Missionary Saints of the High Middle Ages - Martyrdom, Popular.pdf

Missionary Saints of the High Middle Ages: Martyrdom, PopularVeneration, and Canonization

Ryan, James D.

The Catholic Historical Review, Volume 90, Number 1, January 2004,pp. 1-28 (Article)

Published by The Catholic University of America PressDOI: 10.1353/cat.2004.0041

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The Catholic HistoricalReview

VOL. XC JANUARY, 2004 No. 1

*Dr. Ryan is resident professor of history in the City University of New York (BronxCommunity College). His research in Italy and Portugal was partially supported by grantsfrom The City University of New York PSC-CUNY Research Award Program.

MISSIONARY SAINTS OF THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES:MARTYRDOM, POPULAR VENERATION,

AND CANONIZATION

BY

JAMES D. RYAN*

At the beginning of the thirteenth century,as missionaries were againleaving Europe in the hope of creating a Christian world, the idea ofmartyrdom cast a powerful spell.The church calendar still gave primaryplace to holy martyrs, who had accepted gruesome torture and deathrather than renounce their faith in Christ and His promise of eternalhappiness. Liturgical services commemorated their glorious sacrifices,and their cults made them objects of particular devotion. Many of themendicant missionaries who ventured into pagan and Islamic realms inthe thirteenth and fourteenth centuries also accepted death rather thanrenounce Christianity, and their passiones, accounts written to com-memorate their sufferings, were cast in terms reminiscent of the pas-sions of early Christian martyrs. Nevertheless, the institutional churchwas slow to legitimize their cultus and reluctant to honor them as saints,despite efforts by their confreres in Europe to win recognition and can-onization for these martyrs. Over time, however, often many centurieslater, some of these missionaries were belatedly inscribed among theblessed by the Roman Church. Addressing both the circumstances ofearly Franciscan missionary martyrdoms and Rome’s indifference to re-quests for canonization of the martyrs, this paper elaborates cases ofthe few mission martyrs who did eventually win recognition as saints ofthe Roman Church.

Derek Day

Muse

2 MISSIONARY SAINTS OF THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES

1“It is the constant teaching of the Church that [in martyrdom] is such an intensity oflove expressed as to justify the sinner, baptized or unbaptized, and to bring him the for-giveness of all his sins, removing all guilt with stain, pardoning all debt of temporal pun-ishment, and adorning him with a special crown, or aureole. He who prays for a martyrdoes him an injury, said Innocent III.” Thomas Gilby and Lawrence S. Cunningham,“Mar-tyrdom,Theology of,”New Catholic Encyclopedia,2nd ed. (New York,2003), IX,230–231,at p. 231.

2André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (originally published 1981), trans.Jean Birrell (Cambridge,1997),pp.25–26,surveying relevant literature,concludes that thepapal assertion of an exclusive right to canonize dates to the letter of Alexander III(1159–1181) to King Kol of Sweden (Aeterna et incommutabilis) written about 1171.Aparagraph of this epistle (commencing with the word Audivimus) was so identified bycommentators on canon law when it was inserted in the Decretals in 1234.Vauchez be-lieves that the papcy presumed this right even before 1170, and notes that Innocent III(1198–1216) exercised it confidently (pp. 27–28). Concerning papal resistance to thecanonization of mission martyrs, see below.

Papal indifference toward canonization of mendicant friars killed forprofessing their faith in the mission field is problematic. Church doc-trine maintained that the sins of any who laid down their lives for thefaith were deemed to be washed away in their blood, and their entryinto Paradise guaranteed.1 Only a cursory inquiry into the facts of suchcases ought to have been necessary to establish sainthood. This factnotwithstanding, the canonization process, newly created at the dawnof the thirteenth century,was used to keep martyrs killed in the missionfields from being acknowledged as saints.2 The Roman Church not onlyinsisted on close scrutiny before endorsing the cults of those killedwhile trying to convert infidels; it also refused to open proceedings thatmight lead to canonization. Only in the closing years of the fifteenthcentury did the Church accept thirteenth-century mission martyrs ascandidates for sainthood, and the few fourteenth-century martyrs whohave been beatified won this recognition centuries later.

Although the facts in each case are unique, it will be seen that mar-tyrs who did become beati or sancti seem to have enjoyed both thesupport of their Orders and an active cult within Europe. Such populardevotion did not guarantee official church sanction, however. Indeed,popular cults seem often to have been stumbling blocks in the path tobeatification of martyrs because the Roman Church, in the face ofschism and heresy within the western church, became wary of lay en-thusiasm for new martyrs’ cults. As André Vauchez has demonstrated,there was a popular predisposition to venerate martyrs, and many cler-ics and laymen who suffered an undeserved death were acclaimed assuch. His Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages cites some twenty-sixmen, women, and children for whom cults arose in the high Middle

BY JAMES D. RYAN 3

3Ibid., pp. 147–151.Vauchez assures us that this is not an exhaustive list.4Arnold of Brescia,for example,was censured as early as 1139 for his views on absolute

clerical poverty and the abandonment of temporal power by the Church. After he wasburned by the Prefect of Rome in 1155 (for his role in a short-lived Roman Republic),hisashes were scattered in the Tiber, lest the populace venerate them as relics. George W.Greenaway, Arnold of Brescia (Cambridge,1931).Similar, if less dramatic,examples couldeasily be multiplied.

5This event, which helped foment the Albigensian Crusade, occurred in mid-January,but Peter’s feast was fixed as March 5. Acta sanctorum [hereafter, Acta SS], March 5.

6Augustin Villemagne,Bullaire du Bienheureux Pierre de Castelnau, Martyr de la Foi(16 Février 1208) (Montpellier, 1917), published Innocent III’s bulls of March 10, 1208,announcing the martyrdom of Peter of Castelnau (Ne nos ejus tangeret, to the archbish-ops of Arles,Narbonne,Embrun,Aix,and Vienne,and to their suffragans,pp.292–301;andRem crudelem audivimus, to counts, barons, and knights of Narbonne, Arles, Embrun,Aix, and Vienne, pp. 306–315). Noting that these were included in the Codex canoniza-tionum (Rome, 1729), pp. 41–48,Villemagne observed (p. 348),“Castelnau seems not tohave been the object of an express beatification, but, nevertheless, had the equivalent byreason of the two bulls.”Hoffman Nickerson asserts (The Inquisition: A Political and Mil-itary Study of its Establishment [London, 1923], p. 95) “that, unlike Becket, the martyredde Castelnau was not canonized nor did his tomb at St.Giles [St.Aegidius] become a cen-ter of pilgrimage and of miracles.” There was, however, enough of a cult to induce theHuguenots to burn Castelnau’s remains in 1562. In the mid-nineteenth century,Pius IX of-

Ages. The sole trait they had in common was an unmerited, violentend.3 Vauchez sees this phenomenon not only as reflecting popular fearof violent death and thirst for justice,but also as attesting to the survivalof a basic ideal of primitive Christianity: that the only true saints weremartyrs.Whether or not Vauchez’s interpretation of motive is accepted,the fact is that cults venerating perceived victims did arise sponta-neously within European society. These new cults, local manifestationsof heightened religious ardor, fed ecclesiastical fear of heretical sects, aconcern intensified because condemned heretics and schismatics hadsometimes received popular acclaim as martyrs.4 It was partly to con-trol popular enthusiasm and to regulate new cults that the papacy tookthe making of saints into its own hands by establishing rules for canon-ization. Thereafter the Roman Church closely examined the lives anddeeds of men and women, perceived to be holy and popularly vener-ated as saints, before sanctioning their cults.

Such thorough investigations, which seem to have little relevance inthe case of orthodox martyrs, were still in the process of developmentwhen Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) hailed as a saint his legate toLanguedoc, Peter of Castelnau, only one year after his 1208 murder bydeputies of the count of Toulouse.5 Castelnau appears to have been de-clared a saint by papal order, without having been the object of a can-onization, and despite the lack of a popular cult.6 The papal bull that


ficially confirmed his cult ab immemorabili, declaring him Blessed. Bibliotheca Sancto-rum, eds. Filippo Caraffa et al. (13 vols.; Rome, 1961–1970), III, 931–932.

7“Deus tibi dimittat, quia ego dimitto.” Acta SS, March 5, and Villemagne, op. cit.,p. 308.

8Acta SS, March 5.9Vauchez,op.cit.,presents a list (Table 9,pp.252–255) of all processes for canonization

(seventy-two such were opened) and canonizations proclaimed (thirty-seven) between1198 and 1431.

10It should be noted that Castelnau, proclaimed a saint without a formal inquiry, is notincluded in Vauchez’s Table 9.

11Acta SS, May 7, gives Innocent IV’s bull Olim a gentilium, along with vitae of St.Stanislaus and testimony concerning his cult. See also W. Urusczak,“Les répercussions dela mort de S. Thomas Becket en Pologne,” in Thomas Becket, Actes de colloque interna-tional de Sédières (19–24 aout 1973) (Paris, 1975), pp. 115–125, cited by Vauchez, op.cit., p. 168, n. 36. Stanislaus’s cause was opened in 1250.

