A Treatise on Relics

For much of its history the Catholic Church has countenanced the veneration of relics—objects or even bones associated with a saint, or with Jesus Christ himself, that were deemed to have healing power or some beneficial spiritual effect on believers. Despite criticism from some skeptical observers (including even St. Augustine), the belief in relics has continued to this day.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the Protestant Reformation launched a wholesale attack on Church…