Russian officials are calling the discovery of a medieval prince’s relics a miracle and plan to send a fragment to the front. But why do people venerate relics — and does Lenin’s body count?

Russia can talk of nothing but relics these days: in August, restoration work at the Archangel Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin “found” a sarcophagus containing the well-preserved remains of Prince Dmitry Donskoy. The burial site of the commander of the Russian army at the Battle of Kulikovo had not been a secret, but after his canonization in 1988 the Russian Orthodox Church made no attempt to recover his relics. In the fifth year of the full-scale war, however, church authorities decided to raise the symbolic register of patriotism and “recovered” the prince’s remains. This was immediately called miraculous and almost fairy-tale-like, a “sign of Divine Providence”; Vladimir Putin took part in venerating the relics, and a fragment of them has already been promised for the front. In addition, another fragment will take part in a religious procession in Moscow on September 6. Why all these rituals? What’s miraculous about relics? How did the concept of venerating saints’ remains even arise? How does this differ from idolatry? And finally, can the corpse of Lenin, buried on Red Square, be called relics? Meduza put all these questions to Konstantin Mikhailov, a religious scholar, lecturer, and author of the Telegram channel Mykhology.Where did the idea of ‘taking a piece of a person and praying to them’ come from?Scholars disagree sharply about the origins of relic veneration and how the practice developed. But they agree on this much: Christians were venerating the remains of fellow believers as early as the second century A.D., likely a response to the persecution of martyrs who died for their faith. Commemorating the dead became a central tradition in early Christianity, and a cult of saints grew up around the martyrs. Their graves became sites of worship, where rituals were performed and believers gathered.Later in antiquity, the idea took hold that a saint’s body could be moved from one grave to another, or even divided, so that the saint’s patronage could reach as many people as possible. Veneration of saints’ body parts is well documented as early as the fourth century.Dividing a saint’s relics was controversial among Christians at first, but by the early Middle Ages the practice was routine. Every Orthodox church in Russia today is required to have at least one relic fragment sewn into its antimension, a cloth on the altar without which the liturgy cannot be performed.Grave veneration exists across many religions, but venerating individual pieces of human bodies is rare — outside Christianity, the practice is widespread only in Buddhism.Isn’t venerating relics idolatry?Christians disagree on this, too. Catholics and the Orthodox hold that venerating saints is an important practice, not idolatry, because they worship only God — saints are honored as patrons and intercessors before God.They draw a distinction between worship, reserved for God alone, and veneration, extended to saints and angels. A prayer to a saint is typically a request for intercession before God: “Pray to God for us!”Almost all Protestants, by contrast, consider relic veneration to be paganism and idolatry, and regard the cult of saints itself as inconsistent with the teachings of Christ.There’s no scientific answer to this question — it’s a matter of religious belief. Science doesn’t even use the concept of “idolatry”; it’s a term from religious polemics: “You’re an idolater!” “No, you are!” and so on.If science proves relics don’t belong to the saint they’re attributed to, do they stop being relics? And if they’re miracle-working, do they get to stay relics regardless?Science and religion operate on different planes here.From a scientific standpoint, many relics and religious artifacts do raise serious questions. Serious historical research, moreover, doesn’t confirm the existence of many saints venerated by Catholics and the Orthodox.Christian churches sometimes do take scholars’ findings into account. In the twentieth century, for instance, the Catholic Church removed several popular saints from its general calendar.But this isn’t done consistently, because in religious life scientific arguments matter less than tradition — centuries of relic veneration, or belief in miracles that followed prayers before those relics, can outweigh anything historians raise.Do relics have to be incorrupt?Incorruptibility — usually meaning the preservation of a saint’s flesh — isn’t required at all. Many relics are simply bone fragments, with no flesh remaining.Russian Orthodoxy often expects a saint’s relics to be incorrupt, but that’s a tradition rather than a rule. In Greek Orthodoxy, by contrast, preserved flesh after death is sometimes seen as a bad sign.At what point does a ‘corpse’ become ‘relics’ — at canonization? And isn’t Christianity supposed to be about burying people in the ground? Why the exception for saints? Do they get into heaven without being buried?Burial in the ground is usually important to Christians, but the Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant churches all teach that it isn’t critical for the salvation of a person’s soul. An early Christian martyr eaten by lions in a Roman arena, or a devout believer who drowned at sea, can reach heaven just as easily as someone buried by every rule. Getting into heaven depends not on the manner of burial but on other factors, which vary by branch of Christianity.Not every Christian corpse counts as relics, of course. For remains to become relics, a tradition of venerating the deceased usually has to develop first, after which the person must be recognized as a saint — locally, and then church-wide.Both Orthodoxy and Catholicism have also required canonization for centuries now — a formal process in which the church examines a candidate for sainthood, holds internal discussions about the person’s life, and studies accounts of miracles reported after prayers to that person. The Catholic Church’s version is often rigorous, requiring medical examinations of reported healings and careful review of documentation. Orthodoxy’s rules are looser and less strictly defined, but canonization there, too, usually follows lengthy preparation.Churches not infrequently canonize saints for whom no tradition of mass veneration has yet developed, if they believe the person deserves it.If the church’s assessment is favorable, the person is declared a saint. In some cases the body is then exhumed — and it’s at that moment that it becomes relics. The exhumation itself is called a “recovery.”None of this is mandatory, though — the body of someone already declared a saint can stay in the ground for years afterward.How do they verify relics are the ‘real’ ones? Surely they don’t run DNA tests? And who ultimately decides these are the relics of a specific person?For ancient saints, the tradition of veneration — often centuries old — plays the key role. For modern saints, there’s usually no problem at all, because the grave is generally well known and establishing the body’s authenticity requires no complicated procedures.Difficulties really only