This exceedingly rare broadside and later silk pillow relic with dependent authentication document, both associated with the Italian basilica of San Ciriaco in Ancona, combine to offer us a rare composite glimpse into the material circumstances of post-Tridentine Roman Catholic pilgrimage and reliquary culture. The earlier broadside enumerates for visitors to the basilica more than two dozen relics of saints preserved there, including “the right foot in flesh and bone of St. Anne, mother of the most glorious Virgin Mary”; a spina della corona from Christ’s crown of thorns; and the heads of both St. Peter and St. Paul. This handlist even includes the miraculously preserved body of St. Ciriaco himself who, according to local Ancona tradition, was St. Judas Cyriacus, a Jew who had revealed to the Empress Helena the hidden location of the True Cross. and therefore of tremendous (local) importance because of his historic association with that ultimate of physical relics. Judas Cyriacus was believed to have converted as a result of this revelation and subsequently martyred under the presecutions of Julian the Apostate. His relics, translated to the basilica in the eleventh century and maintained there to the present day, are also especially meaningful as Ancona was a major port of embarkation for pilgrims journeying to the Holy Land and thus also an entrepôt for the transmission of relics from the Levant into Europe.

This humble single-sheet broadside and elaborate signed-and-sealed pillow relic together also offer latter-day historians extremely rare and revealing internal evidence and marks of provenance. Though the broadside is undated, it contains the printed rubric arms of the archbishop of Ancona, apparently those of Giannicolò Conti, who held the post from 1666 to 1698. Owing to Clement X’s designation of 1675 as a special Jubilee year during which the indulgent powers of relics were greatly enhanced, thereby  attracting large numbers of pilgrims, that year has been suggested as a possible date for this ephemeron. A further contemporary manuscript annotation on the verso names “Giovanni Francesco, Chancellor, who holds the virtue of healing sciatica,” perhaps denoting the name of an official to whom a suffering pilgrim may have been referred during her journey.

The presence of dozens of first-class apostolic and saintly relics in one space would have drawn pilgrims to S. Ciriaco and likely generated some degree of prosperity for the diocese and town. Finely embroidered textiles associated with pilgrimage sites were often made by skilled nuns associated with a particular pilgrimage church and were thus sometimes referred to as klosterarbeit. Though this artifact’s accompanying certificate of indulgence and authenticity was authorized in “1751,” its initial production may well have been inspired to meet anticipated demand during the later Jubilee year of 1750 proclaimed by Benedict XIV.

—Kelsey Champagne, Earle Havens