You're Dead to Me - Medieval Saints: miracles, relics and pilgrimage

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Greg Jenner is joined in medieval Europe by historian Dr Simon Yarrow and comedian Rachel Parris to learn all about the cult of saints and their relics. The veneration of saints still plays an important role in the lives of Catholics all over the world, but what did the cult of saints – and especially devotion to their relics – play in medieval Europe? This episode explores all aspects of the topic: who became a saint, and how the canonisation process changed over the centuries as the papacy tried to more tightly control it. What sorts of signs and miracles proved someone’s sanctity. What relics are, and how medieval churches acquired them, both legitimately and illegitimately. What people in the Middle Ages thought saints could do for them, and the pilgrimages they took to their tombs in search of aid. And it asks whether everyone believed in the power of saints’ relics – and the gruesome fate awaiting some sceptics. If you’re a fan of marvellous miracle stories, the fascinating history of the Catholic Church, and the odd gory martyrdom, you’ll love our episode on medieval saints. If you want more from Rachel Parris, listen to our episode on Eleanor of Aquitaine. And for more on the history of Catholicism, check out our episodes on the Early Medieval Papacy, Medieval Ghost Stories and Benedetta Carlini. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Lily Tidman Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

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We radio four comedy podcast that takes history serious. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are polishing our reliquaries and joining a pilgrimage to medieval Christendom to learn about the cult of saints and relics. And to help us tell our ascetics from our martyrs, we have two very special guests. In History Corner, he's senior lecturer in medieval history at the University of Birmingham, where he specialises in the cult of saints' relics, miracles and religious cultures in the early and central Middle Ages. You might have read his wonderful book, The Saints, a short history. It's Dr Simon Yarrow. Welcome Simon. Great, thanks for having me. Delighted to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, she's a BAFTA nominated comedian, actor, improviser, author and musician.

What a CV. You'll have seen it all over the TV on The MASH report, Late Night MASH, Mock the Week, QI, would I lie to you? You may have seen her improv skills in the hilarious Jane Austen improv show Ostentatious, which I've seen many times in love.

Maybe you've read her wonderful new book, introducing Mrs Collins on a sort of Austin spinoff. And you'll definitely remember her from our past episode of Your Dead to Me, about Eleanor of Aucatan. It's Rachel Paris. Welcome back, Rachel. Thanks, a delight to be back. We did medieval history together last time. Yes. Which is helpful. Yes, so I should have retained some of that information. You should have. I don't want to judge you early on. And yet, here we are. Would you know of the medieval world? Are you comfortable?

Am I comfortable in the medieval world? As a woman, no. I think there's little pockets of knowledge here and there. You were a chorister, right? You've sung... I was. I've sung medieval. I've sung medieval polyphony. Sure. At university. Yeah. Other people went out and got pissed.

I sung medieval polyphony. So beautiful, beautiful music. I've had quite a lot to do with a lot of different churches. So I was raised Methodists, so obviously, no sense. But then I've worked in quite a lot of different denominations of the church. And I'm quite obsessed with churches, including Catholic churches and across Europe. The first thing I do is go to a cathedral. So I've probably seen a lot of statues and commemorations of saints,

but I don't know much about them. Okay, well, that's fine, because that's today's job, it's finding out more. And obviously, yeah, today we're talking about saints and relics, which are, you know, they're hugely important to Catholics, to people in the Eastern Orthodox Church, many denominations of Christianity. So, what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener or viewer, Hello, might know about today's subject.

And when it comes to the medieval cult of saints and their relics, maybe you're thinking of blood, bones and brutal deaths because they do figure, honestly, that would be true. Maybe you've seen reliquaries in beautiful European churches, such as Rachel's tour of Europe, or visited a medieval pilgrimage site like Canterbury, for example. And in pop culture, saints and their relics feature heavily in books, TV shows, films,

such as Cadfile, Umberto Echo's name of the Rose, conclave, of course, the non-eneralds, and the movie. And then, of course, there's Rosalia's acclaimed album Lux, which is chock-foot of tracks inspired by women saints. But what exactly are relics? Why did medieval people venerate them so? And how many forms do you have to fill in to authenticate a saint? Let's find out. Right, Dr. Simon, we'll start with some basics. We're looking at medieval Christendom. What is medieval? What is Christendom? Okay, yeah, good questions. Good place to start. Yeah, basically the Middle Ages is a lot. long kind of intermission between classical Rome and the Renaissance period. So we're thinking around

kind of 500 to 1500. And it's a phrase the Middle Ages or the medieval period or Latin Christendom. It's first sort of initially invented by this bunch of liberal kind of humanists of the 15th century Renaissance period. And they used it to distinguish themselves to kind of emphasize a continuity with the classical past. Okay. And so it's rather stuck as this phrase and it becomes a kind of mirror or a yardstick for us modern historians to kind of measure what's backwards and what's progressive about our own history. And so it gets a bad press and it's a long period of time. To the thousand years. Exactly. So we might want to see where the cult of saints might fit into that and whether we think of it as something that's relevant to us

or needs to be left consigned to the dark ages. Don't you say dark ages? All the historians watching this are now terrified and angry because we don't say dark ages anymore. What do we say? Early Middle Ages. Oh. Rachel, what would you define a saint as?

I know obviously you didn't grow up in Catholicism, but, you know. I'm just trying to think of the ones that I know, like, I don't know if they're medieval, but like St. Francis, of a CC. Sure, yeah. Nice to animals. Okay.

And was St. Hilda? Hilda? Was there St Hilda? Did she drive the snakes out of somewhere or something? That's St Patrick, I think probably. Oh. What did Hilda do? She convened a great synod in the 7th century, which was there in Whitby.

