Relics Real or Fake?

Saints and their remains: fact or fiction?
The scientific 'truth' about the fascinating contents of our reliquaries

We all know them from our foreign travels or church visits: beautiful reliquaries with a tiny window through which the curious like to peek.

Do the shrines really contain the remains of saints? The question is burning on everyone's lips. The authors, scientists from various disciplines, Mark van Strydonck, Anton Ervynck, Marit Vandenbruaene and Mathieu Boudin take up the challenge. They open reliquaries and carefully dismantle the contents. Pieces of bone, cloths and decorated robes, pebbles, sand, palm branches are dated and examined for all possible traces, using the most recent scientific methods. They compare the results with saints' lives and other known historical or archaeological information. The authors discover that the shrines often preserve bone material from the period in which the saint lived. But sometimes not...

Whether the relics are real or fake is not the most important thing. The fact is that they teach us a great deal about faith, popular devotion and medieval history. Together with the researchers, we look in amazement at the contents of the relics that – despite the extensive research – do not yet reveal all their secrets.