'Postponing oblivion' and tools of political legitimation. Relics in Malta and their echo in the foreign world in the age of Baroque

Abstract

Without any doubt relics as well as relic shrines and associated objects have played a prominent role in European history since the introduction of Christianity. At the most basic level, a relic is a material object that relates to a particular individual and very often also to events and places with which that individual was associated. described as material manifestations of the act of remembrance. They sublimate and perpetuate memory in the guise of physical remains and therefore link the past and present in a concrete and palpable way. North American social historian Annabel Wharton has defined them as 'remnant(s) of a history that is threatened by forgetting': they 'postpone oblivion' and evoke 'an absent whole' .