Dakota Mathieu-Perrin

Relics Beyond Reach: Crisis, Innovation, and the 4th-Class Sacred

My project aims to show how European communities responded to the Second Plague Pandemic through relics, focusing on what I call 4th-class relics (also known as proto-relics). These relics are crisis-driven manifestations of sanctity created through stories, images, and communal practices when physical relics were unavailable to people and communities. I became interested in this during my Master’s work in a Christianity class, where I wrote on Saint Roch and Saint Sebastian and looked at adapting and expanding the traditional definition of a relic from its traditional setting to something less fixed. The concept of a 4th-class relic is important because it provides a framework for understanding how sacred power can be generated dynamically, demonstrating that religion is not fixed to objects or institutions but can adapt to people's needs in moments of crisis. To make it clear, this project doesn’t aim to say that the 4th-class relic is on the same level of sacredness as the first 3 classes, because they are always sacred. The 4th class would be strictly situational and used only in times of crisis for a person or a community. This project uncovers a previously unrecognized form of religious mediation, highlights the resilience and inventiveness of communities in crisis, and offers a new way of thinking about how humans create meaning and protection when existing structures are inaccessible.