When Monks Went Undercover to Steal Relics

My preciousssss

... And they managed to do it while only breaking 3 of the 10 commandments! (2, 8 and 10)

Unless they kept stealing during a Sabbath. That would make a still impressive 4/10.

I heard of similar intrigues among the Tibetans. Metal from meteorite were considered to have special properties sought after by both Tibetan Buddhist practitioners and sorcerors. They made the meteorite metals into a number of ritual implements. Some of them are considered to take on the very beings they subdued and sealed, and thus were prized by both the ruling Buddhists and the sorcerers for the power it carried.

The last bit was interesting:

"... the most important explanation is a theological one. Because relics were infused with the living presence of a saint, capable of working miracles, they were perfectly able to stop a thief. Any relic that didn’t wish to be moved could simply become too heavy to lift, or cause all the doors of the church to spontaneously lock. By this logic, if a relic was stolen, it wanted to be."

It reminds me of the stories Buddhist relics (not necessarily Tibetan) that was similar. Though in those cases, they involved thieves bent on stealing it for personal gain and somehow would get into a series of coincidences that lead to its recovery.