That's correct. She was abbess at Whitby. Yes, I've seen, yes, and forgotten that. It's a running theme. I think they've, oh, and there's the one who got all. poles through him. Who's that one? Like there's all the pictures.

Are you thinking of Sebastian? Yeah, possibly. That's arrows, isn't it? All loads of poles. All through him, yeah. I think saints have usually like had a life particularly dedicated to God in some way. I feel like they've usually been a monk or something like that. Like they've already had a monastic or none like life.

And that they've done something dramatic has happened. like poles through your body, snakes, I don't know, fought a dragon, like, or with Francis of a C, C, married an animal. No, I don't know. I just feel like something to do with animals. Is that how the medieval church defined a saint? Pretty much. I mean, I think, I suppose there are three main elements, and one of them is, I think you've got this, which is basically, to have lived a holy life, to have been a holy person in some way,

and there are lots of ways of being that, including having poles stuck into you, is exactly. And the idea is that you're kind of known to God, that there is a kind of connection that you've established in which you're recognized as a saint and by God. And then the other element is to have a sort of public cult, so public veneration of this person. Usually after they're dead, yeah. The definition really kind of becomes solidified

and made official with after death often, and with the observation of a cult. Yeah. I don't think I'd trust a saint who had a cult during his lifetime. I feel like you should eschew that. Right. And not want it. You should think modesty?

You think they should be... Yes, humble. Yeah, I think it's the art of humble bragging, isn't it? Yes. It's kind of... You've got to somehow indicate to people that you're special, but without being too conspicuous about it. Yeah, don't look at the poles through me, please.

Please. I'm just being here with palsy. Yeah. I'm being told by producer Steve that St. Hilda did have snakes in her story. So you are correct that snakes were associated. Thank you, producer, Steve. I went to St. Hilda's College, so I should know that.

That's Oxford, isn't it? Yes, yes, yes. The thing that we probably should be talking about today is the saints' relics. Do you know what a relic is? Do you know what, the official definition? I don't know the official definition, but I think it's either an accessory or a body part. part of a saint that is kept in a church, sometimes in a special little box,

and you can come and worship it. Yeah. And it's treated as though it's imbued with holiness in itself. And sometimes they're quite gross. Is that fair? Any kind of body parts, arms, hands, foreskin, eyeballs. There's an eyeball in Stonyhurst College that they keep there, the Jesuits, which is pretty special from the, from the,

the period of persecution in the 16th century, there is in fact a kind of a tongue of St. Anthony of Padua as well, which was found in 1263. And I think the symbolism of the tongue is that he was good at preaching, not gossiping. He wasn't a scold. He was a preacher. Right. It was a good tongue.

Yeah, it was a good tongue. Yeah, not a bad tongue. But you keep all these things in little boxes, caskets, but also jewelry in... In books, you can have kind of them encrusted on books, you can have these things called speaking reliquaries, which are shaped in the kind of, in the way, in the kind of the form of the relic that survived. So there's an arm or busts like a head. It's meant to stimulate curiosity. It's also usually very gruesome.

Yeah. As a historian, we're talking about the medieval world, but obviously the history of Christianity begins in the late antiquity, you know, ancient world, really. So when do we first see this relic devotion being part of Christian faith, part of the community? Yeah, well, the classic example at historian's site is polycarp. But Bishop Polycarp was the Bishop of Smyrna on the Aegean coast of Anatolia in the second century. So that's what we now call Turkey-A, right? Yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah. And he was pushed to do cult to a kind of imperial altar

and refused to do so. And for refusing to do so conspicuously as a bishop, he was burnt. He was put on a pyre and burnt. And he was very stubborn. And he refused to burn for quite some time. So they had to skewer him with a spear. Oh, and eventually...

It just comes up, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Poles all the time, isn't it? And eventually he died and he was burnt right down to his ashes and his bones. And this is of one of the earliest mentions of the collection of bones and ashes by a community after the death of a persecuted Christian. And they're venerated.

And there's a celebration, what's called a feast day or the birthday, which is, i.e. the death day, the martyr day of the saint. And these lay down the kind of foundations of what's to come. and it really takes off in the fourth century and the fifth century. So fourth century will be the era of Constantine, the Great, when Christianity is, becomes an official religion in Rome. There's a real interest in martyrdom in the fourth century that's part of the cult of Constantine and the church triumphant, as it's called. Yeah.

So today we're portioning up our pilgrimage in sort of chats through a series of questions. You know, the who, the what, the when, the where, the why, the how. You know, all the classic questions. I think we should start with the who. Who gets to become a saint in the medieval period? If we start our period in the 6th century, in 500s, who qualifies? I would start a bit earlier, and I would say to begin with, if we think of St. Paul's, St. Paul's epistles, his letters to different Christian communities, he always addresses

them as holy, as saints. So to Paul, anyone who's baptized in the Christian faith is a saint, is a holy person. So it's fairly, you know, sociologically that's quite interesting because it means, you know, it's highly participatory and it's very kind of egalitarian. And of course, you don't get to choose whether you're a victim of persecution, so lots of people from very backgrounds

can end up being martyrs during the phases of persecution under the Roman Empire. But then from the 5th and 6th centuries onwards, we tend to get very much elite figures who are in the role of bishops, like often called confessors, and figures of high status. There are even cults of kind of royal dynasties

where Holy Blood runs through royal blood as well in descent lines in Linneus. St Louis in France. Yeah, he's sort of king of France and he's a saint, right? Yeah, you could be quite kind of middle class as well. And so, you know, part of one of the signs of being moral is that you renounce worldly goods. And if you haven't got any worldly goods to renounce in the first place,

then it's not as spectacular as if you have lots, of wealth. Oh, yes, you mean. So as you say, St. Francis came from a very wealthy family and he had, he stood to inherit lots of property. He makes his name as a saint to begin with by renouncing all that. In fact, he kind of strips naked in front of the bishop and his family and renounces his inheritance to become a saint. For me, I don't know if I'm allowed to qualify saints or not, but for me, I like the saints that are not rich. That feels like that that should be necessary to be a saint who is surrendered being rich. Exactly.

