Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages. (Revised Edition)
ISBN: 9781400820207
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Princeton University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Relics and reliquaries -- Thefts; Relics and reliquaries -- Europe; Social history -- Medieval 500-1500;

To obtain sacred relics, medieval monks plundered tombs, avaricious merchants raided churches, and relic-mongers scoured the Roman catacombs. In a revised edition of Furta Sacra , Patrick Geary considers the social and cultural context for these acts, asking how the relics were perceived and why the thefts met with the approval of medieval Christians.


Patrick J. Geary is Professor of History at the University of Florida.
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