What makes an object sacred?

Humans have a thing about things. Since our earliest beginnings, people have been collecting objects for various reasons: they’re useful, or symbols of status, or pretty. But some objects hold greater meaning. They connect us to our memories, to far away places, to our spirituality, and to each other.

This relationship between objects and the sacred is what Kathryn Barush explores with her students at Santa Clara University’s Jesuit School of Theology. As the Thomas E. Bertelsen, Jr. Professor of Art History and Religion, Barush writes extensively on the topic of pilgrimage, and how collecting or viewing sacred objects can function as a kind of spiritual journey—one that brings us closer to enlightenment or even physical wellness.

In early November, Barush released a collaborative guide through the Berkeley Art and Interreligious Pilgrimage Project, which she founded in 2022. In addition to a guidebook, Barush helps host a podcast that brings together leaders in the arts, theology, and science to discuss the possibilities of pilgrimage as an integrative healing ritual for people navigating life with cancer.

Santa Clara Magazine spoke with Barush about what makes an object sacred and whether pilgrimage is possible if we don’t have the capability to travel to Mecca or follow in Saint Ignacio’s footsteps on the Camino.

SCM: What led you to pursue the connection between pilgrimage and sacred objects?

Barush: Back in 2003, I was awarded  a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which allows recipients who’ve just graduated from undergrad to travel and work on a specific project for a year. At the time, I was really interested in a comparative study of Buddhist religious thangka art, which are painted scrolls used for worship, and Christian manuscript illustration. I traveled to Tibet and other nearby places where people are still illuminating religious manuscripts and monastic contexts.

I found that the artwork from both traditions function as vicarious pilgrimage—a kind of pilgrimage of the eye that allows you to enter into these holy books and thangkas.

I ended up modifying my fellowship project and started meeting with folks who are doing this art as a living tradition. I really loved talking to these people who are doing this art of illumination and describe a shared sense of traveling with and through the artworks.

SCM: That idea of a sacred object taking you on a pilgrimage is so interesting. What makes an object sacred in the first place?

I think an object is perceived to be sacred when it spurs a sense of connection—to each other and also to the Divine. My work has mainly focused on objects collected from sacred landscapes and sites of pilgrimage. This kind of collecting has been going on for a long time.

For example, I often show students a reliquary box from the Vatican archives that dates from sixth-century Palestine. The cover contains icon-like scenes from the life of Christ and slides out to reveal compartments that contain bits of stone or soil from the places where those scenes took place. It adds an extra-sensory and tactile element which fosters a sense of connection not only to Jesus and his life, but to all the people who have encountered the box and touched the objects across the centuries and those who might do so in the future. In my work, I call this “extra-temporal communitas,” meaning a kind of connection across time and space. It might also be described as a cloud of witnesses, an idea from the bible used in mystic theology to describe a feeling of the presence of all these people (past, present, future) who have encountered the sacred thing.

Another way to think about this is as a transfer of spirit, like an electrical circuit which connects one thing to another thing to another thing. That is how an encounter with a sixth-century rock can be so exciting: It is directly connected to a sacred story. I teach my students that art like this is bidirectional in that it both emerges from culture, but also gives shape to it in significant ways.

SCM: Are there modern examples of sacred objects that still manage to have that community connection? Things that haven’t been passed down across generations over centuries?

One example might be the Catholic traditional practice of creating contact relics. In scripture, there’s the scene in the Book of Acts where handkerchiefs that had touched the skin of St. Paul were used to heal the sick. Even today, there are pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago who will touch something like a seashell, prayer card or religious medal to a holy object such as the tomb of St. James the Apostle. In a sense, these objects have touched the divine—in this case, a saint connected to God—so it’s not surprising that they help people feel protected or comforted.

There’s also the tradition of carrying around images of saints. For example, some travelers wear a medal of St. Christopher for protection. The saint is often portrayed as a giant crossing a river and carrying the child Jesus on his shoulder. According to The Golden Legend, a collection of stories of the saints written in the 13th century, any day you look at an image of St. Christopher, you will be prevented from dying a sudden, violent death. It’s still fairly common to encounter his image in cars or taxis.

I also think of murals and even tattoos of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This relates to the story of the Virgin Mary who appeared to the Indigenous Mexican saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin and said to him, “I’m your mother and I’m holding you under my mantle.” There’s something protective about her image, so much so many people carry her with them always on their skin.

SCM: What about items of non-religious importance? Things like a child’s cherished blanket that’s become a scrap of fabric from constant touching—a soothing ritual. Can we say that’s sacred?

What one person considers sacred might not be the same as what another person considers sacred. But I think that objects like that are really important because they engage the body through the senses, memory, and imagination. With the blanket example, the child has probably been held with the blanket by people who love him. So there’s that connection piece. Objects like this allow us to have an embodied experience that can transcend time and space because they provide a link to a meaningful place, person, or event. The blankie is something that provides a sense of comfort and protection–I think most objects considered sacred will also do this.

“The stickers that adorn computers, water bottles, and bumpers … say something about who you are and where you’ve been.”

SCM: Is there any risk of diminishing the idea of sacred objects if we say, well, anything can be sacred? Like the stickers we put on our reusable water bottles or laptop. Or is it like love, where more is more?

I don’t think so. In the Middle Ages, people would collect holy water in little soft metal phials that could be pinched shut and then shared with someone they met on the road or brought home for someone who was sick. Pilgrims also collected badges depicting images of a saint or a sacred place (a palm frond for the Holy Land, an enthroned Virgin Mary for Walsingham, and so on) and sewed onto their prayer books or hats. The stickers that adorn computers, water bottles, and bumpers are a modern equivalent. They say something about who you are and where you’ve been. They invoke questions and stories and, like many of these objects we’re talking about, bring people together.

SCM: You recently wrote an article about tarot cards as pilgrimage representatives. It seems like tarot is an example of a thing that has changed meaning in popular imagination over time. Is this something that happens often with sacred objects, that they persist but are redefined?

Definitely. This also brings to mind a holy well just outside of Oxford, England that I used to visit frequently in grad school when I needed a long walk away from the city. The well predates Christianity and was eventually dedicated to St. Frideswide, an Anglo-Saxon saint and patroness of Oxford, and then later to St. Margaret. In Victorian times, it inspired Lewis Carroll’s ‘Treacle Well’ in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. On my walks there, I’d often encounter Anglican and Catholic pilgrims, folks practicing forms of earth-based spirituality, and tourists on Oxford literary tours all headed to the well.

The well exists as a peaceful place of encounter, far enough off the beaten path that it requires a bit of a journey and some patience to find, and brings people a little closer to that which inspires them. For some it’s the connection to saints, for others it’s a sacred spring, for some maybe they’re really into Victorian literature! The meaning of the well has been culturally determined across time. But it still functions as a sacred place that connects people. In a divided world, pilgrimage is more important than ever, whether it’s a vicarious journey spurred by an encounter with a sacred object or a really long walk or both.