RELIC 



6551 



REUIGIO MEDICI 



partners ; or where a lessor releases 

 to the lessee the reversion ex- 

 pectant on the termination of the 

 lease. See Receipt. 



Relic (Lat. reliquiae, remains). 

 In a religious sense, the body or 

 part of a body of a saint or martyr, 

 or some article, such as clothing, 

 associated with a saint or martyr, 

 preserved as an object of devotion 

 or veneration. Generally, the word 

 implies that which is left of an 

 object after the loss or decay of 

 its other parts, or a souvenir of one 

 who is dead. Examples of religious 

 relics are the remains of holy men 

 preserved in churches or shrines ; 

 fragments supposed to have be- 

 longed to the true Cross (q.v. ); 

 and the Holy Coat of Treves (q.v.). 

 Veneration of Christian relics began 

 about the 4th century ; it received 

 marked impetus during the cru- 

 sades; its persistence is exemplified 

 by the search at Glastonbury for 

 the Holy Grail (q.v.), or cup which 

 held the wine blessed at the Last 

 Supper ; a strong reaction set in 

 against it at the Reformation, and 

 it is condemned by Article xxii of 

 the English Prayer Book. 



Burial places of martyrs were 

 chosen by the early Christians for 

 their meetings or services. Later, 

 churches were built over the re- 

 mains ; and at one time conse- 

 cration of a church was dependent 

 upon the possession by that church 

 of some holy relic. Gradually relics 

 came to be associated with miracle 

 working. Desire for the possession 

 of them inspired the secret and 

 fraudulent removal of remains 

 from one church to another. In 

 1215 the fourth Lateran Council 

 forbade relics to be sold or exposed 

 outside of their cases or shrines, and 

 prohibited veneration of relics until 

 their authenticity had been decided 

 by the pope The custom, practic- 

 ally unknown among the Jews, is 

 common to both Roman and Greek 

 churches. See Altar ; Miracle ; 

 Shrine : Worship of the Dead ; 

 consult also Decline and Fall 

 of the Roman Empire, ch. 28, 

 E. Gibbon, 1788 ; Rationalism in 

 Europe, W. E. H. Lecky, new 

 ed., 1910. 



Relief (Lat. relevare, to raise up). 

 Literally the removal of an evil. 

 It is frequently used in connexion 

 with distress arising from un- 

 employment and the like. Relief 

 works are works designed primarily 

 to provide employment, and the 

 word is used in connexion with the 

 administration of the poor laws, as 

 in the phrases outdoor and indoor 

 relief. (See Poor Law). A relief 

 map is one on which the form of 

 the country is indicated by some 

 conventional method such as the 

 layer system. See Map. 



Relief. In the feudal sense, a 

 payment made by a tenant to his 



To start men at work on jobs that 

 have no immediate or permanent 



lord on taking possession of an value, as has sometimes happened, 



estate held under him. Feuds, 

 originally gratuitous, were also pre- 

 carious, and held at the will of the 

 lord, but as a more permanent de- 

 gree of property was introduced, 

 they began to be granted for the 

 life of the feudatory, although they 

 were not hereditary. 

 ' When feuds became hereditary, 

 the relief was continued on the 



is a foolish and short-sighted 

 policy. But such work as road 

 making, land reclamation, and re- 

 afforestation, if carefully controlled 

 to prevent waste of public money, 

 may do much to tide over an 

 anxious and dangerous time. Re- 

 lief works in the modern sense of 

 the term date from later decades 

 of the 1 9th century. In 1 92 1 , owing 

 to the prevalent 

 unemployment, 

 many relief works 

 were started, as 

 c o n s t r u ction of 

 arterial roads. See 

 Unemployment. 



Relievo. Italian 

 term for the sculp- 

 ture in relief used 

 in the decoration 

 with figure com- 

 positions of walls 

 and other flat sur- 

 faces. The Greeks 

 and Romans prac- 

 tised this kind of 

 sculpture in its 

 simpler forms. 

 Some later Hel- 

 lenistic work 

 shows the intro- 

 duction of pic- 

 torial or perspec- 

 tively treated re- 

 lief, i.e. relief with 

 differences in 

 plane, and the 

 c o m m e m o rat ive 

 columns erected in 

 imperial Rome 

 were a distinct 

 effort after per- 

 spective effect. 

 This art, however, made little pro- 

 gress during the Middle Ages. Dona- 

 tello's John Baptist on the font at 

 Siena, completed in 1427, shows the 

 treatment hi a modified form ; but 

 Ghiberti's gates for the Baptistery 

 at Florence are the first conspic- 

 uous instance of its employment. 

 5ee Archaeology; Babylonia; Bam - 



therefore fixed the bino ; Bellerophon ; Cleopatra ; etc. 

 a certain quantity^'' Religio Medici. Sir Thomas 

 Browne's statement of his belief. 

 It was written about 1635, and is 

 quite short. It is divided into two 

 parts, dealing with faith and 

 charity. A devout member of the 

 Church of England, Sir Thomas 

 accepts the Christian belief in its 

 entirety, finding in its mysteries 

 and doctrinal difficulties only a 

 further aid to faith. In this he re- 

 presents his age, but the tolerant 

 and large-hearted way in which he 

 speaks of other creeds shows him 

 far in advance of it. The work was 



Relievo in bronze. Door of the Baptistery, Florence, 

 by L. Ghiberti, depicting scenes from the Old Testament 



death of a tenant, although 

 its original foundation had ceased. 

 Being at first arbitrary and at 

 the discretion of the lord, who 

 by demanding an exorbitant 

 payment could in effect disinherit 

 the heir, reliefs were regarded 

 as one of the great griev- 

 ances of tenure. William the 

 Conqueror 

 relief at 



of arms and habiliments of war, 

 and, in the reign of Henry 

 II, a composition of 100 shil- 

 lings was universally accepted 

 for every knight's fee, until 

 relief was abolished with other 

 feudal anachronisms. See Feudal- 

 ism ; Land. 



Relief Works. Name given to 

 works of a public character under- 

 taken to provide a means of sub- 

 sistence for the unemployed in 

 times of distress. Action of this 

 kind is admittedly no more than a 



palliative at best, and if taken un- very popular abroad, being trans- 

 wisely may aggravate the disease, lated into several foreign languages. 