I don't need it. You have it. I'm going to go and hang out with the goats. Yeah. You know, that's, you know, so actually, once we finish the martyrdoms, right, you get the early martyrs who stand up for their faith and are horribly killed in violent ways. But once martyrdom ends and Christianity is now the official faith of the Roman Empire, you then get a shift in what a saint should be, right?

And it's more of a kind hermit, what we might call asceticism. Yeah, you can be an ascetic. You can be, as I mentioned, confessors, so be a kind of bishop in an administrative position, but you can also be a hermit or you can take a vow to join a monastery and observe kind of obedience and chastity and service of various sorts. You can be a teacher or a missionary. There are elements of those kinds of vocations in life that show up in Vita, which saints' lives. Yeah.

So you can take yourself away from society. or you can do the opposite and go out into society to preach and to practice and spread the faith? Yeah, that's pretty much it, yeah. And putting on your David Dadapehat, how would you spot a saint in its natural habitat? What behaviour are you looking for from a saint? What sort of tells can you sort of go,

oh yeah, that's a saint? Well, I don't know. Again, with a hermit, I feel like I've got a very particular image in my head of what a hermit looks like. I think it's quite a lot based on Monty Python, really. I see them as being quite muddy and wearing like a sort of hair sack, yesion type thing and having no earthly goods and living in a cave, I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah, I think of them as being quite quiet and humble. But then if you're a missionary or a teacher, you've absolutely got to spread the word, haven't you? So you've got to be quite good at talking to people and being confident about that. Yeah. So that's a version of a saint that I can't imagine, i.e. motivational speaker saint, with like a sort of Madonna head mic on. Ted talk.

Ted talk, saint, yeah. Yeah. Cuthbert's a good example of that. Or he kind of combines the two. He's an ascetic. He spends a lot of time as a hermit, and he's also a bishop. And he's sort of, he's famous for kind of traveling, walking on foot, not on a horse, but walking on foot around his diocese preaching to people.

So Cuthbert's a good one for that job description, yeah. Are there any other types we need to mention, you know, any other things that a saint would do that people might go, ah, saint behavior. Yeah, there's some great ones. There's all the kind of repertoire of ascetic behavior, including kind of fasting, and there are a group in Syria who go foraging. They go around eating the grass like animals,

like livestock as a kind of form of humility. You have to endure extremes of temperature, so people like, you know, Cuthbert used to have lots of cold baths. We've got Simon the Stylite who set a trend. I was going to say. He spent almost 40 years at the top of a pillar. Yeah. In Aleppo, which must have been incredibly hot.

So we're in Syria, incredibly hot. He sat on the top of a pillar. Yeah. It's like a sort of weird David Blaine thing, isn't it? Yeah. Did he talk? Yeah. Like, did he shout down?

Bring me a sandwich. Yeah, who's feeding him, right? Yeah. One of my favourites is another Simon. The Simon of a Meta, who's a holy fool, the holy fool type of saying is really fun so he's uh there are a kind of mix of um this kind of classical precedent diogenes and and and jesus speaking truth to power and this sort of philosophy type exactly exactly yeah and he he's famous for dragging dead dogs around the town

for throwing nuts at women and and he also did lots of funny walks as well yeah my word he is Monty Farr. Yeah, he is. He's a good one. I did my dissertation on The Holy Fool, a archetype, but it was based in opera, but Wagner in the Holy Fall, and I talked about Parsifal.

Yeah. But with this Holy Fall, is there an element of like innocence to it, but also clowning? Yeah, definitely. A little bit of misogyny. Yeah, I mean, chucking nuts at people. Subversion, transgression,

about making you uncomfortable and challenging you. Miraculous healers? Yeah, that's a kind of, basic job requirement for all of these things is being, often being, because it's a strong narrative from the Gospels and a lot of these saints' lives, they kind of get their core from the stories of Jesus and the apostles. So, yeah, healing is an important one. Okay. Is there a name for the life of a saint? Is that, you know, do we have a sort of

how you're meant to behave? Yeah. I mean, I guess, I guess in a way that the, following the Gospels is one of the key ideas. So they call it the Vita Apostolica. Ricky Martin song, no? Exactly. Liv of La Vida Apostle. It's very hard to say. It's hard to sing, actually. Sorry. And I believe it says upside, inside out. Yes. Live in La Vida Apostolica. Exactly, exactly. That's the word. That's inside out, presumably he's inside a cave, I don't know, or on top of a pillar. Simon, once these signs of sanctity were noticed, once someone was clearly living La Vita apostolica. That's the saintly cult builds up around them.

So is this a popular thing? Is that the local community going, we've spotted a saint, we like this guy or this woman, we're going to start treating them as a saint? In that early kind of moment of a massive kind of breakout of saints' cults in the 4th century, often it's something that they've been described

as kind of impresario bishops. So you have a story of, you have a story of this kind of subgenre of hagiography, which we'll talk about, which is the translatio or the Elevatsio or the Inventio, all these Latin fancy words for basically the discovery of invention, Inventio means discovery of a saint's relics. And sometimes the story will tell of a saint who visits often a kind of a common person in a vision and tells them and nags them repeatedly. You'll find my bones here and then this gets notified to the authorities,

and there's a big kind of process of transferring them kind of ceremonial, a bit like a classical kind of Adventus, into a new space. And in the fourth century, this is big business for bishops who are kind of digging around catacombs in various kind of cities, mainly Rome, and pulling out bits of bodies and moving into the centre, to the cathedral, the basilica in the center of the town, which is a very, very, very, more.

