‘From beyond the grave: the affective power of James VII & II’s relics’, for Amy Hayes and Lucy Dean, eds, 'Material Culture and Built Heritage: Manifestations of Scotland’s Royal Past, Present and Future'.

Stimulated by the recent acquisition by National Museums Scotland of a silver locket said to contain the pericardium of James VII and II’s heart, this paper considers the part played by such relics and their containers, the reliquaries, in supporting the Stuart challenge to Hanoverian rule, and the connections they facilitated between loyal Jacobites and their absent monarchs, whether alive or dead. On the death of the exiled James in France, in 1701, his body was eviscerated, and these remains divided between five ecclesiastical institutions. The distribution, loss and reappearance of some of these relics helped to promote a message of the virtuous piety of the exiled king, and through him, the sanctity of the Stuart dynasty and its claim to the Scottish, English and Irish crowns. They were intended to advertise the righteousness of the Jacobite cause and secure support. Arguably in death, James’s reach was extended from beyond the grave, extending geographically in location, and temporally down through the succeeding generations of relic custodians. This article considers this heart-shaped locket alongside other Stuart memorial objects in the Scottish national collections. In evoking memories of personal characteristics, such objects stimulated loyalty and affection in those that viewed, held, and revered them. It suggests that some were considered more potent than others, depending on their proximity to the person commemorated: given the persistent belief in the power of the royal touch, contact relics and bodily remains were imbued with quasi-religious and therapeutic status. In the case of James VII and II’s remains, rumours spread of the miraculous benefits of visiting his sarcophagus and memorial in the Benedictines’ Church in Rue St Jacques. Although nothing was to come of it, these miracles were investigated for the potential canonisation of James. For the believer, James’s relics had achieved a religious status, their therapeutic power transmitted through the vessel that contained them; such objects thus held penetrative, affective and amuletic affordances.