Bedazzled Saints - (Studies in Early Modern German History) by Noria K Litaker (Hardcover)

About the Book

"This book argues that whole-body saints (intact skeletons) in Bavaria functioned differently than the small, fragmented relics common in the medieval period. By devising and using this innovative relic presentation, early modern Bavarians materially expressed their loyalty to the universal Roman Catholic church and created local and exclusive patrons for their towns and villages"--

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Sixteenth Century Society Gerald Strauss Book Award
Shortlisted for the Ecclesiastical History Society Book Award

The defense of the cult of saints and relics was an essential element of the Catholic Counter-Reformation in Europe. Facing attacks from Protestant denominations of all kinds, the Roman church redoubled its efforts to promote the veneration of its holy figures and to house their earthly remains in dramatic style. Bedazzled Saints chronicles the transfer, distribution, and display of nearly four hundred "holy bodies" of ancient Christian martyrs, some of the church's most prestigious relics, sent from the Roman catacombs to the Electorate of Bavaria between 1590 and 1803. Local communities, both religious and secular, broke with medieval tradition and spent immense amounts of time and money to fuse incomplete skeletons into lavishly decorated whole-body saints.

By examining these ornamented skeletons--painstakingly enhanced with jewels and fine clothing and still on display atop church altars to this day--Noria Litaker elucidates the interplay between local religious practice and universal church doctrine, shedding new light on the negotiated nature of sanctity in early modern Catholicism. In so doing, she challenges the dominant narrative of the Bavarian Catholic Reformation as a top-down process and provides new insights into the role relics and their innovative presentation played in the development of Catholic identity in early modern German lands.

Review Quotes

Litaker's persuasive, forensic study of catacomb saints will be essential reading to scholars interested in early-modern Catholicism. Scholars of religious practice in early-modern Germany (and beyond) will need to fully metabolize the implications of her compelling research to their understanding of the field. Though it will appeal particularly to specialists, many other readers will undoubtedly appreciate the novel perspectives on early-modern Catholicism unearthed here.--The American Historical Review

Bedazzled Saints is a dizzying must-read. It is highly readable, deeply learned and extremely compelling. One would be hard pressed to offer even a single point of critique. Every single chapter bristles with more insights than one finds in the average monograph and no short review can do it justice. This book will be required reading for scholars of early modern religion and should feature on student reading lists.--English Historical Review

Litaker has written a wonderfully engaging study of Bavaria's catacomb saints that pays meticulous attention to the materiality of these spectacular whole-body relics and contextualizes them via a rich body of written evidence. The book explores the ways in which the dazzling skeletons evoked the history of the universal catholic church while simultaneously becoming deeply embedded in local devotional practices. It constitutes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of baroque piety and of the evolution of post-Reformation Catholic identity.

--Bridget Heal, University of St. Andrews, author of A Magnificent Faith: Art and Identity in Lutheran Germany

Litaker's analysis is persuasive, clear, and interdisciplinary, using methodologies of literary criticism and art history in a sophisticated fashion. Her book will appeal to both specialists and to a wider audience interested in religion, Catholicism broadly, and early modern Germany.

--Marc Forster, Connecticut College, author of Catholic Germany from the Reformation to the Enlightenment

This painstaking examination of not only the bodies themselves but also the relevant parish and municipal records as well as contemporary prints, shows us, as never before, the extent of local, popular involvement in the literal (re)creation and maintenance of the cult of Catacomb saints. This fact alone makes Litaker's work fundamentally original and innovative.

--Simon Ditchfield, University of York, co-editor of Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World

Through her sophisticated analysis of Roman catacomb saints in the former Electorate of Bavaria Noria K. Litaker convincingly demonstrates that the shaping of early modern Catholic faith was a highly creative process that involved a range of different actors and local communities. It is a strong argument for the polycentric functioning of the Roman church between universalism and particularism, between rigid doctrines and the active participation of the faithful as well as the relevance of material culture for the religious experience. . . Litaker's monograph is an important contribution to recent interdisciplinary research on religious material culture, early modern Catholicism, and devotional practices in the early modern period. The pleasant read is recommended not only for specialists in the field of research but also for advanced students and doctoral candidates as well as for a wider audience interested in the history of Catholicism in Bavaria that can still be experienced today.--Central European History

About the Author

Noria K. Litaker is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.