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CHAPTER 1

Expertise and Early Modern Sanctity

On November 25, 1602, Pope Clement VIII (r. 1592–1605) convened a group of eminent cardinals, jurists, and theologians to discuss what he saw as a central problem facing the Catholic Church: the veneration of saints.¹ Although Clement supported the cult of the saints, he told the assembly that he was deeply concerned about a number of dubious practices that had become commonplace. His list of more than twenty items included the printing of vitae, the selling of images, and the distribution of relics from those who had not yet been recognized as saints.² In short, Clement was worried that enthusiasts were pushing forward individuals as saints who in reality had no right to be recognized as holy.

Clement’s concerns encapsulate the issues surrounding saints following the Reformation. Saints were one of the most popular aspects of Catholicism and one of the most effective ways to evangelize the masses.³ The Church needed saints. The enthusiasm that saints inspired, however, could lead believers into error and had put the Church under attack. Believers might, for example, venerate individuals who were not truly holy or even those who had been condemned by the Church. Veneration of Girolamo Savonarola, the condemned heretical Dominican, for example, flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while in the medieval period many venerated as a saint a greyhound who had saved an infant boy.⁴ Such practices went decidedly against the reform aims of the Catholic Church following the Reformation.

Along with such veneration of unworthy or unapproved individuals, other believers might popularize miracles that had little evidence to support them and that seemed little related to the faith. Such dubious miracles provided easy fodder for Protestant reformers, who saw in the cult of the saints an emblem of everything that was wrong with Catholicism.⁵ Veneration of the saints could thus act as both powerful propaganda in favor of Catholicism as well as damning criticism against it. In reaction, the Catholic Church halted official canonization for much of the sixteenth century. After this long hiatus, when papal canonization resumed in 1588, according to Peter Burke, “the distinction between sacred and profane was made sharper than it had been, while recruitment procedures for the saints were made uniform and formal.”⁶

The ways in which this new rigor was applied in practice and how it differed from earlier procedure for medieval saint-making has, in some ways, been difficult to define. In theory, medieval canonizations already were subjected to a degree of central control and involved a number of legal devices designed to separate the holy from the mundane.⁷ Recent scholars have attempted to identify the changes to canonization in the sixteenth century by focusing either on the numerous institutional changes to the Church in the early modern period or by looking at specific case studies.⁸ The present chapter differs from and yet draws on these previous strands of scholarship: the goal here is to examine the practical methods whereby canonization officials verified the miracles and the lives of the saints. The papacy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries drew on medieval precedent, but also created new legalistic and bureaucratic devices to evaluate the holiness of those proclaimed saints including, in particular, an increased role for various outside experts and new methods of assessing evidence. In looking at these new procedures, this chapter provides a broader background for the specific innovation, medical verification of bodily sanctity, which is detailed in later chapters.

Despite the fact that the authorities in Rome introduced more and increasingly lengthy procedures to the canonization process, it never became simply a matter of central authority dictating how veneration should be practiced. Rather, the veneration of a holy individual began with a groundswell of popular support in his or her local community. This popular belief in a person’s sanctity turned into canonization through the actions of a number of patrons, who can be considered negotiators or lobbyists between the Curia and the localities. In fact, even the numerous techniques of verification used by the Holy See were, in many ways, part of that negotiation which turned local ideas about holiness into ones accepted by Rome and therefore suitable for veneration by the universal Church.⁹

In explaining how early modern negotiations of sanctity unfolded, two central themes need to be examined. First, as even the definition of what it meant to be a saint has changed across the long history of the Catholic Church, this chapter begins with the evolving classification of saints in the Church leading up to the period after the Reformation. The focus then turns to the actual process of canonization, from the importance of establishing sanctity at a local level to the role of patronage, and finally, the application of a variety of methods to verify both the holiness of the individual’s life and the truth behind his or her miracles. This last section ends with a survey of the increased role of a variety of experts, including legal professionals, artisans in a range of specialties, and medical professionals, in demonstrating a prospective saint’s miracles. These experts used techniques based on practices in their own fields, drawing on a number of different empirical practices when it came to vetting the potentially holy.

THE EVOLVING MEANING OF SAINTHOOD

The history of saints in the Tridentine period can be characterized as a struggle between established local belief practices and the attempt on the part of the papacy to exercise greater control over saint-making. This was not always the case. In the early Church, until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the papacy played almost no role in defining sainthood.¹⁰ The first real efforts to make canonization a papal prerogative came in the thirteenth century, when a series of legally trained popes, including Innocent III (1198–1216) and Gregory IX (1227–1241), formalized procedure and increasingly made it necessary and desirable to seek papal approval for the veneration of a saint. This was not just a top-down phenomenon, though, since during this period of heightened papal power, local believers frequently sought papal recognition of a saint cult because such affirmation enhanced the stature and credibility of the cult. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215), convened by Innocent III, made such approval not just desirable but necessary, as it forbade the veneration of relics that had not been approved by the papacy.¹¹

Nevertheless, the picture should not be overdrawn. As Aviad Kleinberg has observed, many scholars have overestimated the role that the papacy had in canonization at this point.¹² Local veneration without papal approval still continued unabated. Furthermore, any progress made toward centralization was soon lost when the papacy’s prestige and power sank to a nadir during, first, the Avignon Papacy and, later, the Great Schism (1378–1417).¹³ André Vauchez points to the fifteenth century and the papacy’s return to Rome as the moment when a more central authority emerged.¹⁴ But even at this juncture, local veneration of noncanonized saints continued. Thus, despite the fact that the papacy became more cautious about whom it canonized, its return to Rome had little effect on local veneration.¹⁵

Similarly, the Reformation has been debated as a turning point in the history of saints. The Protestant attack on the cult of the saints is well known.¹⁶ It was demonstrated most violently in acts of iconoclasm including, in particular, the attack on Saint Benno of Saxony. Canonized in 1523, Saint Benno was shortly thereafter denounced by Martin Luther as an example of Catholic superstition and priestly fraud. In the following year, a mob in Saxony paraded horse bones, claiming that they were relics equally valid as those of the deceased Benno.¹⁷ In 1539, as the Reformation spread to new areas, Benno’s shrine and the site of his burial in Meissen were desecrated.¹⁸ Following Benno’s canonization, no new saints were proclaimed by the papacy for sixty-five years, the longest break since the practice began in the Middle Ages. Peter Burke has seen in this halt a “failure of nerve” on the part of the papacy in the face of Protestant attack.¹⁹ Other scholars, among them Miguel Gotor and Ronald Finucane, claim that the pause was characteristic of a papacy that already was slowing canonization frequency as it sought to rearticulate the methods whereby saints were verified.²⁰ Likely both views are correct and the halt is symptomatic both of internal divisions caused by Protestant attack and long-standing papal desire to increase the centralization and rigor of canonization.

