“Let’s make no bones about this.” Where did this come from? The British website, Phrase Finder, explains that the first use of this idiomatic phrase traces back to the 15th century, and has to do with soup–it was best to have no bones in it (bones lead to dissatisfaction, not to mention danger, for the partakers), and so the goal of making no bones is to pare away or remove all that should not be a part of the conversation, the “talk soup” as it were, between people.

But with today’s saint, Bishop Pepin of Landon (in present-day of Belgium), all we really have are bones. He wasn’t martyred–far from it. Pepin was a favorite of all the very rich and powerful of his day and taught kings and princes and was quite a court favorite. Yet, Butler concludes his tale of Pepin by stating that “no other act [than Pepin’s inclusion on the Calendar of Saints] of public veneration has been paid to his memory, than the enshrining of his relics [i.e., Pepin’s bones], which are carried in processions.” We only have Pepin’s bones to make something about, and even that was (maybe still is?) to carry them around on special occasions.

The history of saints’ relics (usually bones but sometimes pieces of items associated closely with them–for example, chips of wood from the cross of Christ) involves their purported powers of healing and other miracles akin to touching the hem of Jesus’s robe. They were believed to have protective powers as well, and were a tangible means of preserving the memories (and stories) of those who have lived godly lives in the past.

What do we do now that is the equivalent, if anything? What pieces of those who’ve gone before us do we retain, and what do we do with them? And why do we no longer believe that these pieces (say, something my grandmother–dead since 1986) crocheted has healing or protective powers? Why do we not have any processions with these relics? Maybe we should.