morbid for pagan Romans, but is part of a new kind of formation of power that's condensing around bishops. What do you mean it's morbid for pagan? Well, in cities, in urban architecture, in the classical period, cemeteries tend to be on the outskirts of cities. So to bring a dead body into the centre of the community and the town is a really big kind of public statement. That process whereby the church starts that go, okay, we need to actually.

actually start sifting through these and authenticating them. When does that happen? When do we get a kind of top-down authentication process? The first reference to what we might call a kind papal canonization procedure. Up to now it's been princes and bishops at a local initiatives, but is in the 10th century and the late 10th century is a bishop Ulrich of Augsborg who is canonized by the Pope. So this is basically a statement that Ulrich is recognized as a saint, the procedure itself becomes much more kind of regularised and systematic in the late 12th and into the 13th century. Okay, so this era of the Crusades and so on that sort of thing. What had he done, Ulrich, to merit this?

He's been a confessor, I think. He'd been just a very good boy. Just been a good boy? It's a top lad. Standards were quite low at the beginning. But if you were designing a process to judge if someone is a saint, so you know, not yourself, obviously. But if you're looking to see, is someone a saint and you need an authentication service, what is your judging process going to be? How do you sift out the real true saints from those who are just wannabies?

Well, I come back to that quote. I think it's a bit like politicians. You know that quote about anyone who wants to be a politician shouldn't be a politician. I'm absolutely ruining the phrasing of that. But I feel like anyone who's seeking sainthood probably shouldn't be a saint. I do think there should be an element of humility to it. Altruism and a bit of healing makes sense to me. That feels like that's a point.

power coming from God. Okay. If you can heal the sick. I wouldn't go for the ones who are too flamboyant and wealthy and powerful. I think a quiet saint who's doing good. You know, sure, bring some people back from the dead if you can. I don't know if any of them could do that. That's the top level.

Pull a Lazarus. Lazarine power is the absolute top level saint power. Were there many of them? Not many. That's quite a rare one, isn't it? Yeah, it is pretty rare. We'll get to one later on, I think, wouldn't we? But it is about getting a balance, I think, definitely.

I mean, I think you can't be too quiet, because, you know, which is the most successful saint? Is it the hermit who goes into the forest and is never heard of again and lives a holy life? Or is it the hermit who people keep going to ask for advice and tracking down, follow him out into the forest? Yeah, that's true. And you want to spread the word, don't you?

Yeah, so it's that humble bragging thing again. It's got to sort of... betray, be very kind of meek and also kind of a little wink and a nod as well. That's what the press want from the royals, isn't it? It is. Really humble and meek, but I'll give you an interview any time you want. There is this process though, right? In the 13th century,

the Pope's start to go, all right, we need a process. So, like, how much form filling do you... I mean, because bureaucracy ruins everything, right? So how much actual, like, filling in forms, sending in paperwork, that you have to do to get someone made a saint? Yeah, that really kicks in in the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, and it's formalized legally by Innocent III, who's a kind of notorious legal pope,

where you need to have what's called a Vita, so a life that demonstrates holy conduct in life, the sorts of things we've been describing. You also need evidence of a holy reputation at death, which is what's called pharma sanctitartis so people whispering whispering campaigns happening and farmer f a MA so where we get the word fame from right exactly so that's hence the sort of celebrity overturns yeah yeah does that mean there's talk about you yeah yeah okay yeah and then of course if that talk uh can kind of extend to people actually being witnesses to miracles and reporting

miracles often miracle healings then you need a miracle collection you need a posthumous collection of miracles post-mortem and the process is so bureaucratic i mean they they used to have to sort of fly witnesses in from such and such a village in wherever into rome to give official testimony which is very just like the same kind of process as the inquisition and with heretics it's an inquisitorial process um so yeah it gets very very kind of uh heavy bureaucratic and sometimes pope's just die before it's done and they have to start again. Oh no. It's like when you fill in a form online and the website crashing.

I've just done all that. We should talk about one of my favourite saints would be Thomas of Cantaloupe. Oh, I like the sound of him. He sounds good, doesn't he? He sounds like a sort of giant melon in a cassock. He was a real guy. He's the saint bishop of Hereford Cathedral, where the Mapermundi is. And he does have Lazarine powers.

He does top-level saint stuff. of bringing people back from the dead. How many people did he bring back from the dead? Well, one I'm aware of, a guy called Thomas Krague, I think, who is a Welshman? But there was an inquiry, right? To find out, okay, is he a legit saint? And they sent lawyers to interrogate and to ask questions

and to find out, did this miracle happen? Yeah. Was he really dead or was he just sleeping? Did he just wake him up? He was hanged. He was a criminal, hanged at the gallows, Thomas Krag. And then his friends sort of asked for help from the saint who was dead by this point. and lo and behold, he came back to life.

Oh, okay. Proper miracle. And so this was the making of Herrick. They got a lot of glamour and money out of this, a lovely big church tower. But it's that interesting thing that the lawyers were sent to interrogate and to quiz the witnesses.

Yeah, exactly, yeah. And that's still a very strong kind of insistence today is that all miracles that happen in canonisation processes today have that kind of, they have medics, and doctors witnessing and examining, scrutinising medical records. It's a weird question, but the lawyers who would interrogate them, would they be wanting them to answer in the affirmative, or would they be wanting it to be like the strictures to be there?

This is where we get this idea of the devil's advocate, is that they have to kind of disprove the miracle in order to prove it in the way. They have to demonstrate that this thing happened, and one of the later sort of technical terms associated with Thomas Aquinas is this notion of contra naturum. So you have to be absolutely certain that this is not something that might have occurred coincidentally or accidentally or by some sort of natural process of causation.