12Acta SS,April 29.13Ibid., Innocent IV’s bull Magnis et crebris, March 24, 1253. Process for his canoniza-

tion was opened shortly after his death,and the inquiry into his cause held the same year.The papacy subsequently fostered and promoted the cult of Peter Martyr; although hehad been killed on April 5, in 1586, Sixtus V fixed his feast on April 29, so that it wouldnever be overshadowed by the Easter Cycle.

announced his death, addressed to the counts, barons, and knights ofsouthern France, termed Castelnau a true martyr, who, like the pro-tomartyr Stephen, forgave his attackers:he had told them,“May God for-give you,because I forgive.”7 Although Innocent cited unspecified “clearmiracles” as attesting to Castelanu’s holiness, it was his martyrdom,“toadvance the faith and in the cause of peace,” which provided groundsfor recognizing him as a saint.8

As the process of canonization was articulated, however, the RomanChurch endorsed few new saints, and very few new martyrs.9 SaintsStanislaus and Peter of Verona, canonized in 1253, were the only mar-tyrs (other than Castelnau) recognized as beati during the thirteenthcentury.10 The former,an Archbishop of Krakow,had been killed in 1079by agents of King Boleslaus II. Stanislaus had become the object of asubstantial cult in Poland that Pope Innocent IV (1243–1254) ratified.11

The latter, also known as Peter Martyr, was a Dominican inquisitor as-sassinated in 1252.12 Perhaps because so many inquisitors were threat-ened with a similar fate, Innocent IV made Peter’s canonization a papalcause and proclaimed him a saint the next year.13 The 1253 canoniza-tions were unique events,however,despite papal willingness to acknowl-edge that those who shed their blood for the faith, whether inquisitorsor missionaries, were martyrs. Innocent IV, for example, addressed sev-

BY JAMES D. RYAN 5

14Among those acknowledged as martyrs in papal letters, but not canonized, are theDominican Conrad of Germany, murdered in 1230 (Galvano Fiamma’s Chronica ordinisfratrum in Annales Fratrum Praedicatorum, 10 [1940], pp. 352–353); the inquisitorsand notaries killed in 1243 at Avignonnet (Bull. Franciscana, 1, 305–306); and the Fran-ciscan inquisitor Peter of Arcagnano, assassinated in 1248 (Bull. Franciscana, 1, 720).Cited by Vauchez, op. cit., p. 415, n. 9.

15For a good overview of medieval mission activity, see Kenneth S. Latourette, A His-tory of the Expansion of Christianity (7 vols.; New York, 1937–1945), Volume 2: TheThousand Years of Uncertainty (New York, 1938). Richard Fletcher’s The BarbarianConversion: From Paganism to Christianity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1997) providesinteresting insights into the development of the missionary tradition, but does not ad-dress the creation of a foreign mission in the later Middle Ages.

16For Franciscan mission efforts, see Noe Simonut, Il Metodo d’Evangelizzazione deiFrancescani tra Musulmani e Mongoli nei Secoli XIII–XIV (Milan, 1947); E. RandolphDaniel, The Franciscan Concept of Mission in the High Middle Ages (Lexington, 1975);and (for their mission activity in Asia Minor and Greece) Lydia von Auw, Anglo Clarenoet les Spirituels Italiens (Rome, 1979). For the Dominicans, see Berthold Altaner, Die Do-

eral bulls to mendicant orders, recognizing brothers who had beenkilled in the name of Christ, and proclaiming his certitude that theywere associated to the college of martyrs.14 These sentiments not with-standing, Rome resisted attempts to have them canonized.

Medieval missionary martyrs and their sacrifices were not forgotten,even if the institutional church turned a blind eye toward them.The re-ligious orders, primarily the Franciscans and Dominicans, which hadsent them to convert the infidel, preserved their vitae and legendae,keeping their memory alive in chronicles and prayers, and providingthem with cultus to the present day.The overwhelming majority of mis-sion martyrs from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries still lack offi-cial recognition, however. Before turning to a representative sample ofthe few Franciscan mission martyrs who were eventually declared beatior sancti,an overview of the mission effort of the High Middle Ages andthe martyrdoms it engendered will provide background information es-sential for understanding the contrast between the many unrecognizedmartyrs and the canonized few.

Background on the Medieval Mission

The renewal of mission efforts outside Europe in the High MiddleAges produced scores of martyrs.15 Most of these were from the Francis-cans and Dominicans, new religious orders that assumed a prominentrole as foreign mission work revived and intensified in the thirteenthcentury.16 They supplied the cadre of dedicated preachers who again


minikanermissionen des 13.Jahrhunderts (Habelschwerdt,1924);and Raymond-JosephLoenertz,La Société des frères pérégrinants, étude sur l’orient dominicain (Rome,1937).

17Several passages from scripture reinforced medieval missionaries’ belief in the Chris-tian mandate to proselytize,e.g.:“This Gospel of the kingdom must be preached through-out the whole world, so all nations will have valid evidence. Then will the end come”(Matthew 24:14); and “Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to all creation”(Mark 16:15).

18This complex story is ably told in Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant(1204–1571),Vol. 1: The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Philadelphia, 1976).

19For the Baltic mission see Eric Christiansen,The Northern Crusades,2nd ed.(London,1997). Most areas on the Baltic littoral were officially converted by the mid-thirteenthcentury, but Dominican missionaries struggled to combat vestigial pagan practices wellinto the next century, and Lithuania did not accept even superficial conversion until1386.

20David Morgan,The Mongols (London,1986),with its bibliography,provides a good in-troduction to the Mongols. For the Mongols’ initial impact on Europe see James Cham-bers, The Devil’s Horsemen:The Mongol Invasion of Europe (London, 1979).

21For Western missionary and diplomatic contact with the Mongols and their accom-modation of the missionaries, see James D. Ryan,“Conversion vs. Baptism? European Mis-sionaries in Asia in the 13th and 14th Centuries,” in Varities of Religious Conversion in

took up the gospel challenge,“Go, therefore, and make all nations yourdisciples: baptize them . . . and teach them to observe all the com-mandments I have given you” (Matthew 28:19–20).17 The mission fieldthey entered had been opened,in the first instance,because of crusadersuccesses. Before the crusades proselytizing had virtually stopped onthe southern and eastern flanks of Europe because Islam tolerated nochallenge to its faith or the prophet, Muhammad. The re-establishmentof Christian rule in the Levant, Mediterranean islands, and Iberiaopened those lands to Christian preachers. After the fall of Constan-tinople in 1204 in the Fourth Crusade,an unparalleled success in termsof territory conquered, the Balkan peninsula was also opened up toWestern missionaries.18 In addition, lands surrounding Byzantium, tradi-tionally tied to the Orthodox Church, increasingly looked toward Romefor leadership and protection.At the same time missionaries were busyalong the Baltic, working to bring the last of Europe’s pagan peoplesinto the Christian fold.19 Even the Mongols,who had posed such a threatin the first half of the thirteenth century, sought friendly relations withthe West and encouraged mission expansion after 1260,following Kublia’sconquest of China,and his brother Hülegü’s destruction of both the As-sassins (1257) and the Caliphate of Baghdad (1258).20 The khans notonly allowed Christian missionaries to travel into Asia; they gave thempermission to preach throughout Mongol territory, and by the four-teenth century there were Latin mission outposts in Mongol Persia, theQipchaq Khanate (the Golden Horde), and Cathay (China).21 In addi-

BY JAMES D. RYAN 7

the Middle Ages, ed. James Muldoon (Gainsville, Florida, 1997), pp. 146–167; FelicitasSchmieder, Europa und die Fremden:die Mongolen im Urteil des Abendlandes vom 13.bis in das 15.Jahrhundert (Sigmaringen,1994); Jean Richard,La Papauté et les missionsd’Orient au moyen age (XIIIe–XVe siècles) (Rome, 1977); Igor de Rachewiltz, Papal En-voys to the Great Khans (Stanford, 1971); and Giovanni Soranzo, Il Papato, l’EuropaChristiana e i Tartari (Milan, 1930).

22These include the Maronite rite, which established union with Rome shortly after1215; the Cilician Armenians, whose Catholicus Constantine I (1221–1267) adopted theRoman creed [see Aziz S. Atiya, History of Eastern Christianity (Notre Dame, Indiana,1968),pp.333 and 398–399];and the northern Syrian Jacobite church,which entered for-mal union in 1245 [Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades (New York, 1976), III,232–233]. Even the Orthodox Church bowed to Rome, at the Council of Lyons, in 1274;see the relevant essays in 1274: Année Charnière, Mutations et Continuités,Proceedingsof the 1974 International Colloquium in Lyons and Paris (Paris, 1977).

23James Muldoon,Popes, Lawyers and Infidels (Philadelphia,1979),pp.39–41 and 52–56. See also Karl-Ernst Lupprian, Die Beziehungen der Päpste zu islamischen undmongolischen Herrschern im 13. Jahrhundert anhand ihres Briefwechsels (VaticanCity, 1981).

