Passion Relic Devotion, an Implanted Relic, and a Prostheticized Body: Rethinking Matter and Agency in “A Grete Myracle of a Knyghte Good Callyd Syr Roger Wallysborow”

Dr. Siobhain Bly Calkin, Department of English Language and Literature.

Passion Relic Devotion, an Implanted Relic, and a Prostheticized Body: Rethinking Matter and Agency in “A Grete Myracle of a Knyghte Good Callyd Syr Roger Wallysborow” 

Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2024) 54 (2): 299–332. https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-11130370

This article analyzes an English miracle narrative in which a portion of the Holy Cross is implanted within a knight’s body in the Holy Land and is translated to Cornwall. The text raises important questions about what implantation means for the relic and human matters so conjoined and their respective agencies. Drawing on ideas about prostheticized bodies developed in disability studies can help scholars better understand the ontological questions raised by the melding of human and nonhuman matters, the profound vulnerability this entails for the devout human subject, and the ways in which this fusion of relic and human matter is socially transformative for the broader community. The article thus outlines some of the complex negotiations of matter and agency that could be imagined as part of the affective world of late medieval and early modern Passion relic veneration.