# Contact relics **Brandea** **Known today as.** Cloths, oil, dust, or other things touched to a saint’s tomb or remains, and so made relics themselves. Kind: Sacramental ## What was it used for? Sent to churches and the faithful in place of the saint’s body, and applied to the sick. ## What does modern science say? Contact relics, now called third-class relics, are still distributed. ## What lore surrounds it? Gregory the Great, asked by the empress Constantina for the head of St. Paul, refused and sent instead a cloth that had touched the apostle’s tomb, explaining that Roman custom did not disturb the bodies of the saints. ## What did the older authorities say? **Gregory the Great.** Tells the empress that the Romans do not touch the saints’ bodies, but place a cloth near them, which then works the same wonders. **The Catholic Encyclopedia.** The Catholic Encyclopedia quotes St. Gregory of Nyssa on the pilgrim at a martyr's tomb, “believing that to touch it is itself a sanctification and a blessing and if it be permitted to carry off any of the dust which has settled upon the martyr's resting place, the dust is accounted as a great gift and the mould as a precious treasure,” and says the veneration of “minute fragments of bone or cloth, small parcels of dust, etc.” was “widespread early in the fourth century.” In the days of Paulinus of Nola “the custom prevailed of pouring oil over the relics or reliquaries of martyrs and then gathering it in vases, sponges, or pieces of cloth. This oil, oleum martyris, was distributed among the faithful as a remedy against sickness.” Trent required that “no new miracles are to be acknowledged or new relics recognized unless the bishop of the diocese has taken cognizance and approved thereof.” ## Sources - Gregory the Great, *Registrum epistularum* 4.30. - *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Relics.” newadvent.org/cathen/12734a.htm - *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Oil of Saints.” newadvent.org/cathen/11228d.htm --- *Contact relics.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/brandea Historical description, not medical advice.