24According to Robert I. Burns,“Christian-Islamic Confrontation in the West: The Thir-teenth Century Dream of Conversion,” American Historical Review, 76 (1971), 1386–1434,at p.1395,the OFM missionary method was confrontation,“outrageous,consciouslyineffective, . . . designed to engage the forces of heaven at some mystical level.” For theidentification of Muhammad as Antichrist, see, inter alia, Norman Daniel, Islam and theWest: The Making of an Image (Edinburgh, 1960); and Richard W. Southern, WesternViews of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1962).

tion, the appearance of restored Christian unity helped stimulate zealfor mission activity. Several Eastern churches had recognized papal pri-macy, while others were in negotiation over union with Rome.22 Lastly,diplomatic contact with Tunis and Morocco had been established byseveral European courts, including the papal curia, and missionariesventured to North Africa, both to bring spiritual comfort to Christiancaptives and mercenaries, and in hope of winning Muslim converts.23

Mission ventures were launched throughout the Eurasian continentand into North Africa,but in this era most martyrs suffered at the handsof Muslims. Islam, like Christianity in its monotheism and dogmatism,stressed the importance of bringing non-believers into the fellowshipof faith,and dealt harshly with heretics and blasphemers. It was Muslimabhorrence of blasphemy that brought wrath upon the friars and occa-sioned martyrdom, because missionary preachers, especially the Fran-ciscans, thought it their task to indict Muhammad as false prophet,heretic,and Antichrist.24 Franciscans delighted in preaching to Muslims,courting confrontation and knowing full well that they offended Is-lamic sensibilities, and they were free to do this in Tartar territory be-cause they generally received a khan’s yarligh, a grant of privilege,


25One yarligh from Qipchaq, for example, issued between 1267 and 1280, and period-ically renewed, gave protection “to Latin priests which according to custom are calledbrothers,” and to their churches and bell towers. Michael Bihl and Arthur C. Moule, Trianova documenta de missionibus F M Tartariae Aquilonaris, in Archivum francis-canum historicum, XVII (1924), 55–71, at pp. 56–58 and 65.

26See Anastasius Van den Wyngaert (ed.),Sinica Franciscana,Vol.I:Itinera et relationesfratrum Minorum saeculi XIII et XIV (Quaracchi,1929) [hereafter,Sinica Fran],pp.501–506; and Analecta Franciscana [hereafter, Anal Fran], III, Chronica XXIV GeneraliumOrdinis Minorum (Quaracchi, 1897), pp. 535–555. Henry Yule translates Pascal’s letter, asprinted in Luke Wadding, Annales Minorum, 2nd ed. (16 vols.; Rome, 1731–1736) [here-after, Ann Min],VII, 256–257, in Cathay and the Way Thither, edd. Henry Yule and HenriCordier, 2nd ed. (4 vols.; London, 1913–1916) [hereafter, Yule,Cathay], III, 81–88.

27Yule, Cathay, III, 86.28Berard (also known as Otto Berard and Baraldus) was accompanied by Peter,Odo,Ac-

cursio, and Adjutus. See Anal Fran, III, 15–19 and pp. 579–596; Acta SS, January 16; AnnMin at 1220; Bibliotheca Sanctorum, II, 1271–1272; and Butler’s Lives of the Saints,edited, revised and supplemented by Herbert Thurston and Donald Atwater (4 vols.;NewYork, 1956), I, 103.

29Francis had placed the group under the leadership of Brother Vitale,but,when he be-came ill in Aragon,leadership devolved on Berard,who spoke some Arabic. Anal Fran, III,16, and Jules Baudot and P. Caussin, Vies des Saints et des Bienheureux (13 vols.; Paris,1935–1959), I, 332–333.

allowing them to preach.25 Pascal of Victoria provides a good illustrationof confrontational preaching. His exploits in Central Asia are known insome detail because he wrote a lengthy letter home about 1338,shortlybefore his martyrdom at Almalyq.26 In 1335 he preached outside amosque in Urgench, in Qipchaq Khanate, haranguing Muslims aboutthe “cheats, falsehoods, and blunders of their false prophet.”27 Becauseof the khan’s yarligh, this was tolerated for twenty-five days before lo-cal authorities moved against Pascal, and even then he was merelybeaten and allowed to travel on. If missionaries preached in this fashionwithout official protection,however,the full weight of outraged Muslimauthority fell upon them. The passiones depict missionary martyrs, inthese circumstances, as welcoming that consequence.

Mission Martyrs from the Thirteenth Century

Saint Berard of Carbio and his four companions provided an early ex-ample of aggressive proselytizing.They are doubly interesting;their deathsin 1220 made them the earliest of the Franciscan martyrs, and their can-onization in 1481 made them the first missionary martyrs to be officiallyproclaimed saints since the thirteenth century.28 Sent to Iberia by St.Fran-cis himself in 1219, Berard’s party, with help from the court of Portugal,made their way to Seville.29 There they attempted to preach in the main

BY JAMES D. RYAN 9

30Acta SS, January 16.31E. Randolph Daniel, op. cit., pp. 37–54, discusses the early rule and the importance of

missionary work and martyrdom.Francis’ regula prima enjoined brothers to preach sim-ply, and made example the primary means of conversion, but “the sources describe theearly Franciscan missionaries as moved by zeal for souls and the desire for martyrdom, . . .[which compelled] them to go to Spain,North Africa and the Middle East to convert Mus-lims” (p. 41).

32Anal Fran, III, 593.33This was recorded by Giordano of Giano, Chronica, sections 7–8, see Anal Fran, I,

3-4, cited by E. Randolph Daniel op. cit., p. 42, n. 26.34For a critical edition,edited by the fathers of the College of St.Bonaventure,Ad Claras

Aquas (Quaracchi),see Anal Fran, III.An English translation is forthcoming from the Fran-ciscan Institute, St.Bonaventure University, St.Bonaventure,New York,but a date for pub-lication has not yet been set.

35Anal Fran, III, 15–22. Appendix I, pp. 579–596, is their passio. Other notices of themartyrdoms, beginning with Vincent of Beauvais, who mentions them in Speculum his-toriale, Book 30, Chap. 13, are summarized in Acta SS, January 16, §III (Vitae scriptores).

mosque, but were prevented by Muslim worshipers, physically abused,and arrested. Even from their cell, however, they railed against “Muham-mad and his damnable law.”30 Sent to Morocco for judgment, they contin-ued to preach Christianity openly, and refused either to return to Europeor to keep quiet.Their persistence was at last rewarded;the sultan himselfsplit their heads with his scimitar on January 16,1220.These five earliestFranciscan martyrs had a profound effect because they gave substance toideals St. Francis had incorporated in his rule.31 Francis expressed delighton learning of their heroic endurance:“Now I can truly say I have fivebrothers.”32 Nevertheless,he forbade the reading of their legenda and vitabecause “each friar should glory in his own and not in another’s passion.”33

Francis’s wishes notwithstanding,his Order of Friars Minor gloried inthe suffering of their fellows abroad and carefully recorded the legendsof the missionary martyrs in Franciscan chronicles.The most importantof these, the Chronicle of the Twenty-four Generals, is a compilation ofannals, archived about 1375.34 It recorded notable events at and be-tween each Chapter General, and inserted a great deal of hagiography,including much of what we know about missionary martyrs.This workis a major source for information about Berard and his associates, re-counting their mission and martyrdom and wonders attending theirdeaths.35 In addition to keeping a record of their sufferings, the Francis-cans also showed their protomartyrs,and others of their brethren killedin the fields of the Lord, due reverence, and celebrated their feast days.

Berard and his companions are unusual, however, because, unlikeother missionary martyrs of this era, they were also the subjects of a


36Anal Fran, III, 11. Orraca, daughter of Alphonso IX of Castile, became a major pa-troness of the Franciscans. In 1218,when the friars first reached Portugal, they received afrosty reception.Through her intercession,however,Afonso II allowed them to constructtwo houses in Portugal that year.

37The Infante, Peter-Ferdinand, was estranged from his brother Afonso and in exile. Hewas accompanying a Castilian nobleman, apparently on a diplomatic mission to the Al-mohad sultan, then resident in “Morocco” (the site of modern Marrakech), an administra-tive center that later gave its name to the surrounding territory. As they traveled themissionaries preached whenever they could and the Infante provided them with food.Anal Fran, III, 16–17.

38Their relics had,according to their vita,been miraculously preserved from an attemptto cremate them.One chest held the “heads with desiccated flesh,” the other the martyrs’bones. Anal Fran, III, 20 and 592.

39Anal Fran, III,592.This passio was reworked and abbreviated into seven readings byJohn Tisserand, after their canonization, for the Franciscan Breviary.That version is repro-duced in Acta SS, January 16.

40There were some other early Franciscan martyrs whose bones were returned to Eu-rope and venerated.These include Daniel and his six companions,who were martyred atCeuta in 1227, and John of Perugia and Peter of Sassoferrato, martyred by Abu Zayd, theAlmohad ruler at Valencia, in 1231. These cases did not generate such elaborate cults asthat which developed for the martyrs of Morocco. For the former see Anal Fran, III, 32–33 and 613–616; Bibliotheca Sanctorum, IV, 469–470; and Domenico Zangari, I setti SS.Frati francescani martirizzati a Ceuta (Naples, 1926). For the latter see Anal Fran, III,

popular cult in Portugal,where they became known as the Santos már-tires de Marrocos. The Franciscan protomartyrs won a special place inthe Portuguese pantheon of saints because, immediately after theirdeath,their bones were carried to Coimbra,then the capital of Portugal,where royal patronage encouraged their veneration. Royal interest inthese friars had begun with their arrival in Portugal, when they had re-ceived an audience with Orraca, wife of King Afonso II (1211–1223).36

Berard had so impressed the queen that she secured the king’s supportfor their mission to Seville.As it happened, another member of the Por-tuguese royal family,Peter-Ferdinand,a younger brother of Afonso II, ac-companied the martyrs to Africa and supported them during their briefmission there.37 After their demise he secured permission from the sul-tan to collect their relics,which he transported back to Coimbra in twosilver chests.38 According to the Franciscan chronicle, which reportsnumerous signs and wonders following the martyr’s deaths in Mo-rocco, and during their relics’ journey to Portugal, their fame had al-ready spread before they arrived in Coimbra.“The queen . . . with thewhole people ran to the sacred relics, and with great devotion andsolemnity led them to the [Augustinian] monastery of the Holy Crossand placed them there with honor.”39 The return of relics of Berard andhis companions to Europe,and the extensive cult that sprang up aroundtheir bones, make them almost unique among mission martyrs.40

BY JAMES D. RYAN 11

186–188; Burns, op. cit., pp. 1396–1397; and León Amorós Payá,“Los santos mártires fran-ciscanos B. Juan de Perusa y B. Pedro de Saxoferrato en la historia de Teruel,” Teruel, 15(1956),5–142.Leo X endorsed the cult of Daniel and his companions (feast day October 13)in 1516. Their relics were venerated for a time in several cities in Spain, Portugal, south-ern France, and Italy. John and Peter had a more lasting cult.The place of their executionwas considered holy ground,and they were credited with bringing about the subsequentconversion of Abu Zayd,who became a vassal of James I of Aragon after 1233.Their boneswere ransomed and carried to Teruel,Aragon,where they became the center of a cult thatcontinues to the present day.For the chronology of James’s conquest see Robert I.Burns,The Crusader Kingdom of Valencia: Reconstruction on a Thirteenth-Century Frontier(Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967), II, 307.

