Holy Bones, Holy Dust by Charles Freeman The Middle Ages are
considered a dark period of history, a time of peasants,
knights, and the Black Death. The Church played a large role in
peoples’ lives by way of feast days, miracle plays, church
attendance, and the display of relics. What are relics and how
did they become such a large part of medieval culture? Charles
Freeman in Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History
of Medieval Europe examines the long use and veneration of items
from Biblical times and from those considered to be saints after
that. A relic could be a body part from an individual that the
Church or others considered to be holy. They could include the
head of John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary’s dress or a piece of
the True Cross. These objects began to be collected in the first
centuries after Christ’s death. Helena, the mother of the
Emperor Constantine, traveled to the Holy Land in search of the
places where Jesus and the disciples walked and brought back the
True Cross on which J