This mid-sixteenth century halt in canonization brought in its wake significant changes to both how saints were venerated and how they were made. The foundation of the Roman Inquisition in 1542 was the first innovation that altered local practices of veneration. In addition to extirpating heresy, the tribunal of the Inquisition was also tasked with rooting out forms of worship that could damage the Church. Hence, the Inquisition began in the 1560s to systematically suppress the veneration of holy individuals that had not received papal approval.²¹ This was despite the fact that the Council of Trent (1545–1563) had decreed that bishops could still approve the veneration of local holy people.²² In using the Inquisition in this way, the papacy exerted control over canonization, overruling the authority of local bishops. That this was a statement of papal power is especially clear since, as several scholars have recently demonstrated, the tribunal itself functioned to a great extent as an instrument of the papacy.²³ Thus, despite what the Decrees of Trent stipulated, the Inquisition, and by extension the papacy, began for the first time to regulate local patterns of veneration.

Nevertheless, the Inquisition’s activities might have been more significant for what they symbolized than what was actually achieved. The Inquisition lacked the ability, especially in its early years, to penetrate into many of the communities that it officially oversaw. An example of its lack of authority is the saint cult for Gaetano da Thiene (d. 1547), which sprang up in Naples in the years following his death. This cult continued into the seventeenth century without any official approval until da Thiene’s beatification eighty-two years later, in 1629.²⁴ The files of the Roman Inquisition contain numerous cases that stretch well into the eighteenth century, in which unapproved veneration had proceeded unchecked—sometimes for decades. Each of these cases came to the attention of the Inquisition only when someone denounced the local cult.²⁵

Nevertheless, by the 1560s the papacy had taken a significant and symbolic step in centralizing saint-making through its creation of this permanent congregation—the Inquisition—that was loyal to the pope and that was officially tasked with halting unapproved veneration.

The second part of the rearticulation and centralization of canonization was the foundation of a congregation that oversaw the approval and proclamation of saints. This came in 1588 when Pope Sixtus V (1585–1590) promulgated the Bull, Immensa aeterni Dei, establishing fifteen congregations to oversee the life of the Church and the Papal States, including the new Congregation of Rites. This Congregation was in charge of two central areas of Church life: (1) the rites, liturgy, and ceremonies of the Church, and (2) the canonization of saints. From 1588 onward, the Congregation of Rites was the main body in the Church charged with vetting the applications of saints and presenting results to the pope.²⁶ Five cardinals made up the membership in this Congregation and they reported directly to the supreme pontiff.²⁷ In theory, the founding of the Congregation of Rites should therefore have marked the transition of canonization into an entirely papal prerogative.

Again, however, the situation was in practice more complicated than this ideal. In reality, the Congregation of Rites relied heavily on local enthusiasm and belief for processes of canonization to begin and move forward. Furthermore, especially in the early years after the founding of the Congregation of Rites, its activities were frequently aided if not shared by the Tribunal of the Rota. This Tribunal dated to the fourteenth century and was the highest court of appeal in the Church. Prior to the foundation of the Congregation of Rites, and even for decades later, the Rota judged the quality of the evidence in processes of canonization and ensured that certain standards were met.²⁸ Thus, even as the Congregation of Rites marked an institutional change in how saints were made, in reality the importance of both local veneration and old institutions involved with verifying sanctity persisted.

The institutional changes to the Church in the sixteenth century, then, are only part of the story. In addition to the continuing role of local veneration, strong patronage was important, and the new methods of verification greatly influenced who was chosen to be put forward as a saint and whether or not such promotion was ultimately successful.

HOW TO BECOME A SAINT

The early modern process of canonization involved a series of investigations carried out at a local level, followed by multiple reexaminations of the evidence in Rome. Much of this process had been in place by the late Middle Ages.²⁹ Yet as the papacy worked to centralize canonization procedures, it also enacted a variety of new regulations designed to verify, before the Church canonized an individual, that he or she was indeed a saint. These included new phases in the process of canonization, more careful evaluation of evidence, and greater oversight by officials in Rome.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, canonizations still normally began at a local level with the first—or ordinary—process opened by a bishop. In most cases, the bishop was responding to a swell of popular support. After interviews of an initial set of witnesses had established the prospective saint’s holy life and miracles, the bishop then sent the dossier of testimony and other evidence for canonization to Rome. There, the Tribunal of the Rota and then the Congregation of Rites decided whether there was sufficient evidence to continue with a canonization. If these authorities approved, they sent their recommendation to the pope, who gave the command to issue remissorial letters deputing officials to carry out the second, or apostolic, phase. The Rota Tribunal usually drew up these letters.³⁰

Although frequently many of the same testators from the ordinary process would be called during the apostolic, during this period the apostolic phase was made completely distinct from the ordinary. That is, whereas in the past the same documents and testimonies might simply be reused as evidence during this new phase, after Trent the entire process was carried out again. By redoing all the interviews and other evidence collection, the papacy clearly distinguished papal from local authority when it came to canonization. The apostolic phase proceeded with questions drawn up in Rome, with judges selected by the papacy, and across any number of locations where the prospective saint lived for an extended period of time.³¹ Furthermore, the apostolic process frequently was split itself into two phases during this period: in genere, which sought to demonstrate an individual’s saintly reputation, and in specie, which examined specific virtues and miracles attributed to the holy person.³² During the in specie phase of the apostolic process, a number of new methods of verification, including medical examination of the corpse, were required as early as the turn of the seventeenth century.

