Prologue: the making of a martyr -- How the Christian relic emerged -- The incorruptible flesh of the martyrs -- Creating a Christian landscape -- The battle for acceptance -- The view from Byzantium -- Bishops, magic and relics in the post-Roman world -- 'A barbarous, fierce and unbelieving nation' -- The great consolidator -- Hope and desperation in a disordered world -- Cults and the rise of anti-semitism -- Fervent Christian pilgrims -- 'The eyes are fed with gold-bedecked reliquaries' -- Looting the East -- Louis IX and the Sainte-Chapelle -- Sacred flesh between death and resurrection -- 'Christ's recruits ... fight back' -- Protectors of il Popolo -- The Virgin Mary and the penitent whore -- The wondrous blood of Christ -- Rescuers and devils -- 'Of far-off saints, hallowed in sundry lands' -- 'dead images that ... may not ... help any man of any disease' -- Protestantism and the new iconoclasm -- Intimations of reality -- Reasserting the miraculous -- Within the community of the supernatural.