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The cult of the saints was one of the most distinctive features of medieval Christianity, and it shaped the religious, social, and cultural life of the High Middle Ages in profound ways. The saints were believed to be the friends of God who had lived exemplary lives on earth and who now enjoyed the beatific vision in heaven. The saints were believed to intercede with God on behalf of the living, and their relics — the physical remains of their bodies, the objects associated with their lives, and the fragments of their clothing and possessions — were venerated as sources of miraculous power. The cult of the saints was a major source of comfort, hope, and identity in a world that was dangerous and uncertain, and it shaped the religious imagination of medieval Christians for centuries.
The standard English-language treatment is Peter Brown, “The Cult of the Saints” (Chicago, 1981), and the indispensable French complement is André Vauchez, “Saints, prophètes et visionnaires” (1999). The Liber miraculorum of each great shrine is the primary source for the local cult; the Vita of the saint is the literary form.
The Theological Basis of the Cult
The theological basis of the cult of the saints was rooted in the Christian belief in the communion of saints — the belief that the members of the Church on earth, the souls in purgatory, and the saints in heaven are all united in the mystical body of Christ. The saints in heaven were believed to be active participants in the life of the Church on earth, and they were believed to intercede with God on behalf of the faithful. The veneration of the saints was based on the belief that the saints could bring the prayers of the faithful to the throne of God, and that the saints could intervene in the lives of the faithful in miraculous ways.
The theological justification of the cult of the saints was developed by the Church Fathers and the scholastic theologians of the medieval period. The Church Fathers — St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory the Great — wrote extensively on the cult of the saints, and they defended the practice against the criticisms of pagan and Jewish opponents. The scholastic theologians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, and others — developed a systematic theology of the cult of the saints that integrated the practice with the broader theology of the Church.
The Veneration of Relics
The veneration of relics was a major feature of the cult of the saints, and it was based on the belief that the physical remains of the saints and the objects associated with their lives were channels of divine power. The relics were venerated in shrines and reliquaries, and they were carried in processions and displayed on feast days. The relics were believed to perform miracles — to heal the sick, to protect the city, to defeat the enemies of the faith — and they were a major source of revenue for the churches and monasteries that possessed them.
The relics of the saints were of various kinds. The first-class relics were the physical remains of the saints — bones, hair, blood, and other parts of the body. The second-class relics were the objects that the saints had used or worn — clothing, jewelry, books, and instruments of martyrdom. The third-class relics were the objects that had touched the first-class or second-class relics — cloths, medals, and ampullae of oil or water that had been blessed by contact with a relic.
The acquisition of relics was a major enterprise in the medieval Church. The popes, the kings, the bishops, and the great lords competed for the possession of the most prestigious relics, and they sent emissaries to distant lands to obtain them. The translation of relics — the formal movement of relics from one place to another — was a major ceremonial event, marked by solemn processions and celebrations. The Translation of the relics of St. Thomas Becket from Canterbury Cathedral in 1220, for example, was a major event in the history of medieval England.
The Major Relics of Christendom
The relics of Christ and the Virgin Mary were the most prestigious of all relics, and they were venerated in churches and monasteries across Christendom. The relics of the True Cross were distributed across Christendom, and they were venerated in churches and monasteries from Jerusalem to Canterbury. The relics of the Crown of Thorns, the Holy Lance, the Holy Sponge, and the other instruments of the Passion were venerated in Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Paris (in the Sainte-Chapelle, built by King Louis IX to house the relics of the Crown of Thorns).
The relics of the apostles were also highly venerated. The relics of St. Peter and St. Paul were venerated in Rome at the Basilica of St. Peter and the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, and the relics of St. James were venerated at Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. The relics of the early martyrs were distributed across Christendom, and the relics of St. Stephen, St. Lawrence, St. Vincent, and many others were venerated in churches and monasteries across Europe.
The Practice of Canonization
The canonization of a saint was a formal process by which the Church recognized that a person was a saint and that the cult of the saint was legitimate. In the early Middle Ages, the canonization of saints was largely a local matter, with the bishops of the dioceses where the cult was venerated making the formal decision. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the popes gradually took control of the canonization process, and the formal procedure of canonization was established. The procedure required the verification of the candidate’s heroic virtues (or martyrdom), the verification of miracles attributed to the candidate’s intercession, and the formal approval of the pope.
The canonization of saints was a major event in the life of the Church, and it was typically celebrated with elaborate ceremonies and feasting. The canonization of a saint could transform the status of a local cult into a universal cult of the Church, and it could bring prestige, pilgrims, and revenue to the churches and monasteries that held the relics of the saint. The canonization of St. Francis of Assisi in 1228, for example, was a major event in the life of the Church, and it contributed to the rapid expansion of the Franciscan Order and the cult of St. Francis across Europe.
The Cult of the Local Saints
The cult of local saints was a major feature of the medieval religious life, and it contributed to the identity of the local community and to the prestige of the local churches and monasteries. The local saint was typically a bishop, an abbot, a missionary, a martyr, or a holy person who had lived in the region and who had worked miracles after death. The local saint was venerated as a patron of the community, and the feast day of the saint was a major event in the life of the community.
The cult of the local saint was a major source of identity for the medieval community, and it contributed to the cohesion of the community in various ways. The feast day of the saint was a major occasion for the gathering of the community, and the procession of the saint was a major ceremony that reinforced the identity of the community. The miracles attributed to the saint were a major source of comfort and hope for the community, and the relics of the saint were a major source of pride and prestige.
The Cult and the Medieval Economy
The cult of the saints had a major impact on the medieval economy, and the pilgrimage trade was a significant source of revenue for the towns and churches along the pilgrimage routes. The pilgrims needed food, lodging, transportation, and souvenirs, and the pilgrimage trade stimulated the development of inns, taverns, shops, and transportation services along the routes. The pilgrimage trade also stimulated the production of religious artifacts — statues, paintings, medals, ampullae, scapulars — that were sold to the pilgrims as souvenirs of the pilgrimage.
The cult of the saints also stimulated the development of artistic and literary forms. The vitae of the saints were a major genre of medieval literature, and the works of Sulpicius Severus, Bede, Ælfric of Eynsham, Abelard, Walter Map, Jacques de Voragine, and many others were major contributions to the medieval literary tradition. The artistic representations of the saints — in the illumination of manuscripts, in the sculpture of tympana and jambs, in the stained glass of cathedrals — were a major form of medieval art, and they contributed to the development of the visual culture of the period.
The Decline of the Cult
The cult of the saints declined in the late medieval and early modern periods for several reasons. The Lollard movement in England and the Hussite movement in Bohemia challenged the cult of the saints in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century rejected the cult of the saints as a form of idolatry. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) defended the cult of the saints as a legitimate practice, but the Reformation had already spread to a large part of Europe, and the cult of the saints was largely abandoned in the Protestant countries.
The cult of the saints survived in the Catholic countries and in the Orthodox countries, and it remains a major feature of the Catholic and Orthodox religious life in the modern era. The canonization of saints continues in the Catholic Church, and the veneration of relics continues in the Catholic and Orthodox churches. The cult of the saints is a major subject of historical and theological study, and it remains a vibrant feature of the religious life of millions of Christians around the world.
Sources
Principal sources used in this article:
- André Vauchez, Saints, prophètes et visionnaires (Albin Michel, 1999).
Further reading:
- Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints (Chicago, 1981) — for the late-antique antecedent.
For a recent single-volume synthesis with full scholarly apparatus, see the relevant chapter of Barbara H. Rosenwein, A Short History of the Middle Ages (University of Toronto Press, 2014).