Enjoying the Saints: Sanctity and Society in the Early Modern Catholic World

Module Code: HIS-00021-M
Tutor: Simon Ditchfield
Credits: 20

The history of holiness and the cult of saints from the close of the Council of Trent in 1564 to the French occupation of Rome (1798) is one characterised by an apparent paradox. On the one hand, never had so many saints (from all periods of Christian history) been integrated into Roman Catholic worship and devotion. On the other, never had the cult of saints and the definition of holiness been so closely regulated by Rome; first informally, and then formally by the Congregation of Rites (founded in 1588) in conjunction with the Roman Inquisition (founded in 1542).

This course sets out to challenge this notion of contradiction and paradox, replacing it with a more nuanced and flexible understanding that takes into account the consumption as well as production of holiness. In doing so it helps us to see the fundamental role played by the cult of saints in helping to create this planet’s first world religion. Extensive use will be made of contemporary saints’ lives (both printed and online) together with relevant artistic and architectural evidence.

Learning outcomes

After successfully completing this course students will be able to:

  • Explain their conception of the role of saints' cults in Early Modern Catholicism
  • Identify and analyse the various ways in which saints' cults were expressed and consumed (textually and visually) during the early modern period
  • Critique a range of diverse primary and secondary sources with confidence in order to be able to relate the process of saint-making to the wider changes within early modern Roman Catholicism

Teaching Programme

Students will attend nine weekly two-hour seminars. They will complete a 2,000-word procedural essay for which they will receive an individual tutorial.

The likely seminar programme is as follows:

  1. Introduction: 'Getting a Life'
  2. Saints as a Verb: What Do They Do?
  3. Saints as a Noun: Making Saints Before the Reformation
  4. 'Tridentine Sanctity': Making Saints in the Counter-Reformation
  5. Reading, Reciting and Writing Sanctity: Consuming/Producing the Holy (Part I)
  6. Performing Sanctity: Consuming/Producing the Holy (Part II)
  7. Reading/writing week
  8. Saints in the Enlightenment
  9. Wrap Up Session: 'Thinking With Saints'

Assessment

There will be a procedural essay of 2,000 words maximum (not including footnotes and bibliography). This will be marked and given back in a tutorial in week nine. An assessed essay of up to 4,000 words (which, depending on your personal choice, may or may not be a development of your procedural essay) will be due on Monday of week two of the summer term.

Preliminary Reading

  • Hsia, R. Po Chia. The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540-1770,  2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
  • Woodward, Kenneth L. Making Saints, Inside the Vatican: Who Becomes Saints, Who do Not, and Why... Touchstone books, 1996; first edn. Chatto & Windus, 1990.
  • Kleinberg, Aviad. Flesh Made Word: Saints' Stories and the Western Imagination. Harvard: Belknap Press, 2008.