This week we look at one of the most central elements of medieval Christian
spirituality, the cult of saints. Saints bridged the gap between divine
perfection and human imperfection. Though fully human, saints were thought
to have been gifted by God with an unusual grace, which could be shared
with other humans in a variety of ways both before and after death. The
cult of saints and veneration of relics dates back at least to the second
century of the Christian era. Christian attitudes toward their martyrs
shocked the surrounding pagan world. The hellenistic world in which Christianity
emerged had insisted on an absolute distinction between the sublunary and
superlunary worlds. The world below the moon was a world of corruption
and decay, necessarily inferior to the world of the heavens, thought to
be beyond time and change, incorruptible. The scholar Peter Brown describes
a "fault line" running through the universe around the
moon, with death representing a moment where that fault line could be breeched,
where the soul, purified of the "dregs of earthly material" (the
body) could cross over and gain or regain a place in the clear light above
the world. Whether this was forever, or as Jews and Christians hoped, only
for a long hiatus before the resurrection of the dead, the dead body joined
in the instability and opacity of the sublunary world while the soul enjoyed
the unmovable clarity of the remainder of the universe.
What separated late antique Christians from pagans and Jews was their insistence
that the tomb of dead saints (or the relics of that saint--the body or things
that had touched the physical person of that saint) contained the real presence
of the saint at the same time that the saint enjoyed the company of God in heaven.
The saint was thought to be simultaneously present in heaven and on earth at
the location of his or her remains. One of the material results of this phenomenon
was a breaking down of traditional responses to the dead. In the Roman world,
for instance, cemeteries were always placed outside the city, away from public
spaces. There is no cemetery at the Roman forum, for instance, an important public
space filled with temples (sites of worship), shops, and locations of public
discourse. But Christians began to combine tomb and altar. It isn't that the
Christian made offerings to the dead saints themselves-- they weren't worshipping
the saint, but they found the tomb of the saint to be a particularly efficacious
place to worship God through veneration of God's power behind the saint. Soon
Christians come to place the tombs of their saints around the bishops' centers,
in the midst of the city, and of course all of the major churches of Europe are
essentially tombs!! Medieval Christians honored saints with feast days, pleaded
with them to intercede with God on their behalf in times of crisis, and regularly
sought contact with their relics through pilgrimage.
The Lynch reading is very short, but provides at least a cursory introduction to the cult of saints and the myriad attending spiritual practices.You can see how the cult of saints worked in practice in the St. Foy material and in Thomas Aquinas's scholastic discussion.
The Relics of St. Foy (a 4th century martyr) at Conques lay along one of the four pilgrims' routes to St. James of Compostela (from Le Puy en Velay) and was a frequent stop for travelers along that route as well as being a popular destination in its own right.Bernard of Angers traveled to Conques in the early eleventh century to learn about the cult through first hand observation. The selection of miracles here gives insight into the medieval conception of God and divine power and the function of saints in medieval society relative to that conception as well as into the cult of St. Foy particularly.
The Thomas Aquinas text follows the formal "Question" format common to late medieval scholasticism. The master first poses a question (in this case, "whether any kind of worship is due to the relics of the saints") followed by a series of arguments for and against the proposition. "Objections" one to three represent theoretical arguments against the proposition, while "on the contrary" represents a theoretical argument for the proposition. "I answer that" is Thomas's own opinion on the matter. Finally, he dismisses the objections raised at the beginning of the question one by one, demonstrating why they are not valid. Note that Thomas and his fellow university educated audience were aware of the same sorts of objections you might raise yourself from modern perspective. The theologians' commitment to the cult of saints was based on careful, rational considerations of practices handed down to them by tradition.
The passage from Jacob Voragine's Golden Legend on the relics of St. James is meant to be skimmed. It is intended to provide background for the reading on pilgrimage to St. James: the pilgrim's account is meant to help you concretize your understanding of the role saints played in the lives of ordinary medieval Christians, while the Newman mystery novel is meant to help you develop a sense of how all his played out in medieval life more broadly.
Paper
Topic: (For instructions on writing the short
papers, click here.) Write on any one of
the following: 1. What is the role of skepticism in Bernard of Anger's text? Compare it with the skepticism of Thomas of Aquinas's later scholastic text. 2. What kind of miracles does St. Foy perform? What does this tell you about the role of saints in the lives of medieval Christians? 3.From a theological perspective, why were saints venerated? From a popular perspective, why were saints venerated? Does there seem to be a difference in purpose? 4. Comment on Sharan Newman's depiction of medieval pilgrimage from the perspective our other course readings. What do you think she gets right? What do you think she gets wrong? |