{"id":4275,"date":"2009-05-19T23:35:48","date_gmt":"2009-05-20T03:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=4275"},"modified":"2009-05-19T23:35:48","modified_gmt":"2009-05-20T03:35:48","slug":"i-left-my-heart-in-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/i-left-my-heart-in-san-francisco\/","title":{"rendered":"I left my heart in San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was in Italy a few years back I remember visiting the basilica where St. Anthony\u2019s tongue, larynx and associated parts could be inspected. A book has been written<\/a> about scattered holy body parts:<\/p>\n

They are scattered all over the world – holy little odds and bits: St. Anthony’s shrivelled tongue in Rome, a tooth from the Buddha in Sri Lanka, the finger of St. John the Baptist in Florence.<\/p>\n

More than isolated curiosities, these pieces of the dead have always attracted reverence from the religious who find in the smallest, and often grossest, body parts, evidence of holiness.<\/p>\n

Why else would an English bishop take a bite out of St. Mary Magdalene’s bones? And how did a hair from Muhammad’s chin end up in Kashmir?<\/p>\n

These are the kinds of questions that inspired author and scholar Peter Manseau to embark on a journey around the world to investigate relics and the people who adore them, which resulted in the book Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World’s Holy Dead<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I saw quite a few relics while in Italy but they did not, unlike many of the churches that housed them, inspire reverence. In fact, after a while I found myself humming Spike Milligan\u2019s version of, \u201cI left my heart in San Francisco\u201d:<\/em><\/p>\n

I left my heart in San Francisco,
\nI left my knees in old Peru.
\nI left my little wooden leg
\nHanging on a metal peg,
\nAnd my eyeballs I gave to you.
\nI left my teeth on Table Mountain,
\nHigh on a hill they smile at me.
\nWhen I come home to you, San Francisco,
\nThere won’t be much left of me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was in Italy a few years back I remember visiting the basilica where St. Anthony\u2019s tongue, larynx and associated parts could be inspected. A book has been written about scattered holy body parts: They are scattered all over … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":27,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nothing-in-particular"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}