Yeah, this is the supernatural, right? Yeah. This has to be the intervention of God or a saint. The saint is the intercessor on behalf of God. But it throws up some real curious puzzles for us. So, for example, there's a, again, a notorious case from the 13th century of this guy called Thomas of Eldersfield, who crops up in some of the posthumous miracles of Wolfston.

And he, he's a bit of a naughty boy, and he gets into a fight with somebody over a woman, and they have this kind of trial by combat, which he loses. And his punishment is to have his eyeballs and his testicles removed. Oh. Oh. Why is it so ball-based? Yeah, exactly. Just all the spheres of your body.

Take all these balls. Yeah. The story goes on as this kind of detailed little scene where these balls are seen rolling down the road and little children come and pick them up and play marbles with them. So he then gets kind of carted off to a hospital where prayers are offered to Wolfston. And, surprise, surprise, he has his full set of new balls. restored to him. Yeah. How do you explain that one? I really can't. And I don't want to. I mean, the boys... I'm just thinking, it wouldn't, it would be a terrible game of marbles.

Yeah. You're like, well, first there's only two. I mean, I don't want to say anything about the size of them, but like, yeah, it doesn't seem practical to me. But there we go, you're thinking like a lawyer. You're immediately asking questions. You should be a kind of lawyer. What I'm doing is overimagining it and I'm not enjoying it. This is what historians have to do. Absolutely. This is the specific job of historians. What about his eyeballs? Anything about them?

They were restored. They were restored as well? Did they accidentally swap him around and he had testicles for eyeballs? Because that would be hilarious, right? I've done a miracle. It wasn't an accurate miracle, but it is still a miracle. So, okay, so we have these miracles being interrogated by lawyers who are looking to disprove, hence the phrase devil's advocate, which is an office that comes along in the 16th century,

but it's an official position in the Vatican. You are the devil's advocate. you argue against the miracle and you have to prove that the miracle didn't happen. Oh, I love that. That's one of the things I'll actually remember. But we should talk about hagiography or hagiography. Yeah.

Which literally means sort of sacred writings, right? And these are the writings of saints' lives. And they're quite tropic. They're quite stock genre stories. Yes, it's literally hagiography. It just means writing about the holy. And it's a huge kind of literary tradition in the medieval period.

And it's described by Edward Gibbon, who's a bit of a skeptic in the 18th century, he talks about it as having all the fiction without the genius of poetry. Wow, scathing. Yeah, so there's a real kind of downer on hagiography. It's often seen as quite dismal and quite, as you say, repetitious, full of topoy.

Nothing like a kind of modern novel, which we all feel is the kind of standard for thinking about what a good literary kind of piece of work is. Who would write it, the stories? These are written by specialist monks who work in scriptoria, who, again, they're kind of, there's a lot of kind of what you might call intertextuality. So they're writing, they're taking bits from earlier stories and kind of weaving them into their new stories. You might sort of think of it all as a kind of a mythology of Christian glory. And I think of it that way.

And you have these topoi. So, you know, they're often a, a. sign of being a saint is that you are pious in your infancy so you don't go out and play football you stay in and you pray and uh what a dweb exactly you're a bit nerdy um that that's that's one of them that you go around and there's a kind of odor of sanctity around you there are these kinds of topoy that you have that you find in the literature but the thing that fascinates me as a historian is the way that those are kind of mingled with little snippets and clues of what must be kind of repartage or actual historical detail.

Yeah. So the hagiography, the hagiography is a sort of tradition of writing these biographies of saints. We should talk about medieval miracles and healing miracles because they're really, really interesting. Rachel, different saints had different medical specialisms. So you turn to each saint for their different skill, right? And so it depends on what they can do for you. I'll name a saint. I've got a little mini quiz for you.

I love it. I'll name of saint. You tell me what medical specialism they handle. Okay. So, St. Apollonia. Apollonia. Could, um, thinking Apollo. He could, um, lift people up.

Lovely. No, he's the patron saint of toothache. Too-thake. Because all his teeth are ripped out. Oh. So he knows about toothache. St. Margaret. Oh, St. Margaret, lovely.

Healing wounds. Not bad. Childbirth. That's quite, yeah. So she's the childbirth. She's a kind of patron saint of me. Yeah. St. Fiagra.

Theagra Fiacra Yeah, feyacry yeah Just being clear Broken bone Healing broken bones Good guess It's hemorrhoids

I'm God there's someone for that Yeah Simon Saint Artemis Artemis Artemis Artemius He's kind of in rivalry

With Wolston I think He's for hernias And testicles I was going to say Restoring testicles He's a safe pair of hands Safe pair of glands Yeah

Okay, so we have, you know, if you have a medical condition, you go to a certain saint and you pray asking for healing, for health, for restoration of your wellness. You know, it's fascinating, I suppose, that each person has their, each saint has their own remit in the medical world and in the healing world. So where do people go to get these cures? You know, you don't go to the pharmacy necessarily for the miracle cure. You go to where? A monastery?

You usually go to a shrine. And shrines can be in monasteries and they can be in local churches. And a shrine tends to be a kind of monumental structure like a tomb with a roof, the kind of gabled roof or canopy over the top of it. And these house the relics. And sometimes if you're lucky, you've got the kind of the entire body and it's kind of incorrupt. And you can, Cuthbert's a good example of that. Ethel Thrift in St. Ely is another one.

And sometimes there'll be in a reliquary. It's positioned on an altar. or above the altar or on a kind of, sometimes you get relic collections in cabinets. These are very kind of highly kind of curated spaces. And the idea is to give you an experience that is going to facilitate your access to the contagious kind of power of the relic,

the kind of holy radiation. It's a fantastic, I don't know if you've been to Santiago. No. So Santiago, I'm much really, recommend it. To Compostela, yes, in kind of, yeah, Galicia. It's a fantastic place, some great wine bars, some wonderful wine. It's great, great seafood.

