Current page: 1 (book has 13 pages total) [available reading passage: 9 pages]
Font:
100% +
"I'll take you to the museum..."
Stories told by Russian museum workers
Series "People's Book"
Head of the People's Book project Vladimir Chernets
Project coordinator, editor of the People's Book website Vladimir Guga
Project Manager for Internet promotion of the People's Book Tatiana Mayorova
Editorial board: Vladimir Guga, Anna Zimova, Ekaterina Serebryakova
© AST Publishing House LLC, 2017
* * *
We express our gratitude
Organizing Committee of the International Youth Poetry Competition named after. K. R. Natalya Zhukova, host of the “Museum Stories” program on Radio St. Petersburg
To the Russian Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM Russia) and personally to Afanasy Gnedovsky and Dinara Khalikova
Zoya Chalova, President of the St. Petersburg Library Society, Director of the Central City Public Library named after. V. V. Mayakovsky
Interstate TV and Radio Company "MIR" and personally to the head of the Internet Broadcasting Service Maria Cheglyaeva
Anna Worldova, correspondent for Radio Russia
Natalia Shergina, journalist
Tatyana Barkova, photographer
Yuri Murashkin, photographer
School-studio of television skills "Kadr"
Music TV channel "Pladis"
"Community of St. Petersburg Bloggers"
Magazine "Tourism and Culture Industry"
Alla Karyagina, host of the World of Arts program on Radio Maria
St. Petersburg Writers' Bench and personally Yuri Sobolev
Children's Library of History and Culture of St. Petersburg and personally Mira Vasyukova
Academy of Russian Ballet named after. A. Ya. Vaganova and personally Galina Petrova
State Museum of the History of Religion (St. Petersburg)
State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg)
Russian Ethnographic Museum (St. Petersburg)
St. Petersburg State Museum of Theater and Musical Art
Russian State Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic (St. Petersburg)
All-Russian Museum of A. S. Pushkin and Memorial Museum-Apartment of A. S. Pushkin (Moika, 12)
Exhibition Center "Hermitage Amsterdam"
State Museum-Reserve "Tsarskoe Selo" (St. Petersburg)
State Museum-Reserve "Pavlovsk" (St. Petersburg)
State Museum-Reserve "Gatchina" (St. Petersburg)
Museum-Institute of the Roerich Family (St. Petersburg)
State Lermontov Museum-Reserve "Tarkhany"
Marina Tsvetaeva House-Museum (Moscow)
Elabuga State Museum-Reserve
Kozmodemyansk cultural and historical museum complex
Kostroma Architectural, Ethnographic and Landscape Museum-Reserve "Kostromskaya Sloboda"
Boris Pasternak Memorial Museum (Chistopol, Republic of Tatarstan)
Museum of Wooden Architecture (Kostroma)
Museum of Electric Transport (St. Petersburg)
Museum-estate of S. V. Rachmaninov “Ivanovka”
Orenburg Regional Museum of Fine Arts
Military Medical Museum (St. Petersburg)
Tver Regional Art Gallery
Central Museum of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
Chistopol State Historical, Architectural and Literary Museum-Reserve
“My whole life is connected with museums”
Opening remarks by the Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation for Culture and Art
The collection that you are holding in your hands is designed to emphasize the importance of museums in our lives. And not only through acquaintance with the objects they store, but also through contact with the personal stories that envelop the museum world.
One of the clearest proofs of the intertwining of these two professions is the work of Nobel laureate in literature Orhan Pamuk, who wrote the novel “The Museum of Innocence”, and then brought the atmosphere of the life of his heroes into reality by opening a museum in Istanbul. Similar to the mission of a museum, literature, especially documentaries, is designed to record, preserve information and carry values through time, remaining relevant and in demand for society. In essence, the museum teaches a leisurely, calm, respectful attitude towards heritage, history, and monuments. A person who has gone through museum school has a “protective psychology.” He reacts differently to the threat of losing what memory carries.
Visiting a museum is, like reading a good book, great pleasure and happiness, and very affordable. If we talk about a book, you just need to take it off the shelf and you are already happy if it is a good book. The museum additionally gives you a sense of your presence, your presence inside this world, the world of historical figures and events.
