#1257 MOUNT AND BLADE SKIN#

Many Italian Catholics pray directly to the saints and rely on them to intervene based on their specialties. But that isnвЂ™t reflected in the way relic veneration works in practice.

Plenty of churches are strewn with the holy dead.ДЄccording to the Catholic Church, saints (and their bodies) donвЂ™t actually have the power to grant miracles-only God can do that. Because a mystical union is believed to exist between saintsвЂ™ bodies on earth and their souls in heaven, the places where saintsвЂ™ corpses (or at least parts of them) are kept become a kind of portal between heaven and earth. The reason is relic veneration, a type of prayer where people ask for a saintвЂ™s help in convincing God to answer their prayers. In shrines like Uncle VincentвЂ™s, IвЂ™ve seen skeletons in formalwear lying in Sleeping Beauty caskets, and gilded boxes containing holy hearts, tongues, heads, arms, toes, and almost any other body part imaginable. Catholic churches, particularly in Italy, often display the corpses of saints. Thanks to the positioning of his hands in his lap, he is less conspicuously missing his penis, which was deemed immodest and amputated sometime before 1957, when its removal was mentioned in a letter from the archpriest of Bonito.ДЄs an American, I find the sight of a corpse displayed like this a little shocking, but it isnвЂ™t so unusual. He is conspicuously missing the tips of his toes. Combined with the flesh mustache, it gives him a 1970s look that I find kind of charming.

#1257 MOUNT AND BLADE SKIN#

His ribcage peeks through his open sternum as if his skin were a shirt left casually unbuttoned. The bone on his chin is bare and the flesh on his cheeks sags so much it looks like he has a handlebar mustache. His skin is dusty brown and drapes over him like a limp paper bag, curling around whatever cartilage it finds. But I wonder if he could hear me-his ears are a little caved in. The Plexiglas door between us has knee-high vents I could kneel down and whisper my prayers to him if I wanted to. On the left side of the shrine is a marble niche containing the seated body of the man himself. Some people believe he operates on his devotees in their sleep, leaving them cured but with a telltale scar to prove that the workвЂ™s been done.Д®x votos, photograph, and notes at the shrine of Uncle Vincent. A photocopied page of local lore at the shrine describes how hands-on Uncle Vincent can be when he grants these medical miracles. There are metal eyes, breasts, hands, guts, hearts (both the sacred and the anatomical variety), and even a paunchy belly. On one wall a copper leg is pinned to a corkboard next to a picture of a smiling man with his leg in a cast. Sometimes the charms represent the thing they asked for-a baby or a computer-but mostly they depict body parts that have been healed. There are hundreds of flat metal charms called ex votosВ left by people whose prayers to Uncle Vincent have been answered. There are rosaries, electric candles, potted plants, and ribbons, and baby clothes and thank-you notes from women who asked for help in childbirth. Photos and gifts from grateful recipients are stuck to every wall and stacked in every corner. Uncle Vincent is known for granting miracles. I watch as two men in a garbage truck drive by: one makes the sign of the cross and the other tips his hat to the shrineвЂ™s iron door.ДЄs soon as IвЂ™m inside, the reason for their reverence is clear. I borrow the key to the shrine from city hall and park across the street. As soon as I turn off the dirt road onto the cityвЂ™s cobblestones, a sign with a cross and arrow points me not in the direction of the parish church but toward Uncle VincentвЂ™s shrine, a yellow stucco building thatвЂ™s a little too big to be a mausoleum and a little too small to be an apartment. ItвЂ™s not much more than twelve streets on top of a hill surrounded by CampaniaвЂ™s farmland. Renting a car here wasnвЂ™t sensible, but it was the only way I could get to Bonito, where I had made an appointment to meet its most powerful and reclusive resident: a naked mummy named Zio Vincenzo Camuso, or, in English, Uncle Vincent.Д«onito is tiny.

Cars go when they go and stop to avoid vehicular manslaughter. Locals telegraph their unwillingness to stop on red with the internationally understood middle finger, which means tourists like me learn quickly that Neapolitan traffic isnвЂ™t ruled by lights or laws. IвЂ™m not being romantic-I mean theyвЂ™re shiny and worthless. Traffic lights dot the streets of Naples like rhinestones. Originally published on Lapham's Quarterly Roundtable.

1257 mount and blade