At the completion of the apostolic phase, the dossier of testimony was sent back to the Tribunal of the Rota in Rome for additional consideration. If the Rota was convinced that the prospective saint possessed both the requisite pious life and evidence of miracles, its members approved the canonization process. The Rota then created a summarized compendium on the deceased that they forwarded to the pope and the Congregation of Rites.³³ The cardinals in the Congregation of Rites reviewed this summary. They then pronounced on whether or not they deemed the individual fit for beatification and sent their recommendation to the pope. After receiving initial approval from the Rites and Rota, the pope could beatify an individual without further consultation.³⁴ Beatification, or becoming “blessed,” was a term without clear meaning until the seventeenth century.³⁵ Over the course of the early seventeenth century, though, it came to designate an individual who had received preliminary approval from the Church and therefore could be venerated by local believers or within a certain religious community, such as a religious order.³⁶

To proceed from beatification to canonization required an addendum to the apostolic phase to verify any new miracles that might have occurred in the intervening years, since frequently at least a decade passed between beatification and canonization.³⁷ The Congregation of Rites reassessed both these new miracles and the saints’ previous virtues and miracles. If the saint’s qualities were deemed sufficient, the pope convened a series of three consistories to discuss the prospective saint’s merits. Eminent cardinals and prelates of the Holy See attended these consistories in which speakers, generally consistorial lawyers, prepared orations on the virtues and miracles of the candidate in question. At the last consistory, the assemblage voted on whether or not the individual should be canonized. If the vote was positive, the pope set a day to proclaim the canonization in a ceremony at Saint Peter’s.³⁸ Such canonizations resulted in huge festivities, both inside and outside Rome. The promoters of the individual’s sanctity printed vitae of the saint, and a variety of imagery circulated that proclaimed the sanctity of the individual.³⁹ Thus, a large propaganda effort that attempted to spread veneration of the saint across the Catholic world followed canonization. In this way, local belief was integrated, made official, and turned into universal veneration.

In general, the process of canonization constituted an extremely complicated bureaucratic and legalistic procedure. But underpinning the various iterations of the canonization process there were a few, central elements that unified every successful canonization: the enthusiasm of believers, the continued support of a patron, and the successful navigating of the various legal criteria for sainthood.

MANAGING THE ENTHUSIASM OF BELIEVERS

Despite the modifications to canonization in the early modern period, one important aspect of sanctity remained unchanged: for a canonization proceeding to begin, the basic requirement was people who believed in the holiness of the deceased individual. Yet local enthusiasm for a holy individual was not a simple matter. Even when it already existed at a person’s death, those who favored canonization sought to manipulate, stoke, and channel it in ways that could be productive for canonization efforts. When such fame and enthusiasm were not manifest, promoters of a saint went to great lengths to generate it. Others also attempted to capitalize on the fame of a saint in order to play on local divisions or for goals other than canonization. Thus, the first stage in canonization—the belief that an individual was holy—represented a moment in which the raw power of faith could be harnessed to agendas that might either be beneficial or detrimental to Church unity. It was exactly this power of faith that concerned Clement VIII in 1602, when he convened the meeting with which this chapter began.

A number of late sixteenth-century cases demonstrate how the fame of a holy individual could create intense emotion and devotion, which could be difficult for the papacy to control. When Filippo Neri died in 1595, for example, contemporary avvisi, or newsletters, from Rome reported that a “huge concourse of people” formed along the processional route that Neri’s body traversed in Rome. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to touch the body.⁴⁰ His fellow Oratorians displayed his cadaver for a full day after his death, during which time a great throng of Romans came to see the deceased. Giacomo Bacci, one of Neri’s first hagiographers, describes the crowd’s frenzy: “Some cut off pieces of his [Neri’s] vestments, though the fathers [members of Neri’s Order, the Oratorians] did all they could to hinder it; others cut off some of his hair, or of his beard, and even portions of his finger-nails, which they kept by them as relics. Among the crowd were many ladies who out of devotion drew the rings from their fingers and put them on the fingers of the Saint, and then replaced them on their own.”⁴¹ Clearly, Romans viewed Neri as an especially holy person. Neri’s supporters encouraged such displays of emotion by creating situations in which veneration could flourish. His well-staged autopsy that night, which is explored in the next chapter, further stoked the flames of devotion to the deceased Oratorian.⁴² It was due to such clear enthusiasm for Neri that Clement VIII specifically listed his cult as one that concerned him in 1602.⁴³

In another case, after Felice of Cantalice died in Rome in 1587, his fellow Capuchins encouraged the massive enthusiasm for the saint by managing access to his body. Initially, the Capuchins laid out the corpse in their Church of San Bonaventura and invited the populace in, allowing them to interact with the body. An enormous crowd responded, excited to be able to touch the deceased friar. Some mourners kissed the hands, feet, and face of Felice while others, who may have been more concerned with relics, tore off pieces of his clothes, tufts of his beard, two of his teeth, and some flesh from his head. Those who were not able to get close enough to physically touch the friar used canes or other implements to reach over the crowd and poke the cadaver.⁴⁴ In the midst of such enthusiasm, the father general of the Capuchins suddenly expelled the crowd and closed the church, citing the danger that such a large crowd could cause on such a hot day.⁴⁵

Although he may have been genuinely concerned about the welfare of the believers, the father general’s decision to prevent access to Felice’s body also further stoked the crowd’s enthusiasm. The assembled believers now surrounded the building and began to demand access to the corpse. In the midst of this spectacle, Cardinal Anton Maria Salviati elbowed his way into the church and advised the Capuchin leaders to either send for the Swiss Guards or immediately bury the body so as to remove the object of the crowd’s devotion and thereby calm it.⁴⁶

Salviati’s involvement was likely a purposeful intervention by the papacy in a scene it had deemed excessive. After all, Salviati was a high-ranking cardinal who was a member of the apostolic chamber, had served the Curia on a number of dangerous diplomatic missions, and had worked to extend papal power and Catholic interests against Protestant ones.⁴⁷ Given his diplomatic background and elite status, he was the perfect agent of papal authority to defuse this tense situation. Immediately after Salviati’s intervention, Fra Felice was placed in a wooden coffin and laid in the Capuchin cemetery attached to San Bonaventura. That the Capuchins had not done this earlier suggests that they were deploying Felice’s holy cadaver to incite the passions of believers in Rome.

