Magnificent Corpses: Searching Through Europe for St. Peter's Head, St. Claire's Heart, St. Stephen's Hand, and Other Saints' Relics [Paperback]

Anneli Rufus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 25, 1999

Holy relics -- the bodily remains of saints and other sacred figures -- were for centuries the most revered objects in the Western world, at center-stage in Europe's great churches and cathedrals. Today some relics have been shunted to side chapels and dark crypts, yet many continue to draw prayerful pilgrims, as they have for centuries, seeking solace, inspiration, and signs of miracles. In Magnificent Corpses, Anneli Rufus recounts her visits to 18 of Europe's most significant relics. With an engaging mix of history and personal narrative, Rufus tells their secret stories and, along the way, revisits with a fresh eye the compelling accounts of the saints whose physical bodies the relics represent.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Travel with Anneli Rufus as she visits St. Anthony's jawbone, shriveled tongue, and vocal cords. Critically acclaimed author Rufus weaves a hair-raising travelogue out of 28 visits to garlanded skulls, disembodied hands, and fully clad mummies in towns and villages across Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Denmark, England, and France. Each tale is a literary gem as well as a wonderment of miracles attributed to the living saints and their corporeal remains. Known as an impassioned preacher and miracle maker during his life, after his death in 1231 his tomb was repeatedly reopened for relics. At one point, his tongue was reported to still be living and was placed on display. In 1981, his vocal cords were found still fresh! Incredible reports like these and the high quality of Rufus's narrative craftsmanship win Magnificent Corpses my vote for the most entertaining metaphysical read of the summer. --Randall Cohan

From Publishers Weekly

The veneration of relics, especially the bones, body parts and body fluids of saints, has a long and rather grisly history in Christianity. In addition, the legends that accompany the deaths of the saints provide fodder for worshippers to seek out the fingernails, hair, tongues, hearts and heads of these blessed ones so that by touching them they may receive God's grace. As a teenager, Rufus (The World Holiday Book), even though Jewish, was fascinated by these "extraordinary tales of girls who had their eyes torn out, their breasts slashed off, who sang while being boiled." In a book that is part travel guide, part detective story and part history of the saints, Rufus recounts her searches for more than 20 of Europe's relics. As she notes, some of these relics continue to exert enormous appeal. "In certain churches, mummies lie like well-loved mascots...it is difficult to find a pew in the Paris chapel where the corpse of St. Catherine Laboure lies with its blue eyes wide open.... Pilgrims line up for a chance to see St. Anthony's severed tongue, to touch and kiss the glass that shields it." In a wonderfully warm and engaging style, Rufus retells the stories of saints like Ursula and the 11,000 virgins, who, legend has it, were murdered by pagans upon their return to Cologne after a voyage to Rome. The women's remains are housed in the Basilica of St. Ursula in Cologne, where, Rufus notes, "Bones flock in the walls like geometric bands, zigzags and crosses. Vertebrae scatter like thick white blossoms...I crane my neck to see the femurs overhead." Among other shrines she visits is that of St. Maria Goretti in the church of Our Lady of Graces in Nettuno, Italy. According to legend, Maria chose death over rape and eight years later visited her assailant in a dream that converted him. Her bones are encased in a wax figure of the young girl inside a glass casket in the shrine. Rufus reports that the gift shop has locks of Maria's hair on display, lurid dime novels about the case, and even comic books about Maria's story. Rufus's splendid storytelling takes readers on a European tour not soon forgotten, one that explores religion's fascination with death. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; 1st edition (June 25, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569246874
• ISBN-13: 978-1569246870
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #940,941 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent Disappointment, February 8, 2000

By 

M. Wells (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Magnificent Corpses: Searching Through Europe for St. Peter's Head, St. Claire's Heart, St. Stephen's Hand, and Other Saints' Relics (Paperback)

As a non-Catholic who finds the Catholic church and all of its excesses fascinating, I was excited to read this book. Unfortunately, Magnificent Corpses is quite a disappointment in both structure and substance. The book is a collection of barely strung together essays on the history of saints and their modern relics. The loose collection only magnifies the lack of editing in the book. I had no idea why the author always commented about an "incorrupt corpse" until the last chapter or so when she finally explained it to us all. She also repeats stories without referring back to her earlier statements. The stories themselves are also repetitive with constant cutesy references to girls in tube tops, women with shopping bags, or men in Bermudas to bring the reader back to present day. After the second time, we get the picture already! Finally, I can do without the heavy dose of late 20th Century politically correct morals laced in her commentary of the saints and the present day countries that she visited. It's enough to make a liberal, like myself, want to scream!

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat Informative, But Too Cynical For The Topic, October 31, 2001

By 

Michael Lima (Fresno, California USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Magnificent Corpses: Searching Through Europe for St. Peter's Head, St. Claire's Heart, St. Stephen's Hand, and Other Saints' Relics (Paperback)

Having visited a few relics myself (St. Oliver Plunkett's head in Drogheda, Ireland and Blessed Brother Andre's heart in Montreal), I was quite excited to find this book. I knew that the author isn't a Catholic, so I wasn't expecting a book heavy on either background or doctrine. Instead, I was expecting a light hearted, but respectful, look at the relics and the people who worship them. What I found was a lot more background, but a lot less respect, than I expected.

It's clear Rufus has studied her Butler's Lives of the Saints very thoroughly, because she does an excellent job of giving the historical details of the saints' lives and telling how their relics ended up in the places where they are located. She even does a great job of describing the appearance of the churches and the saints' reliquaries. Where the book falls short is in its compassion for those who believe in a relic's power. Rufus uses a Joan Didion-esque style to talk about the people visiting the relics at the same time she was visiting them. In these asides, she primarily focuses on people who either clearly did not want to be visiting the relics or were visiting only as part of a tour. She also tends to show most people either not knowing where these relics are located, or so focused on day to day activity that they don't pay attention to them. By focusing on these people and situations, Rufus gives the impression that the relics are not a part of today's life, and that the people who visit them for faith reasons aren't "normal". Rufus backs up this impression by interjecting her opinions on the psychological and physiological conditions of the saints. These comments give the book a cynical tone that isn't appropriate for the topic.

Discussing relics is not an easy subject to write about. Focusing on the morbid or gruesome aspects of the relics will only get the devout angry. Focusing on the spiritual side to relics would bore the non-believer audience. Rufus attempted to find a middle road by taking a journalistic approach to the topic. Yet, she undermines the journalistic intent of her study by interjecting her commentary into each chapter. The result is a book that is an interesting introduction to the history of these relics, but one that lacks any spiritual perspective to place these items into their proper context.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Creepy, but not for the reasons you might think, August 17, 2002

By 

Christopher Buczek (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Magnificent Corpses: Searching Through Europe for St. Peter's Head, St. Claire's Heart, St. Stephen's Hand, and Other Saints' Relics (Paperback)

I began reading this book with real relish-- like the author claims to be, I've always been fascinated with the cult of the saints. More than once I've stepped inside a gloomy church in Europe or Canada and been surprised to find the remains of a saint, displayed in a golden reliquary or laid on silken pillows, gently lighted. What do these richly dressed bones mean to the people who reverently placed them there, and those who still come to pray before them, and place their trust in them? I've even been led to ask--why do I often feel peace beside these dessicated remains, instead of revulsion, or pity, or fear?
Regrettably, I found answers to none of my questions here. These questions, or similar ones, seem never to have occurred to Rufus. Instead, she casts a cold, unquestioning eye on every shrine she enters and writes about what she sees with a predictable and trite condescension. Because there are only so many ways to lament the "superstition" of displaying human remains for veneration, Rufus dips into the lives of the saints to fill out her little book. Here, also, she is remarkably culturally tone-deaf. Yes, the lives of the saints have been re-constructed into hagiography by the Catholic church to teach lessons of purity, or forbearance, or obedience--but the faithful who come to these shrines and who feel an intimate connection with these saints cannot do so because they are examplars of virtue (what teenager goes on holiday to a church to celebrate chastity?) There is something else at work here, something very powerful and mysterious and, I think, worth knowing about. But you won't find out about it in this book. I could say that Rufus never met a saint she liked, but I don't know if she has ever met a person she liked. She didn't encounter a single person during her travels who she feels is worthy of being portrayed with empathy or understanding. In the end this book reminded me of certain 19th century accounts by Englishmen making their grand tour through Italy; like Rufus they intended to tell us what they found but because they were careful to carry their prejudices with them, and to unpack them first and to drape them over everything they saw, they ended up revealing very little about the places they visited, and far too much about themselves.