I am sure that the publication “People's Book. “I’ll take you to the museum” will be interesting not only for museum employees, who will be able to get acquainted with the memories of colleagues and visitors, but also for museum lovers, for whom this book will open the door to such a different and full of discoveries world of museum life.
V. I. Tolstoy,
Vice-President of ICOM Russia, Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation on Culture and Art
Instead of a preface
Life is amazing and unpredictable. Who would have thought that when the AST publishing house decided to release another “People's Book” (this time dedicated to museums), this would lead to a new St. Petersburg community, which does not yet have a name, but it seems that it already has a future.
And it all started with a thought: how can museum workers, scientific people, sometimes closed, immersed in their own quests and serious matters, be involved in collecting stories for this collection? Hear from them life-like, maybe even ironic or comic stories about their life in the museum? That’s when the idea arose - to hold something like a museum skit...
They decided to organize the first St. Petersburg skit party outside the museum, in the “Books and Coffee” art cafe. It wasn’t just a success – everyone present liked it! It turned out that museum workers are not people at all immersed in the past. They are ironic, know how to tell wonderful - enticing and funny - stories, love to listen and know how to laugh contagiously.
At the second skit, a proposal was received from representatives of the State Museum of the History of Religion: let’s meet next time at our museum! And here we go... One museum replaced another, new people came, and the old-timers called themselves “veterans” of the new museum movement. Over the course of a year, skit parties have turned from just friendly communication into a completely serious activity: they get to know each other, are interested in how colleagues live, look at museums, expositions, exhibitions, and then talk about them. Bringing new colleagues here, they find friends and partners for new projects... The community spread throughout the city with its activities: first they performed at the Book Salon in St. Petersburg, then at the Book Alleys, and now the museum hour at the Friday evenings of the St. Petersburg Writers' Book Shop has become a permanent feature.
The poet said: “It is not given to us to predict how our word will respond...” But it turned out to be given to us, even before the book was published. And now the book is coming out. And, perhaps, not the last, which will be written together by people who cannot imagine life without a museum.
Natalya Zhukova,
Open area
Collecting stories about these roads, we compiled a whole book. Among its authors are researchers, travelers, and tour guides. If you think that a book of museum stories is a collection of strict manuscripts, you are deeply mistaken. A museum is an amazing world in which scientific discoveries are made and a variety of events take place - tragic and comical. That is why the thematic rubricator and the pool of our authors are so diverse.
We started putting together the book “I'll Take You to a Museum” at the end of 2015 and finally, almost two years later, it was released. Making the collection was not easy, since we were following an unbeaten path: books like this had never been published before. But nevertheless, we - authors, editors, experts - tried to make the book as honest, interesting and competent as possible.
Read our book and come to museums.
The museum is an open area! The museum is a territory of discovery!
Vladimir Guga,
correspondent for the magazine “We Read Together”, coordinator of the “People’s Book” project and editor of the website of the same name
I
Museums we choose
Nahum Kleiman
film historian, Honored Artist of the Russian Federation
(Moscow)
There can be no progress in art
1
© N. I. Kleiman, text, photo, 2017
In 1989, Naum Ikhilievich Kleiman headed the Cinema Museum, organized by the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR, which became a real cult place in the capital. In 2005, the State Central Cinema Museum was evicted from the walls of the Cinema Center built for it on Krasnaya Presnya, and thousands of serious film lovers lost a platform to get acquainted with the best examples of cinema and communicate with like-minded people. Naum Ikhilyevich Kleiman told the organizers of the project “People's Book. I’ll take you to a museum” about the importance of museums in the life of a modern person and shared his views on museum culture.
N. I. Kleiman. In Japan at a seminar on Eisenstein
Museum as an Island of Honor
The museum world of Russia is usually perceived only through the prism of its two cultural capitals. However, devotees live and work in the regions who create amazing things. Yes, in St. Petersburg and Moscow there are much more opportunities to support museum work. But sometimes we simply cannot imagine how much ingenuity and true talent the workers of regional museums have shown at all times.
The Minusinsk Museum of Local Lore received top awards at international exhibitions back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was founded by pharmacist and pharmacist Nikolai Martyanov in 1877. This museum still exists and is thriving. I visited it with Vasily Shukshin in 1963. It not only contains household items, flora and fauna of Siberia, but also shows the involvement of the inhabitants of a distant region in the “big” world. Martyanov created not just a repository of artifacts, but assembled a model of a single world, organic, technical, human.