And the church itself, the cathedral is famous because it's the kind of ultimate place to go on pilgrimage, which all other kind of places lead up to. And it's a big kind of Romanesque church. And just to the kind of east of the crossing in the nave part, there is this huge elaborate kind of baroque complex of passages and crypts and you get to kind of walk around it, you go down into the crypt and you see a little kind of silver casket, which has got St James's relics and then you go up some stairs and there's a huge bust of James looking down the nave and you get a very kind of intimate, cozy moment with him because it's a very small little space and you get to people

give him a hug and whisper in his ear and then they go down and out the other side and walk round the ambulatory. So I, you know, I really recommend Santiago, is it, a compassella as a place to go. Yeah, that sounds amazing. This is pilgrimage, right? People would go on. So how does a pilgrimage differ to an ordinary journey? I mean, obviously a journey is a commute.

A pilgrimage is still a commute of sorts because you're getting somewhere special. But is the journey itself also holy? You have to go in sandals. Yeah. Carry a stick and a shell and a purse. And there is a classic look, which you've got to try and reconstruct. Okay, what's the look? You have your kind of.

a script and a staff, which is like a kind of pouch for your money and you go in sandals, or sometimes you go barefoot on parts of it and, you know, to show your commitment. And it's about devotion. It's about having a reason to go that's to do with making a vow or a promise for some sort of interaction with the saint. And you, sometimes people have pilgrimages kind of prescribed for them by their confessor by priests. say, you know, you've been naughty, and the only thing that will solve it is if you go on pilgrimage to such and such a local shrine. But then you get these massive kind of international pilgrim

routes which link up. And Compostella is one of the kind of term in eye for this. And Canterbury is another. Yeah. Cologne another. And Rome, of course. I mean, Canterbury, we know through, you know, Geoffrey Chaucer's, you know, the Canterbury Tales, that's a pilgrimage, right? That's people are telling stories as they go to the holy site. And that's where Beckett was murdered and then very quickly canonised by Mets. That's right. Like, sort of kings, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to murder you.

So it's really interesting. And people going on pilgrimage is a sort of huge, important part of spiritual life. But it's also kind of an economy, right? There's commerce attached. Do you know anything about this? Have you ever encountered this sort of notion of the kind of economy attached to pilgrimage?

No, I think I've only ever thought of it. I'm sure I've seen shrines, which involve almost like a wishing world-type situation with coins thrown at them. That's a way of getting money, is there? Yeah, you sure, yeah. People could misbehave on these pilgrimages, right? They could get drunk, they could have sex and be naughty.

So sometimes you'd get to the final site and be like, I'm so sorry for everything I just did on the pilgrimage. My bad, girls' trip went a bit wild. Yeah, it's basically stagged it. Sorry. But we should say that when people get to these sites, they're spending money. They are, yes.

are. And I mean, I think the way I would think about it is that these cults are the people who are the custodians of relics, they have a particular kind of clearly devotional, liturgical, and pastoral kind of set of priorities on this. You do occasionally get them keeping records of payments made at the shrine from the 13th century in England, we have cathedral shrines with little accounts, little ledgers of of money offered. And I think probably a lot of these cuts will pay for themselves in that sense in terms of, you know, in what we would think of as a kind of profit and loss basis. But that's not the main kind of aim of it.

The people who do benefit from it, though, are the kind of citizens of the town. It's that they're a huge boost to the local economy and just can think of the specialist kind of jobs that people take up their artisans, hostelries, brewers, cobblers, people selling merch of various kinds. So this is like early tourism. Yeah. Yeah.

So before Taylor Swift comes into town, actually it's the pilgrims come into town that brings you the money to the economy. Sometimes they do relic tours as well and they're kind of on tour with their relic and they can collect money that way. That seems dicey to me. Keep it safe.

What if it falls off? I mean, you say merch. What is medieval relic merch? Pilgrine badges. Okay. That's cute. Little flasks of oil or holy water or bits of files of blood that you can take back home with you,

badges to show that you've been to this place. I love that there has always been this. Not always, but for so long it's been this like you can get a bit of tat to go with the expatri. I don't know if it's a myth or not, but there is famously the word tawdry supposedly derives from St. Audrey. Yes. Oh, really?

Is it St. Audrey of Ely, I think. and the notion that so many people just sort of bought tat, you know, the word sort of evolved and now we sort of think of it as... Yeah, we've all bought a multicolored eraser. Yeah, we've all got a pencil. Yeah, yeah. Producer Emma outside was showing us all her pencils, she gets from museum gay shops and they're very lovely.

But I think, you know, we can be cynical, right? We can sort of, in our heads to be like, oh, it's very exit through the gift shop, you know, all the money. But actually, you know, these pilgrimages are incredibly special, they're incredibly important to people. They may be going for a miracle. they may need healing, they may be concerned about their soul. And also, we still, when we go to, when we have a wonderful memory,

we buy souvenirs so we can remember the thing. Yeah. It's not just tat, is it. It can be meaningful. Yeah, it is a souvenir. It's a nicer way to put it, a memento. And I do, you're right, I have plenty of those from trips. You want to bring a part of it home with you, just hopefully not a body part.

Because they need them. Whose testicle is that? Yeah. I'm so sorry. A keepsake. We should talk about how some of these relics ended up in these churches and in these shrines because a lot of the time it was legitimate and holy

and then sometimes it was fraud and theft, right? It was some serious, some sort of dodgy dealing sometimes. Can you talk us through the translation, this translatio? Yeah, sure. Well, I mentioned already this notion of the vision and the invention. So this is a kind of trope in which the saint visits somebody in a dream. tells them you can find our relics here and it's about time you did something about it

and a discovery story is written up, etc., etc., and translation takes place. There's a nice example of acquiring relics by kind of royal patronage as well, which is the hand of St. James at Reading, who is in the 12th century, so Empress Matilda, who was married to Henry V.