Cantalice’s case was not unique. Promoters of sanctity regularly managed access to and staged interactions with a prospective saint’s body in an attempt to build enthusiasm and establish a cult. In the small town of Rossano in Calabria, for example, local Capuchins attempted to put forward one of their brothers as a saint. They therefore staged viewings of his body, which was said to miraculously resist rot. His corpse was moved from a group tomb to the sanctuary of the church. His brothers then allowed small groups of local parishioners, and especially local women, to enter the sanctuary to see and venerate the body. As lay believers, in particular women, normally would not have had access to this section of the church, the experience was designed to inspire wonder and awe. In fact, these activities soon generated a strong local following, despite the fact that the exact identity of the deceased brother was unknown.⁴⁸

In addition to managing access to the body of a prospective saint, supporters could engage almost in a sort of multimedia campaign to encourage belief in an individual’s holiness.⁴⁹ Those who sought to forward the cult of Girolamo Mani in Verona in the 1650s, for example, began to print and distribute vitae depicting the prospective saint with holy rays of light coming from his head, implying that he already was a saint. This use of the printing press soon helped to create a sizeable local following for Mani.⁵⁰ In 1632 in Benevento, in Campania, the local Jesuits unearthed and displayed the body of Caterina Margiacca, whom they believed to be holy.⁵¹ They then distributed her bones as relics and printed portraits of her holding a halo-like crown.⁵² In this case, the circulation of both relics and imagery helped spread and enlarge her cult. Portrait statuary was also made of prospective saints and displayed publicly to stir devotion. Such was the case for one prospective saint who had the name “venerable” placed underneath a statue carved in his likeness, which was then strategically located above the central altar in his parish church.⁵³ In each of these examples, the promoters of sanctity clearly sought to encourage and focus the veneration of deceased individuals whom they deemed holy. A variety of media was thus employed to convey the message. These cases, which are among a few dozen that appear in the archives of the Roman Inquisition, are likely just the tip of the iceberg and represent generally how saints were promoted.⁵⁴

The effort expended to canonize Ignatius of Loyola (d. 1556) probably represents the most elaborate attempt to promote a saint’s cult in this period. After Pope Clement VIII denied Loyola’s canonization process in 1599 on the grounds that too few miracles had been attributed to the Jesuit founder, several supporters undertook a campaign to generate belief in Loyola’s saintliness. They sought to fashion a reputation for him as a miracle worker. Cardinal Cesare Baronio (1538–1607), author of the famous Ecclesiastical Annals, along with the first Jesuit cardinal, Francisco Toledo, conducted displays of devotion at Loyola’s tomb. These displays focused on the healing powers of the holy man’s relics.⁵⁵ The campaign extended into other media as well, with the cardinals and the Jesuits commissioning new vitae and even portraits by Peter Paul Rubens that cast Ignatius as a miracle worker. These actions were successful and the promoters of Loyola’s sanctity persuaded Pope Paul V to open the process of canonization just a few years later, in 1605. Loyola was canonized in 1622.⁵⁶

Although Loyola’s case was successful, this crowd-fueled promotion of sanctity became suspect in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and most cases discussed here come from Inquisition trials. Such concern was not without basis: the promotion of an individual’s sanctity by inflaming the masses did not necessarily dovetail with official, papal views on how the faith should be promulgated and could be counterproductive, leading to resistance to central authority. In 1655, for example, a woman named Francesca da Montimaggiore from the diocese of Fano, part of the Papal States on the Eastern coast of Italy, claimed to have enjoyed a vision in which the locally venerated saint Oliver (d. ca. 1050) revealed to her that he was buried under a large stone in a nearby parish church.⁵⁷ He had been there for some time, but now “no longer wanted to be buried.”⁵⁸ News spread within the local community, and based on the strength of Francesca’s vision, a large group of believers began to worship at the rock in the small church. The bishop, concerned about this growing cult, ordered that the rock be removed so that “the truth could be made clear.”⁵⁹ Once the bishop’s agents moved the stone, the gathered faithful found no body. The cavity that the rock covered was left open for several hours, permitting the worshipers to use the evidence of their own eyes to recognize that Francesca’s vision was false.

The cult of “Saint” Oliver became a rallying point for local believers against the Church hierarchy. Undeterred by the lack of a body, the faithful came up with two theories: either the body had been moved secretly by the bishop at night or, given the lack of veneration shown to him by the religious authorities, Saint Oliver chose to hide his remains when the stone was moved.⁶⁰ In short, when the bishop did not support their faith in Saint Oliver, the local parishioners became convinced that he was either attempting to deceive them or was perhaps not a very faithful Catholic. Lacking the corporeal remains of the saint, believers took pieces of the rock as “relics.”⁶¹

Oliver’s absent remains catalyzed old divisions in the community and accentuated a preexisting divide between the bishop and his parishioners. Indeed, the cult acted to support Francesca’s claims to sanctity through her ability to prophesy—an ability viewed with skepticism by local ecclesiastical leaders. The inquisitor, who had now been deputed to deal with this case, quickly brought the matter to a close by sealing the doors of the church and preventing access to the stone.⁶² There is no coda explaining what the parishioners of that church did when it was sealed, but it is likely that they either ceased going to services or dispersed to other nearby churches. In either event, the suppression of this burgeoning cult disrupted local patterns of worship and quelled growing religious enthusiasm.

Much of the initial phase of canonization, therefore, entailed encouraging and then managing the cult of a saint. The Curia, however, viewed such activities with increasing concern. The Roman Inquisition was already tasked with suppressing any such unapproved veneration. These efforts, which were somewhat ineffective, were aided in the 1620s, when Pope Urban VIII promulgated a series of decrees designed to deal with the problem of unapproved veneration. In particular, in 1628 he forbade the canonization of any holy person until fifty years had elapsed since his or her death.⁶³ Thereafter, the opening move in any canonization proceeding was to establish that no cult had existed sooner than fifty years after the saint’s death.⁶⁴ This served a double purpose: such a time lag was assumed to lead to a more careful consideration of the saint’s merits, as enthusiasm waned, and by forcing the promoters of sanctity to ensure that no public cult had formed prior to canonization, authorities thereby ensured that no unapproved veneration counted for official canonization.

