Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?: Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation

Good if sprawling overview of the cult of saints. Lacks a cohesive argument (in the manner of Making of Europe) other than that the cult was very important BUT, if you want a wealth of anecdotes about the cult and short often incisive commentary on each aspect of its development, this is a good place to start.

Bartlett brings clarity and order to a very complicated subject. The book is an impressive work of scholarship, and is interesting and very readable. I would gladly have read another 700 pages. Were it not so long, it would be ideal required supplemental reading for mediaeval or church history classes.

Well-reasoned thinking on a fallacy: saints.

Ordered for teacher, they were very pleased

Reading this was as exciting as reading a dictionary--just an unending list of one saint after another, repetitive, boring, completely uninformative.

Thanks

St. Augustine pondered the miracles the saints could do (this was before he became a saint and presumably dabbled in miracles himself) and asked a question that the medievalist scholar Robert Bartlett has taken for the title of his new book. _Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation_ (Princeton University Press) is an academic doorstopper, over 600 pages of small-print text, not to mention notes and a voluminous bibliography. It is a treat, though, to see such erudition amassed this way; it is hard to imagine any aspect of the cult of the saints that Bartlett has left out in this extraordinarily comprehensive text. Yet there is enormous entertainment here as well. The times were far different from our own, and if miracles are happening now, they are not the same sorts of miracles that so astonished and inspired the men and woman described in these pages. We do not have dead now doing such great things, for instance, as did St. Edmund of East Anglia, who even though dead got so angry with King Sweyn Forkbeard for pillaging his abbey that he ran him through with a spear. Bartlett does such a splendid job of sympathetic understanding and neutrality, it is hard to figure out his own views of such miracles. Those of us who take a skeptical view of the supernatural will find much to condemn here, but readers among the millions who believe in saintly miracles will find no reason to leave off believing.Holy men and women doing wondrous things are part of many religious traditions. The early Christian church took this a few steps further. Not only was death no barrier for saints who wanted to continue working miracles, but their corpses, or bits and pieces of them, possessed wonder-working capacities. It is fun to read the words of contemporaries who thought there might be something wrong in worshipping dead people rather than the supreme being they followed. In the twelfth century, a critic confronted the problem that there were competing revered heads of John the Baptist, one in Constantinople and one in Saint-Jean-d'Angélyin France: “There were not two John the Baptists, nor one with two heads!” Calvin mocked the slipper of St. Peter which was preserved at Poitiers, a slipper of satin and gold: “See how they make him stylish after his death as a compensation for the poverty which he had during his lifetime.” These saints violated physical laws by such things as levitation, and some turned water into wine as Jesus had done, though Bartlett explains that “in the cooler northern and western parts of Europe, other beverages might be more suitable.” He gives as an example St. Arnulf of Metz, who miraculously provided beer for all the entourage carrying his body to burial. The chief miracles worked by saints, however, were cures attested by many grateful petitioners. It is a surprise, then, to read that saints were not always healing in their saintly way. Sometimes they caused rather than cured illness. A woman who swore a false oath to St. Bertrand that she was innocent of adultery “saw her hand wither and dry up.” A man who falsely swore to St. Cuthbert immediately went blind. Around 840, men claiming to be monks brought some bones to Lyons, saying they had forgotten which saint they belonged to; perhaps objecting to this neglect, the relics “did not heal, but knocked women about the church, striking them to the ground.” St. Etheldreda took her staff and stabbed a man in the heart with it for oppressing her believers; he lived long enough only to tell what she had done to him. Simon de Montfort, who died in battle in 1265, was regarded as a saint, but when some skeptic derided him, the skeptic “lost the power of speech and was unable to move a hand or foot but sat like a dead person.”This huge mass of scholarship never gets around to answering the question of its title; believers only, it seems, can understand why the dead can do such great things (and maybe how, as well). Perhaps this is as it should be; Bartlett summarizes that “the cult of the saints met needs, in particular the need for the hope of a cure in a sick and suffering world without effective medicine, but it also suffused the imagination of worshippers.” That may have to do for a “why.” But who, and when, and where - this enormous and humane reference work gives all that, along with with stories that are appalling and ghoulish and mysterious and funny.

The emphasis of death and the afterlife in Christianity is a major component of the religion's history. Robert Bartlett explores the Christian saints, known as the holy dead in this great book. He discusses a variety of saints and their alleged miracles, pilgrimages, and works.One of the strongest points of this book is that it covers a large group of saints - even a dog! It emcompasses a group of women, political bishops, and the trade of relics. Bartlett's strength as an author comes from his experiences as a professor of medieval history in Scotland. His previous books include  Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal  and  The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350 , both of which cover different subsets of the middle ages.Another of Bartlett's strong points is that it explores a human aspect of the saints. His best point is that "the cult of the saints met need" and provided a positive outlook for the "sick and suffering world." Adding personality to the tet makes it an engaging and thought-provoking read.The main criticism readers might have of this book is that it does not necessarily set out to answer the question it poses in the title. Still, readers will appreciate this book as a demonstration of the prominence of religion in Christian Europe. Bartlett's story is one of passion and a search for happiness.

You might not think you'd enjoy a detailed study of the mediaeval cult of saints, but, unless you have no sense of humour, you'll enjoy this. It manages erudition without ever losing the (reasonably knowledgeable) general reader. It is comprehensive but never repetitive, and it is fun. Bartlett, like Gibbon, loves the jolly, gossipy bits. There were times when I laughed out loud. Mind you, if you really believe in saints,this might be a bit of a facet.

This is a very comprehensive and scholarly presentation of just about all concievable facets of saints and their cult through the Middle Ages. Taking its origin in the commemoration and cult of the martyrs at their tombs, new persons for veneration were quickly found among holy men and women after persecutions of Christians stopped after 300 AD. Eventually a cult of saints developed and their remains were venerated all through Christendom and the saints became prime actors in everyday life of medieval people. Quickly the cult of such persons also became a tool for power and prestige and thus an important factor in the evolvement of medieval church and society. The book tells this story with many examples and a high degree of detail which is quite entertaining as well as thought-provoking. The book is thoroughly cross-referenced (I have already ordered a couple of follow-ups) and all in all it is an excellent read.

Excellent.

Great read, but slowly as is packed with information. Well written

Brilliant and insightful, as always with Rob Bartlett.