St. Gerard's Wrath: Religious Power Politics in a Dutch Community

Abstract

The public humiliation of saints is generally viewed as a medieval ritual defence mechanism. To protect their property and rights from bands of marauding robbers and greedy landlords, monasteries mobilized the wrath of their patron saint. Recent research in the southern Netherlands has shown that similar rituals were performed there until the late nineteenth century, though their target had changed. Nineteenth-century monastic communities used these rituals in their struggle against the diocesan incorporation of the parishes they had administered for centuries. This case study describes a competitive process of this kind; it sheds new light on an old ritual and enhances our understanding of the dynamics of diocese formation. [politics, religion, saints, diocese formation, Europe]