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Empire of Relics
Empire of Relics: When Bones, Blood, and Bread Became the Currency of the Sacred
What happens when faith turns material? In the Middle Ages, relics were more than devotional objects, they were power. The finger of a saint could draw pilgrims across Europe. A vial of blood could bankroll a cathedral. A splinter of the “true cross” could legitimize an empire.
In this episode, we step inside the strange economy of holiness: where churches competed for body parts, kings went to war over bones, and ordinary believers risked everything to touch a fragment of the sacred.
Was it faith or fraud?…
The skinny
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