41Redemptus Menth,“Zur Verehrung der Protomartyrer des Franziskannerordens, St.Berard und Genossen,” Franziskanische Studien, 26 (1939), 101–120, makes an exhaus-tive survey of testimony concerning the cult of the martyrs in Portugal, tracing its devel-opment down to the twentieth century.

42Ibid., p. 103. Subsequently a beautiful stone casket was made to house the holybones.The convent of Lorvão was secularized in the nineteenth century,but the conventchurch still serves as parish church for the local area. When the author visited there in1999 the sacristan showed him the small, unadorned box that preserves the few remain-ing fragments of the martyrs’bones.It is kept,along with other church treasures, in a glasscase in the sacristy. The reliquary sarcophagus, some 105x45x37 cm., with richly carvedreliefs on one side depicting the five martyrs being greeted by a seated female figure(probably Queen Orraca), is now in the collection of the Museu Nacional de Machado deCastro, in Coimbra, where it was cleaned and beautifully restored in 1999.

43Ibid., p. 104.44Flávio Gonçalves,“A representação artística dos ‘mártires de Marrocos,’” Museu, ed.

Carlos da Silva Lopes, 2nd ed., VI (December, 1963), 20–50, identifies many examples ofartistically decorated reliquaries fabricated prior to 1481 (pp.20–28),but most of the pre-cious reliquaries that survived were created in the late 1400’s and after, when treasurefrom Africa, Asia, and the New World supported artists who gave expression to the en-thusiasm for the missionary work that swept Portugal in that era.

A popular cult for the five martyrs developed and spread throughoutPortugal immediately after the arrival of their remains, and, as it ex-panded, the relics were shared with other areas of that kingdom.41 Thisprocess began when Sancha, sister of King Afonso and abbess of thecloistered Cistercian convent of Lorvão, near Coimbra, acquired theheads and bones of two martyrs through negotiations with the Augus-tinian Canons of St.Cruz.42 The Lorvão convent and the monastery of St.Cruz received requests from all over the kingdom for remains of theholy men, and became twin fonts from which relics were disseminatedto other centers in Portugal.43 Records concerning the fabrication ofelaborate reliquaries show that costly shrines to the martyrs were lo-cated in Porto, Lisbon, and other centers well in advance of the pro-tomartyrs’canonization in 1481.44 Their cult was strongest in the area ofCoimbra, however, where complex rituals developed in connectionwith the celebration of the martyrs’ January 16 feast. One of the more


45For the history of the “processio nudorum” and attendant rituals, see Menth, op. cit.,pp. 106–109. Luke Wadding (Acta SS, January 16, Miracula) reports witnessing a proces-sion of some 300 nudi when he was a student in Coimbra in 1610.

46Menth notes (op. cit.,p.105) the Augustinian Canons’ important role in spreading de-votion to the martyrs, and (p. 103) that the relics were shared with other congregationsof Canons Regular (St. Salvardo in Porto and St.Vincent in Lisbon, for example) even be-fore they were granted to Franciscan convents.

47There are exceptions to this rule, such as the gilded silver reliquary from 1515 in theMuseu Nacional de Machado de Castro (Inventario da colecção Museu Nacional deMachado de Castro, ourivesaria sécs.XVI e XVII [Lisbon,1992],pp.116–117),describedin detail by António Noguiera Gonçalves, Estudos de ourivesaria (Porto, 1989), pp. 124–126.

48see Menth, op. cit., pp. 104.

bizarre rites was the “procissão dos nús,” in which hundreds of semi-clad men and boys paraded through the streets of Coimbra before en-tering the church of St. Cruz, where they venerated the relics. This hadits origins no later than 1423,a plague year in Portugal,when Vasco Mar-tiz, an obscure devotee, vowed to make an unclad pilgrimage to themartyrs’ relics each year, if his five sons be spared. He and his descen-dants became the nucleus for the naked processions that continued,de-spite ridicule from the university community in Coimbra, until theywere suppressed in 1798.45 The nakedness of the participants had a di-rect, if strange, relationship to the cult of the martyrs; by laying asidetheir clothing, the devotees shared in the humility and degradation thatthe martyrs had experienced before their execution. In other centers(and in Coimbra, after the procissão dos nús were halted) extravagantdisplays of devotion continued into the nineteenth century, featuringboys dressed in Franciscan habits, wearing elaborate headdresses withswords that appeared to be cleaving their heads. It ought to be notedthat, while the martyrs were Franciscan, and the Franciscan Orderclearly encouraged devotion to them, the relics of the martyrs werechiefly housed in monasteries and convents of other religious orders,and the cult which developed was a Portuguese, not a Franciscan, phe-nomenon.46

Although many valuable silver and gilt reliquaries were lost with thesuppression of religious cloisters in Portugal in the nineteenth century,physical evidence of the Portuguese faithful’s devotion to the martyrsof Morocco can still be seen,chiefly in wooden shrines which have sur-vived.47 When, for example, the Augustinian Holy Cross monastery,where their relics originally resided,was suppressed in 1834, the costlysilver shrine on the high altar of the St.Andrew chapel, into which theirbones had been deposited in 1458,disappeared forever.48 The monastery’s

BY JAMES D. RYAN 13

49The relics now reside in two silver and gilt reliquary busts, prominently displayed inthe church’s treasury. They are considered second in importance only to the relics of St.Teofilio, who founded Holy Cross Monastery in the late twelfth century. His more elabo-rate reliquary bust displays his cranium through a crystal window.

50This shrine is a shelf at eye-level in the right aisle of the church, near the entrance tothe sacristy and the treasury. The five figures are polychromed wood statues approxi-mately fifty cm. in height. When the author photographed the shrine in 1997, it wasgraced by a small pot of live flowers.

51In the Church of St. Francis thirteenth-century Gothic architecture is overwhelmedby glitter.The elaborate foliated carvings that surround its numerous altars, extend up itspillars, and overspread the ceiling, are still coated with some 100 kg. of gold leaf.

52The painted statues of the friars are dressed in cloth habits. One Moor holds a headhe has taken from a corpse supine at his feet, the other is in the act of decapitating akneeling friar, whose head has just begun to fall. The remaining three friars prayerfullyand patiently await their deaths.

53Not all shrines are as well preserved as that in Porto. In the Franciscan Church atEvora, for example, the altar dedicated to the Moroccan martyrs was later redecorated inBaroque style, and, although the five statues are still present, they reside, with other holyimages, on marble shelves above the altar, their context lost.

54Heinrich Finke, Acta Aragonensia (Berlin, 1908), I, 754, cited in Vauchez, op. cit., pp.416–417, n. 13.Through some error Vauchez gives the date of the Moroccan martyrdomsas 1216.

church was preserved,however, as the Igreja de Santa Cruz, a popularplace of worship in downtown Coimbra. The treasury of that churchstill keeps what is left of the martyrs’ relics in a place of honor.49 Thereis also a shrine to them in the church itself,a tableau depicting five Fran-ciscans in attitudes of prayer despite their chains.50 Another shrine sur-vives in the Igreja de São Francisco, in Porto, a deconsecrated Gothicchurch whose interior, overlaid with gold from Brazilian treasure shipsin the sixteenth century, makes it a tourist attraction.51 Among its trea-sures is a fifteenth-century altar dedicated to the martyrs of Morocco,with seven polychromed, life-sized wooden statues depicting the fivemartyrs in the process of being butchered by two Moroccans wieldingswords.52 Less elaborate shrines located throughout Portugal also showhow deeply the Moroccan martyrs captured the popular imaginationof the Portuguese in the medieval era.53 The Franciscan protomartyrshad no such popular following elsewhere, even within the IberianPeninsula.

Neither the existence of this cult, nor royal support for the cause ofthe martyrs,was enough to move the papacy to canonize Berard and hiscompanions. Royal requests for canonization of the Moroccan martyrs,such as the petition by King James II of Aragon to Pope John XXII(1316–1334) to begin the process of canonization, were of no avail.54

The papacy resisted pressure from both the Franciscan Order and the


55Sixtus IV, born into poverty as Francesco della Rovere, reached high office throughhis talents as a theologian and preacher in the Franciscan Order.He is chiefly rememberedas pope for his nepotism, for efforts to enhance the papacy as an Italian principality, as aRenaissance patron of the arts,and for underwriting lavish construction within Rome (in-cluding the Sistine Chapel). Ludwig von Pastor, A History of the Popes from the Close ofthe Middle Ages,Vol. IV (London, 1894).

