Nevertheless, the picture should not be overdrawn. As Aviad Kleinberg has observed, many scholars have overestimated the role that the papacy had in canonization at this point.12 Local veneration without papal approval still continued unabated. Furthermore, any progress made toward centralization was soon lost when the papacy’s prestige and power sank to a nadir during, first, the Avignon Papacy and, later, the Great Schism (1378–1417).13 André Vauchez points to the fifteenth century and the papacy’s return to Rome as the moment when a more central authority emerged.14 But even at this juncture, local veneration of noncanonized saints continued. Thus, despite the fact that the papacy became more cautious about whom it canonized, its return to Rome had little effect on local veneration.15
Similarly, the Reformation has been debated as a turning point in the history of saints. The Protestant attack on the cult of the saints is well known.16 It was demonstrated most violently in acts of iconoclasm including, in particular, the attack on Saint Benno of Saxony. Canonized in 1523, Saint Benno was shortly thereafter denounced by Martin Luther as an example of Catholic superstition and priestly fraud. In the following year, a mob in Saxony paraded horse bones, claiming that they were relics equally valid as those of the deceased Benno.17 In 1539, as the Reformation spread to new areas, Benno’s shrine and the site of his burial in Meissen were desecrated.18 Following Benno’s canonization, no new saints were proclaimed by the papacy for sixty-five years, the longest break since the practice began in the Middle Ages. Peter Burke has seen in this halt a “failure of nerve” on the part of the papacy in the face of Protestant attack.19 Other scholars, among them Miguel Gotor and Ronald Finucane, claim that the pause was characteristic of a papacy that already was slowing canonization frequency as it sought to rearticulate the methods whereby saints were verified.20 Likely both views are correct and the halt is symptomatic both of internal divisions caused by Protestant attack and long-standing papal desire to increase the centralization and rigor of canonization.
This mid-sixteenth century halt in canonization brought in its wake significant changes to both how saints were venerated and how they were made. The foundation of the Roman Inquisition in 1542 was the first innovation that altered local practices of veneration. In addition to extirpating heresy, the tribunal of the Inquisition was also tasked with rooting out forms of worship that could damage the Church. Hence, the Inquisition began in the 1560s to systematically suppress the veneration of holy individuals that had not received papal approval.21 This was despite the fact that the Council of Trent (1545–1563) had decreed that bishops could still approve the veneration of local holy people.22 In using the Inquisition in this way, the papacy exerted control over canonization, overruling the authority of local bishops. That this was a statement of papal power is especially clear since, as several scholars have recently demonstrated, the tribunal itself functioned to a great extent as an instrument of the papacy.23 Thus, despite what the Decrees of Trent stipulated, the Inquisition, and by extension the papacy, began for the first time to regulate local patterns of veneration.
Nevertheless, the Inquisition’s activities might have been more significant for what they symbolized than what was actually achieved. The Inquisition lacked the ability, especially in its early years, to penetrate into many of the communities that it officially oversaw. An example of its lack of authority is the saint cult for Gaetano da Thiene (d. 1547), which sprang up in Naples in the years following his death. This cult continued into the seventeenth century without any official approval until da Thiene’s beatification eighty-two years later, in 1629.24 The files of the Roman Inquisition contain numerous cases that stretch well into the eighteenth century, in which unapproved veneration had proceeded unchecked—sometimes for decades. Each of these cases came to the attention of the Inquisition only when someone denounced the local cult.25
Nevertheless, by the 1560s the papacy had taken a significant and symbolic step in centralizing saint-making through its creation of this permanent congregation—the Inquisition—that was loyal to the pope and that was officially tasked with halting unapproved veneration.
The second part of the rearticulation and centralization of canonization was the foundation of a congregation that oversaw the approval and proclamation of saints. This came in 1588 when Pope Sixtus V (1585–1590) promulgated the Bull, Immensa aeterni Dei, establishing fifteen congregations to oversee the life of the Church and the Papal States, including the new Congregation of Rites. This Congregation was in charge of two central areas of Church life: (1) the rites, liturgy, and ceremonies of the Church, and (2) the canonization of saints. From 1588 onward, the Congregation of Rites was the main body in the Church charged with vetting the applications of saints and presenting results to the pope.26 Five cardinals made up the membership in this Congregation and they reported directly to the supreme pontiff.27 In theory, the founding of the Congregation of Rites should therefore have marked the transition of canonization into an entirely papal prerogative.
Again, however, the situation was in practice more complicated than this ideal. In reality, the Congregation of Rites relied heavily on local enthusiasm and belief for processes of canonization to begin and move forward. Furthermore, especially in the early years after the founding of the Congregation of Rites, its activities were frequently aided if not shared by the Tribunal of the Rota. This Tribunal dated to the fourteenth century and was the highest court of appeal in the Church. Prior to the foundation of the Congregation of Rites, and even for decades later, the Rota judged the quality of the evidence in processes of canonization and ensured that certain standards were met.28 Thus, even as the Congregation of Rites marked an institutional change in how saints were made, in reality the importance of both local veneration and old institutions involved with verifying sanctity persisted.
The institutional changes to the Church in the sixteenth century, then, are only part of the story. In addition to the continuing role of local veneration, strong patronage was important, and the new methods of verification greatly influenced who was chosen to be put forward as a saint and whether or not such promotion was ultimately successful.
HOW TO BECOME A SAINT
The early modern process of canonization involved a series of investigations carried out at a local level, followed by multiple reexaminations of the evidence in Rome. Much of this process had been in place by the late Middle Ages.29 Yet as the papacy worked to centralize canonization procedures, it also enacted a variety of new regulations designed to verify, before the Church canonized an individual, that he or she was indeed a saint. These included new phases in the process of canonization, more careful evaluation of evidence, and greater oversight by officials in Rome.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, canonizations still normally began at a local level with the first—or ordinary—process opened by a bishop. In most cases, the bishop was responding to a swell of popular support. After interviews of an initial set of witnesses had established the prospective saint’s holy life and miracles, the bishop then sent the dossier of testimony and other evidence for canonization to Rome. There, the Tribunal of the Rota and then the Congregation of Rites decided whether there was sufficient evidence to continue with a canonization. If these authorities approved, they sent their recommendation to the pope, who gave the command to issue remissorial letters deputing officials to carry out the second, or apostolic, phase. The Rota Tribunal usually drew up these letters.30
Although frequently