arise in two cases.First, when the church has declared someone a saint whose exact burial site is unknown — because, say, he lived many centuries ago, or because the remains weren’t properly buried, as happened with Nicholas II and his family.Second, when remains that may belong to a saint turn up in an ancient burial site, and there’s a desire to prove they truly are the saint’s — as happened in the mid-twentieth century, when remains the Catholic Church regards as those of the Apostle Peter were found in Rome.But how do you prove it’s Peter and not someone else?In earlier eras, stories of miracles or prophetic dreams would settle such questions. Today the church can draw on archaeological findings — whether the burial site fits, whether the archaeological layer matches, whether objects found near the remains correspond to the saint’s social status in life — or even DNA testing, if there’s something to compare the remains against, such as other fragments of the same relics or living descendants of the saint.The final decision, though, rests with the church, and scientific arguments are only part of the equation — and often a limited one. It’s impossible, for instance, to prove that remains from a person executed in Rome in the first century A.D. truly belonged to the Apostle Peter. And even where proof is possible, there’s no guarantee the church will accept it: the Russian Orthodox Church still hasn’t recognized the authenticity of Nicholas II’s relics, even though scientists are confident in the DNA analysis.So what about the relics of Dmitry Donskoy — they lay in one place for centuries, and now they’ve been ‘recovered’?This is actually a good example. Dmitry Donskoy died in 1389 and was buried in the Archangel Cathedral. When the cathedral was dismantled and rebuilt in its current form in the early sixteenth century, Dmitry — like the other members of the princely family buried there — was briefly moved out and then carefully returned to his place.From then to the present day, the location of Prince Dmitry’s grave has been well known. The tomb was even opened in the 1860s, and the burials shifted somewhat — but exactly how and where was documented.All that time, though, what lay in the grave was simply remains, not relics — Dmitry Donskoy wasn’t canonized until 1988. That decision has sparked controversy ever since, partly because not everyone considers Prince Dmitry’s life worthy of religious glorification (he was a complicated historical figure with a tangled and often contentious relationship with the church), and partly because he was canonized without careful preparation, as part of a larger batch of canonizations. That haste reflected the rapid shifts underway in Orthodoxy’s position in the Soviet Union in 1988 and throughout perestroika, which forced the church to adapt quickly to new circumstances.No one opened the tomb after the 1988 canonization, even as a cult around Dmitry took shape — churches were built for the new saint, and icons of him were painted. Only recently, as widely reported, was the tomb opened and several fragments separated from Dmitry’s remains.In short, there’s no scientific doubt about the authenticity of these relics. The burial site, the age, and the condition of the skeleton all confirm this is indeed the body of Dmitry Donskoy. DNA analysis hasn’t been done yet, but it’s unlikely to turn up anything unexpected.How does miracle-working actually work? Into how many pieces can relics be divided before they stop ‘working’? And does the degree of veneration or ‘miraculous power’ scale with a saint’s deeds in life?From a scientific standpoint, there’s no such thing as miracle-working, of course. From the standpoint of religious tradition, though, it isn’t measured in efficiency or horsepower — it doesn’t depend on how many pieces a relic has been divided into, and churches often display tiny fragments that are deeply venerated.Likewise, a saint’s deeds in life don’t affect the power of their relics: if someone is a saint, believers can pray to them, and if it pleases God, a miracle may occur.A saint’s life can shape their “specialty” — people are more likely to pray for healing to a saint who was a doctor, for example. But in everyday practice, of course, some saints are popular favorites while others are rarely remembered.How does the church explain cases where there are more relics of a single saint than one body could physically supply?Fragments of relics pose no problem. But it does happen that the same body part turns up in different places — there are currently at least three heads of John the Baptist venerated around the world. To avoid such duplicates, churches try to trace a relic’s history and document its provenance.Everyone understands that some relics are probably not authentic, and people always have — criticism of fake relics turns up in medieval church texts. But medieval forgery isn’t the only explanation.Duplication can also result from pious misunderstanding, confusion, or the mixing up of saints with similar names. Relics have sometimes been lost and found again — the head of John the Baptist was lost and recovered several times, with the church establishing a separate feast to mark each recovery. From a scientific standpoint, of course, the identity of relics that were lost and later recovered remains an open question.Both the Orthodox and Catholic churches take roughly the same position: if you believe relics are genuine, you may pray before them. Even if they aren’t, God knows the prayer is sincere.In practice, though, churches make little effort to challenge disputed relics once they’re ancient and widely venerated. And no one, of course, could possibly track the thousands of relic fragments scattered across churches and private collections.Relics are profitable for the church, aren’t they? Is there an unspoken ban on criticizing their veneration as a result?Relics can indeed be an important source of income for individual churches and for the church as a whole. And a ban on criticizing the cult of relics does exist — openly, having been approved by church councils.But the ban has more to do with theology than money: the debate over whether relics and saints can be venerated at all has gone on for centuries, and for both the Orthodox and Catholic churches, the cult of relics has long been central to religious identity.Criticism of fake relics is permitted, though, as long as it’s conducted with respect for the cult as a whole.Can Lenin in the Mausoleum be considered relics in some sense? Or are relics something only saints have?Lenin’s body in the Mausoleum — like the imitations it inspired, such as those of Mao or Dimitrov — is a good example of a secular, ideological cult built around a corpse.Curiously, this cult took shape at exactly the moment when Soviet authorities were actively fighting the Orthodox cult of relics — the resemblance was even noted in internal party discussions in the 1920s.But this still isn’t relics, even in the broadest sense — the Mausoleum was used in political rituals, but no one prayed to Lenin’s body.And no one, it seems, has ever claimed to have been healed after giving a Young Pioneer salute in front of it.At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.Konstantin Mikhailov