The Siren's Call: Praying to the bones

Charles Freeman's "Holy Bones, Holy Dust" is an insightful study of the religious rise of relics during the Middle Ages; plus a relic left behind by C.S. Lewis.

Near the end of "The Leopard," Giuseppe di Lampedusa's 1958 novel about the crumbling Sicilian aristocracy, a priest visits three spinsters to assess the holy relics in the family's private family chapel. The priest determines that, out of all the various bits of bone and other strange objects, some are authentic and should be kept. The rest are thrown away.

If author Charles Freeman had been along on that visit, he would have insisted, "Don't throw anything away! Keep everything!"

Why? According to "Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe" (Yale University: 306 pp., $35), all relics — authentic and otherwise — provide an intriguing perspective on thought in the Middle Ages and the way the remains of the dead turned from something repulsive into objects of adoration. Relics were special hotlines to Heaven.

Over the centuries, the practice of revering relics has been good fodder for opponents of Christianity — and especially of the Catholic Church. How could somebody cherish decaying corpses? Gross! Idolatrous!

Still, the practice continues today, with the faithful visiting shrines around the world or else keeping small relics — non-morbid ones (one assumes) — in their own homes: It might be a crucifix embedded with a grain of sand from Jerusalem, for example, or a medallion containing a bit of cloth that has touched the tomb of Saint Anthony of Padua.

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