on faith. John Calvin composed a systematic critique of the cult of relics in the vernacular
(Traité des reliques, 1547), in which he rejected the veneration of relics on theological
grounds and delighted in such absurdities as the multiple heads of John the Baptist
enshrined in churches throughout Europe. Theological opposition often turned to violent
iconoclasm on the part of Huguenots during the Wars of Religion. Relic collections were
destroyed and the statues of the saints in many French churches still bear the scars of
attack. The Council of Trent took steps to reorganize the practice of the cult of saints and
the means by which saints were canonized within early-modern Catholicism.
Thomas Head
[See also: BOOK OF HOURS; CHARTRES; CONQUES; GREGORY OF TOURS;
HAGIOGRAPHY; LEGENDA AUREA; MARTIN OF TOURS; PILGRIMAGE;
RELICS AND RELIQUARIES; SAINTS’ LIVES]
Brown, Peter. The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Dubois, Jacques. Les martyrologies du moyen âge latin. Turnhout: Brepols, 1978.
Farmer, Sharon. Communities of Saint Martin: Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1991.
Geary, Patrick J. Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages. 2nd ed. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1990.
Head, Thomas. Hagiography and the Cult of Saints: The Diocese of Orléans, 800–1200.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Patlagean, Evelyne, and Pierre Riché, eds. Hagiographie, cultures, et sociétés: IVe-XIIe siècles.
Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1981.
Philippart, Guy. Les légendiers latins et autres manuscrits hagiographiques. Turnhout: Brepols,
1977.
Rousselle, Aline. Croire et guérir: la foi en Gaule dans l’antiquité tardive. Paris: Fayard, 1990.
Schmitt, Jean-Claude. The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children Since the Thirteenth
Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Sigal, Pierre-André. L’homme et le miracle dans la France médiévale (XIe-XIIe siècle). Paris: Cerf,
1985.
Vauchez, André. La sainteté en occident aux derniers siècles du moyen âge d’après les procès de
canonisation et les documents hagiographiques. Rome: École Française de Rome, 1981.
Wilson, Stephen, ed. Saints and Their Cults. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
SAINTS’ LIVES
. Hagiographic literature in Old and Middle French—stories about Christ, the Virgin,
biblical figures, authentic or apocryphal, and above all the lives of the saints—is rich and
varied. Unlike most other writing in the vernacular, to which the church was either
indifferent or hostile, hagiographic literature was encouraged by ecclesiastical authorities,
especially after the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which insisted on the necessity of
preaching in the vernacular tongues. Hagiography is one of the most fecund of Old
French genres, as well as the most ancient. There exist in verse more than 240 versions of
the Lives of over a hundred saints and an even higher number in prose. Most of this
literature is unedited. The first extant French literary composition, the Sequence de sainte
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1614