Nicked

Well, this was a really charming read! And I can’t think of a better word than that to describe it, all things considered.

A lot of that charm comes from the writing. The language reads as quite modern, which is great given that this is, at its core, a heist novel, and the writing helps maintain the story’s forward motion. But while the language is modern, the descriptions and the characterization all fit in with the setting: the world of the Mediterranean countries in the eleventh century. There is a kind of lushness to it that I really appreciated, especially given the time period and the subject matter.

The nature of the heist is also interesting: a mission to steal the bones of St. Nicholas (yes, the same Saint Nicholas who inspired Santa Claus) from his resting place in Myra, and bring the bones back to the Italian port city of Bari. This is an actual historical event, often euphemistically called “The Translation of the Relics of St. Nicholas of Myra to Bari”, with the term “translation” doing some heavy lifting in that title. At the time, acquiring relics (the body parts and/or items related to a saint) was a big thing for both religious, political, and economic reasons, and many cities hoarded as many as they could find. There were faith-based reasons for doing such a thing, of course: in the novel, for instance, Bari’s people are falling ill with a pox, and it is believed that having the relics of St. Nicholas in the city would help cure the populace - not least because the bones of St. Nicholas were said to exude an ichor that, when used topically or ingested, could cure one of any disease. But there were other, far more secular reasons for taking the relics. Any city that had a relic was usually a place that was visited by pilgrims looking for a miracle, and those pilgrims often spent quite a bit of money along the way and upon arrival at their destination. Relics, therefore, were a powerful economic driver, and could turn an otherwise sleepy backwater trading port into a major tourist destination.

Relics were also not just for making money; they were often also used as a means of gaining and shoring up political power, too. Part of it was economic, certainly: the more relics in the city, the more pilgrims would visit that city, and therefore that city would make more money. But in the medieval period, relics could also be used to signify a city’s political legitimacy, or to project power in a region. If a city holds the relic of an important saint - say, Saint Paul, for instance - then that city might be considered more powerful than another city holding the relics of a less famous saint.

Now, while all of this is clearly secular, faith does indeed figure into this whole thing. Many people really did believe in the power of relics, but they also held those beliefs alongside the much more earthly reasons I’ve already mentioned. One would think that the concerns of the divine are distinct from the concerns of the flesh, but in the medieval period these two were not so distinct - even among the monastic orders, many of whom supposedly isolated themselves from the rest of the world in order to maintain a “purity of spirit”. The relic trade, therefore, illustrated how, even in a supposed age of miracles, the sacred could be, and very frequently was, commodified: made into a tool for wealth and power. This is something that readers will surely recognize still happens today in the form of the American Heresy, the prosperity gospel, and the alt-right.

This duality of and connection between the divine and the secular is also illustrated in the two main characters, Nicephorus and Tyun. Nicephorus is a Benedictine monk, whose dream of Saint Nicholas provides the “spiritual” impetus for the entire heist - this, despite his skepticism regarding the interpretation of his dream by the bishop. Tyun, on the other hand, is a self-labeled relic hunter, whose sales pitch to the governor of Bari makes the heist actually happen. These two are each other’s foils: where Nicephorus is driven to tell the truth even to his own detriment, while Tyun is a con artist who doesn’t hesitate to lie, even when everyone knows he is lying. It is through their interactions over the course of the story that the novel’s themes are given shape.

And those themes are actually quite serious, despite the seeming lightheartedness of the main plot. The novel asks: is faith enough? Throughout the novel this question is asked in a variety of ways: is faith enough to justify a theft? Is faith enough to cure a plague? Is faith enough to make miracles? Despite the existence of a song that seems to imply that believing is sufficient for the creation of miracles (it was from a little movie called The Prince of Egypt, in case anyone needs reminding), this novel chooses to approach the question with a greater dose of nuance than a straightforward black and white answer. This, I think, is a good thing, as the question of faith is always something that individuals need to figure out on their own.

Overall this was a pretty fun read, with a fast-paced heist story built up around a fairly serious theme. The writing is a pleasure to read, the characters are intriguing, and the theme at the novel’s heart is something that is still relevant today, despite the novel being set in the medieval period. Definitely a book for readers willing to be surprised, not just by plot twists, but by the thoughts this read will likely inspire.