56Cum alias animo (Acta SS, January 16) declares the feast a double major to be cele-brated by Franciscans everywhere.

57Glassberger, Chronica, in Anal Fran, II, 474, quoted at length in Menth, op. cit., pp.104 and 108. Menth discusses the possible influence of the Portuguese cult in the papaldecision on pp. 115–117.

58The more limited cults that developed around the remains of the martyrs of Ceutaand of Valencia (see note 40, above) also demonstrate this point.Popular cults developedonly where relics were returned from the killing fields of the missions.

crown of Portugal until the late fifteenth century,and,when the martyrswere canonized, the popular cult in Portugal may not have played a sig-nificant part in the event.The central element in their canonization ap-pears to have been sympathy for their cause by Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1481), himself a Franciscan.55 He decreed the sainthood of his order’sprotomartyrs in the bull Cum alias animo,on August 7,1481,addressedto his “dear sons”within the Order of Friars Minor.56

Nevertheless, the popular cult for the Franciscan protomartyrs inPortugal, where the authorization of their cult was received with re-joicing, may have played a role in their canonization. The Franciscanchronicler, Nicholas Glassberger, reported that Sixtus IV orally autho-rized the celebration of the feast of the protomartyrs on November 18,1480 (almost a year before the issuance of Cum alias animo),“for allpeoples . . . as long before there was a special decree by his predeces-sors”for Coimbra.57 Documentation to demonstrate this is lacking,how-ever. With the suppression of monasteries in Portugal in the nineteenthcentury records concerning the martyrs’ cult, which might have in-cluded correspondence with Rome concerning canonization,were scat-tered and lost at the same time that the precious metal in reliquariesvanished into private treasuries.

Even if the cult for the martyrs of Morocco played no part in theircanonization, it is still instructive.As protomartyrs, they loomed large inthe pantheon of Franciscan heroes, and that alone might have justifiedPope Sixtus’s action on their behalf. Long before that happened, how-ever, they were the objects of devotion in Portugal, where a broad-based cult developed around their mortal remains. This occurred onlybecause their bones were present to be venerated.58 In later decadesthe suffering of other mission martyrs,Franciscans and Dominicans,did

BY JAMES D. RYAN 15

59No full list of these mission martyrs has been compiled.Vauchez,op.cit.,p.416,n.12,mentions some,and Girolamo Golubovich,Biblioteca Bio-Bibliografica della Terra Santae dell’Oriente Francescano,Vols. I–V (Quaracchi, 1906–1929) [hereafter, BTS], I–III, pas-sim, has several partial lists. Most of these martyrs have no cult outside the Franciscanliturgy and office.

not generate similar cults outside the convents of their orders. Berardand his companions achieved martyrdom in Morocco through their fa-natical preaching against Islam, but their recognition as saints by thePortuguese rested on an accident of history: that their relics had beencarried back to Europe after their martyrdom.

Missionary martyrs who perished in Asia in the later thirteenth andthe fourteenth centuries were, for the most part, less fortunate.59 Theirjourneys into lands east of the Black Sea took many months, and thosebound for Chaghatai Khanate (in Central Asia) or Cathay were often onthe road for more than a year.On these travels they passed through hos-tile territory,and even on friendly ground the protection of Mongol lawoccasionally disappeared. Whether accidentally thrown into the handsof the Muslims,or caught in the whirlwind of a political upheaval, therewas little chance, after martyrdom, that their relics would be returnedto Europe. If they had successfully created Roman-rite Christian com-munities in Asia, their remains would doubtless have been carefullypreserved locally, and cults for them fostered there. The mission com-munities they established were only temporary, however. By the end ofthe fourteenth century, after the Mongols were expelled from Chinaand Islam was the triumphant religion in other centers, the medievalAsian mission was effectively over.

Although the Asia mission failed to achieve long-lasting results, someof the mission travelers did achieve popular recognition in ChristianEurope, as the intertwined histories of two contemporary fourteenth-century beati,Odoric of Pordenone and Thomas of Tolentino, illustrate.Both men, on their way to China in the 1320’s, were forced to travel byway of India because the road through central Asia was unsafe.The fol-lowing brief recapitulation of their respective vitae will show howtheir careers were interwoven, and underline the importance of relics,both for the development of popular cults, and in the making of saints.

Fourteenth-Century Examples of Mission Martyrs

When Thomas, born about 1260 in Tolentino, a small city in theMarch of Ancona, became a Franciscan, he took the side of those zeal-


60Golubovich attempts a chronology for Thomas of Tolentino in BTS, III, 219 ff. Thebroad outline of Thomas’ life is clear,but his vita in Acta SS, April 1, is fraught with factualerror, which derivative hagiographic collections (e.g., Butler’s Lives of the Saints, II, 60–61), slavishly repeat.

61The conflict over poverty within the Franciscan Order erupted into an open breachafter rumors circulated in the March of Ancona,where many Franciscan zealots had theirroots, that the Second Council of Lyon had moderated the rigor of the Franciscan rule.Out of this the Spiritual Franciscans emerged, with Clareno as their spokesman.The onlysurviving report of these events is by Angelo Clareno in his Historia septem tribula-tionum (see Golubovich, BTS, II, 466–467). David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: FromProtest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (University Park,Pennsylvania,2001),gives a nuanced interpretation of the evidence (pp.43–46 ff.), terming the Ancon-ian conflict of the 1270’s “an important milestone in the rise of the Spiritual Franciscans”(p. 45). See also Nachman Falbel,Os espirituais franciscanos (Sao Paulo, 1995), pp. 105–112;and Paolo G.Pagnani,“Gli Spirituali delle Marche,”in S.Tommaso da Tolentino,ed.Ed-mondo Casadidio (Tolentino, 1964), pp. 10–11.

62With the collapse of the Asian mission,Montecorvino was virtually forgotten until theseventeenth century, when Luke Wadding uncovered letters from and concerning Johnof Montecorvino (a manuscript now in the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. Latin 5006,of c. 1337, fol. 171r and ff.) and included them in his Ann Min,VI, at 1305, nn. 13–14, andat 1306,n.6.Modern biographers of Montecorvino include:Anastasius Van den Wyngaert,Jean de Mont Corvin, OFM, premier évêque de Kambaliq (Peking), a.1244–1328 (Lille,1924); Arthur C. Moule, Christians in China Before the Year 1500 (New York, 1926),chap.VII; and Christian Troll,“Die Chinamission im Mittelalter,”Franziskanische Studien,48–49 (1966–1967).The texts of relevant documents are printed in Sinica Fran, I,and BTS,I and II.

63The twenty-seven letters Montecorvino carried east (Registres de Nicholas IV, ed.Ernest Langlois [Paris,1905],nos.2218–2244),show he was to follow the Silk Road throughCentral Asia. Forced to tarry in the Near East until 1291, Montecorvino finally left forChina on the more arduous route through India.

ous for apostolic poverty.60 Along with a group that included AngeloClareno,Thomas was condemned to perpetual incarceration about 1278.61

All the members of this group were set at liberty in 1289,and sent east toopen a mission in China. That expedition was led by John of Monte-corvino, a friar with nine years’ experience as missionary in eastern Ana-tolia, whom Pope Nicholas IV (1288–1292) made his envoy to the GreatKhan in Cathay.62 Because of civil war in Mongol Central Asia, the mis-sionaries were detained in Mesopotamia, and, when Montecorvino ulti-mately pressed on to China, the zealots who had been sent out with himremained in the Levant.63 There Thomas of Tolentino acted as ambassadorfor the Armenian court, moving back and forth between Cilicia and Italyseveral times over the next decade.When Montecorvino’s first reports ofgreat success in Cathay reached Persia in 1307, it was Thomas who car-ried the news to the papal court in France.There he “rehearsed in a won-derful speech before [Clement V and the cardinals] these wonderful

BY JAMES D. RYAN 17

64Translated by Moule, op. cit., p. 182.65Moule (op. cit., pp. 182–189) translates the documents that attest to these steps.

Clement V thereby initiated a new mission strategy for Asia, concerning which seeRichard,op.cit.,pp.123–124 and 144 ff.; and Giorgio Fedalto,La chiesa latina in Oriente(Verona, 1973), I, 396 ff.

66With Thomas of Tolentino,“iam sexagenarius,”were James of Padua, like Thomas,anordained priest, and the lay brothers Peter of Siena and Demetrius of “Tafelicium [Tiflis?],a Georgian skilled in languages.”Arthur C. Moule,“Brother Jordan of Sévérac,” Journal ofthe Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1928), pp. 349–376, at 361.

67The original report of the events was made in two letters sent from India by Jordanof Sévérac to friars in Persia, seconded west from those houses. Various manuscripts inwhich they were partially preserved caused modern redactors to speak of them as fourletters. Moule collated the letters, compiled from several sources, into a critical transcrip-tion,with English translation, in “Brother Jordan of Sévérac.”The merchants included twoGenoese, Jacobin and Lafranquinus.

68The catechumens lived in “the city of Parroth (Bharuch),where many were Christianin name but not baptized.”Moule,“Brother Jordan,”p. 362.

