“L’Idolatire Huguenote”— better known as the “flesh book,”— is causing skin to crawl all over The University of Memphis campus.
What makes the book so creepy is that the cover of the book is made out of actual human flesh.
“Most of the students who hear about the book doubt its existence,” said Ed Frank, the library curator of the Special Collections Department at the U of M library. “They think it’s a hoax like the tale of the pool on the roof of the University Center.”
Frank said that the book is becoming a popular attraction at The U of M.
“Every week we get a couple of people who wander in asking questions,” Frank said. “They mostly just want to know if it’s true, if we really have a book made of flesh.”
The flesh book, or anthropically bound book, was written by a French Jesuit named Louis Richeome in Lyon, France. It is a Roman Catholic commentary on the religious wars between the Huguenots and the Roman Catholics, who viewed the Huguenots as unholy and accused them of idolatry.
“At first most people thought the skin was that of an unlucky Huguenot killed in the wars, but it is just as likely that it is that of a Roman Catholic who knowingly devoted his dead body for the book cover,” according to Frank.
The cover is stiff and rigid, with a milky, white pigment. The cover is more like a wrapper: it has practically fallen off and no longer binds the book. The text is printed on rag paper, a high-quality material at the time the book was printed.
“The book has been here since the early 1970s, but until recently most people didn’t even know we had it,” Frank said.
The flesh book, written in 1608, is not even the oldest original book kept under lock and key at the collections office.
“Several date back beyond the 1500s and the Renaissance,” Frank said.
In addition to the flesh book, the Special Collections Department also has about 70 personal letters written by Civil War soldiers from both the North and South, a secret German Army report from 1933 and some personal letters from Robert Church, Sr. who is considered to be the first black millionaire in the South.
“Although it may seem odd and even demented to us today, people in those days thought of the practice much differently than we do,” Frank said. “It was not such a gruesome thought back then.”
Some have questioned the authenticity of the cover but Frank insists it’s a bona-fide human hide.
“The book has been sent to forensic labs and the cover was proven to be human flesh by forensic pathologists,” Frank said.
Even the skeptics are a little reluctant to hold the book at first, Frank said.
The sight of the book is less than impressive, and not something that would necessarily bother most people at first. But when people are told it’s human flesh they sometimes get a bit squeamish.
“Its not every day that you get to hold a dead man,” Frank said, simply.
