The authority of canon and its structure is not to be found in a study either of the final textual form or the community, but in both, through the dialog between them.

The gods of the hearth exist for us still; and let all new faith be tolerant of that fetishism, lest it bruise its own roots.

Abstract

In Romola George Eliot elucidates the morality of Comtean attitudes to relics and reliquaries. Devotees of Comte’s Religion of Humanity, led by Frederic Harrison, experienced every reliquarian thrill sacramentally, as a sign of grace. Harrison expertly orchestrated the 1901 Millenary of Alfred’s Death to help us all experience these fetishistic thrills unashamedly, collectively, in public. During the 1849 Jubilee of Alfred’s Birth, the thrill of translating Alfred’s burning words into a modern reliquary healed Martin Tupper’s notorious stammer. Can we who today still love Alfred afford to sacrifice such devout thrills of emotion felt by those who locked, kissed, and unlocked the Victorian reliquaries — the Chronicle, the Life, the Works — in which Alfred’s relics, we hope and trust, still lie enshrined?

Keywords: George Eliot, John Allen Giles, John Henry Newman, Reliquary, Nineteenth-century medievalism