Rag and Bone
A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead
By Peter Manseau
(Henry Holt and Co., Hardcover, 9780805086522, 256pp.)
Publication Date: March 31, 2009
Other Editions of This Title: eBook
Categories: Comparative Religion, History, Sociology of Religion
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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.
Peter Manseau is the author of the memoir Vows and the novel Songs for the Butcher's Daughter. He is also the coauthor (with Jeff Sharlet) of Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible. The editor of Search: The Magazine of Science, Religion, and Culture, he lives with his wife and two daughters in Washington, D.C., where he teaches writing and studies religion at Georgetown University. The impulse to preserve and revere the body parts of the holy deceased has been part of the human experience since the Buddha lost his baby teeth and John the Baptist lost his head. With postmortem accounts of Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, and a crowd of other holy souls, Peter Manseau's Rag and Bone tells the hidden histories of these bodies that have meant so much to so many. Along the way, we meet a California seeker of a nun’s disembodied hand, a French forensics expert who rides the metro with the rib from what may have been a saint, two young Syrian brothers who study English beside a hair from the Prophet's beard, and discover many more true tales of the living and dubious legends of the dead. By examining these relics—the bits and pieces of long-dead saints found in most religious traditions—Manseau has written a tremendously moving book about life, the varieties of faith, and how both life and faith are sustained. The result of wide travel, the author's own deep curiosity, and visits with those living who take care of those dead, Rag and Bone stitches together a portrait of the world's religions. And it delivers a respectful, witty, and fascinating look into the place where the abstractions of faith meet the realities of physical objects, of rags and bones. "From Damascus to Jerusalem to Philadelphia (oddly, one of the relic capitals of the world), Manseau recounts his journey to find religious objects that have captivated the faithful for centuries and his encounters with modern pilgrims along the way . . . Manseau's vivid recollections of each trip, combined with personal anecdotes and interesting tidbits (did you know that every Roman Catholic Church in the U.S. has a relic?), provide a fascinating look into an ancient and complex topic."—M. J. Stephey, Time"From Damascus to Jerusalem to Philadelphia (oddly, one of the relic capitals of the world), Manseau recounts his journey to find religious objects that have captivated the faithful for centuries and his encounters with modern pilgrims along the way . . . Manseau's vivid recollections of each trip, combined with personal anecdotes and interesting tidbits (did you know that every Roman Catholic Church in the U.S. has a relic?), provide a fascinating look into an ancient and complex topic."—M. J. Stephey, Time
"You might be confident that the risen Christ is the Messiah, but would you be more so if you could venerate a piece of his remains: his foreskin, for example? Peter Manseau's Rag and Bone, a travelogue in which the author details his search for body parts of the holy deceased, tackles the curious relationship between faith and the physical evidence relics offer. 'A relic concentrates the beliefs surrounding it until they can be seen . . . like shining sunlight through a magnifying glass,' Manseau writes of his pilgrimages to view bits of the departed, including Muhammad's whisker in Kashmir, one of the Buddha's teeth in Sri Lanka and Jesus' prepuce in Jerusalem. Of course, there's a lot of room for the word 'alleged' when scrutinizing remains over two millennia old, but aside from a chapter devoted to a researcher trying to determine whether a scorched human rib found in a French museum belonged to Joan of Arc, Manseau is less interested in the legitimacy of relics than in how people use them to support belief. Christianity, Islam and Buddhism thrive by convincing the uninitiated that dogma preached by long-dead figureheads is universal truth. As the author points out, what better 'portable form of sanctity' is there for evangelicals than St. Francis Xavier's toe, Lama Yeshe's leg or St. Anthony's tongue? Born to a former nun and a priest who married but refused to renounce the Church, Manseau brings the same expansive perspective on belief to Rag and Bone that fueled his 2005 memoir, Vows—the understanding that every leap of faith can benefit from a little push."—Justin Moyer, The Washinton Post
"Talk about a long, strange trip. Manseau journeys around the world seeking Muhammad's whiskers, Buddha's tooth (there's a Temple of the Holy Tooth in Sri Lanka) and even Jesus' foreskin—or at least the people who believe these saintly relics exist. Of course, there really is 'La Chapelle dell Reliquie' is Padua, Italy, the home to Saint Anthony's tongue. There's proper respect for believers and a nod and a wink for the others (the traveling Heart Shrine Relic van, for example, reminds him of the Scooby-Doo gang's Mystery Machine)."—Billy Heller, New York Post
"Because he is serious but not heavy, Peter Manseau—journalist, novelist, memoirist, teacher, student—makes an amusing traveling companion in Rag and Bone, his tour of the bits and pieces of saints and saviors that we have been moved to worship . . . Manseau's pleasure is to roam the globe, dropping in at the basilica in Goa that houses the shriveled remains of St. Francis Xavier, or the shrine to the Buddha's tooth in Sri Lanka. But his point is that such relics, whether spurious or with provenance, are one of the ways in which humankind connects to something beyond itself . . . Part history, part hagiography, part travel book and part memoir, Rag and Bone is an elegantly crafted tribute to the ways in which life and death connect."—David L. Beck, St. Petersburg Times
"Let’s start with this: when I was carrying this book around with me, while reading it for the purposes of this review, someone who knows me well noticed the cover—with the title, and the picture of a praying skeleton—and started laughing. 'Boy,' he said, 'is that ever up your alley.' And it is. That’s the truth about Rag and Bone: it is a very specific, narrowly focused sort of book, and if this is your sort of thing—poking among the religious curiosities of the world, with an eye for the mystic
Peter Manseau studied religion and literature at the University of Massachusetts and Boston University. He is the author of Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible; Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son; and Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter, a novel. An adjunct professor of writing at Georgetown University, he lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter.