Another example is Barnaul. Altai is a stunning region. The Gorno-Altai Autonomous Region is the northernmost Buddhist region in the world. Also very interesting here are traces of the settlement of freed convicts from tsarist times, former serfs from different regions of the European part of Russia. At one time, they came to Altai, received land there... This combination of cultures - Buddhism and Russian traditions - is unique.
The Altai region has given Russia a lot of talent, including filmmakers. In Barnaul there is the State Museum of the History of Literature, Art and Culture (GMILIKA). Wonderful people from this museum have come to Moscow, to our Cinema Museum more than once - director Igor Alekseevich Korotkov and his deputy for scientific work Elena Vladimirovna Ogneva.
Once upon a time, the Barnaul museum had a branch - the House-Museum of Vasily Shukshin in his native village of Srostki. Now this museum has a whole network of branches, including those related to cinema. A branch is already operating, preserving the memory of the magnificent actress Ekaterina Savinova. In the future, there will be the opening of museums for director Ivan Aleksandrovich Pyryev and actor Valery Zolotukhin. Enthusiasts strive to perpetuate the names of all the people for whom the Altai region is famous. This is not just boasting about your small homeland, but an attempt to inspire the younger generation: “Guys, you do not live on the edge of the world. Your fellow countrymen are world famous people.” This is an extremely important – both moral and civic – function of the museum, not to mention the preservation of memorial items and the memory of wonderful artists.
The Irkutsk Museum of the Decembrists appeared literally before my eyes. For more than a century, enthusiasts have been collecting exhibits related to the stay of the Decembrists and their families in Siberia. They were kept for a long time in the collections of the Museum of History and Local Lore, sometimes making exhibitions. In 1963, when a group of VGIK graduates traveled around Siberia with their diploma works, the poet Mark Sergeev spoke about the future museum as a dream - “his own and a few other eccentrics.” In 1970, an exhibition opened in the Trubetskoys’ house, and later in the Volkonskys’ house. As far as I remember, even then the concept of this museum was very different from the general Soviet doctrine, according to which the December Uprising of 1825 was only the forerunner of October.
The founders of this museum created a kind of “island of honor,” if you like, which today can play a colossal moral role both for Irkutsk and for all of Russia. The same enthusiast was Vladimir Petrovich Kupchenko, who did everything to ensure that Maximilian Voloshin’s house in Crimea became a museum. But these are just a few unique museum phenomena that come to mind first. And there are many, many more of them.
Museum like Fate
Many roads lead people to serve in museums. One ancient Chinese parable comes to mind: a man was invited to civil service, which in China was and remains a very honorable occupation. And he went on foot to the capital. He walked and walked and suddenly saw a small child crying on the threshold of a house near the road. It turned out that his parents died of illness. The man decided to stop and wait for the next passerby to place the orphan in his care. But those passers-by who occasionally appeared on the road did not want to take the child. Then the would-be dignitary began to cultivate the land of his deceased parents. Gradually, the man got used to the baby, and spent his whole life next to him, never getting into public service.
When the Union of Cinematographers founded the museum, I didn’t think that it would become a job for me. I intended to continue to work on the Eisenstein legacy and film science... I agreed to “help with the development of the concept”, to devote a year and a half to the museum, no more. But this “child” still didn’t let me go. To be honest, I am not a fighter, I have absolutely no fighting qualities. But it turned out that the director must keep his fists clenched and his elbows outstretched at all times, so that the newly-minted “masters of life” do not destroy his museum. They repeatedly tried to break me, but I could not allow myself to give up, so as not to betray the cause that society and cinema needed and the young people who believed in it - not only employees, but viewers: they needed such a museum. As, indeed, to the classics themselves, who, without our attention to their heritage, also become “orphans.”