Given these changes and innovations, why was Loyola’s case, which clearly represented unapproved veneration, allowed to go forward whereas so many others were not? The answer lies in patronage. Political and economic support determined to a great extent how nearly any aspect of a canonization unfolded. In Loyola’s case, there were two eminent cardinals and the entire Jesuit order that pressed forward approval for his canonization. The next section examines how such patronage worked in a number of other cases.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PATRONS

As we have seen, “unapproved veneration” first won a degree of approval when a local authority—usually the bishop—opened the ordinary phase of the process of canonization. The success of this preliminary evaluation depended heavily on the strength of the patron in the local community. If the bishop was absent or disliked, old religious or political divisions were often reignited. For instance, in 1612 a metropolitan canon opened the canonization of Francisco Girolamo Simon in Valencia because the episcopal seat was temporarily vacant and thereby sparked riots in the city.⁶⁵ Shortly after the opening of the ordinary process, conflicts between Dominicans and Franciscans in the city exploded, with the former decrying the veneration of Simon as excessive and unjustified. In response, some of Simon’s supporters—i nspired by Franciscan preaching—marched to the Dominican convent and demonstrated—even firing arquebuses at the building in protest.⁶⁶

Even when there was not a great deal of acrimony in the opening of a process, the bishop or other official still needed a fair amount of locally accepted support to begin this extended undertaking. Canonizations began with a sermon in which the bishop or one of his agents announced that he would collect testimony about the holy life and miracles of the prospective saint. A location—usually a local church—and a time were then set for testimony to be taken. The bishop and a notary carefully recorded the testimonies. This process could be lengthy, as hundreds of witnesses might come forward for an especially popular saint: 139 testators appeared for Felice of Cantalice in 1587 alone, while Filippo Neri had 351 people testify for him between the opening of his ordinary process in 1595 and the beginning of the apostolic process in 1610.⁶⁷

The resources that were required—both financially and organizationally—to maintain a notary to record hundreds of witness testimonies over months, if not years, were large. Therefore, even initially, a patron was required who was willing to devote resources and who had the authority to cajole or inspire local believers to come forward. And a single denunciation, even at this stage, could open an entire negative Inquisition proceeding, which would derail the process.⁶⁸

Once the bishop or other official sent the ordinary process to Rome for review, another sort of patron was required: one who could grease the slow-moving wheels of the papal curia and hold the audience of successive popes. For most successful canonizations, support from a patron was made explicit from the moment the dossier arrived in Rome. For example, lay and clerical ambassadors from the city of Milan, who had been given a special commission not only by the city but also from the king of Spain, brought Carlo Borromeo’s process to Rome in 1604.⁶⁹ Similarly, letters from the leaders of the Jesuit order and John IV of Portugal accompanied Francis Xavier’s ordinary process.⁷⁰ Teresa of Avila’s ordinary process was approved and her apostolic opened only after the king of Spain, Philip III, and his wife specifically wrote to the papacy to express their devotion to the prospective saint.⁷¹ The petitions for the opening of Francisco de Borja’s official canonization process included letters from many eminent people throughout the Iberian Peninsula, including the Spanish monarchs, the Duke of Lerma, and high-ranking members of the Jesuit order.⁷² Thus, demonstrations of support from the elite ranks of society were important even during this early phase of the canonization process. Promoters had to illustrate that their prospective saint enjoyed the support of powerful patrons within the Roman Church for the bid to even be considered.

After the process began to move along the track to approval and was under review by first the Rota and then the Congregation of Rites, it could stall if there was not sufficient pressure placed on these bodies to move the canonization along at a steady rate. Each institution had more than just one canonization to consider and ruled upon a variety of other matters that had nothing to do with saints.⁷³ Furthermore, when a pope died, his successor often had different interests and so might direct efforts away from the canonization of a given holy person favored by the previous pope. A powerful patron was thus needed to drive a saint’s cause if it was to remain a priority long enough for the bid to succeed.

Even Carlo Borromeo’s process of canonization, which was the most rapidly carried out in this period, stalled in 1605 as it shifted from the ordinary to the apostolic process.⁷⁴ As the process dragged on for two years without much advancement, crowned heads throughout Europe began to flood the Curia with letters urging the completion of Borromeo’s canonization. Philip III of Spain wrote the pope about his desire to see Borromeo canonized, as did Sigismund III, the king of Poland. The Dukes of Savoy, Parma, and Mantua, as well as several Swiss Catholic communities, expressed their support for Borromeo’s canonization bid.⁷⁵ The process picked up speed and the Church canonized Borromeo in 1610. Indeed, the pressure exerted by these powers on the papacy may explain why Borromeo avoided the intermediary phase of beatification—the last saint to do so.⁷⁶

The necessity of patronage is further revealed by the failed canonization attempt of Pope Gregory X (1271–1276). Pietro Maria Campi (1569–1649)—the main supporter of the cause—worked tirelessly for years in the early seventeenth century to gain official acceptance for Gregory’s sanctity. While Campi did manage to win some support for Gregory through the powerful Farnese family, it was never enough to overcome the evidentiary issues that hindered the process. The Farnese family was just one Roman family, not a crowned head of state, and not even entirely unwavering in its support of Gregory.⁷⁷

Even at a late stage in the canonization of Saint Hyacinth, the king of Poland, Sigismumd III (1587–1632), was careful to maintain explicit support. Prior to the final presentation of evidence on behalf of this prospective saint, the king sent an official to hold a gathering—reminiscent in many ways of a political rally—at a palace near Campo de’ Fiori. Then, when he presented the evidence, this official marched to the Vatican with an amazing show of support, accompanied by “many curial officials, noble men, Roman barons, and other prelates.”⁷⁸ Given the size of this rally and its route through major thoroughfares, much of the city’s population was aware of it. It can be no surprise, then, that Hyacinth’s canonization was approved shortly thereafter.

Although patronage sped the bureaucratic process of canonization, it also was required to pay for the increasingly expensive costs of canonization. The supporters of a saint cult paid for every phase in a canonization process from the diocesan inquiry up to the ceremony in which the pope proclaimed the newly minted saint to the world. Until the last phases of the canonization, these payments were made without any assurance that it would actually lead to the desired outcome. Given the enormous expense—both in time and in money—of canonization and the insecurity of the investment, putting one’s money into a prospective saint was in itself a great act of faith. It was also an act that required a patron with access to extensive economic resources.

Lists of expenses do not normally appear in canonization processi and so it is only occasionally that we get a glimpse of how extraordinarily expensive canonization could be. The cost for Carlo Borromeo’s canonization, records show, amounted to the staggering sum of about 30,000 ducats.⁷⁹ This was nearly the same amount it cost Venice to keep its largest warship in action for an entire year, including pay for all the men on board and for the equipment.⁸⁰ The cost comparison demonstrates how very important Borromeo’s canonization was to Milan. The city and episcopacy of Milan, which footed the bill for this canonization, spent amounts on Borromeo’s canonization that easily could have paid for the extension of city walls, numerous troops, or other important defensive measures during a period of regular warfare. That it chose instead to support a canonization bid confirms that saints were considered an essential good for the community in which they were venerated on par with, if not more important than, physical defense of the city.

