Holy Bones, Holy Dust:
how relics shaped the history of Medieval Europe
Charles Freeman
Yale, 2011
232.5 F855h
"Relics were everywhere in medieval society. Saintly morsels such as bones, hair, teeth, blood, milk, and clothes, and items like the Crown of Thorns, coveted by Louis IX of France, were thought to bring the believer closer to the saint, who might intercede with God on his or her behalf. In the first comprehensive history in English of the rise of relic cults, Charles Freeman takes readers on a vivid, fast-paced journey from Constantinople to the northern Isles of Scotland over the course of a millennium.
In Holy Bones, Holy Dust, Freeman illustrates that the pervasiveness and variety of relics answered very specific needs of ordinary people across a darkened Europe under threat of political upheavals, disease, and hellfire. But relics were not only venerated—they were traded, collected, lost, stolen, duplicated, and destroyed. They were bargaining chips, good business and good propaganda, politically appropriated across Europe, and even used to wield military power." -publisher
''In Holy Bones, Holy Dust, Charles Freeman presents the massive history of relic veneration in a way that is at the same time comprehensive, compulsive and accessible. This is no mean achievement.''—Paul Fouracre, Frankland: The Franks and the World of Medieval Europe (Paul Fouracre )
contents:
Prologue: the making of a martyr -- How the Christian relic emerged -- The incorruptible flesh of the martyrs -- Creating a Christian landscape -- The battle for acceptance -- The view from Byzantium -- Bishops, magic and relics in the post-Roman world -- 'A barbarous, fierce and unbelieving nation' -- The great consolidator -- Hope and desperation in a disordered world -- Cults and the rise of anti-semitism -- Fervent Christian pilgrims -- 'The eyes are fed with gold-bedecked reliquaries' -- Looting the East -- Louis IX and the Sainte-Chapelle -- Sacred flesh between death and resurrection -- 'Christ's recruits ... fight back' -- Protectors of il Popolo -- The Virgin Mary and the penitent whore -- The wondrous blood of Christ -- Rescuers and devils -- 'Of far-off saints, hallowed in sundry lands' -- 'dead images that ... may not ... help any man of any disease' -- Protestantism and the new iconoclasm -- Intimations of reality -- Reasserting the miraculous -- Within the community of the supernatural.
Charles Freeman is a scholar and freelance historian specializing in the history of ancient Greece and Rome. He is the author of numerous books on the ancient world including The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason. He has taught courses on ancient history in Cambridge's Adult Education program and is Historical Consultant to the Blue Guides. He also leads cultural study tours to Italy, Greece and Turkey. In 2003, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He lives in Suffolk, England.