Recent Trends in the Study of Medieval Canonizations

Abstract

Canonization processes, inquiries into a putative saint's life, merits and miracles, are rich sources for the study of lived experiences as well as religious practices of lay Christians. Studies of this field have multiplied during the 1990s and 2000s; the focus had shifted from overall categorizations and comparison of various processes to a narrower but nuanced perspective; qualitative close reading of the depositions is an important method of analysis. Currently, social history approach, everyday life, family and gender, as well as local interaction and political motivation behind the practicalities of the proceedings are pre-eminent themes in the study of medieval canonizations.

Dialogue and Destabilization: An Index for Comparative Global Exemplarity

“…The canonization process, for example, or the formal and legal process of saint-making in Christianity, only began to develop among the highest levels of ecclesiastical authority in the eleventh century CE, with procedural refinements that would continue through the sixteenth century when it was considered to be a prerogative of the Pope alone. 8 By the later Middle Ages, authorizing texts included canonization 8 On the development of the canonization process in the medieval Church see, most recently, (Prudlo 2015); see also (Katajala-Peltomaa 2010;Vauchez 1989). inquests, but long before that period, lives, liturgical feasts, and miracle collections conferred an exemplary figure with authority. Informal conferences of authority proliferated as well, in the form of personal prayers, visions, devotional images, and accounts of pilgrimage to a local shrine.…”