A Profile of Thirteenth-Century Sainthood

Abstract

Thus far, two quantitative studies of Catholic sainthood have been attempted. Altruistic Love by Pitirim Sorokin,1 which deals with the entire history of Christianity, established the patterns of saintly behavior over a two-thousand-year period. Although many of Sorokin's analytical categories are useful, his conclusions are rather broad and do not take sufficiently into account changing conditions in church history. His geographical subdivisions, for example, which are based upon the twentieth-century nation-state, are anachronistic when applied to a medieval context. No distinctions are made between the various genres of freeman, e.g., the old feudal aristocracy and the urban-dwelling nobility, although their interests were often in conflict. Nor does Sorokin consider the role of the papacy and the political crosscurrents-Guelph vs. Ghibelline, Englishman vs. Frenchman, heresy vs. orthodoxy-which determined the function of a saint's cult and the likelihood of his being venerated in any particular epoch. Frequently these saints became the objects of cults not so much because of their personal piety but rather as a result of their political activities, family connections, or membership in an aggressive religious order. Nor does Sorokin consider the many local saints, whose worship was restricted to one or several dioceses and who failed to gain international recognition. Such relatively obscure individuals, the sources of much local pride, were often the objects of more active and long-lasting cults than their well-known confreres.