Although it is not clear how all the money in Borromeo’s cause was spent, the well-documented expenses for Francesca Romana’s canonization (1608) give a great deal of information about the individual costs of saint-making in the early modern period. The price tag for her canonization, which seems to have represented only expenses from the apostolic phase of her process from 1604 to 1608, came to 19,000 scudi.⁸¹ In addition to this general expense, various gifts, gratuities, and bribes had to be given to those involved at the moment of canonization. As a gratuity for the canonization, the promoters paid 500 scudi to the pope and 200 scudi to Franciso Peña for his role as deacon of the Rota; each of the other two Rota judges involved received 100 scudi, and Cardinal Pinello, the head of the Congregation of Rites, was awarded 200 scudi.⁸² The list contains quite a few other people who were paid lesser sums: Giambattista Spada, the fiscal lawyer for the canonization, received twenty-five scudi, an unnamed papal physician received twelve, and even the Swiss Guards who attended the pope received four scudi each.⁸³ For comparison, artisans in the city of Rome made about three scudi a month, while police officers made four.⁸⁴ Thus, these “tips” were rather large financial awards with even the least payment equivalent to a whole month’s salary for many Romans.

In addition to monetary remuneration, many also received costly garments and accessories in thanks for their efforts on the canonization. The pope was given a stole for processions, as well as a silk cord to cinch it, another stole for saying masses, a taffeta shirt, sandals and socks, an apron, a bag, and a mat with which he could cover his desk.⁸⁵ Others received silk garments, with a variety of embellishments depending on rank and status. The famous jurist Prospero Farinacci received a gown made of blue silk with a hood “like the consistorial lawyers wear.”⁸⁶ The papal doctor was given a red garment with a hood.⁸⁷ Thus, canonization required a wide array of goods and monies that only truly eminent and wealthy patrons could be expected to furnish.

Perhaps due to such additional costs that could spiral out of control, Pope Benedict XIV (1740–1758), more than a hundred years later, sought to fix prices for canonization.⁸⁸ Benedict forbade the giving of gifts, even if they were only edible items, to those involved with canonization, and set the amount that could be given as a gratuity at a fairly low value.⁸⁹ Furthermore, he specified how much individual pieces of the canonization ceremony should cost. The prices were still surprisingly high: the Bull and Decree of canonization cost a total of 1650 scudi—just for the document.⁹⁰ Expenses for the festival to be held in Saint Peter’s to celebrate a saint’s election amounted to 20,400 scudi.⁹¹ Given these efforts at setting prices, which we might imagine could be circumvented when one wanted to press for a canonization, saint-making continued to be an enormously expensive endeavor well into the eighteenth century. These high prices and expensive bribes, furthermore, were a burden that continued to be shouldered by the promoters of the saint’s cause.

Patrons therefore acted as brokers for a saint’s cult in a number of ways. First, they translated the veneration that was occurring locally into a dossier, vouched for by their good name, that might be acceptable to Rome. Then, throughout the process the patron kept the canonization moving forward through a combination of financial incentives and political displays. In many ways, the patron helped, in the words of Simon Ditchfield, to “universalize the particular.”⁹² That is, the patron tried to ensure that local patterns of belief became part of the overall tapestry of Catholic faith. Canonization officials in Rome, though, had their own apparatus whereby they evaluated evidence that came from the parishes and sought to determine whether or not it was in accordance with the belief system of the universal Church.

VERIFYING SANCTITY

The Church’s increasingly rigorous attempt to demonstrate beyond all doubt that an individual should be recognized as a saint really began with the opening of the apostolic process of canonization.⁹³ Although certainly the ordinary phase of the process sought to establish that a person lived a holy life and worked miracles, especially in the seventeenth century, the apostolic phase represented a much more rigorous and centrally directed procedure. The pope opened the apostolic phase by issuing remissorial and compulsorial letters, which designated three local officials to oversee the canonization process in each locale and that specified which questions should be asked.⁹⁴ The letters required that a notary be present for all testimony to provide the stamp of law to the proceedings.⁹⁵

The questions asked during the apostolic phase were carefully designed to establish whether certain criteria for holiness were met as well as to evaluate witness probity. The questions asked in the 1650 apostolic process in Valencia for Francisco de Borja are typical.⁹⁶ At the outset, witnesses for Borgia were first warned that it is a grave sin to commit perjury.⁹⁷ Following this initial admonition, the first round of questions sought to affirm the identity of the witness. Investigators asked witnesses for their first and last name, who their parents were, where they were from, how wealthy they were, and how they made their money.⁹⁸ Next the officials sought to assess the witness’s probity: each was asked about his or her spiritual state, when and where they last confessed, if they received communion, and if they had ever been excommunicated. They also asked witnesses whether they had ever been convicted of a crime.⁹⁹ Finally, the judges asked if the witness’s testimony had been coached in any way.¹⁰⁰

Following the inquiry into the character of the witness, the judges then turned to questions about the saint. Frequently, these questions were open-ended. In the case of Borja, the judges asked a series of questions about his life that might lead to a range of answers, including whether the witness knew if Borja had a reputation for being a saint, what miracles he might have worked, and how the witness knew that what had occurred was actually a miracle.¹⁰¹ Again, this set of questions appears to have been standard and was routinely asked in apostolic phases of canonization.¹⁰² The motives behind such questioning were threefold: to ascertain whether the witness in fact knew the prospective saint, judged him to be holy, and understood what criteria were required to establish that an individual was a saint. Such distinctions were crucial since a witness’s reliability was predicated on his ability to effectively understand what was happening when a miracle occurred.¹⁰³

Following these initial questions, the Rota judges then sought specific details about the saint. The letters regularly supplied lists of miracles and virtues that witnesses could potentially confirm. Rota judges drew this list from testimony given in the ordinary process or the in genere phase of the apostolic process. Officials did not require witnesses to speak about each point on a list, but to select the items which they knew something about. In the case of Maria Magdalene de’ Pazzi, this list for the Florentine phase of her apostolic process consisted of twenty items. The first group posited some basic facts about de’ Pazzi—for example, that she was born legitimately, the identity of her parents, the date of her baptism, and how she was educated.¹⁰⁴ The next sections consisted of statements about her virtues. Testators were asked to affirm, for example, that “she had the greatest charity for her neighbor[s], longing for their salvation, and she cared for weak nuns, both looking after some novices, and instructing other nuns.”¹⁰⁵ Finally, the investigators turned to miracles, including specific ones to be certified. For de’ Pazzi, they asked, for example, if “a fluid, similar to oil, emanated from her corpse and if a sweet odor came forth from her tomb.”¹⁰⁶ Other topics, such as whether the deponent had witnessed many people attending the tomb of de’ Pazzi, also appeared in the list.¹⁰⁷

The questions and then the list of virtues and miracles were part of the apparatus whereby canonization officials attempted to demonstrate that the prospective saint merited canonization. The idea here is that proof is cumulative in nature and that the weight of many reliable witnesses to an event provided the most effective demonstration of its reality.¹⁰⁸ Thus, when the Rota compiled the apostolic process, for each miracle to be considered, a short summary would be created where each witness’s account of what happened is produced in extract form.¹⁰⁹ The weight of the testimony for each miracle was thereby clearly laid out for readers to see.

