From Publishers Weekly
As Sora indicates in this unfocused book, relics have been around for centuries, and the Catholic Church has used them not only in its quest to canonize saints but also to foster private spirituality devoted to particular saints and their activities. Sora explains that not all relics are created equal, and that they are divided into three classes. A first-class relic includes any object that can be attributed to Jesus, or any bone or body part of a saint. Any item that a saint used—a Bible, a veil—is a second-class relic. Finally, an object can become a third-class relic simply by touching a higher relic: a glove that might have touched a Bible that Saint Teresa of Avila carried would become an object of devotion. Sora offers a mini-guidebook to several major relics of the Church, describing how they likely originated, where they are now and what kinds of miracles have been associated with them. He ranges over well-known relics from the Shroud of Turin and the skull of John the Baptist to Noah's Ark and the blood of the Gospel writers. While the book contains some inviting moments, Sora disappointingly provides no clues about the broader significance of relics or any reasons why he chose these over thousands of other relics that people venerate.
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Review
"Whether you believe in the relics, every sacred nail, body part or cloth has a pretty good tale associated with it. This is a well-written collection of many of those tales." (
The Dallas Morning News, August 19, 2005)
A handy compendium that covers major known but undiscovered Judeo-Christian religious relics, ranging from the bones of saints and prophets to artifacts associated with the Crucifixion.
With no real new ground to break here, Sora does a creditable job of enumerating relics that have had an impact on the faithful and on the religious establishment, assembling interesting apocrypha and updating their status. He's forthright on the phenomenon the Catholic Church calls "multiplication," otherwise known as fakery: enough pieces from the True Cross extant "to rebuild Noah's Ark," multiple heads of John the Baptist, etc. Yet records of miracles and paranormal events associated with numerous relics, replete with a host of unbiased witnesses, continue to persist and continue to resist debunking. When confronted with disproving the Shroud of Turin—supposedly the winding sheet of Christ's corpse—several scientists of indisputable world repute, the author points out, have leaned toward authentification. In fact, three separate radiocarbon dating tests indicating origin in the medieval period constitute the principal negative data; whereas cloth type, pollen accrual, etc., point to timely origin in the Middle East as do the blood type and DNA extracted from the Shroud. Enduring controversies, however, continue to be associated with a wealth of fascinating historical and cultural material like. There's the Ark of the Covenant, for instance, which leads Sora to plausible hiding places in Ireland, Scotland, France, and Ethiopia (where its supposed residence is celebrated annually), as well as Jerusalem. The once dormant relic trade itself may be energized again thanks to the Internet. While one smuggler simply FedExed saintly remains to the US not long ago, an opponent of spurious relic trading who is quoted by Sora finds eBay, despite its attempts to ban body parts of any nature, a "charnel house of holy bones," with offerings often described in perfect churchly Latin and men of the cloth among alleged buyers.
Nonreligious, readable and occasionally fascinating. (Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2004)
“…offers stories behind the most sacred.” (Publishing News, 08/10/04)
