From late Antiquity, the veneration of saints and relics was an important element in the structure of Christian societies as a whole.1 In the history of saintly cults, the dislocation of the saint’s relics and other physical objects associated with the saint’s cult constitutes an important phenomenon which can be divided roughly into two types. The first of these would be the ceremonious translatio of relics, an event which usually occurred under conditions of relative political stability and which frequently had its roots in the sphere of political theology and the sacralisation of secular authority.