Patricia Grau-Dieckmann

Original title: Los Perfumes en el Cristianismo

Published in Mirabilia 3 (2003)

Keywords: Christendom, aromas, incense, myrrh, perfumes, spikenard.

In several religions, pleasant smells –perfumes– play an important role in the rites and in the liturgy, during meditation and in the prayers, while communing with the divinities. Christianity did not keep aside from this practice but infused it with a new signification. Christ Himself entered in contact with the most valuable perfumes since his early childhood. The incense and the myrrh offered by the wise men from Orient, the oil of spikenard and the funeral oils used to anoint His body mark only the initiation of a relation with the aromas which will flourish in Jesus Christ’s legacy for the many centuries in which Christendom was formed and consolidated.