The church of San Zaccaria is so named in honor of San Zaccaria, or St. Zechariah, who was the father of John the Baptist. The remains of St. Zechariah reside in the church of San Zaccaria here in Venice.
The story of St. Zechariah strongly resembles that of both Mary the mother of Jesus and the Old Testament patriarch Abraham. Zechariah was a priest who was working in the temple one day when the angel Gabriel appeared to him and told him that he would have a son, even though Zechariah was quite advanced in age and his wife Elizabeth was barren. Zechariah was told that the baby’s name was to be John and that he would be a great man in the sight of the Lord. Naturally, the announcement by the angel Gabriel of a child to be born resembles the story of the Annunciation to Mary, and the fact that Zechariah and his wife were elderly and barren resembles the story of Abraham, patriarch of the Hebrew people. However, unlike Mary and Abraham, Zechariah doubted the angel’s message and so Gabriel informed him that he would be struck dumb until the miracle of the child’s birth occurred. When Zechariah left the temple, he was unable to speak and so everyone knew that he had had a vision of some sorts. Shortly after this, Elizabeth his wife became pregnant. When the baby was born and it came time for him to be circumcised, all the people wanted to call him Zechariah, after his father. However, Elizabeth insisted that his name was to be John. The people then asked Zechariah what he wanted his son’s name to be and because he could not talk, he wrote down “His name is John.” As soon as he wrote this, he was able to speak again. These are the only biblical facts which are given about Zechariah, but there is an unverifiable tradition that states that Zechariah was murdered in the temple for refusing to say where his son John was.
The church of San Zaccaria itself was built in a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance styles between 1444 and 1515. Antonio Gambello was the principal architect, but the façade was eventually completed by Mauro Codussi. It contains a number of great works of art, in addition to the bones of San Zaccaria, including paintings by Tiepolo, Tintoretto, and Bellini’s last Madonna.
St. Jerome, who is best known for his translation of the Bible into Latin which has come to be known as the Vulgate, wrote, “We do not adore, I will not say the relics of the martyrs, but either the sun or the moon or even the angels…But we honor the martyrs’ relics, so that thereby we give honor to Him Whose [witness] they are: we honor the servants, that the honor shown to them may reflect on their Master.” This is an important principle of Catholicism of which many non-Catholics may not be aware. Catholics do not worship Mary, the saints, and their relics. Instead, Catholics honor these people and their relics as a way to show respect for how they did God’s work. The same concept applies to intercession, when Catholics do not pray to the saints in the same way they pray to God, but rather ask the saints, or Mary, to intercede for them to God, as a way to, to put it bluntly, add a little extra power to a prayer. For these reasons, relics of saints, including not only their bones, but objects that once belonged to or were used by them, are to be honored and shown proper respect so that, as St. Jerome writes, “the honor shown to them may reflect on their Master.”
Although all relics are to be honored and shown proper respect, not all relics are equal. There are actually three separate classes of relics. A first class relic is a part of the saint, such as a bone, hair, etc., or the instruments of Christ’s passion, such as pieces of the cross, the nails used to nail Christ to the cross, the spear thrust into His side or the crown of thorns. A second class relic is something owned by the saint, such as a crucifix, a book, or a piece of clothing, or instruments of torture that were used against a martyr. A third class relic is something that has been touched to a first or second class relic or to the tomb of a saint. There are Church laws which govern the treatment of relics, including Canon Law 1190 which states that not only is it absolutely wrong to sell sacred relics, but distinguished relics and others which are held in great veneration by the people may not validly be in any way alienated nor transferred on a permanent basis without the permission of the Apostolic See. Also, while it is okay to purchase sacred relics in order to keep them from being desecrated, bidding for them at auction is strongly frowned upon because this may involve driving up the price for someone who simply wants to rescue the relic from desecration.
Siegel states that “The objectification of desire entailed in journeys and collections will tend to yield—as Proust will put it—something less and something more than satisfaction.” While sacred relics are honored by pilgrims seeking to kneel by the bones of saints whom they respect, the relics themselves are often collected and hoarded by certain cities seeking to increase their own importance by being able to brag about the influential religious figures whose final resting places are within their city limits. Venice is not least among these, for the city has always sought to increase its own importance, as well as its ties to Rome. Rome, of course, is the unofficial capital of relics, possessing far more than any other city in the world, including the bones of St. Peter beneath the basilica of the same name. Venice, by also collecting relics, sought to strengthen in the minds of its citizens, and its visitors, its similarities to Rome. Not to mention that Venice has, from early on, been a bit relic-crazy. The best example of Venice’s long-standing tradition of going to great lengths to acquire relics is the story of how the bones of St. Mark the Evangelist came to reside in the city. They were smuggled out of Alexandria, Egypt, when the Venetians stole the body and covered it in pork to keep the Muslim Egyptians from finding it. This need to obtain the body of one of the greatest saints underlies a Venetian need to obtain proof of their greatness. The Venetians desired tangible proof of their excellence and superiority, and possessing the relics of one of the four Gospel writers certainly provided them with a certain degree of fame. Baudrillard states that “only a more or less complex organization of objects, each of which refers to all the others, can endow each with an abstractness such that the subject will be able to grasp it in that lived abstractness which is the experience of possession.” This applies to the fact that there are classes of relics and, even when someone is not aware of these specific classes, they are aware that some relics are clearly more prized than others, thus making them worth possessing and collecting for their rarity and importance.
Relics, such as the bones of San Zaccaria, can be seen as not only important from a religious standpoint, but they can also contribute to the importance and power of a city, simply through their collection.
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