Custodire il sacro: reliquiari del primo millennio (IV-X secolo). Linee tematiche e spunti di ricerca

Reliquaries represent a category of artefacts with several values, both material and symbolic, which historiography is only recently bringing to light. This paper aims at introducing a series of contributions dedicated to this particular type of container, on which the attention of various scholars was focused during a conference held in Vercelli in January 2021. The aim was to present the wealth of perspectives, in terms of data and methodology, that the analysis of these objects can entail. The complexity of the theme is declined on the functional level (containers for relics and/or Holy Bread), on the typological one, in the diversification of the forms and their evolution from a diachronic point of view, but also on the ideological one, with all the implications that the contact of the container with the Sacred (viz the relic) foresees. Furthermore, reliquaries turn out to be mobile materials, involved in long-distance circuits and sometimes they appear as very long-lived artefacts, objects of secular devotion or hoarding.