69Ibid., p. 365.

works of our God so well begun . . . by Brother John, . . . asking the lordPope . . . to take care that [they] be increased and perfected.”64 In re-sponse, Clement V (1305–1314) instructed the Franciscans to selectseven friars to be consecrated bishop and sent into China,to anoint Mon-tecorvino archbishop of a newly created See of Khan-baliq (modern Bei-jing),with authority to organize a hierarchy for the entire Tartar empire.65

Aside from the fact of Thomas’ return to Persia, little is known of hisactivities until 1320,when,“already sixty years old,”he set out for Chinain the company of three other Franciscans.66 They sailed along the westcoast of India with some Italian merchants and a Dominican, Jordan ofSévérac, whose letters became the martyrs’ passio.67 About the begin-ning of April, 1321, the friars were driven in at Tana (modern Thana), acoastal city near Bombay administered by Muslims. There they foundrefuge with Christians who asked that they visit yet another commu-nity, to administer baptisms. Jordan went,because he “knew the Persiantongue more fully,” leaving the others behind.68 A domestic disturbancein the household in which they were staying brought three of the Fran-ciscans to the attention of local authorities, who pressed them for de-tails both about their beliefs and their views concerning Islam. It wasThomas of Tolentino who spoke up:“As you are determined that I shallsay, I say that Mohomet is the son of perdition and is in hell with thedevil, and all who hold his false and profane law are damned.” Thissealed their fate.“Then all the Saracens together with the Cadi cried,‘Lethim die because he has spoken evil of the Prophet.’”69 Their captorsforthwith attempted to put them to death.


70Ibid., pp. 365–368.71This was Peter of Siena,who was flogged while being urged to utter “God is one,”then

hanged. When he remained unaffected, he was put to death by the sword. Ibid., p. 369.72Ibid., p. 373.73For Odoric’s Relatio, see Sinica Fran, I, 411–495. Yule,Cathay, II, 97–277,has appen-

dices containing both Latin (pp. 278–336) and Old Italian (pp. 337–367) texts of the Re-latio.Henri Cordier (ed.),Les Voyages en Asie au XIV siècle du bienheureux frère Odoricde Pordenone,Vol. X of Recueil de voyages et de documents pour servir à l’histoire dela géographie (Paris, 1891), is an exhaustive study of the Relatio and its author.

74Yule,Cathay, II,183–184.Montecorvino had established a suffragan diocese at Zaitun(near modern Hsiamen in Fukien province, formerly called Amoy Harbor),a major port inthe Yüan era.

75Odoric’s comments on the west coast of India are rather brief in comparison to othersections of his Relatio. In the passages concerning that region (Yule, Cathay, II, 114–145) he does remark on its flora, fauna,peoples and their customs,but his retelling of thestory of the martyrdoms (pp. 117–125) and details concerning the translation of therelics (pp. 126–132) dominate that part of the Relatio.

Jordan of Sévérac’s letters vividly describe these various attempts—they were placed in fire, first clothed, then naked, but nothing injuredthem. Although the “Mellic” at first set them free, evil zealots instigatedthat ruler to send “four satellites of the devil . . . to kill the servants ofGod,”and they were ultimately hacked to death.70 The fourth Franciscanwas also apprehended, tortured, and then killed by being cut in two.71

Jordan returned to find them all dead, and he piously buried their re-mains. His letters list wonders that attended their deaths, and lamentthat he had not shared their fate.“Woe to that most evil hour, the hate-ful hour, in which for the salvation of others I so unhappily separatedmyself from my holy companions, ignorant, alas for me! of their futurecrowns.”72 A lengthy account of the Tana martyrdoms was also includedin the Relatio of Odoric of Pordenone, a narration of his mission jour-neys that was much copied and widely read.73 He had learned of theirfate in Persia, before departing for Cathay, and stopped at Tana about1323 to collect their bones and carry them to the brothers in China.The relics were, in fact, installed in one of the Franciscan churches inZaitun.74 This task, and that of spreading the fame of the heroic martyrsas examples of Christian virtue, seemed so important to Odoric that hisRelatio spends far more time recounting their passio and miracles as-sociated with their relics than providing a description of locales in In-dia through which he passed.75

Even before Odoric composed his narrative in 1330, the Franciscanswere working for the canonization of the Tana martyrs.This cause wasalso supported by Jordan of Sévérac, who had returned to Europe and

BY JAMES D. RYAN 19

76Henri Cordier, Les Merveilles de l’Asie par le Père Jourdain Catalini de Sévérac(Paris,1925),contains a facsimile of the unique manuscript (British Museum,Add.19513)of the Mirabilia of Jordan,accompanied by a flawed French translation;see comments byMoule,“Brother Jordan,”p.349.Henry Yule translated Jordan’s Mirabilia,Hakluyt Society,First Series, #31 (London, 1863). Jordan is generally credited with working for their can-onization during that period.

77For fourteenth-century missionary activity in India see James D.Ryan,“European Trav-elers before Columbus:The Fourteenth Century’s Discovery of India,”Catholic HistoricalReview, LXXIX (October, 1993), 648–670.

78See George H. Edgell,“Le martyre du frère Pierre de Sienne et de ses compagnons àTana, fresques d’Ambrogio Lorenzetti,”Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 71 (1929),307–308,citedin Vauchez, op. cit., p. 417, n. 12. It does not appear that there was a popular cult for thatmartyr in Siena,however.Golubovich summarizes mention made of Peter of Siena in BTS,III, 221–222.

79Acta SS,April 1.80The exact circumstances surrounding the return of the relic by “John, the son of

Hugolino of Pisa,”are unknown,but local legend includes harrowing stories of saving therelic from pirates and other threats.Maritza V.Amurri,“S.Tommaso da Tolentino,”in I santidelle Marche, ed. Edmondo Casadidio (Tolentino, 1967), pp. 123–125. It must have beencarried west before or at the time of the overthrow of Mongol forces in Zaitun (c. 1360)and the expulsion of foreigners, including the Franciscans, whom the Mongols had sup-ported. Tolentana, Confirmationis cultus ab immemorabili tempore praestiti ServoDei Thomae a Tolentino Ordinis Minorum S. Francisci martyri at sancto nuncupato.

was in Avignon by 1329,where he wrote his Mirabilia Descripta,an ac-count of his travels.76 Clearly,Pope John XXII held Jordan in high regard,for he appointed him as first Bishop of Columbum (Quilon, in south-west India) on August 9,1330.77 Odoric’s Relatio,which was widely cir-culated almost immediately,augmented the martyr’s celebrity.It inspired,for example, a painting of the Tana martyrdom, featuring Thomas’ com-panion, Peter of Siena, installed in the Church of St. Francis at Siena be-fore 1348.78 Nevertheless, requests on behalf of these martyrs, made toJohn XXII and subsequent popes, fell on deaf ears.The role of the Fran-ciscans in the schism over poverty no doubt militated against exaltationof the Tana martyrs, and proceedings that might have led to their can-onization were not opened.79

Many centuries were to pass before an official inquiry into the causeof the Tana martyrs was begun, in the city of Tolentino, where a popu-lar cult had developed around a relic of Brother Thomas. Just as theAsian mission was collapsing, about the end of the fourteenth century,Thomas’ skull was carried to Tolentino by a Pisan merchant and in-stalled in the Franciscan Church of St. Francis, adjacent to the principalsquare of the commune.80 Numerous miracles were reported at the shrineestablished around this relic,and Thomas quickly became a major patron


Positio super casu excepto (Sacred Congregation of Rites, Rome, 1894), fol. 10v, dates thereturn of the relic to the early fifteenth century.

81Edmondo Casadidio, San Catervo (Tolentino, 1967), pp. 7–8.82The process of canonization for Nicholas of Tolentino (†1305) was opened in 1325,

and he was declared a saint in 1446. Il processo per la canonizzazione di S.Nicola da To-lentino, Critical edition by Nicola Occhione (Rome, 1984).

83Edmondo Casadidio,“Il culto di S. Tommaso martire a Tolentino,” S.Tommaso da To-lentino, pp. 14–17, presents evidence of an active cult in each succeeding century. Hip-polyte Delehaye,“Saints de Tolentino.La Vita S.Catervi,”Analecta Bollandiana,LXI (1943),5–28, cites the ranking of the patron saints of Tolentino given in a 1797 tract publishedthere.

84Tolentana, Confirmationis cultus ab immemorabili tempore, fol. 11v.85This chapel, to the left of the high altar, also features a prominently displayed marble

statue of Thomas.86Tolentana, Confirmationis cultus ab immemorabili tempore.

for his natal city.Tolentino is only a minor city in the March of Ancona,but it is rich in saints. Chief among these is St. Catervo, a baptized Ro-man martyred at Tolentino, around whose sarcophagus a Benedictineabbey was established.81 The city’s second most important saint is theAugustinian Hermit,Nicholas,a contemporary of Thomas,whose home-bound sanctity was rather quickly rewarded with canonization.82 Themartyred Thomas became Tolentino’s third most important patron,and he has been venerated there and honored with a feast, the first Sun-day in June, through the past six centuries.83 Although the Church ofRome declined to declare Thomas a saint, Pope Boniface IX (1389–1404) did grant a plenary indulgence to all who contributed for theconstruction of a special chapel, an addition to the Church of St. Fran-cis where Thomas’ relic was placed.84 Thomas’ association with the reli-gious life of the city was strengthened in the seventeenth century,when the Church of St.Francis became the collegiate church for canonsof the diocese of Tolentino,and when a new cathedral,San Catervo,wasconstructed in 1825, the reliquary bust containing Thomas’ skull wascarried into it in solemn procession. That relic is now on display, to-gether with the head of St. Catervo, in the glass-fronted altar employedfor daily services.85 It was largely because of the persistence of this lo-cal cult that Franciscan efforts to win official recognition for the Tanamartyrs finally achieved success in 1894, when Pope Leo XIII beatifiedThomas of Tolentino and his companions.86

Yet another opportunity to evaluate the advantages that an activecult, anchored on relics, bestowed on medieval missionary candidatesfor sainthood is provided by the beatification of Odoric of Pordenone.Odoric was not martyred in Asia,and later became well known throughhis Relatio, a widely copied travel narrative. He was popularly pro-

BY JAMES D. RYAN 21

87To some modern commentators Odoric seems more a footloose adventurer than amissionary. Yule,Cathay, II, 11, characterized the reports that Odoric was a missionary asresting “on the basis of pure imagination only,”an opinion not contradicted by Cordier,LesVoyages . . . du bienheureux frère Odoric de Pordenone,or by the majority of the twentieth-century editors of the Relatio, some of whom are cited below. In his own time, however,Odoric was revered as a missionary, not an explorer.