The creation of the Cinema Museum took so long and was not easy, because the idea of what “cinema should be” was constantly changing: yesterday’s “demigods” were constantly being overthrown. In the 20s, pre-revolutionary cinema was overthrown, then, in the 30s, a blow was struck against the so-called “formalists” who helped cinema find its own language, in the 40s they hit the “politically immature” filmmakers of the 30s, etc. .d... Disrespect for one's predecessors is a terrible tendency. Why did this happen to us? There are many reasons for this. But, in particular, we are in the grip of a very strange understanding of progress as the obligatory replacement of the worse (or underdeveloped) with the better. But there can be no progress in art! In general, not respecting your predecessors means not respecting your descendants. At one of the decisive meetings with Soviet officials regarding the fate of the Cinema Museum on Krasnaya Presnya, a certain lady in the office asked us: “Well, what kind of garbage will you display there? Postcards? Posters? Advertisements? Yes?"
Stanislav Rostotsky and artist Elsa Rappoport at her exhibition at the Cinema Museum
Fortunately, at that moment, in 1992, we were supported by Yevgeny Yuryevich Sidorov, the Minister of Culture, and the Cinema Museum, for which the split Union of Cinematographers no longer had the funds, was re-established in order to receive state status in 2002.
Museum as a Chamber of Weights and Measures
Not only celebrities came out of the Cinema Museum, including Andrei Zvyagintsev, Alexei Popogrebsky, Boris Khlebnikov, but also a number of artists, cameramen, and many simply good people.
Quentin Tarantino at the Museum of Cinema stock exhibition near the costumes for the film “Ivan the Terrible”
What is a museum? This is not only a repository of documents and art monuments. It is, first of all, a navigator in the world of culture. Figuratively speaking, a visitor to a museum is given a map and told: “Here are Leonardo and Rembrandt, here is Van Gogh, and here is Serov. Now decide for yourself whether the constantly appearing new paintings are approaching these standards and which of them is a new phenomenon in art, which will later also become a standard?” I have said many times, but I am not afraid to repeat, that a museum is a kind of chamber of weights and measures. Agree, we need to know what a kilogram is, what a second is, what a kilometer is. Otherwise we will be lost in this world. So the Cinema Museum fulfilled its function of educating the individual, and also served as a chamber of aesthetic measures and weights in the endless sea of “audio vision”.
But sometimes a museum plays not only an educational role, but also provides an opportunity to make important personal discoveries. Once we showed visitors the film “Ilyich's Outpost.” After the session, a young woman came up to me and said: “I am so grateful to you for this film. Now I understand my mother better.” For me, this is the highest compliment to the work of the museum! If a person begins to understand his mother better, then the existence of the museum is justified. This viewer does not necessarily need to understand the nuances of Marlen Khutsiev’s direction or Margarita Pilikhina’s cinematography. The main thing is that her mother became for her part of the reality that she saw and understood. What could be more important?
Museum as a Guarantor of Permanence
Can a museum survive in the era of special effects-rich cinema, digital television, and computer technology? Certainly! When we held the first exhibition of works by Kazimir Malevich at the Tretyakov Gallery, I invited my techie friends to it, who were not directly related to art, but who sincerely wanted to understand why this “abstractionist” was so valued in the world. Leading them through the exhibition and commenting on the paintings to the best of my ability and knowledge, I suddenly discovered that there were more and more people around - they also wanted to hear our conversation. It is known that an unprepared visitor’s first reaction to Malevich’s work is approximately the following: “Well, I drew a square. What's so special about this? I can do that too". But people begin to look at so-called non-objective art completely differently when you tell them that Malevich studied with icon painters, in particular with Andrei Rublev, whose “Trinity” for some reason depicts a double rectangle in the center on a white field... It turns out that it’s so geometric the “golden ratio”, known to the ancient Greeks, is presented, associated with both the categories of beauty and the irrationality of the world. On this greatest icon, Rublev depicted not only the Old Testament legend of the three angels who visited the house of Abraham, but also the New Testament metaphysics of the unity of the three hypostases of God. And he depicted it not only figuratively - in the silent conversation of the Trinity about the self-sacrifice of Christ, but also abstractly - with the help of a geometric system of circles and spheres spreading from the Sacrificial Chalice to the entire universe. If you stand in front of a genuine icon at the right point, you will suddenly find yourself in a sphere that, thanks to reverse perspective, extends from the icon into the space in front of it. It’s like an analogue of the sacrament of communion! This miracle cannot be achieved with any reproductions. You experience a similar effect, say, in Toledo in front of El Greco’s painting “The Funeral of Count Orgaz”: standing in front of it at the barrier that the artist himself may have placed, you suddenly see the count’s funeral on the ground above, his soul in front of the Virgin Mary from below, and right in front ourselves - the boundless Cosmos beyond perspective...
