I found this belt in the National Museum of Ireland and I really liked the design. Well, the buckle anyway, the entire belt is metal. That might be uncomfortable to wear around town. The museum had a great collection of ecclesiastical metalwork. These are church-related items--not crucifixes--that were meant to be worshipped. For example we saw items of clothing and representations of body parts all done up with jewels and intricate metalwork. There is an ornamental prosthetic arm done in silver and bronze. We saw a jewelled slipper that was labelled as a shrine to the shoe of Saint Brigid. Why Brigid's shoe is important is beyond me? It must have been part of some parable. The belt's display tag says:
Bronze and silver
belt shrine
Moylough
Co. Sligo
8th century AD
If you think that this is weird, you should go to St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice. They have a room that's full of "relics" from martyrs. Basically, these relics are the dessicated limbs that were hacked off some unfortunate individuals who refused to deny their religion. It's really creepy, and they charge you 2 euros to go in, so it's a bit like a side circus freakshow. I don't understand catholics and their obsession with death, suffering, torture etc.!
ReplyDeleteI think the weirdest thing I saw was the torture museum at Rothenberg ob der Tauber in Germany. I'm not sure if they were used by the church but they seem to have been used religiously by the German criminal justice system.
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