Russian officials are calling the discovery of a medieval prince’s relics a miracle and plan to send a fragment to the front. But why do people venerate relics — and does Lenin’s body count?

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Russia can talk of nothing but relics these days: in August, restoration work at the Archangel Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin “found” a sarcophagus containing the well-preserved remains of Prince Dmitry Donskoy. The burial site of the commander of the Russian army at the Battle of Kulikovo had not been a secret, but after his canonization in 1988 the Russian Orthodox Church made no attempt to recover his relics. In the fifth year of the full-scale war, however, church authorities decided to raise the symbolic register of patriotism and “recovered” the prince’s remains. This was immediately called miraculous and almost fairy-tale-like, a “sign of Divine Providence”; Vladimir Putin took part in venerating the relics, and a fragment of them has already been promised for the front. In addition, another fragment will take part in a religious procession in Moscow on September 6. Why all these rituals? What’s miraculous about relics? How did the concept of venerating saints’ remains even arise? How does this differ from idolatry? And finally, can the corpse of Lenin, buried on Red Square, be called relics? Meduza put all these questions to Konstantin Mikhailov, a religious scholar, lecturer, and author of the Telegram channel Mykhology.

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