Rag and Bone: In Search of the Holy Dead

Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead
By Peter Manseau
Henry Holt & Company; 241 pages

The Gist:
"This is a book about dismembered toes," Georgetown professor Peter Manseau writes by way of introduction. "But it is not a book about death." From Damascus to Jerusalem to Philadelphia (oddly, one of the relic capitals of the world), Manseau recounts his journey to find religious objects that have captivated the faithful for centuries and his encounters with modern pilgrims along the way. This includes a French mortician who analyzes the charred remains of Joan of Arc; a Sri Lankan tour guide who makes his living at the Temple of the Holy Tooth; a Syrian boy whose playground includes the al-Jami al-Kabir mosque in Damascus; and a Pakistani man who, when asked if he felt closer to Muhammad after beholding the Prophet's purported whiskers, simply replied, "Close? I cannot be close. I come to remind me how far it is I must go."

Highlight Reel:

1. On rating Christian relics: In the Catholic Church, "there came to be three distinct kinds: first class, second class, and third class, with further scales of value evident but less formally defined within each class. First class relics include any object that may have had contact with Jesus Christ during his life, death or resurrection: wood from the stable where legend says he was born; pieces of the cross or nails used for his crucifixion; the Shroud of Turin, which the faithful believe wrapped his body before it was set in the tomb ... Had John the Baptist worn a watch, for example, it would be a second-class relic. (Had Jesus given it to him, it would be a first.) A third-class relic is anything — anything at all — that has touched a first-class relic." As Manseau is quick to point out, such categorization often did more harm than good: "Seen charitably, this means that anyone could aspire to possess one. Seen cynically — and no less historically — the three-classes scheme meant that counterfeiting of the second and third class could be easily performed."
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2. On the commercialization and forgery of relics: "The boom and ease of buying religious items on eBay and elsewhere on the Web has led to a rebirth in the relic trade, and, it seems, to a renaissance of relic forgery ... Many of these forgeries are convincing to all but the most seasoned experts in the field, and even a few of them have been fooled," Manseau writes, adding, "The problem of fake relics goes well beyond bones. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was shaken by the exposure of forged documents related to its founding. The counterfeiter responsible for the fakes was a disgruntled Mormon missionary ... He created and sold titillating documents — including one that purported to show that LDS founder Joseph Smith practiced magic. In [Mark William] Hoffman's most notorious forgery, he presented Smith as a man visited not by an angel but by a giant white salamander."

3. On the power of relics: "When the Taliban first attempted to take control of Afghanistan in 1996, they knew where to begin. The Taliban leader Mullah Omar demanded to be let into a shrine containing relics of Prophet Muhammad: hair from his beard, and a cloak he is said to have worn. Seizing the cloak, Mullah Omar went to the roof of the shrine and slid his hands into the sleeves, holding the garment before him for everyone to see. To the crowd watching it looked like he had gone into the relic chamber and come out transformed into the Prophet himself."

The Lowdown:

Manseau's vivid recollections of each trip, combined with personal anecdotes and interesting tidbits (did you know that every Roman Catholic Church in the U.S. has a relic?), provide a fascinating look into an ancient and complex topic. He writes that when he saw the first sonogram of his daughter, his mind immediately wandered back to the relics he had seen and studied the world over. "Perhaps it was a renewed interest in all that is implied by the word miracle," he muses. "Or perhaps it was the experience of seeing the component parts of a human being in a state of existence that was somewhere in between, not fully in the world and not fully out of it ... I wanted her to know how lucky she is to be born at a time when a vast spiritual vocabulary is open to her. I wanted to teach her that faith is strange and beautiful and sometimes scary."

After all, as Manseau concludes, "how can we begin to consider the meaning of whatever is left of Francis, Joan, Ella, the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, or anyone dead but not forgotten, unless we acknowledge, with sadness, with wonder, that they began as small and perfect as the rest of us? These bones — fragile, mortal, beautiful — are where belief begins. Faith, at least according to Saint Paul's definition, is trust in things unseen. What, then, to make of relics? The point of them is to be seen, meditated on, keened over. Are they signs of weak faith, or strong? After seeing so many of them for myself, I've come to believe that relics are signs that faith is a lot more complicated than Saint Paul suggests."

The Verdict: Read.

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