In addition to soliciting testimony from witnesses who knew about the miracles of the prospective saint, the judges in an apostolic process sought testimony from experts in a wide variety of disciplines. In one case, an inquisitor who was investigating the veracity of a saint’s relics called upon a woodworker as an expert. He asked the woodworker to use his knowledge to determine how much of the original relics survived in a wooden casing for a long dead saint. The inquisitor was prepared to quash the veneration if there was not enough of the saint left for devotion still to be shown toward the reliquary.¹¹⁰ In another case, when the survival of a woman through a difficult childbirth was declared a miracle, midwives from the city of Rome were asked to evaluate whether it did in fact exceed the realm of the natural.¹¹¹

In judging these cases, both the woodworker and the midwives relied on their own experience and on specific observations to respond to the canonization judges’ questions. That is, the Church employed artisanal experts using empirical techniques to create knowledge about the holy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This matches what Pamela Long and Pamela Smith, among others, have uncovered, namely, that artisanal techniques of hands-on manipulation and direct observation began to enjoy status as viable methods of making knowledge during this period.¹¹²

In addition to using artisans as expert witnesses, Church officials employed techniques characteristic of various trades, those accustomed to using experience as a guide to practice, when it came to assessing the holy body. When canonization judges and medical professionals unearthed the body of Thomas of Villanova in 1611 (can. 1658), they recorded in thorough, firsthand detail their experience at the tomb. They visited his sepulcher on October 13 at the third hour of night.¹¹³ The notary recounted in minute detail the appearance of the church and of Thomas’s tomb, noting the exact dimensions of the room in which it sat as well as the number of votive tablets, candles, and other instruments of worship that believers had placed on the sepulcher.¹¹⁴ When it came time to reveal Thomas’s corpse, the notary stated that his actual tomb was “four and a half palms in length, two in width, and another two in depth covered in a purple veil propped up by gold pedestals and studded with gilded bolts [but] not properly closed or locked.” He further gave the name of the woodworker, Simon, who opened the coffin.¹¹⁵ Upon opening, the notary recorded what the medical team said and wrote down every bone that they found.¹¹⁶ This level of detail appears to have been normal in canonization proceedings and also occurs, for example, in the visitation of Lorenzo Giustiniani’s tomb in Venice.¹¹⁷

This extensive recounting of details in examining saintly bodies along with an emphasis on direct observation was a narrative technique characteristic of contemporary travel writing, legal studies, medicine, and, later, early experimental societies in order to make eyewitness testimony into a historical reality.¹¹⁸ Spanish pilots sailing to the New World, for example, were asked by Spanish cartographers to record extensive descriptions of what they saw so that the cartographers could be sure of its accuracy.¹¹⁹ Detail implied authenticity. Later in the seventeenth century, experimentalists with the Royal Society would use such elaborate detail to demonstrate that a real historical event or experiment actually had happened. Robert Boyle, for example, would engage in long descriptions of minutiae prior to and during an experiment. These details would demonstrate that no part of what had occurred was omitted and therefore the unusual event had occurred as described.¹²⁰ Canonization officials thus engaged in a culture of observational empiricism so as to demonstrate the reality of miracles as they occurred in the bodies of saints.

Perhaps the clearest combination of empiricism and expertise in canonization proceedings came during the physician-led examinations of saintly bodies, which is the focus of the remainder of the book. The evaluation of Andrea Corsini’s body will serve as a preliminary example, though, which well illustrates the Church’s embrace of such techniques. In 1606 local canonization judges in Florence asked the physician, Angelo Bonello, to evaluate the state of Corsini’s corpse. Upon examining the body, Bonello “wondered at and admired the body’s preservation [which was] beyond the bounds of nature.”¹²¹ That is, Bonello considered the preservation of the body to be miraculous.¹²²

To bolster his testimony and conclusions about the body, though, Bonello enumerated a number of features that led him to his conclusion, including the cadaver’s skin color, flexibility, and the contents of the abdomen, which he opened during his investigation.¹²³ In Bonello’s own words: “Therefore I, Angelo Bonello, Florentine, extensively saw, touched, and smelled Corsini’s body.”¹²⁴ That is, he made an empirical survey of this corpse in which he observed and tested the corpse against his theoretical and practical knowledge of human cadavers and decay. Furthermore, he demonstrated what he found in a semi-public autopsy in which seventeen other witnesses were present. These witnesses added their names to Bonello’s notarized description of the event. The signatories were men of standing, consisting of some of the most eminent contemporary Florentine citizens: a senator, a member of the Guiccardini family, the Florentine inquisitor general, a local surgeon, and many other illustrious prelates.¹²⁵ The document for Corsini’s wondrous corpse thus represented a rich tapestry of evidentiary devices including empirical demonstrations, common assent, and philosophical discussion of the boundaries of nature. As this example illustrates, canonization officials relied on a number of techniques at this moment, including various forms of empirical knowledge making, to help make a miracle appear not just believable but a verifiable reality.

Physicians, therefore, represented ideal expert witnesses for the Church because they could deploy so many evidentiary devices in their testimonies about miracles. It was for this reason that canonization officials frequently asked physicians to reinterpret miracles that might have evidentiary issues. During the canonization process of Lorenzo Giustiniani, for example, Domenico Maffeo testified to Giustiniani’s miraculous healing of his son, also named Lorenzo, who was suffering from epilepsy. Maffeo was a less than optimal witness, however, having previously been accused of killing a person; in addition, his son, a few years after the miraculous cure, died.¹²⁶ Thus, both the testator and the subject of the cure were not considered reliable. In evaluating this evidence, the Tribunal of the Rota turned to Paolo Zacchia, a famous Roman physician and author of a treatise entitled Medical-Legal Questions, a foundational work of forensic medicine.¹²⁷ That the Rota asked Zacchia, rather than consult with one of the local surgeons who resided near Maffeo, suggests the Church’s preference for prestige and a physician rather than direct observation of an event. Zacchia was asked to reevaluate this supposed miracle and see if it could be made to meet Rome’s evidentiary standards.¹²⁸ Zacchia diagnosed the boy’s illness as a specific disease, came up with a prognosis, and concluded that there was no natural way that the body could have been healed.¹²⁹ Through a mix of theoretical training and experience, Zacchia was able to conclude that the boy’s healing was miraculous. Thus, Zacchia thereby turned questionable testimony produced outside Rome into evidence acceptable to the Roman Curia. Expert witnesses, and especially physicians, functioned in a role somewhere between agents of papal authority and negotiators between local and official sanctity.

