As the editor, more than twenty years ago, of a similar generic study volume on the legal and judicial aspects of medieval canonization processes, I took this Brill Companion in hand with great interest. I was pleased to see the continued thriving of this fertile research field opened in the last decades of the twentieth century with path-breaking monographs by André Vauchez and Michael Goodich. This institutional framework, providing a copious documentation of the late medieval cult of saints, was subsequently explored by Thomas Wetzstein, Ottfried Krafft, Roberto Paciocco, Ronald Finucane, Donald Prudlo and many others. The editor of the present volume, Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, is also one of the prominent experts on canonization processes, not only with her monographs but also with her collaborative efforts initiating workshops and editing several thematic volumes on this subject. Katajala-Peltomaa and Christian Krötzl have built up an excellent research center in Tampere and Turku dealing with the medieval cult of saints. Half of the twelve studies of this Brill companion volume come from their Finnish circle. Together with several international colleagues, this team is well-positioned to provide a new overview of the field of canonization processes.
In her Introduction, Sari Katajala-Peltomaa describes the development of medieval canonization procedures, extending also to early modern times, to the founding of the Sacred Congregation of Rites (1588) and the reforms of Pope Benedict XIV in the eighteenth century. Discussing medieval and early modern material together is itself a useful innovation, supported in the volume by two studies: Maria Teresa Fattori on the determination of miracles by the Congregation of Rites and Jonathan Greenwood on the canonization procedures of two principal Jesuit saints, Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier. Speaking about structural aspects of canonization records, Katajala-Peltomaa summarizes the sophisticated critical attitude distilled from decades of studying the numerous testimonies of miracle accounts in the processes. While these colorful narratives were in fact largely influenced by stereotypes, suggested by the questionnaires, and shaped by various additional “filters,” they still offer a valuable insight into the everyday life and the beliefs of the people involved. Based on such possibilities, as Katajala-Peltomaa pictures the state of the art, impressive microhistorical accounts have evolved in this domain (e.g., by Robert Bartlett, Didier Lett) and this source material has also provided an opportunity to study disabilities, illnesses, epidemics.
The companion volume intends to offer a series of systematically structured research questions that might stimulate ongoing scholarly inquiry, direct attention to yet unresolved aspects of this complex, and open the gates in new directions. Christian Krötzl raises the puzzling question, why did the papacy, toward the end of the Middle Ages, show such a blatant disinterest in the canonization of saints, after having appropriated and regulated this procedure in the thirteenth century? The explanation of the legal challenges, regional constraints, and the motivations of this papal reluctance might be worthy of further exploration. From this point of view his own field of expertise, the Nordic canonization procedures allow some enlightening observations.
The examination of the inquisitorial truth-finding procedures in the canonization processes could be illuminated by confronting them to other types of judicial source material. Didier Lett compares the witness depositions at the canonization process of Nicholas of Tolentino with criminal investigations in medieval Italian communes. He finds interesting parallels in the ways of “transforming an individual into a saint and an accused into a criminal” (the title of his contribution), and relevant differences in the attitudes of the witnesses and the speed of the procedures. Saku Pihko confronts the data of the canonization investigations around the Italian hermit John Buoni with the heresy-inquests in Languedoc, related to the murder of the inquisitors in Avignonet in 1242. The ambivalent features of the inquisitorial inquiries on sainthood and/or heresy, a field once charted by Dyan Elliott, are placed here in a more factual dimension: proofs of miracle are compared here to the ones of murder.
Speaking about the situation of canonization records in a broader judicial context, let me voice here a missed opportunity. A third comparative corpus could have been integrated to this series: the confrontation with late medieval and early modern witch trials. The making of a saint and the making of a witch would have been relevant in this context, because in both cases experience-based testimonies of miracles or bewitchments served to attribute, by judicial procedure, supernatural capacities to an ordinary human being.