When he died, She kind of, one of the first things she did was had a good look around his treasury and his relic collection and she nabbed the Hand of St. James and brought it back with her and gave it to the kind of family monastery which was at Reading. We did an episode about her with Carriad actually, so, you know, if any listeners want to listen to that episode. And obviously sometimes things are just downright stolen, right? They're in Crusades, in times of war.

You know, in 1204, the Constantinople, it's sacked during the Fourth Crusade. And the Christian crusading warriors just steal relics. Absolutely, yeah. In the wake of the First Crusade and the Fourth Crusade, 1204, as you say, there's a lot of sacking and plundering going on and people's relic collections being plundered and being sent back home to various kinds of churches who, in some cases it looks like they're almost kind of on order.

It's like if you come across a relic of Saint-Wa-Wat-It, then we want him because we've... We've got there. We're dedicated to the march. That's how art crime works, isn't it? Like sometimes... I was just about to say that, yeah. Yeah, you sort of have you... I'd really want to pick a SO.

Could you just... Yeah, but also the idea that art is only as valuable as what you imbue it as. Sure. So it has no particular physical value, like a load of bones. To one person is just a load of bones. But if you say, or believe that it is the bones of this saint, then all of a sudden it's like worth this huge amount.

Yeah, yeah. But it's sort of... Really, it's just... it's nothing, but until someone says it is. And as well as the hagiographies, as well as these sort of saints' lives, we also have these lovely texts called a furta sacra. Do you know what that means?

No. Or sacred something. It literally means pious theft. Oh. They are kind of stories and texts that basically say, we didn't steal this, we just feel like it should be here, not there. Yeah.

It's like we morally, this should be in this church. Yes, we should. stole it technically. I mean, it's essentially a kind of confession of theft. It is. And it's, I think it sort of borrows from, it's a kind of narrative of abduction and consent. So if you think about parallels at the time in, you know, elite families, aristocrats and the marriage of daughters, and there is a, there is a tradition of abducting the daughter. And the consent of the daughter is something that's added later to the story of how, of how this marriage takes place. There's this very similar kind of idea.

It's basically like a kind of heist story. So there's a couple of great examples. There's one from the Miracles of St. Phoey, St. Faith, in Konk, which is one of these great kind of pilgrimage churches. This is in the 9th century. The story's written up much later, but in the 9th century, they send one of their monks to a rival monastery where he kind of goes undercover as a mole for 10 years.

He spends 10 years winning over their trust and then there's a moment where he gets an opportunity and in the dead of night he steals, he trashes the relics of St Faith and takes them back to his own church monastery and con. It's a long con. It's a long con. It's a long conk.

It's a long conk for a long con. You get these sort of confession documents saying like the saint came to me in a dream and said they wanted to be stolen. Exactly, yeah. Which is amazing, right? Yeah, and I wonder sometimes whether money is changing hands behind the scene. There's a great story from the translation of St Edith,

St Edith, who's a nun in Wilton near Salisbury in the late 10th century. And there's a story about how a bunch of travelling what called Pictish monks, Scots, presumably, arrive. And they've got with them a casket with the relics of St. Ui, one of their saints. They're seemingly on a relic tour and they put the casket on the altar in the church in Wilton

and it won't budge when it comes. They kind of enjoy the hospitality of the nuns and the monastery and then it won't budge. It won't leave when they want to go. And the story then tells us that Abbas Walthreth

who's the mother of Edith as it happens, she has to write a check for 200 shillings, which is about £100, to tell them to go away and leave. So how do we interpret that? Whether this is a con that the Scots are perpetrators,

Scottish monks are perpetrating on their nuns, or whether the nuns have said, right, we'll just pay for this because we want it, we like it. Whether the nuns like in the sound of music, that sneaky nuns, whether they put like massive weights in it to weigh it down. I wonder, smart nuns.

None the wiser, there you go. Rachel, I think we've kind of covered quite a broad spectrum of medieval saints' lives. Yeah, I feel like I know them intimately. It's quite, it's fascinating, isn't it? Because obviously, saints' lives are still so important to people of faith now, but actually there is something quite medieval about some of this.

Yeah, definitely, especially the gruesome elements. I find, you know, this idea that you can have holy testicles and, yeah, foreskin and that, I don't know. It's funny because on the other hand, there's the medieval period feels like, you know, there's a blasphemy and there's sensitivities around this sort of thing. And then on the other hand, they're there playing marbles with balls in the street and throwing nuts at women. And, yeah, it's a mixed time. The nuance window It's time now for the nuance window This is where Rachel and I sit reverently

At a holy person's tomb for two minutes While Simon takes to the pulpit To tell us something we need to know about medieval saints So my stopwatch is ready Take it away, Dr Simon Historians study the past through its written and material traces They go to the archive and they find sources

survivals, leftovers, what you could say could call relics. As historians, we need to remind ourselves when we work with our sources that they don't just contain information, facts, evidence out of which to reconstruct as if scientifically some conclusive truth about the past, they are also a puzzle and a challenge

to our sense of empathy and humanity. They dare us to conjure up the past and to ventriloquise the dead. And along with the world, this, there are ethical responsibilities and repercussions for us all when historians attempt to do this. And this is part of the ongoing conversation of this brilliant podcast. Studying the medieval cult of saints and their relics raises the stakes further. How should historians explain miracles? Again, this is a puzzle and a challenge. Saints, relics and miracles are signs. They represent

and they point to something beyond our understanding. The lives of saints have an immediate presence in our encounters with their gruesome remains. They are intriguing, disturbing, unsettling. But they also excite the imagination. They're a spur to creativity, a sense of trepidation, perhaps even awe. This is how we are made to feel in the presence of saints' relics. And this is how historians often feel when they go into the archive. So saints are a bit like influences or celebrities,

except they are not trying to sell as products like social influences or looks, maxing gurus. They aren't like AI serving us up, hallucinated, slop-larded with flattery. They are teaching us about life and death and about our lives and our deaths. They don't provide any easy answers, but they do offer a reassurance

that humans have been here before. Amazing, thank you so much. Two minutes on the dot. Look at that. Wow. Incredible. Amazing. A miracle.

