It is hard to imagine that the gruesome topic of bodysnatching and the ghastly, gory and gorgeous world of relics would be a main focus of religious veneration throughout the Middle Ages. Through...
A first-time study of a privately owned 16th-century prayer roll from England is a valuable addition to knowledge on medieval England’s Christian ‘cult of the Cross’ in which the Holy Cross was...
The practice of preserving and enshrining the remains of saints and heroes, or other items associated with their life or death, has been ongoing for thousands of years dating back well into the pre-...
A team of archaeologists from the Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology have been busy for the past few years working on an assignment worth envying, reports China Daily. Deep in the Chinese central...
An amateur archaeologist in England claims the Holy Grail is buried in a secret “Grail crypt” under a river in Hounslow, London. And an environment agency plans to drain the river to find out if the...
Traditional religious literature affirms that the Heilige Lanze (Sacred Lance), also called Spear of Destiny, Longinus Spear, Maurice’s Spear and a myriad of other names, was the weapon with which...
The ‘Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon,’ more commonly known as the Knights Templar, or the Templars, was one of the most renowned military orders during the Middle Ages. The...
The oldest known crown in the world, which was famously discovered in 1961 as part of the Nahal Mishmar Hoard, along with numerous other treasured artifacts, was recently revealed in New York...
A medieval document has revealed connections between how we celebrate Christmas today and an English monastery. The document is a list of relics given to Battle Abbey, which was bestowed on by two...
Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) exploded in 1956. To understand why this occurred, it is necessary to explore the (Catholic and Orthodox) Christian practice of mummification, which is rarely...
Death was always a source of mystery for people around the world. But what happens when we erase that invisible border and make the dead a thing to worship? Never too far from every major turn of...
As the flames of every disaster fade, stories emerge about heroes and this is again the case in Paris where a brave French priest not only attended to the wounded after the Notre-Dame cathedral fire...
The destruction of Notre Dame cathedral is lamentable. A wonderful icon has been largely destroyed by fire . However, we should not despair. Part of the reason this loss is so upsetting is because we...
The Tucson Artifacts created quite a sensation when they were discovered in the 1920s. Over 30 crosses and other relics were recovered, and they tell the story of a group of Roman colonists who were...
As early as Homer, more than 2,500 years ago, Greek mythology explored the idea of automatons and self-moving devices. By the third century BC, engineers in Hellenistic Alexandria, in Egypt, were...
The Darkhad are a Mongol tribe who live in northern Mongolia. In particular, this tribe is found in the Ulaan-Uul, Renchinlkhumbe, Tsagaannuur, and Bayanzurkh sums (the equivalent of a district) of...