88Arthur C.Moule,“A Life of Odoric of Pordenone,”T’oung Pao, XX (1920),275–290, atp.279.Moule translates Odoric’s vita on pp.278–285.See also BTS, II,374–393.This vita,probably written by a contemporary, was surely composed while Odoric’s memory wasstill alive, and Moule (p. 278) argues that it probably dates to within a few decades of hisdeath.

89The first eight of Odoric’s sixteen years abroad were spent in Armenia and Persia,and, after an arduous trek east via India, he remained in China for three years before re-turning to Europe by way of Tibet and Central Asia.

90Acta SS, January 14.The “carus amicus” in Odoric’s vita was Conrad Bernardiggi, theGastald of Udine. Yule, Cathay, II, 13.

claimed a saint,however, immediately after his death,on the basis of theaustere self-sacrifice he manifested as a missionary.87 His hagiographicvita reports that “in the sixteen years he was [across the sea] he bap-tized twenty thousand infidels and subdued them to the Catholic faith.”88

The number of converts is probably a pious exaggeration, but Odoric’stime abroad was spent working in Franciscan convents in the East,where he would have died in obscurity (like so many others) had henot returned to recruit additional friars for work in China.89 After rest-ing a few months in Padua, where he dictated his Relatio in the springof 1330,he set out for Avignon to request papal permission to lead fiftyFranciscans back to Cathay. He never reached Avignon, however; ill, herepaired to Udine, the city where he had first entered the FranciscanOrder, and died there on January 14, 1331.

The circumstances surrounding his death and burial led to the im-mediate formation of a cult for Odoric in Udine. His fellow friars werepreparing to give him a hurried and private burial, but were prohibitedby the local magistrate, a “dear friend” of Odoric’s who demanded asolemn funeral.90 At the rites,which drew a large crowd,a noble woman,the sister of the Patriarch of Aquileia, suffering for seven months frompainful contractions of her arm, exclaimed aloud that she had beencured. What the friars had intended as an interment for a humble fol-lower of il poverello quickly turned into an apotheosis.As the bier wasmobbed by relic-seekers snatching at Odoric’s robe,hair and beard,oneparticularly bold matron (heronia) tried to snip off an ear with her scis-sors,but,miraculously, they would not close. In the midst of this tumult,the funeral was delayed. Fearing some injury might come to Odoric’scorpse, the friars arranged a second, solemn funeral for the third day,


91Acta SS, January 14.92Arrigo Sedran, Il Beato Odorico da Pordenone—la sua figura e il suo paese (Por-

togruaro, 1993), pp. 26–27; Yule, Cathay, II, 14–15.93The patriarch determined that his feast be celebrated on the second Sunday of Janu-

ary.Giuseppe Ellero,Beato Odorico da Pordenone e il libro dei suoi viaggi (Udine,1914),p. 46.

94Udine’s fiscal records show payment, in September, 1331, for an “Archa . . . nobilior”for Brother Odoric, which the town commissioned from the sculptor Filippo De Sanctis(ibid., p. 46, n. 1). One bas-relief panel depicts Gastald Bernardiggi and Patriarch Paganoattending, with angels present, at Odoric’s burial. Celso Costantini, La beatificazione diFra Odorico da Pordenone nel suo secondo centenario (Pordenone, an undated publi-cation by the committee to honor Odoric on the 700th anniversary of his birth, i.e.,1965).The bulk of this pamphlet is an expanded version of the author’s article “La beatificazionedi Fra Odorico da Pordenone,” Il Noncello—Rivista d’arte e di cultura,V[1955]), 12–13.

95The tibia that Pordenone received is still venerated there,but the author could find notrace of the ankle bone that Yule (Cathay, II,19) reported to have been given to Villa Nova.

employing a distinguished professor of theology of the Order of Preach-ers to deliver a suitable oration on Odoric’s life and pious works.91 Boththe Patriarch of Aquileia, Pagano della Torre, and Udine’s civic officialshad become involved, however, and Odoric’s corpse was twice ex-humed in the weeks following his death. When it showed no sign ofcorruption,and as reports of miracles through his intercession increased,the city authorized construction of a shrine at its own expense,and thepatriarch ordered a notary to record miracles worked through Odoric’sintercession.92

Odoric was immediately and enthusiastically recognized a saint by thepopulace of Friuli, the territory governed from Udine,and to the presentday his cult is important there. In May, 1332, the patriarch officiated asOdoric’s holy remains were solemnly reinterred in the Franciscan con-vent church at Udine.93 His shrine was an alabaster sarcophagus, hand-somely decorated with reliefs, and, in token of its occupant’s saintlystatus, standing on pillars.94 Patriarch Pagano also petitioned John XXIIto open canonization proceedings for Odoric that same year, a requestthat was refused. Papal indifference notwithstanding, the patriarch stillenjoyed independent authority, and Odoric was officially venerated inFriuli, at Udine and at other shrines. Two of these, one in his nativetown, Pordenone, another in its suburb, Villa Nova, the actual site ofOdoric’s birth, received relics from Odoric’s bones.95

Because Odoric remained a major saint for Friuli, formal proceedingsthat led to his beatification were opened in the eighteenth century, longafter his death. On March 16, 1750, the last Patriarch of Aquileia, Cardi-nal Daniel Delfino, whose seat was then Udine, petitioned the Sacred

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96Antonio Battistella, VI Centenario del B. Odorico da Pordenone, Anno II (Udine,1934), p. 37, n. 3.

97Costantini, La beatificazione di Fra Odorico, pp. 13–14.98“Cultu ab immemorabili tempore praedicto Beato praestito.” Costantini,La beatifi-

cazione di Fra Odorico, prints the Decretum along with various supporting documents.Yule, Cathay, II, 35–36, also has the Decretum’s text.

99Ellero, op. cit., pp. 7–9.100Yule, Cathay, II, 19, includes a drawing of the shrine as it appeared when he visited

Friuli in the mid-nineteenth century.101In the nineteenth century, as mass-produced holy pictures became popular objects

of devotion in the homes of the humble, prints of blessed Odoric were in brisk demand.Luigi Ciceri, Religiosità popolare in Friuli (Udine, 1980), p. 83.

102Ellero published Beato Odorico to commemorate the January 14, 1914, reconstruc-tion of Odoric’s tomb.

Congregation of Rites to initiate proceedings for Odoric’s canonization.Clearly, this was an important matter; before preparing the petition, Pa-triarch Delfino had written to prelates throughout northern Italy,askingtheir support.96 His campaign for official recognition of Odoric’s cultwas occasioned by the imminent suppression of the Partiarchate ofAquileia, which occurred in 1751, when patriarchal jurisdiction wasvested in the newly created archdiocese of Udine and Gorizia.97 Absentpatriarchal authority, papal endorsement was necessary to ensure thecontinuation of Odoric’s public veneration.Rome was now sympatheticto appeals from Friuli, and the Sacred Congregation of Rites initiated afull inquiry into Odoric’s cause, steps detailed in the July 2, 1755, edictof Pope Benedict XIV (1740–1758) that explicitly approved Odoric’scult,“established from time immemorial.”98

Winds of revolutionary change led to secularization and suppressionof many religious houses in Friuli soon after Odoric’s beatification.When Venetian authorities took the Franciscan church in which he wasoriginally interred for use as a hospital in 1771, the Franciscans andOdoric moved to the Church “del Carmine,” a recently suppressed(1770) Carmelite convent. The Franciscans were forced to leave Udinewhen Napoleonic edicts reduced religious houses in 1806, but Odoricremained, kept briefly in the metropolitan church until his corpse wasreturned, in 1808, to the Chiesa del Carmine, now a diocesan church,where it has resided ever since.99 There sculptural elements of Odoric’soriginal sarcophagus, which had earlier been broken up, were incorpo-rated in the altar shrine in which Odoric’s relics were placed.100 Despiterevolutionary upheavals, his cult continued to draw support from thefaithful of Friuli.101 This popularity facilitated fund raising by public sub-scription, and Odoric’s shrine was rebuilt at the beginning of the twen-tieth century.102 The missionary’s mummified body now rests in a special


103The author was so informed by the sacristan when he visited and photographed theshrine in 1997.

104This relatively new parish was established in 1973, its church dedicated in 1991.Sedran, op. cit., p. 31.

105In addition to the statue on the main altar, there is a painting of Odoric preaching inthe East, and, outside the church, a life-size, modern bronze statue of Odoric.

106Its sacristan, interviewed in 1997,attributes the popularity of the church primarily toits reputation as the birthplace of the Blessed Odoric.

