Liam Ostermann's Reviews > Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead

Possibly one of the worst books I have read in a long time. I gave up confidence in the author when I read on page 80:

"...By the time King Louis IX got involved in the relic hunt, King Baldwin II, the ruler of the Knights Templar who governed Jerusalem from 1118 to 1131, gladly served as broker for the French sovereign's purchase of both the Crown of Thorns and another head of John the Baptists..."

Almost everything in the above statement is wrong, Baldwin II was not 'ruler' of the Knights Templar which was only founded in 1119 by Hughes de Payens and Godfrey de Saint-Omer and Baldwin was busy as King of Jerusalem by that stage. Baldwin didn't provide any help to Louis IX of France because Baldwin died in 1131 and Louis IX was born until 1214 and didn't acquire the crown of thorns until 1238 by which time there was no 'kingdom' of Jerusalem because Saladin had reconquered it in 1187. King Louis IX purchased the crown of thorns from the Latin emperor of Constantinople (that it was a 'Latin' emperor not a Greek one is actually significant but way to complicated to explain so I suggest looking up the sack of Constantinople and the fourth crusade).

That this farago of inaccuracy is part of the authors explanation that the real purpose of the Crusades was to steal relics is both implausible and deeply insulting - it is like explaining that the cause of WWII was Hitler's desire to loot great works of art.

What is even more disturbing is his laudatory chapter on the 'Heart Shrine Relic Tour' which was going about the world raising funds to build a 500 foot high 'Maitreya Buddha' in Uttar Pradesh. As of 2024 no statue has been built though the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition did try and grab 300 acres of land under India's 'Land Acquisition Act' (a law from the British Raj for compulsory purchasing land for railways - it is one of numerous legal hangovers from the Raj which render questionable the boast that the British empire provided India with the rule of law). Even by the time this book was published in 2009 the whole project stank of boondoggle and corruption and it is amazing that the author in his supposedly extensive travels and research in connection with this book never met, or even heard of, any of the 3000 indian families protesting at the seizure of their lands for derisory compensation.

The failure to get the Maitreya Buddha built is all the more extraordinary because India is overflowing with hideous gigantic statues most of them built in the last twenty years.

Nor does he bother to question, let alone provide scientific explanation, for the buddhist 'relics' which are supposed to miraculously appear in the cremated remains of buddhist holy people. As for his piece on the buddha's tooth in Kandy in Sri Lanka he might be surprised to learn that there are equally significant relics of the Buddha in 23 countries (24 if you count heaven as a country) including two teeth in the USA. Nor does he mention the extensive wars over these relics.

Perhaps his most extraordinary chapter is on the remains of the now sainted grand duchess Elizabeth of Russia. He relates the most ridiculous tales about how her body while being transported out of Russia had to be continually reburied to hide it from Bolsheviks which is highly unlikely as it was part of consignment of half a dozen dead Romanovs plus servants brought out of Russia by the Allied Military Mission and in any case stopping a train to bury and then dig up six or more bodies would have been time consuming as well as impossible to hide. There was nothing remarkable about the removal of grand duchess Elizabeth's remains to Jerusalem, it was because her German family and its English branch (the Mountbattens) had plenty of money to pay for it to be moved. The far less rich, or uncaring, relatives of the other Romanovs left their bodies in Beijing's orthodox cathedral which was torn down during the cultural revolution and is now a car park. Some relics are clearly less worth recovering than others.

Finally Mr Manseau repeats the claim that St. Anthony's chapel in Pittsburgh with its 5,000 relics has more relics than any place aside from Rome. This might come as a surprise to, for example, the basilica of St Ursula in Cologne which houses the relics of Ursula and her 11,000 martyred virgin companions. I am sure that there are numerous other cathedrals, monasteries and religious houses throughout the world who would dispute the Pittsburgh claim, which is apparently self invented and self perpetuated by the Pittsburgh Church.

In a book of little over 230 pages I have barely scratched the surface of the stupidities to be found in it and makes this book an exemplar in everything that is wrong with almost every book written about religious phenomena by amateurs which inevitably means the credulous and ignorant.