Relics and reliquaries were really a thing of the Middle Ages. A saint’s bone or two could put your tiny village on the map and quickly transform it into a pilgrimage destination, which also meant something else: money.

Hang on, you may say: are we talking about spirituality or cash? Well, both. But let’s take a step at a time and see exactly what relics are. The trend, to be truthful to history, wasn’t only Italian, but European as a whole, and developed in the early centuries of Christianity. Indeed, one of the first relics we know of was a piece of the Holy Cross that Constantine’s mother Helena had brought to Constantinople.