Holy Things

Nice little piece on religious relics, and both the current and historic place that they have held in matters of faith, particularly in the Catholic church.http://www.slate.com/id/2232883 Good reading.

The hottest time for the whole relic thing was, of course, during the Crusades. Lots of pieces of the supposed "True Cross," lots of various bones of saints and apostles, and other pieces of this and that that were all venerated like it was going out of style. Of course, the True Cross, itself, was the biggest deal--supposedly the Crusaders couldn't be defeated when they were carrying it into battle and that held true for quite a while. That all ended when they decided to take it out for a spin on their ill fated offensive that ended disastrously at their defeat at the Horns of Hattin. Saladin kicked some Crusader ass that day and took the True Cross for his own fun which included dragging it through Jerusalem after the subsequent siege and victory that ended the period of the Second Crusade. Richard the Lionheart wanted it badly when he mounted the Third Crusade and Saladin shrewdly bargained with him for it, but the Crusaders never got it back. I guess it's somewhere holding up an arch at a present day McDonald's in Amman or Damascus. My favorite relic story is from the Siege of Antioch during the First Crusade where the Crusaders surrounded and began a siege of the city, took it, and then were besieged themselves and gradually starved by a larger Saracen army. Things were looking down: the Crusaders were eating their horses to survive, no one could find a decent croissant, and the ranks were about to throw in the towel. One day, a soldier named, Peter Bartholemew claimed that if they were to dig directly under the floor before the altar in Antioch's largest church, they would find the lance that pierced Jesus' side at the crucifixion. By this time, the guys running the show were all out of ideas and said, "what the f___, let's give it a shot" (or words to that effect) and so they started digging and lo and behold, somebody actually unearthed a spear right were Peter said it would be. The wise old heads knew it was simply a random spear point from who knew where, but they knew how to play a tune when it was right before them, so the story rapidly went out among the troops that they were now carrying the spear that touched Christ. The boys became completely ape shit crazy to attack, and essentially poured out of the fortress and surprised and terrified the Muslim besiegers with their new found religious fury and carried the day. That kind of stuff sometimes happens in warfare, not unlike college football when Vanderbilt will somehow get filled with piss and vinegar and knock off LSU or somebody big. Anyway, Peter was obviously a loon and later became a pain in the ass to all around him, proclaiming visions of this and that and one day they stuck a sword in him to shut him up. Lesson there, too. You can get away with something like this once in while but be careful about showing your ass too much afterward. Otherwise, LSU will put up eighty on you when you meet them in Baton Rouge next season. And, that's just in the first half.