As these examples show, canonization processes introduced a number of techniques whereby evidence produced at a local level in the parishes was reinterpreted and reevaluated through agents of the Roman Curia. These techniques married both the empirical methods characteristic of artisanal practitioners with the natural philosophic modes of interpretation available to physicians and theologians. In this way, ideas about sanctity generated locally were integrated into and made acceptable for the universal Church. Canonization after Trent was both an imposition of central authority and an act of negotiation between the center of the Catholic world and its peripheries.

The final act in the reform and introduction of more rigor into canonization after the Reformation was the creation of the office of promotor fidei by Pope Urban VIII in 1631. The individual holding this office was deputed to sit with the Congregation of Rites when they vetted the apostolic process. However, his job was an unusual one: his goal was to find errors with the process and potential reasons why a candidate should not be canonized, thus earning the unofficial nickname of the “Devil’s Advocate.”¹³⁰ In practice, this meant that after the testimony for the miracles and the virtues of a prospective saint were summarized, the promotor fidei would attack individual elements of the argument for canonization. He might impugn the reliability of witnesses, argue that a miracle may have been invented or exaggerated, or question whether testimony about miracles stemmed more from a misunderstanding about how nature worked rather than an actual appearance of a miracle.

The evaluation of the promotor fidei carried out during the apostolic phase of the canonization of Alfonso Toribio in 1675 (can. 1712) represents nicely the way in which these agents vetted canonization processes. The promotor in this case was Prospero Bottini (1621–1712), the Archbishop of Myra. He evaluated the evidence for a number of miracles that Toribio supposedly had carried out both in life and after his death. The information produced during his evaluation was printed in a type of document called a Positio super dubio. Such works were published to demonstrate the extreme care and caution that the Church took when evaluating the lives and miracles of the saints. The Positio for Toribio contains an initial summary of the evidence for each miracle, then Bottini’s objections to it, followed by rebuttals to Bottini’s arguments either by a consistorial lawyer, Federico Caccia, or the eminent physician Paolo Manfredi. The choice of Manfredi as expert medical witness was not casual: he was at the forefront of medicine in the seventeenth century. In the years immediately prior to giving testimony in this case, he had carried out some of the earliest experiments on blood transfusion and undertaken careful anatomical research into the structure of the eye and the ear.¹³¹ He responded to Boccini’s objections in many of the medical cases, while in several cases both Caccia and Manfredi offered rebuttals.¹³² Thus, any miracle accepted for Toribio’s canonization had been considered by multiple experts before it was actually deemed verified.

This debate between the promotor fidei, medical practitioners, and lawyers over the miracles for Toribio demonstrates the ways in which the negotiation for sanctity had evolved in the seventeenth century. First, each of the expert witnesses involved in this case was selected by the Roman Curia and resided in Rome. In addition, their arguments focused on specific and expert pieces of knowledge that were beyond the ability of most parishioners to evaluate.¹³³ Thus, sanctity was a matter removed from its original, locally constructed beginnings. In some sense, the introduction of the promotor fidei could be seen as the final act of centralization of canonization under the papacy.

Yet even in this case, the importance of local belief and the role of patrons is evident. All the testimony came from Lima, Peru, where Toribio had died, and the experts in Rome took it at face value—that is, they evaluated and accepted Toribio’s holiness according to the testimony of those residing in the New World. Furthermore, patronage is everywhere evident. Not only had all this testimony been sent from Peru to Italy, but it had also been translated into Latin and circulated in print form. All this would have cost time and money. Finally, the current Archbishop of Lima was present for some of the miracles that had occurred, implying some sort of involvement by this local patron who was perhaps looking for miracles enacted by the prospective saint.¹³⁴ He was acting, as Baronio had for Loyola, as a promoter who sought to encourage veneration for his deceased predecessor.

CONCLUSION

The long history of saints in the Catholic Church might appear to be a struggle between central authority and local belief. Yet in many ways, this is more appearance than reality. Prior to the sixteenth century, attempts to regulate local veneration were either non-existent or only very unevenly applied. Then, even after a number of institutional changes altered significantly the bodies associated with saintmaking in the sixteenth century, local veneration continued along older models.

The real changes came in the early seventeenth century, when repression of local cults was unified with increasing standardization of the techniques whereby parochial veneration turned into universal canonization. Such an act of canonization required enthusiastic support both at home and in the form of eminent patrons. These patrons translated the local enthusiasm into a dossier of evidence that brought the saint’s case to Rome, where a process of negotiation began. This meant the potential holy individual was subject to an increasingly rigorous evaluation. The Church employed a variety of methods to ascertain the truth of an individual’s sanctity, including verification of witness probity, the use of multiple witnesses for an event, and the deployment of new narrative techniques designed to validate miracles. Many of these techniques mirrored the empirical methods employed by artisanal practitioners in a number of fields. The Church’s use of such techniques very likely contributed to the legitimation and eventual appropriation of such empirical methods by those who studied the natural world.¹³⁵

In addition to these techniques, the Church also came to rely heavily on experts in their attempt to demonstrate the reality of miracles. Lawyers, craftsmen, and a variety of medical practitioners began to make regular appearances at the meetings of the Tribunal of the Rota and the Congregation of Rites. Although medieval churchmen had used experts during canonization, the early modern Church relied extensively on expert testimony to help it verify the most important miracles. Through reliance on such testimony, canonization became less a matter of popular acclaim and more an exercise in expertise.

The remaining chapters of this book focus on one set of experts—medical professionals—and their attempts to turn popular ideas about bodily signs of holiness into evidence that demonstrated the reality of a saint’s miracles. The next chapter charts the rise to prominence of the expert medical witness and the increasingly important role anatomy played in this evolution.