[Red Badger]

IMAGE: A PIECE OF THE FEMUR, BELIEVED TO BE OF ST JAMES THE YOUNGER, MOUNTED ON A WOODEN PEG AND WITH A GILDED RING

CREDIT: KAARE LUND RASMUSSEN/SDU

[Red Badger]

PinGGG!..................

[cuban leaf]

They can throw that in with that shroud thingee. Not to mention those pieces of toast with Jerry Garcia’s image on them. :)

[Beowulf9]

“Thus, the preserved relic, the femur, is not that of St. James. It originates from an individual some 160-240 years younger than St. James, explains Professor Kaare Lund Rasmussen, University of Southern Denmark, adding:

- Though the relic is not that of St James, it casts a rare flicker of light on a very early and largely unaccounted for time in the history of early Christianity”.

[fidelis]

” In the first few centuries of Christianity, life was difficult for the Christian minority, but gradually towards sixth century Christianity became the dominant religion and after Emperor Constantine on his deathbed declared Christianity the state religion, churches were erected all over the Roman Empire.”

This fiction just keeps getting perpetuated. The facts are that Constantine converted after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in AD 312, but was not baptized until he was on his deathbed.

Also, Constantine issued the Edict of Tolerance that made the free practice of all religions legal (including Christianity), but he did not make Christianity the state religion. That was for a later emperor to do.

[sphinx]

The best known set of remains, of course, are St. Peter's, which were rediscovered in situ in an ancient Roman necropolis. This was located along the Via Cornelia, which led out of Rome and at the time ran next to the Circus of Nero, where Peter was martyred. (St. Peter's Basilica shares a portion of the Circus' foundation wall.) The necropolis was in turn buried to create a the building platform when Constantine started construction on the first St. Peter's Basilica in 319. That's as close to an undisturbed time capsule as one can get on ancient remains, this side of Pompeii. Or a shipwreck. Attribution to a specific individual can't be done with absolute certainty, but the archaeology is pretty solid. The original grave was already a small shrine by the second century, with a small Roman style mortuary monument erected over the original hole in the ground. This is all directly under the high alter in the current St. Peter's and was buried and left undisturbed for over 1,600 years.

If you get a chance to visit Rome and St. Peter's and the Vatican Museums are on your list, be sure to sign up early for the necropolis tour. This is NOT part of the regular St. Peter's tour. It is an inherently limited access space and, in addition to being a tight space physically, the surviving frescos on the surviving Roman tombs are quite fragile. Only a couple of hundred people a day are allowed through. There's no trick to signing up; you just need to make your reservation early because the necropolis tours fill up fast.

[fruser1]

They should run the DNA through a criminal database just to see what comes up.