About

The project ‘RECOGNISING SAINTS in the High Middle Ages: Local and Papal Formalisation of Cults Reconsidered’ (2023/50/E/HS3/00250) is funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, as a part of the SONATA BIS call and hosted by the Faculty of History, University of Warsaw.

The special reverence surrounding some of the deceased is a phenomenon common to many religions. However, the complicated procedure of recognizing saints and then formalizing their veneration, culminating in a decision made by the highest religious authorities is peculiar to Roman Catholicism. Yet, the procedure of papal canonization as we know it today has not always existed in Latin Christianity – it developed between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, gradually replacing local forms of recognition of saints and gaining popularity over time. Why did this happen? This is one of the questions our project sets out to answer. Its goal is to understand why the local bishops or their congregations, hitherto responsible for formalizing the cults of the new saints, increasingly decided to waiver this power to the papacy during the High Middle Ages. Also, why did this happen so unevenly? Some local churches accepted the papal authority to appoint new saints very early on, making elevation to the altars dependent on Rome’s decision, while others continued the custom of local recognition of sainthood for a long time.

To answer these questions we must look at the phenomenon of the recognition of new cults itself, which in this period differed significantly from the system of papal canonizations as they exist today. In most cases, formalisations of cults were carried out at the local level by numerous actors: individual bishops, synods or groups of bishops, often headed by a metropolitan. Not infrequently monastic communities were the guiding force, while lay rulers also had their role in the process. Why such a path was chosen and not another – this, as in the case of the reasons for appeals to Rome – still needs to be investigated. As of today no one has yet conducted a systematic and comprehensive study covering all cases of formalization of new cults in the High Middle Ages. This is the task our project sets itself. The research team will undertake a systematic analysis of the available sources, which will allow to sketch a comprehensive picture of this phenomenon and answer the most pressing research questions of the project. This will also be served by a digital tool, created as part of the project – the Sainthood Recognition Catalogue – which will allow us to document all cases of saint recognition and investigate their relationships to one another. It will enable us to fully understand the phenomenon of sainthood recognition in the High Middle Ages, as well as shed light on the multiple solutions that were enacted to formalise cults. It will also give us a chance to understand what was the reason for the centralization of this phenomenon and the increasing involvement of the papacy in it.

The project will provide a significantly better understanding of the medieval cult of saints, one of the most crucial phenomenon of this era. At the same time, the project focuses on a key moment in the development of the peculiarity that distinguishes Catholicism to this day, namely the functioning of a central authority in the form of the papacy. It shows how Rome’s power in the Church grew gradually, primarily through its authority, which slowly found recognition and was accepted by the local churches. This discloses new research perspectives: a broader reflection on the issue of the building of the authority of institutions, lay as well as religious, and the relationship between the periphery and the centre, represented by Rome.