Defending the orthodoxy and authenticity of relics. 1 U.S. copy.

[Relics] / M. l’abbé de Cordemoy / [Louis-Géraud de Cordemoy]. Traité des Stes Reliques. Paris: Chez François Babutt, 1719. 12mo [18.0 x 10.3 cm], [xvi] pp., [4] ff., 213 pp, [3] pp., with woodcut title-page vignette, head-pieces, initials, and tail-piece. Bound in nineteenth-century calf and marbled paper over boards, title gold-stamped on spine, spine gild tooled, marbled endpapers, green silk ribbon bookmark, front flyleaf with stamp of the Maison Saint-Joseph in Morangis (‘Le Desert’). Minor rubbing and edge wear to spine and boards. Internally only occasional minor staining, edge wear, and edge toning.

Rare (1 U.S. copy: Harvard) first edition of this treatise in defense of relics by the notable Cartesian philosopher Louis-Géraud de Cordemoy (1651-1722), who mines early texts hoping both “to combat the complaints of the Protestants and to strengthen the piety of the faithful” (p. viii).

Cordemoy first defines relics as the bodies of saints or items that touched their bodies, their tombs, or their reliquaries. On these matters he cites biblical authorities (Old Testament, Gospels, Acts of Apostles), Church Fathers, early saints’ ‘Lives,’ and foundational documents of church history.

He provides short case studies of the relics of individual saints, e.g., Symphorosa, Polycarpe, Lawrence, Peter & Paul, Simeon Stylites, Pelagia, etc., etc. Cordemoy then details the early practice of consecrating altars atop the tombs of martyrs, a tendency that soon developed into consecrating altars atop the ‘portable tombs’ which are reliquaries.

Special attention is given to the unusual cases of the True Cross and its rediscovery by St. Helen and to relic soil from the Holy Land (ch. vii). Cordemoy states that because relics have performed miracles, they must be orthodox and “marked by God” (ch. viii).

He refutes Protestant objections that the worship of relics mimics pagan idolatry and mentions Henry VIII and Thomas of Canterbury (ch. ix).

Also addressed are prevailing accusations that many relics are fakes or forgeries (p. 206). Cordemoy prefers to stick to venerable examples deep in church history, and little space is given to the extreme proliferation of relics, many of which were certainly dubious, in popular material culture in his own time.

OCLC & KVK locate just 1 U.S. example of this work (Harvard),

*Le Journal des Sçavans, vol. xxiii (5 June 1719), pp. 381-83; Cioranescu, 20508; Conlon 19:335.

$1,350.00