In a museum, both visual and verbal communication with the original is possible, which other types and objects of educational activity lack. Neither cinema nor the Internet will ever replace the original! But at the same time, the museum must not lag behind the times; it must attract more and more new means and forms of exhibition and communication.
When I first came to Berlin in 1968 at the invitation of the GDR Academy of Arts, its president, director Konrad Wolf, suggested going to Weimar, Dresden and Leipzig. In Weimar, the first thing I went to, of course, was the Goethe House. I was told that first I had to go to the stables... I was surprised, but that’s what I did. It turned out that the stables had been converted into a cinema hall in which a short introductory film was shown. It told who Goethe was, what his passions were, what he did for German culture, what this house meant to him, what kind of relationship he had with the Duke... Within fifteen to twenty minutes I was put in a certain mood, brought into Goethe’s life was introduced to his character, and the things from that house that I was about to see were shown in the context of his biography and work. After such an overture, I looked with completely different eyes at both the front suite in the memorial house and the small room where the poet worked at his desk. Today, technology even makes it possible to tactfully introduce small “exhibition films” into a memorial exhibition, through broadcasting to a visitor’s smartphone, revealing the meaning and significance of the exhibits.
Museum as a fashion trend
The exhibition of Valentin Serov’s paintings was crowded even before Vladimir Putin appeared there. True, at first there was no excitement there. Then fame spread throughout Moscow, and it began... I got there when there was already a line. Unfortunately, we have something called “fashion”. Alas, art has become a subject of fashionable reception... It is customary to “tear” tickets for some concerts, as is customary to worship a cult figure. Unfortunately, they tried to make Valentin Serov’s work into something it never was. Yes, there was a stampede at the Picasso exhibition, and I remember it very well. And at the Moscow-Paris exhibition. They became for many people a discovery of the art of the 20th century, for some - an opportunity to “taste the forbidden fruit”, and for others - a reason for scandal. Yes, the same Caravaggio! People also stood in line to see him. But Serov is not a shortage and something forbidden. The public themselves “promoted” him, and Putin’s visit may have spurred this “promotion”. In part, I’m even glad about this: Serov is a world-class artist, but only a few of his paintings were popular in Russia. And outside of it, he is generally little known. Now he will be “in demand” at least no less than Shishkin...
I believe that the more the head of state goes to exhibitions, the better the state will be. The example of a leader often cultivates the feelings of the masses, and such an example is far from the worst. But the exhibition of Serov’s works turned partly into a fashionable event, which swirled around, like a whirlpool, a lot of people who were generally indifferent to culture, including representatives of the political elite. The media also added fuel to the fire. The role of television as a drug is undeniable: it injects into the public consciousness an excited attitude towards the most natural things.
Serov, by the way, is very well represented in the Tretyakov Gallery. Well, they brought a portrait of Ida Rubinstein from St. Petersburg for this exhibition. So what? It wasn’t for him that everyone rushed to the Central House of Artists! It’s just that suddenly everyone “needed” to watch Serov. Once in the Louvre I saw a crowd of tourists looking at the La Gioconda through telescopes and binoculars. But why is the Mona Lisa an object of cult? What, the “Madonna of the Rocks” by the same Leonardo, located nearby, has less artistic value?
Museum as a Window to Eternity
I really love the A.S. Pushkin Museum in St. Petersburg, which now occupies the entire house on the Moika, where the poet spent the last months of his life. Once upon a time, only the poet’s memorial apartment in this house was a museum. Nina Ivanovna Popova, the current director of the Anna Akhmatova Museum in the Fountain House, worked here. She led the tours amazingly. I was lucky - friends introduced us, and I had the honor of walking through Pushkin’s apartment together with Nina Ivanovna. I will never forget the beginning of her story: “Everything you see here, except for the cane, the desk and the bullet-ridden vest, is typology. Even a miniature of Natalya Nikolaevna (Goncharova. - Ed.) is a facsimile copy. Real miniatures would fade in the light and we do not display them. The only thing that is truly authentic is the view from the window. Pushkin saw the same thing that you see now. Here is Benkendorf's house, and this is Derzhavin's house. And there is Winter..."
