This chapter will examine the notion of theology as a science in some summae from the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth century, exploring the works written both by secular masters and members of the religious orders.

The literature generated by the cult of the saints extended well beyond their written lives to encompass plays, poetry, and prose. This chapter explores the vital role played by vernacular print and manuscripts in sustaining English Catholics and their exile communities overseas as one of the many ways literary works on saints could help to construct, foster, and defend early modern Catholic identities.

This chapter traces basic contours of early scholastic Atonement theories from 1150 to 1250, which integrated insights from Augustine and Anselm on the objective work of Atonement with Abelard's attention to the subjective dimensions of Atonement.

Liturgy was central to the cult of the saints, regulating how, when, where, and with what honors they were worshipped. This chapter examines how Roman attempts to censor and standardize the liturgy after the Council of Trent came up against local, regional, and national efforts to preserve the distinctiveness of their particular devotions.

Sanctity intersected with medicine during the early modern period because the remains of aspiring saints could offer evidence of divine favor. By studying examples of extreme asceticism, bodily incorruption, and other anatomical wonders, this chapter reveals how medical expertise became a crucial part of Catholic canonization efforts.

While few martyrs made it to sainthood during the early modern period, the idea of martyrdom was nevertheless revitalized and reshaped following the Reformation and New World discoveries. This chapter analyzes how martyrdom functioned across different geographical and religious frontiers – heresy, infidelity, and paganism – whose importance shifted over time in line with Catholic imperial expansion.

This chapter traces the development of Black sanctity in early modern Catholicism, examining how Black saints were venerated within the context of European Christianity, transatlantic slavery, and African diasporic communities. By focusing on both ancient and contemporary holy Black figures, the chapter explores the rich and multifaced roles played by Black saints in both European missionary efforts and Afro-diasporic religious practices.

This chapter explores the development of debates on the moral among theologians from the mid twelfth century to the first half of the thirteenth century. It identifies a crucial turning point in the early decades of the thirteenth century, when interest in understanding the very nature of the human being and its faculties paved the way for a general reassessment of the issue of the different kinds of law.

This chapter examines bishops both as saint-makers and as saints in their own right from the end of the Council of Trent through the eighteenth century. Bishops promoted the cult of existing saints in their communities, worked as arbiters in formal canonization procedures to create new saints, and sometimes became saints themselves through their efforts to live like the model bishop saints they admired.

The twelfth century witnessed an unprecedented scholarly effort to access and assimilate new corpora of knowledge by translating Greek as well as Arabic sources into Latin. This chapter surveys the various translations, discusses the role of those who mediated them to the Latin tradition, and finally focuses on the reception of the texts at the University of Paris during the first decades of the thirteenth century.

Using the Iberian Peninsula as a case study, this chapter examines the evolution of female sanctity away from the late medieval visionary model pioneered by Catherine of Siena toward a new paradigm of enclosed, contemplative mysticism exemplified by Teresa of Ávila. Analysis of the post-Tridentine lives and hagiographies of late medieval and early sixteenth-century visionary Castilian women reveals the existence and surprising vitality of an “intermediate” model, which shows that Teresa’s triumph was by no means inevitable.

This chapter argues that not only the author but also the implied audiences and situations of the Johannine texts are fictionalized. It also critiques the longstanding scholarly reconstruction of a “Johannine Community,” proposing alternative ways of contextualizing these works.

This chapter considers how a representative sample of early scholastic thinkers grappled with a range of questions around the creation and nature of angels, on the one hand, and angelic powers and operations, on the other.

Hagiography played a seminal role within early modern Catholicism, with the writing and dissemination of the lives of saints – ancient, medieval, and contemporary – essential to countering Protestant attacks and reinforcing Catholic identities. This chapter investigates how printed lives, epics, and dramatic performances contributed to a multisensory experience of sanctity that connected local religious communities with the broader aims of early modern Roman Catholic Reform.