, specifically the Romanesque period (c. 1000-1200), the cult of the relic—or the spiritual tourism of pilgrims traveling far to visit churches with relic collections and spending money on the journey, in the specific town, and at the church—was at its peak, right after the Council of Ephesus (431) sanctioned the cult of the Virgin as Mother of God, and the creation and distribution of images of Mary and Jesus. Less than four centuries later, the Second Council of Nicaea (787) declared that no church should be dedicated without relics.
During the cult of relics, hair was often the determining factor in whether the body of a saint was deemed incorruptible (1 Cor 15:42). If the hair of an exhumed saint was perfectly preserved, it served as evidence of the saint’s holiness and challenged doubters. At the same time, Mary’s hair (just like her breastmilk) was said to have apotropaic powers, the best example being the hair of Hildegard of Bingen upset a demon possessing a woman.
At the time, first-class saint relics were in high demand, especially first-class relics of the mother of God or remains of the body of the woman who carried Jesus (Mary’s breastmilk played a key role in medieval alchemy and medicine as a fertility treatment). In medieval Europe, hair—as it was during Mary’s time—was a marker of status, maturity, and virility and as such, was used to communicate marital status and sexuality in hagiography depicting female saints in triptychs, illustrated manuscripts, and icons. Saints deemed guilty of sexual wrongs, such as Mary of Egypt and Mary Magdalene, were shown covered in long, wild hair mimicking hirsutism. Mary’s hair was notably tidy and veiled, whereas Mary Magdalene’s hair was depicted wild, long and curly, and in explicit portraits reinforcing this sexual “sinhood,” draped over her torso, breasts still showing. But there were exceptions to this rule, such as Giovanni Baronzio’s The Crucifixion, depicting Mary with long wavy hair caressing her gown, which one scholar argued emphasized a virginal, yet motherly Mary in a chapel surrounded by iconography representing human fertility.
Traditionally as a Jewish woman, Mary would have worn a veil in public, when she was betrothed, married, and a mother, which significantly influenced Christian and Catholic veiling customs. Identified as the first consecrated Christian virgin, a woman who herself was said to become a tabernacle for the living body of Jesus influencing twenty-first-century women readopting veiling, she was and is depicted in the color of purity, blue, or white.
For consecrated women in Mary’s time and during the Middle Ages, a woman cutting her hair was seen as an anticipated sacrifice for God, symbolizing their chastity (in parallel to Mary’s continued virginity) and although likely part of hair collection practices at the time, revisiting pieces of Mary’s hair (on public display) was a way to reinforce her virginity and consecration, and thus how Mary’s hair (as was medieval social custom) reflected her spiritual status. Some scholars even argue that when medieval women ascetics cut their hair, and like Mary turned their back on sexual procreation, they took on the social and spiritual role of men.
Thus, the gender-bending power of cutting and viewing hair also complicated Mary’s role at the same time that the church was still cementing that both relics and Mary herself were only to be venerated, not worshipped—a hot topic from the fourth century onward as the Church debated the orthodoxy or idolatry of relics veneration. As Catholic scholar Andrew Greeley writes in his book The Mary Myth, Mary references what many goddesses throughout time have provided—that divinity has both male and female attributes. As Christian writer Elizabeth Morgan reflects:
Mary, being the God-bearer, embodies the importance of sexual differentiation, that which signifies both our identity limitations and the range of possibilities to which humans are heir.
As a representative of the best, or rather most holy human existence, she showcases godliness through traditional feminine roles.
Thus, relics of her hair, as a symbol of her womanhood and sexuality, represented material evidence for Mary’s divine femininity, right during a period when Catholicism was subsuming localized gods and goddesses during its spread across Europe. To expel pagan feminine celebrations, Jesuits conflated Mary with other figures of divine womanhood, replacing pagan may festivals with spring pageants for the queen of Heaven. During the medieval era, as today, there was a need for a divine feminine, and Mary at the peak of her cult (and today with the rise of Goddess Worship in western Europe and the Americas) fulfilled this role. New Marian cults have even begun developing around the world, including the Temple of Mary founded by Sri Hettienne BhaktyMayi Maria Ma who creates box relics holding soil, insects, water, and dust collected from sites of Marian apparitions around the world.
Thus, medieval relics of Mary’s hair continue to influence Marian veneration and devotion and still exist around the world to this day, albeit not widely known even by current members of the Catholic Church. In fact, in 2020, eBay came under fire when someone listed a silver-plated reliquary containing locks of Mary’s hair for just over $2,000. The small, miniscule relic encased in a highly decorative reliquary is strikingly similar to many others on the market, such as one that exists in the collection of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the University of Notre Dame’s campus and of Leila’s Hair Museum in Independence, Missouri. Trading and selling relics is not new (although it is not allowed by the Church, according to the “Relics in the Church” published by the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints —medieval popes were known to distribute relics of Mary’s hair to European noble families, but as sales skyrocket in recent years, people around the world are re-encountering the strange yet fascinating medieval cult of Mary’s hair.
Emma Cieslik is a religious scholar and museum worker based in Washington, DC. She is particularly interested in the intersections of gender, sexuality, and religion, especially in the context of material culture.
Top Image: British Library MS Add. 18193, fol. 48v
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