4 ms·
One Charles de Fleury catalogued pieces of the true cross and found them to sum to 2% of a plausibly sized cross, not the oft-repeated claim that they add up to
by sweettea 5y ago
One Charles de Fleury catalogued pieces of the true cross and found them to sum to 2% of a plausibly sized cross, not the oft-repeated claim that they add up to a large ship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Cross#Dispersal_of_relics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Cross#Dispersal_of_relics paragraph 6. While perhaps biased, it does seem plausible that a cataloguing of such claimed relics today would add up to a similar total volume.
- TheCoelacanth 5y agoI think the claim that they would add up to a ship was made in the 1500s, while the cataloging was done in the late 1800s. In between was the Protestant Reformation and centuries of incredibly bloody religious wars in which many of the belligerents were opposed to the idea of relics and vigorously sought to destroy them. The English Civil War is believed to have resulted in the destruction of 97% of religious art in the country[1], and England got off relatively lightly compared to much of Europe. The Thirty Years War killed a third of Germany's population. Those wars between different Christian denominations would have destroyed many relics. Ottoman conquests and subsequent conversions to Islam would have taken care of more. [1] https://hyperallergic.com/256802/how-a-rare-judas-painting-survived-the-16th-century-english-reformation/ https://hyperallergic.com/256802/how-a-rare-judas-painting-s...