The Saints: A Short History
by Simon Yarrow, OUP, £10.99
God makes saints, but human beings are charged with the daunting task of understanding them. We have not always acquitted ourselves with high honours. As Simon Yarrow explains, some rulers had an unfortunate habit of “bending saints’ cults to their political ambitions”. Assembling a dazzling collection of relics or claiming a saint’s special favour was often more about prestige and posturing than devotion. Charlemagne had his moments of genuine piety, but when he organised lists of official saints he had the machinations of his rivals in his sights: the goal was “to choke at birth local attempts to galvanise political will around new saints”.
