“Earth mixed with his flesh, blood, skin, and bones, formed into a lump.”
[Relic Pasta] / Fidelis of Sigmaringen. Aus dem Grab des seeligen Fidelis Mart. Capucin. auch mit desselbigen Fleich, Blut, Haut, und Beineren vermischte Kalch-Erden, zu einer Massa gemacht bey denen PP. Capuc. Zu Veldkirch. Ao. 1735. S.l. [perhaps Veldkirch]: s.n., 1725. [8.8 x 6.5 cm], [1] f. letterpress slip. Folds, minor staining, well preserved.
Unrecorded—and very unusual—letterpress slip whose German text may be translated, “From the grave of the Blessed Fidelis, Capuchin Martyr, chalky earth mixed with his flesh, blood, skin, and bones, formed into a lump by the Capuchins at Veldkirch. In the Year 1735.”
The figure referred to here is the Counter-Reformation Capuchin friar Fidelis of Sigmaringen (1577-1622), who was martyred by Calvinist troops. His shrine—with portions of his body—is in the Kapuzinerkloster Feldkirch in Austria. He was beatified in 1729 and canonized in 1746.
But what was the use of this slip, and what was the Massa (“lump” or “cake”) made of his flesh, blood, skin and bones? The slip either labeled a larger object or, given how it is folded, enclosed a small particle or fragment. Perhaps the slip simply was touched to or contacted to the Massa. It seems that this Massa was similar to what in an Italian context is called pasta di reliquie (“relic paste”), i.e., dust and other fine, undifferentiated particles collected from a holy burial site, often catacombs.
Pasta di reliquie was a sort of stucco composed of a mixture of paper, glue, and dust/soil from the cemeteries of saints and martyrs. This material, used since the 17th century, was, in Italy, shaped and painted to create figurines, statuettes, medallions, or images of saints and sacred emblems. Inscriptions such as ‘di più ss. Martiri,’ ‘D. P. S. M.,’ ‘Pain de S. Réliques,’ ‘s. plu. m.,’ or other labels were added to indicate the presence of this holy compound (see especially Borsook and Cordez). Such items generally were made for use in the convents/monasteries or to be given to the faithful.
It is worth considering that the Massa might have had medicinal uses: Dust taken from the tombs of saints for the purpose of curing ailments (mixed with liquid and consumed or applied as a paste) is a practice attested in early Christian sources, e.g., in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History.
OCLC and KVK locate no other examples of this slip, nor have I seen it (or the practice it describes) in the literature on St. Fidelis.
*E. Borsook, ed., Fantasia in Convento: Tesori di Carta e Stucco dal Seicento All’Ottocento, see esp. pp. 29-31, 101-178; P. Cordez, Schatz, Gedächtnis, Wunder die Objekte der Kirchen im Mittelalter; F. J. Beche, Reliquien, Relikte, Ressourcen: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Ausstellung menschlicher Knochen zwischen Sakralraum und Museum, pp. 135-6.