A miracle. Not without the page. Paperwork. No, exactly. Yeah. What's come out through the discussion for me is that with all the authentication and the evidence that was required to make a saint and to authenticate a relic, really a relic is holy because people believe in it,

whether they've believed in it for 600 years or 100 years or however long, if there is faith in something, that in itself is what makes it sacred. Yeah. Not just the paper about it. Yeah, it's not just a form filling, is it, you're right. The interesting thing actually is that we might think of the medieval world as the era of saints, but more saints were canonised in the 20th century than in any medieval century. Absolutely.

Oh, really? Who? I mean, there's a patron saint of comedy writers. There's a patron saint of podcasting. What? Yeah. So, yeah. Is Adam Buxton? I mean, he should be.

He's certainly up there, isn't it? Yeah, no, actually the 20th century popes sort of widened the scope a lot more, isn't they? One of the most recent ones ago. called Carlo Acutis, who was a social influencer. Wow. Oh, really? So there's a patron saint of social influences, yeah. Of, you know, YouTubers and whatever.

Yeah, there we go. That's fascinating, yeah. So we're still in the era of saints. We're still in the era of the canonisation process. More so, perhaps, than ever. So what do you know now? It is now, of course, time for our Quickfire quiz. This is the So What Do You Know Now?

My favourite bit. This is to see what Rachel has learned. Now, Rachel, you have taken no notes. I just wrote some down for posterity because I felt like I owed it to the book. Sure. I just wrote down the marbles with testicles story. But apart from that, no, I haven't. So I won't be looking at my notebook.

I mean, you're very clever. You know, you've studied at Oxford. You have a tremendous brain. I don't think that has any bearing on the other. Well, let's see how much you remember. Okay, I've got ten questions for you. Okay. Good luck.

Question one. What is a relic? It's a piece of or an object associated with a saint that is kept by the church for people to worship. Very good. Venerate, yes. Question two. What was the earliest type of Christian saint? The first one available. We all are.

Anyone who's been christened is a saint. Yeah, that's absolutely true. That's not what I heard, but that's completely true. We did say that. Everyone who'd been christened. I've got martyrs, but I will give you that because that's excellent. Well done. You were listening. Question three, give one example of a medieval saint's relic. Oh, four skin. It's the one that sticks in the mind.

Good ahead, Anthony's tongue, Beckett's blood as well. We heard. Question four, name the most famous miracle performed by St Thomas of Cantaloupe in Hereford. Oh, what did you tell me? Cantaloupe. He's not the one who raised someone from the day. He is. He is. Yep, yep. He revived a hanged man. Yeah, very good. Question five, what institution took control of the canonisation process in the 1100s, 1200s or so? What institution? The papacy? Yeah, it is the papacy, yeah. Question six, what illness was sent Artemis supposedly good at healing. You wrote it in your book. I've written it down? Yeah. Did I? Artemis, he's good with... Oh, testicles.

Testicles and hernias, very good. Question seven, what are hagiographies and vete? The stories of the lives of saints. Very good. Question eight, what keepsakes could medieval pilgrims buy at shrines? Badges? Yeah, lovely little badges. Very good. Souvenirs of their time at the shrine. Question nine, name two ways a church might acquire a relic.

Well, according to some of your stories, nick it. Or someone obscure would have a vision and tell them that they know where it was buried and they'd dig it up. Very good. And also plunder and theft and wars and crusades. That's excellent. This is a perfect 10 out of turn. How did the monks of conch acquire the body of Saint Faith? Oh, was that the one, was that the undercover guy?

Yeah. There was a monk that went and spied on them for 10 years in a long conk. And he got it. 10 out of 10, Rachel, never in doubt, incredible skills. I'm putting on my CV. That's very, very impressive. And you even gave me an answer that wasn't even in my quiz. So that's amazing.

Well, well done, Rachel. Thank you so much. And of course, thank you so much, Simon, for teaching us that. Listener, viewer. For more from Rachel, of course, check out our episode on Eleanor Racketane, one of the great queens of the medieval world. And for more medieval, more medieval faith and culture, actually, we have episodes on medieval ghost stories.

We've got episodes on Jeffrey Chaucer. We've got naughty nun, Benedetti Carini. She was very cheeky. And we have one on medieval animals, so plenty to get into there. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear the show

28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. But I just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We have the stupendous Dr Simon Yarrow from the University of Birmingham.

Thank you, Simon. Thank you. It's great fun. It was good fun. Annie Comedy Corner, we have the sensational Rachel Paris. Thank you so much. Thank you. I learnt so much. I mean, you knew quite a lot, but you did learn some stuff too.

So that's the best of both worlds. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we crack open another tomb to examine the perfectly preserved historical subjects inside. But for now, I'm off to the shrine of St. Fiakra, because these haemorrhoids are killing me. Bye!

Could you talk about being invisible or double denim? Who knows what's next on the new series of Just a Minute? Belting out a rendition of Godabat. Whatever the topic, our panel has just a minute to speak, without hesitation, deviation or repetition. Join Zoe Lyons, Desry Birch, Paul Merton, and many more for the new series of just a minute with me, Super Kids.

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