In any religion, there is a tradition to worship the relics of revered saints. But if this is natural for believers, then how can one explain the deification of completely secular relics, like Einstein's eye or Napoleon's penis?
Are relics under the hammer?
Regardless of our belief in the afterlife, hardly any of us would agree that after his death the fragments of the dead body were sold on eBay. The article was prompted by a recent complaint about an online auction site, where one of the clients came across an advertisement for the sale of a bone fragment, as it was assured, of one of the Catholic saints. An outraged user raised an intriguing question about the sanctity of our physical body, or rather, about respect for what remains after our death.
What are we worshiping?
The eerie theme of preserving and worshiping the remains of revered figures, of course, does not contain anything new. For centuries, believers have made pilgrimages in order to see, touch, pray near the relics of prophets and martyrs. How authentic these relics are is another matter. By the way, does the Buddha's tooth actually exist, which is allegedly kept in a temple in the city of Kandy, Sri Lanka, or hair from the beard of the Prophet Muhammad (stored in a palace in Istanbul), the sacred umbilical cord of Christ (they claim that it is kept in the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome). In any case, these shrines are revered by believers, and this is important and deserves respect.
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But what about the rest?
Not everyone is lucky enough to be classified as a saint. There are only a few of them, and the Earth is inhabited by ordinary people. And even those of us who are extolled by history are likewise made of flesh and blood. What will become of us after ten, one hundred years of repose? The vast majority of us, no doubt, will remain in place intact under the gravestones and will survive as long as the worms will allow, pardon the black humor. But not everyone is so lucky. Lovers of the history of the world are waiting to be shown what the features or individual parts of the body of this or that figure looked like. Let's take some anatomical relics as an example.
Galileo's finger
In June 2010, Italy celebrated one of the most unique holidays in cultural history. This was connected with an amazing event: the Museum of the History of Science in Florence acquired the thumb and middle fingers of the astronomer Galileo Galilei at an auction. Already at the exhibition in the museum, visitors were re-acquainted with the tooth of a medieval scientist. Now complete with new acquisitions. It is known that parts of Galileo's body were seized by desperate followers and admirers in order to preserve at least part of his genius in this world. This happened in 1737, at a time when the remains of Galileo were transferred from one grave to another. The miners got fingers, one tooth and part of the vertebrae. Truly, fetishism knows no reasonable limit! The artifacts are now on display next to a pair of telescopes invented by the astronomer. Fingers can be seen in a glass vesseland modern pilgrims can see with their own eyes this pseudo-temple, where the spirit of a person who has comprehended the sky like no one before him soars.
Napoleon's penis
While some secular relics are kept in state museums, others are in private collections. Take Napoleon Bonaparte's penis. In 1821, an English surgeon performed an autopsy of a recently deceased French general on the Atlantic island of Saint Helena, where he had been exiled six years earlier, after the defeat of the French at Waterloo. Since then, a part of the general's body, which the French dubbed "shriveled tendon" out of delicacy, has passed from hand to hand more than once. The relic was sold and resold at auctions. Traveled first to an Italian priest, then to a London bookseller who paid $ 2,900 for it in 1969 and kept a piece of shriveled flesh under the bed in a suitcase until his death in 2007. Then an intimate fragment of the emperor's body was transferred to the private collection of an American urologist. In June 2016, his vast collection of historical curiosities, including the cyanide ampoules that Hermann Göring had committed suicide, was auctioned to a collector in Argentina.
Einstein's eyes
Unlike the exposed part of Napoleon's body, Einstein's brain and eyes were placed in a special bank safe in New Jersey. Before the cremation of the deceased physicist's body, his brain and eyeballs were blasphemously removed. This was done by the autopsy pathologist Thomas Harvey, who for decades kept the brain in a glass jar filled with a special solution in his basement. And he handed over his eyes to the Bank of New Jersey for storage. And only in 1998, Harvey, tired of such a great responsibility, donated the brain of a genius for storage in the laboratory of the medical faculty of Princeton University.
Einstein's eyes were transferred to the custody of ophthalmologist Henry Abrams, who died in 2009. The eyes of a genius have not yet been auctioned as a lot. Time will tell. Strange exhibits are always valuable.
"Last Breath" by Thomas Edison
An existential desire to preserve the unsustainable - this is how the next relic can be called. The Henry Ford Museum, Michigan, displays a glass vial sealed with a cork. It contains the last breath of Thomas Edison, the inventor of the phonograph, movie camera and light bulb. In 1931, when the brilliant physicist died in his bedroom, there was a personal doctor next to him, who managed to absorb the dying man's last breath into a test tube and seal it. Edison's son Charles, perhaps believing (like the Greeks) that the spirit (or pneuma) is associated with the soul, later handed the test tube over for safe storage to his father's business partner, automobile tycoon Ford.
Body parts of Pancho Villa
The corpse of Mexican revolutionary general Pancho Villa was exhumed by grave robbers three years after his car was ambushed and the hero was shot.
Unsurprisingly, the obsession and desire to possess the remains of famous figures encourages fraud and the use of fake fragments. In 2011, the world learned about one of these troublesome relics. In El Paso, Texas, they started talking about the sale of personal items and body parts of the deceased general. For example, a trigger from Pancho Villa's weapon has been proposed. But how elusive a revolutionary was during his lifetime, he remains just as elusive after death. There are too many people claiming the right to possess the general's perforated skull, separated from the body during the exhumation in 1926. Mention is also made of his heroic finger, "wrinkled and slightly curved," as reporter Dave described as he advertised the auctioned lot. Naturally, there are no guarantees of the authenticity of the finger,he just bought this piece five years ago. But Dave is still tempted to sell his finger, and on his Facebook page he never tires of promising that "you will never find a more authentic exhibit like this."
Eventually
What prompts a person to possess material proof of the physical existence of another, ultimately unknown person? Perhaps such fragments are viewed as conductors through which history is traced, bursts of life at its different turns? Or perhaps they believe in totems that can drive away the idea of the inevitability of death? The owner of Einstein's eyes, an ophthalmologist, confessed to a reporter in 1994: “The professor's life is not over. Part of him is still with me."