Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe

A richly textured history spanning a thousand years of holy relics across Europe

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. Freeman examines an expansive array of relics, showing how the mania for these objects deepens our understanding of the medieval world and why these relics continue to capture our imagination.

• Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages
• The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, Enlarged Edition
• Relics: What They Are and Why They Matter
• Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (Zone Books)
• Saints Preserved: An Encyclopedia of Relics
• Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400-circa 1204
• Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages: A Reader (Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures)
• The Reliquary Effect: Enshrining the Sacred Object
• The Pilgrim's Guide to Santiago de Compostela
• Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?: Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation