Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead [Hardcover]

Peter Manseau (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0805086528 | ISBN-13: 978-0805086522 | Publication Date: March 31, 2009 | Edition: First Edition

A fascinating, intelligent, and sometimes funny tour of the human relics at the root of the world’s major religions

By examining relics—the bits and pieces of long-dead saints at the heart of nearly all religious traditions—Peter Manseau delivers a book about life, and about faith and how it is sustained. The result of wide travel and the author’s own deep curiosity, filled with true tales of the living and dubious legends of the dead, Rag and Bone tells of a California seeker who ended up in a Jerusalem convent because of a nun’s disembodied hand; a French forensics expert who travels on the metro with the rib of a saint; two young brothers who collect tickets at a Syrian mosque, studying English beside a hair from the Prophet Muhammad’s beard; and many other stories, myths, and peculiar histories.

With these, and an array of other digits, limbs, and bones, Manseau provides a respectful, witty, informed, inquisitive, thoughtful, and fascinating look into the "primordial strangeness that is at the heart of belief," and the place where the abstractions of faith meet the realities of physical objects, of rags and bones.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

You have to love a book with sentences like this: Things got rough for the foreskins of Jesus as the Middle Ages matured. Author Manseau (Vows) lavishly scatters gems like this as he travels the world in search of the bones, teeth, hair and other scraps from the religiously renowned. The result is a lively lope among fragments from famous faith figures – Buddha's tooth, Muhammad's whiskers and the aforementioned foreskin, or foreskins, as many people and places have claimed ownership of this fragment. Manseau never gives over entirely to the snarkiness that sometimes marred some of his previous work, especially Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible. Instead, he provides a rich history of each of the, ahem, items he considers and examines their effects on contemporary believers. Occasionally, Manseau's pilgrimages feel a little cursory; he writes that some of his visits to the relic sites were shorter than he would have liked. Yet he listens well. When he meets a Pakistani man praying before the supposed whiskers of Muhammad in an Aleppo mosque, Manseau asks if the man has come to be close to the Prophet. Close? I cannot be close, the pilgrim replies. I come to remind me how far it is I must go. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

This is a peculiar book about a peculiar subject, the veneration of the sacred remains of saints and other holy men and women called relics, which every Roman Catholic church possesses. Manseau looks at relics through the prism of history. The Reformation denigrated their use, accentuating the differences between Catholics and Protestants and triggering schisms within the church. But relics aren’t only a Christian tradition. Muslims also revere relics. Nor are relics strictly remnants of the past. When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, he sequestered himself in his apartment with the heart of Saint Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney, patron saint of priests. The eight chapters of Manseau’s book focus on various body parts—a toe, a leg, a whisker, teeth, and nails—of a holy person as a way of commenting on their contemporary relevance. To some, venerating relics may seem a strange custom, but, Manseau somberly points out, people fight and die over these very artifacts. They are certainly not to be taken lightly. --June Sawyers

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (March 31, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805086528
• ISBN-13: 978-0805086522
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #631,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Peter Manseau is the author of the novel Songs for the Butcher's Daughter, the memoir Vows, and the travelogue Rag and Bone; he is also the co-author, with Jeff Sharlet, of Killing the Buddha. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. A founding editor of the award-winning webzine KillingTheBuddha.com, he lives with his wife and two daughters in Washington, D.C., where he studies religion and teaches writing at Georgetown University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the facsinating role of relics in the world today, April 13, 2009

By 

David Swanson (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead (Hardcover)

There are at least three good reasons to read Peter Manseau's latest book, Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead. The most quickly apparent reason is the way Manseau writes. Disguised as a travelogue, Rag and Bone is actually a history of the role relics play in the world's religions. Of the few remains of Joan of Arc Manseau writes,

"The bits and pieces that may have once belonged to the Maid of Orleans, the most popular saint the church ever killed, have been placed inside three glass jars, slid into cloth cozies, and arranged within a pale wooden case the size of a toolbox... First on the the RER commuter train, then the metro, she rides up out of the darkness like a body exhumed, despite the unfortunate fact that she never had a grave to begin with."

Manseau strikes the delicate balance of humor and awe through the book's eight chapters. While not overlooking the odd moments that are bound to take place while traveling the world to view pieces of dead people, the author is careful to treat the relics and those who venerate them with deference and admiration.

The stories that emerge when the reporter's search intersects with those who see something transcendent in old bones and bits of skin is the second reason Rag and Bone is so enjoyable. The best travelogues entertain even while showing the reader fascinating scenes and unknown histories; both are abundant in these pages. Manseau mixes his own adventures of traveling to places like Jerusalem and Syria with the stories of the once living saints whose bodies- or what's left of them- continue to influence the faithful.

There's another reason I so thoroughly enjoyed this book, though I'm not sure the author intended this reaction. Rag and Bone repeatedly shows the human desire for a physical connection with the spiritual world. Officially, many of the world's religions are rather ambivalent- or outright hostile- towards relics and the veneration that often follows. This hasn't stopped believers all around the world from making pilgrimages to see bits of bone, tooth, hair and (yes, it's true) foreskin. While modern religion is often portrayed in otherworldly terms, Manseau compellingly portrays the human need for a tangible connection with the divine.

In the midst of it's adventure, history, and humor there is plenty to ponder in Rag and Bone for those who share my Christian belief. Historic Christianity affirms the physical-ness of creation and humanity and looks to a final restoration of all things that is not less but more physical than what we now experience. Unfortunately Christianity has often moved in more gnostic directions where the body and the world is seen as a temporary existence from which we will one day escape. Within this dualistic worldview it makes sense that believers would grasp at relics as material connections to the out-of-reach spiritual world. A more traditional understanding of Christianity looks not to jars of bones for this connection but to people (the image-bearers of God) and the creation (a reflection of the character and creativity of God). The Christian is directed to God by the living creations of God. We are encouraged to worship as we encounter the beautiful and complex results of God's creative work.

Whether or not a reader finds this type of insight in its pages, Rag and Bone is an enjoyable read- as entertaining as it is informative.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lively Stories of the Dead, April 6, 2009

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead (Hardcover)

We take it for granted that people will revere their dead, memorializing or sentimentalizing them. We might view as old-fashioned the practice of keeping a lock of the dear departed's hair, but there is nothing too strange in that. But what if the keepsake was the dear departed's tongue? Veneration for body parts has a long history. "Whether a tooth, a heart, a whisker, or a calcified tear, these items have exerted a remarkable and complicated influence in the world for such tiny, often frankly repulsive, things." So writes Peter Manseau in _Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead_ (Henry Holt), a strange, reflective, and amusing tale of a very weird but universal practice. Manseau has traveled all over the world to peep at some of these objects, the ways they are put on display, their influence, and the people who adore them. Manseau is a writer on religion and other subjects, and throughout brings a humorous but always sympathetic view to relics and believers, and his insights into human nature through this peculiar subject are always interesting and sometimes profound.

He starts in Goa, for a look at the corpse of St. Francis Xavier. Francis stayed whole and undecayed until his return to Goa, where he was put on display and in 1554 a "pious Portuguese woman" was so filled with religious fervor before the relic that she not only kissed his toe but bit it off. That was a spontaneous removal, but in 1614 his right lower arm was cut off, split, and sent to Italy and Belgium to benefit Jesuits there; then later Jesuits in Japan got the rest of the arm, and then a shoulder blade went... well, you get the picture. One of the best parts of Manseau's book is that it does not restrict itself to the veneration of bones that is a familiar part of Catholic tradition, but shows relics in other religions as well. There are, for instance, relics in Islam, but they point out a very basic divide in the great Shia and Sunni branches. Shiites are inspired by relics and Sunnis are disgusted by them. From the beard of the Prophet himself has come (as one chapter here is titled) "The Most Dangerous Whisker in the World". Then there is the Buddha's tooth, which resides, naturally, at the Temple of the Holy Tooth in a Sri Lankan hill town. The most peculiar stories here have to do with the foreskin (or foreskins) of Jesus. All of him went to heaven, believers say, but the fruit of his circumcision had to be left behind on Earth somewhere. There used to be a dozen of these prepuces circulating around all over Europe. There are still bits of it about, but the place most accepted as the site of the true foreskin is Calcata, Italy, although the Catholic Church dismisses it as an "irreverent curiosity." This is perhaps a better designation than that given by a seventeenth-century Vatican librarian, who determined that the prepuce had indeed left Earth along with Jesus, and expanded and stopped at Saturn, where it became the planet's recently-discovered ring.

The Catholic Church has a designation for the offense of buying and selling sacred objects: simony. But there is a loophole: such objects can be donated, and donations can be accepted in return. This points out that relics are big business, like the touring Buddha relics which bring in dollars that are to go to an enormous statue of the Buddha, twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty. It also explains some of the thefts that have gone on for centuries, first by the Crusaders and then by monks of one church stealing from another in what seems like a great sport played from one era to the next. Of course, it isn't all about money, and as Manseau points out in this delightful collection of travel stories with a purpose, it isn't even always about faith. George Washington's hair can be found in many collections, as can fabric that soaked up Abe Lincoln's blood. And then there is the museum in Georgia that enshrines a finding from deep in the shag carpet of the Jungle Room in Graceland, and exhibits it as "Possibly Elvis's Toenail."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, educational lighter read, June 8, 2009

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Bluestalking Reader "Bluestalking Reader" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead (Hardcover)

Exactly the book I hoped it would be, at exactly the right time. I was looking for a well-written, somewhat humorous travel memoir with a more literary bent. So much of what I've been reading lately has been so heavy, and I needed a short break from that. Manseau's book fit the bill perfectly.

The subject of religious relics is probably covered in more depth elsewhere, in a nonfiction book that perhaps goes into more detail. But that's not the book I wanted to read. Manseau's less-structured romp through the world of relics, and light foray into what makes them important to some, was appealingly sweet and informative enough it satisifed my need to know just the surface facts. Indeed, at times his musings were more deep than others, and I enjoyed that as well. For me, it was just the right book for the point I'm at in my reading.