While the huge amount of witness testimonies on miracles in canonization processes has been largely explored from a quantitative, typological, rhetorical point of view, new openings can be signaled here as well. Jenni Kuuliala calls the attention to the lack of a systematic examination of testimonies on the exemplary life of the saint, the comparative importance of which, juxtaposed to miracles, grew considerably in this period. A closer look reveals that beyond the mention of the general topoi of abstinence, charity, and austere penitence, these testimonies, like the ones on the posthumous miracles, obey a set of implicit expectations: abstinence and self-torture should be controlled (medical or spiritual supervisors and confessors should see to it), and holy suffering should be present with male candidates for sainthood also, as this “somatic spirituality” (as termed by Caroline Walker Bynum) is not only the privilege of female saints.
Another innovative approach to witness testimonies is presented by Nicole Archambeau. She examines them not according to their relation to the sainthood candidate (in this case Delphine de Sabran, a pious fourteenth-century Provencal countess) nor according to their narratives of the virtues or the miracles of the saint, but according to their inter-relationships among themselves. In other words, she proposes to uncover the sociocultural or spiritual networks of witnesses who try to promote the canonization, and whose family conversations, friendships, and conflicts influence the emerging cult. The reconstruction of these networks using modern digital tools (Gephi visualization) is truly impressive and stimulates similar ventures for other canonization processes. The constitution and the groupings of such witness-networks could then allow fascinating inquiries: whose testimonies are solicited and willingly referred to and whose are rather neglected or even excluded in the official documentation? In Delphine’s case the contemporary debates about the Spiritual Franciscans infuse (and ultimately shipwreck) the investigation.
A further dimension of the exploration of witness testimonies is related to the authenticity and credibility of their perception of miraculous bodily phenomena, such as true healing of disabilities, revival from death, or the bodily signs of sainthood. Each of these themes is related to important territories of current historical research. As for the various kinds of disabilities appearing in front of the investigators in the canonization processes, the study by Adelheid Russenberger in the present volume, based on the trials of Thomas Cantilupe, Louis of Toulouse, and Nicholas of Tolentino, opens a reflection on the emotional impact of impairments for the suffering and their communities, relying on the recent synthesis on this theme by Jenni Kuuliala.
The history of human attitudes towards death, a major theme of historical reflection in the footsteps of Philippe Ariès, has copious source material in canonization processes where the weight of the resurrection miracles was prominent. Jyrki Nissi choses an interesting use of this material: he confronts the pious advice of the ars bene moriendi treatises with the moving testimonies of the sorrowful perception of the bodily signs of death and the terror of a bad death to be read in the accounts of the miraculés. On the opposite side of this spectrum, the passing of the would-be saint in question was accompanied by a triumph over the bodily signs of death. As Marika Räsänen demonstrates in the cases of Dominican saints, the sensory encounters with the saint candidate’s body, the emotional outburst at the perception of the “sweet fragrance,” and the incorruption of the body were an important part of these investigations, carefully managed by the promoting friars.
Finally, two essays in the volume address the general source-value of witness testimonies in canonization processes. Laura Smoller pairs her expertise on the investigations concerning Vincent Ferrer with the precisely contemporary documentation of the canonization process of Bernardino of Siena, edited by Letizia Pellegrini. She reaches back to the advice by Carlo Ginzburg and John Arnold about how to find some authentic information in judicial-inquisitorial sources produced by a multiplicity of distorting constraints. Confronting competing stories, attending to minor details mentioned in the testimonies but dropped as insignificant by the final, official documentation, can yield interesting results in the canonization procedures as well.
Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, the editor of the volume, resumes a theme of her own research with the depositions in the process of Thomas of Cantilupe under the notion of the experience of “lived religion”—a subject to which she has dedicated a considerable amount of her own study. Through detailed analysis of the example of a youth claiming to have been resurrected from death, she illustrates how narratives and memories contribute to the formation of the experience of a miracle, perceived as the result of an interaction with the saint. She offers a sample for future analysts of how such a documentation can offer “an excellent window into internalized cultural conventions and the various negotiations of giving meaning” (236).
In conclusion, the Brill Companion volume on medieval canonization processes presents a very useful, systematic overview of the state of the art of the field and opens stimulating new perspectives for further research in this treasure-mine documenting medieval beliefs in the power of saints and the Church’s efforts to appropriate and control these cults.