107Eight were martyred at Almalyq because they refused to renounce their faith. Theseinclude six Franciscans (four priests and two lay brothers), an interpreter, and a mer-chant from Genoa. A brief report of their deaths is included in the Chronicle of the 24Generals, Anal Fran, III, 531–532, with a more complete passio, drawn from varioussources, in Yule, Cathay, III, 31–33; and Sinica Fran, I, 510–511. Concerning Pascal, seep. 8, above.

glass coffin within the reconstructed sarcophagus, and, during the oc-tave of his January 14 feast, the glass case with Odoric’s corpse is ex-posed for veneration.Throngs of people from all over Friuli flock to thechurch each year.103 Odoric’s cult is also maintained in Pordenone,where his tibia, kept in the cathedral in a large silver and crystal reli-quary, is displayed for public veneration every January in the parishchurch of the Blessed Odoric.104 Even the small church at Villa Nova,where a statue of Odoric graces the altar, is touched by Odoric’s popu-larity.105 Although that parish is very small and far from wealthy, thechurch’s popularity as a marriage chapel, drawing weddings from allover the district, provides extraordinary funds for its maintenance.106

Conclusions

This essay has concentrated on mission martyrs of the thirteenth andfourteenth centuries who had cults and were beatified or canonized,but it must be remembered that most of their contemporaries, killed inAsia or Africa, have not become objects of popular veneration and stilllack official recognition. Among these, for example, are Richard of Bur-gundy,Bishop of Almalyq,who was martyred in Central Asia with Pascalof Victoria and six others in 1338, and whose legenda is well docu-mented.107 The few whose sanctity and virtue won broader recognitionwere blessed by circumstances;either their bones were returned to Eu-rope,or, like Odoric, they expired in the midst of the Christian commu-nity. It was therefore possible for the tombs of such missionaries tobecome popular shrines where miracles were recorded,and the ground-work was laid for petitions to Rome to endorse their cults.Martyrs with

BY JAMES D. RYAN 25

108Works stressing Odoric’s regional importance, such as Sedran, op. cit., and Ellero, op.cit., pointedly and repeatedly refer to Odoric as “il nostro Beato” and a patron for Friuli.Costantini,La beatificazione di Fra Odorico, referring to Odoric as “a most illustrious cit-izen of Pordenone” (p. 16), notes that his candidacy for sainthood is still active.

109Professor Edmondo Casadidio stressed this element during an interview in March,1997, in Tolentino. See also Pagnani (op. cit.), who makes the same point.

tombs in distant lands, who lacked a popular constituency, were lessfortunate.

It must not be concluded that the mere presence of a martyr’s boneswould occasion the creation of a shrine, however. The stories of themartyrs of Morocco,of Thomas,and of Odoric all suggest that their pop-ular cults, which have persisted in varying degrees to the present day,arose because devotion to these beati resonated within their respectivecommunities of believers. The Franciscan protomartyrs seem to havecomplemented the Portuguese self-image of dedicated warriors forChrist, who had wrested their homeland from the Moors and whocountenanced heroic self-sacrifice to bring all lands under the sway ofChrist’s church. Odoric of Pordenone, on the other hand, filled an im-portant niche in the somewhat limited pantheon of Friuli saints. Hequickly became a special patron for the people of that province, and isstill described in those terms today.108 In the case of Thomas of To-lentino, devotion at his shrine seems to have been encouraged by thepopular mind-set in the March of Ancona.Local biographers stress bothhis association with the Spiritual Franciscans and the fact that this sectdrew much of its strength from Le Marche, where radical poverty res-onated in the populace of its many small and poor communes.109 In ad-dition, local pride in the exploits of a missionary martyr who was also afellow-citizen has played a large part in fostering and sustaining popu-lar devotion to Thomas in Tolentino.Thus, in each case, there were spe-cial circumstances that encouraged the growth and persistence of cultsaround the relics of medieval missionaries.

In the same way that unique, local factors fostered popular devotionto Thomas of Tolentino in the fifteenth century,a new set of conditionshas revitalized his cult in the twentieth century. This martyr has be-come a patron of the Catholic Church in India,and has been adopted asa founding saint by the diocese of Bombay, of which Thana (Tana) isnow an industrial suburb. Since the beatification of the Tana martyrs,the Indian church has achieved greater independence, and Thomas ofTolentino has become very important to the faithful in Bombay. On


110This applied originally to the Archdiocese of Goa and the Diocese of Damaun. TheFour Martyrs of Thana (Bombay, anonymous and undated pamphlet), p. 1.

111S.Tommaso da Tolentino.Martire per la Fede in India onorato nella sua Città na-tale dall’episcopato Indiano nell’anno del Concilio Ecumenico—20–21 Novembre 1965(Tolentino, commemorative program).

112See note 62, above.113Gaspare Han,OFM,Giovanni da Montecorvino:Fondatore della chiesa Cattolica in

Cina, trans. Tobia Lapolla, OFM (Rome, 1996), pp. 113–130. Originally published in Tai-wan in Chinese in 1990, it was translated and reissued to commemorate the “settimo cen-tenario del suo arrivo a Pechino (1294–1994).”

October 24, 1914, the Sacred Congregation of Rites introduced the Of-fice and Mass of Blessed Thomas into the calendars of Indian diocesesfor April 9, the date of his martyrdom.110 In November,1965,Cardinal Va-lerian Gracias, Indian-born Archbishop of Bombay and the first nativeIndian created a cardinal, led a delegation of Indian bishops to To-lentino, where they participated in a conference in memory of BlessedThomas, to honor the martyr whose blood helped pave the way forCatholicism in Bombay.111 As a consequence of that visit a special bondhas been created between Tolentino and Bombay, marked by a regularexchange of correspondence. Copies of letters between priests, nuns,and school children of Bombay and Tolentino are prominently dis-played on a bulletin board in the Cathedral of San Catervo, to the rightof the high altar. This lively correspondence, and the interest it gener-ates in the faithful of Tolentino, is yet another manifestation of the at-traction the martyred Thomas still has in a changing world. Near thebulletin board,there is a framed picture of his martyrdom in Tana,a holyimage painted in India, and parishioners take evident pride in thatland’s devotion to their saint.

Special, local circumstances,which played such a large part in foster-ing devotion to each of the medieval missionary saints discussed above,remain central to the process by which saints are recognized. John ofMontecorvino, missionary to the Mongol court and first Archbishop ofBeijing (then Khan-baliq), was almost completely forgotten in Europeafter the collapse of the mission to Mongol Asia.112 Nevertheless, he iscurrently under scrutiny as a candidate for beatification.Pressure for hiscanonization did not arise in the town of Montecorvino, Italy, but fromthe Roman Catholic community in China,which now traces its roots toJohn of Montecorvino and the fourteenth-century missionaries whotraveled to that land in his wake.113 Franciscan clerics,whose order hasactively supported the China mission over the last 150 years,play a ma-

BY JAMES D. RYAN 27

114An account of the 1924 synod, from the Acta Ordinis Fratrum Minorum (Year 47,July,1928,Fas.VII), is reprinted in Han,op.cit.,pp.194–195.Costantini’s “Supplication . . .to obtain the Beatification of the Servant of God, John of Montecorvino” is found onp.196.Costantini,who later became the secretary of the Propaganda Fide (1935),and wascreated a cardinal in 1953, authored articles on Odoric of Pordenone cited above.

115The Four Martyrs of Thana, p. 4. The relic was sent to Cardinal Archbishop Graciasby the Father General of the Franciscans and is housed in the parish church of St. John theBaptist,Thana.

jor role in this effort. It was initiated,however,at the first plenary synodof the Chinese Church, held at Shanghai in 1924.There some fifty bish-ops and a greater number of theologians, “with a profound sense ofveneration for John of Montecorvino,” petitioned Archbishop CelsoCostantini, the Apostolic Legate in China, to request that canonizationproceedings be initiated.114 Montecorvino’s cause is still alive because ithas been tirelessly pursued by Chinese clerics, such as Father GasparHan, and laymen since that time. If John of Montecorvino is beatified inthe twenty-first century, it will be because of the petitions and devotionof tens of thousands of Chinese Christians.

Similarly, Blessed Thomas of Tolentino, a martyr of the fourteenthcentury, beatified only one hundred years ago, may yet be enshrined asa saint of the Roman Church in the new century. If this comes about,however, it will be because the faithful of India, and in particular thosein Bombay, demand it. Today a fragment of Thomas’ skull, sent from To-lentino to India, is enshrined at Thana, where it is venerated every yearon April 9, and throughout the year in special services on the ninth dayof each month.115 Now the faithful there have a shrine to Thomas’mem-ory, and the relic provided from the West has become the centerpiecefor an active cult honoring that medieval martyr. Ironically, Thomaswould have been all but forgotten had his bones remained in India inthe fourteenth century. They were piously carried to China, however,and his cranium returned thence to his native city,where a combinationof factors made him the object of veneration by his fellow countrymen,and helped ensure that he would be enrolled among the Blessed of theRoman Church. Thomas’ cause for canonization has been given lifeagain,because another set of special circumstances make his sufferingsmeaningful to a new group of believers, who venerate his relic andhonor his self-sacrifice. As it was in the High Middle Ages, so it remainstoday; when a congregation find a martyr’s relics relevant to their spiri-tual needs,the holy bones that spark devotion become the central focus


of a cult, and occasion pressure for recognition and legitimacy withinthe larger community of the faithful.The story of the medieval mission-aries, and the popular cults their relics have generated, demonstratehow these forces have shaped, and continue to shape, the institutionalchurch.

A life-size bronze statue of Odoric of Pordenone located outside the parish church of VillaNova, Italy, his birthplace. It was erected in 1995 as a gift of the Latteria di Borgomeduna.Photo by James D. Ryan.

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