“An entertaining… affecting inquiry into man’s yearning for spiritual transcendence.”—The New York Times Book Review
"A globe-traveling tale of the one thing all humanity shares: the body."—USA Today
“Reveal[s] the enduring power of faith, regardless of ideology, and the obsessive nature of religious belief -- which, as this entertaining book amply proves, is all too capable of taking peculiar turns.”—Los Angeles Times
“Manseau … lavishly scatters gems … as he travels the world in search of the bones, teeth, hair and other scraps from the religiously renowned…. A lively lope among fragments from famous faith figures.”—Publishers Weekly
“Adroit, worldly … Transports readers around the globe to check out places accessible and remote where fabric, wood, sinew and other materials are venerated…. An amusing romp.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Talk about a long, strange trip…. There's proper respect for believers and a nod and a wink for the others.”—Billy Heller, The New York Post
"Manseau brings the same expansive perspective on belief to "Rag and Bone" that fueled his ... memoir, "Vows" -- the understanding that every leap of faith can benefit from a little push." —Washington Post
“A beautiful, and at times very funny and insightful journey of faith, culture, religious history, and exotic locales…. A truly great book.”—Sacramento Book Review
"Manseau’s unerring eye for detail makes for a fascinating travelogue. But Rag and Bone is more than that. Drawing on history, spiritual traditions, legend and contemporary reports, this book is a totally exuberant compendium of human beliefs, certain to satisfy devotees of all stripes."—Barnes & Noble Review
“A thoughtful invitation to explore locations, myths, legends, and truths of relics…. In Rag and Bone, Manseau brings bare bones to life, and he has composed an intriguing … travelogue that takes the reader around the world, exploring truth and legend, but more importantly on a journey of understanding why they matter.”—Beliefnet
“Dry bones dance in Rag and Bone, as Peter Manseau brings death to life through his fascinating exploration of religious relics: the skull fragments, detached digits, and ashes of the holy. This is a book that might have been written in the 15th century just as easily as now, but we're lucky to have here the unique 21st century voice of Manseau--a Yiddish-speaking, Buddha-curious son of a Catholic priest and a nun--and one of the most peculiar and most entertaining travelogues in years.”—Jeff Sharlet, New York Times bestselling author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
“Peter Manseau’s Rag and Bone reads like a novel, entertains like a television docudrama, and educates like the best college professor you ever had. It is at once informative, quirky, and funny. Do people really think that the leathery tongue of a 12th century saint can bless them with good fortune? They do. Why do people believe in such weird things as the holy relics of religion? Read this book to find out. WARNING: you may very well discover that you also hold beliefs in holy relics and not even know it!”—Michael Shermer, Publisher of Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist for Scientific American, author of Why People Believe Weird Things and Why Darwin Matters
“A text for the devoted and devoutly lapsed, Rag and Bone is part religious study and part travelogue. Peter Manseau proves a reliable guide, getting both the concepts and the corpses right: the idea of the thing, and the thing itself. And how far afield his curiosities take us – fellow pilgrims one and all – for whom the dead may be more than the sum of parts.”—Thomas Lynch, author of The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade
“The dead may tell no tales, but the relics they leave behind do, if only we will listen to what they have to say. Happily, one of America’s best young writers has his ear to the ground at reliquaries from San Francisco to Sri Lanka. The result is an intriguing tour of the world’s most holy hairs, hearts, and hands that refuses to lapse into the sort of confessional cant that deadens much writing on religion today. Rag and Bone is alive with both humorous and heartbreaking observations about the chicanery and mystery of things seen and unseen.”—Stephen Prothero, Professor of Religion at Boston University and author of the New York Times bestseller Religious Literacy
“A dead saint’s bones, an ancient prophet’s whisker, the Buddha's tooth: As Peter Manseau traces the trail of religious relics, he merges the holy and the human with keen insight. The language shines and the humor delights, but even more, we come away having learned something profound about the making of religious meaning.”—Barbara J. King, author of Evolving God
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