When you stand in front of this window, you inevitably identify yourself with Pushkin. This kind of perception of the museum allows you to understand much more than what the lecture gives. There should be no fetishistic attitude towards the museum. And a museum specialist should not deceive by passing off the typology as genuine things. Of course, he should admit: “This is what Pushkin’s living room might have looked like, and this is what his bedroom might have looked like. But we also have something that you won’t see in any other museum in the world.” With the right approach to presenting information, the museum visitor is not simply placed in the coordinate system selected according to the accepted general methodology. It is important to immerse him not only in the aura of the originals, but also in the field of assumptions. There is no need to hide controversial issues from him, and it is necessary to awaken a person’s memory and imagination with expositional images (not only originals and typological artifacts). It is impossible to isolate art, on the one hand, from objective life, from the ever-changing reality of the universe, and on the other, from museum creativity and from the co-creation of the viewer.
Interviewed by Vladimir Guga
>Essays by topic
Excursion to the museum
I often visit all sorts of museums, I really like this feeling of meeting the past, you feel like the hero of an old novel and part of another era. Museums store artifacts, paintings, manuscripts, things and objects that appeared long before us, all of which in our time have great cultural and historical value.
Museums come in different types. For example, a historical museum that stores information about significant events in history. The ethnographic museum tells about the rituals and traditions of different peoples. It stores unique cultural monuments: national costumes, household items, beliefs and folklore, etc. The local history museum can introduce you to the past of your native land. Wandering through the halls of the museum, we get acquainted with the past. A very important figure in any museum is the guide; with the help of his story, you can compare exhibits and stories, then the picture becomes more complete. You can ask the guide questions; he always has a timely and detailed question.
One day before Victory Day, my class and I decided to go to our city museum, the Museum of Military Glory, where an open week was held. We were met by a museum employee, she greeted us and introduced herself, asked us several questions about our knowledge of the history of the Great Patriotic War, we answered them with enthusiasm. She told us that in the museum we would see the heroes of our city and hear their story.
When we entered the hall, it was as if we had plunged into the past. The room resembled a military headquarters and an archive at the same time; the guide said that they used preserved letters, photographs, orders, officer tablets, etc. Everything around was in dark colors, the predominant colors were grey, dark blue, khaki and brown. There were many portraits, medals, and slogans on the walls. The guide's story impressed us to the core; she told us about a resident of our city who lost everything during the war, but still did not give up, fighting to the bitter end. After visiting the museum, we walked in silence for a long time, each of us thought about the important feat of the Soviet people, in the eyes of each there was sorrow and gratitude for the peaceful sky given by a valuable thousand lives. Now none of us will doubt whether to go to the parade in honor of the Victory.
Culture and education
Museum, theater, circus, exhibition hall, concert hall, library - this is cultural institutions.
School, lyceum, gymnasium, college, university, conservatory - this is educational institutions.
Emphasize cultural institutions with one feature and educational institutions with two.
School, museum, circus, gymnasium, library, theater, school, college, university, concert hall, lyceum, exhibition hall.
This is the task Seryozha and Nadya came up with for you. Find out a cultural institution by one - a single subject. Write the names of these institutions in the boxes.
Write what cultural and educational institutions there are in your region (city, village).
a) Cultural institutions: circus, operetta, puppet theater, Pushkin library
b) Educational institutions: Lyceum No. 40, university, polytechnic college, police school
Write a story about a museum you visited. Here you can paste a photo of a museum building or an interesting exhibit.
I visited the Armory. The Armory Chamber, a museum-treasury, is part of the Grand Kremlin Palace complex. It is located in a building built in 1851 by the architect Konstantin Ton.
Presented here are precious objects kept for centuries in the royal treasury, made in the Kremlin workshops, as well as received as gifts from foreign embassies, ceremonial royal clothing and coronation dress, monuments of weaponry, a collection of crews, and items of ceremonial horse harness.
Find out what educational institutions the adults in your family graduated from and what profession they received. Fill out the table.
About a six-day work week With a 6-day
What is a social worker?
Root hermitage in the Kursk region: the story of a miracle Root hermitage prayer service for the sick
Ceremonial signing of the agreement Ceremony of signing the cooperation agreement
Conditions and procedure for venerating the relics of St.