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

by Anneli S. Rufus

Release Date: July, 1999

Edition: Paperback

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Somewhat Informative, But Too Cynical For The Topic

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.

dreadful waste of time and trees

This dreadful book is so fraught with errors that it is stunning - a veritable work of art in the dubious category of bad writing. The prose is stiff at best, the attitude is undeservedly condescending, and many of the details that are presented as "fact" can easily be found to be wrong.
I have read this book and all of the reviews posted with great interest. I am interested to find that there are essentially two camps - those find this book's tone (and facts) to be irresponsible and/or misleading, and those who eagerly swallow everything that the author asserts. The author's own response to the reviewer from Denton, TX reveals her arrogance and ignorance of the issues. As Ms. Rufus is not even able to grasp the points made by the reviewer, it underscores her abject inability to write on this topic in an intelligent and informed manner. Sure, she asserts that she is a "traveller" not a scholar (that is apparant!), but she has the audacity to write a book on a topic that she does not even seem interested in researching - shame on you, Anneli Rufus - your readers deserve better. You have insulted your readers by implying that they are too stupid or too lazy to care about your gross inaccuracies. There are way too many books out there to bother reading trash like this!!!!!!!!!!!!