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This article reassesses pilgrimage practices in eleventh- and twelfth-century England and questions the assumption that pilgrims had relatively unrestricted access to saints' shrines and relics in this period. Drawing on hagiographical evidence, and focusing on six case studies, the article finds that remarkably few pilgrims are depicted in close proximity to a saint's shrine in these narrative sources; they are instead shown venerating at alternative places of devotion such as holy wells, empty graves and extra-mural chapels. It proposes that policies of restricted access were operated by many English cult centres earlier than is often imagined, and in discussing why ecclesiastical institutions may have distanced the laity from their principal shrines the article sets its conclusions within the wider religious developments of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Becket's relics are likely to have been owned by institutions and individuals throughout much of later medieval England, the reliable surviving evidence for them is limited. Without pretending to anything like completeness, the present essay assesses a range of sources in order to determine (or at least suggest) their usefulness for constructing a historically rooted understanding of the definition, distribution, appearance, and housing of Becket-relics. The approach taken arises partially from an ambition to cover as much ground as possible in the available space, and partially from misgivings about the value of documents whose original contexts cannot be satisfactorily reconstructed. The analysis is intended to contribute to scholarship on the cult of Becket generally in later medieval England: to this end, evidence has been sought widely and Canterbury receives less attention than the reader might expect, although the essay turns to the cathedral priory at the end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

St Leocadia, a fourth-century Toledan Christian virgin and patron saint of the city, miraculously emerged from a sepulchre in the presence of Ildephonsus, Archbishop of Toledo, and the Visigothic King Recesvintus, in the 7th century. After this wondrous event, in which a fragment of her veil was cut as proof of her public visitation, her body was removed from Toledo to be preserved from the Muslim conquest, taken to Flanders and eventually repatriated to her home town at the request of Philip II as the Lutheran threat to the Spanish northern territories escalated. A wave of literature and images concerning her figure was produced in the wake of three events: the return of her relics to Toledo in 1587, those of Ildephonsus in 1596 and the inauguration of the chapel of Our Lady of the Tabernacle, also in Toledo, in 1616. The following essays consider why and how this virgin saint became instrumental in cementing the alliance of Church and Monarchy as well as buttressing the Archbishop of Toledo's status as Primate of Spain in the early seventeenth century. Focusing on the historical, visual and literary portraits of Leocadia, they examine the manner in which Early Modern Spanish authors—Miguel Hernández, Lope de Vega, José de Valdivielso and Pedro Calderón de la Barca—and artists—Francisco Merino, Blas de Prado, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, Antonio de Lanchares and Pedro Orrente—imagined and recreated the narrative of her sanctity paying particular attention to the function of public witness as effected by their works as well as by their readers and viewers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rich hagiographical corpus, charters and privileges of the monastery of Werden on the Ruhr allow unparalleled access to its ninth-century history. This article focuses upon three ninth-century vitae of its founding saint which delineate both the transformations which Werden underwent in the course of the century and the ways in which the monastery attempted to respond and adapt to these changes. In so doing, it illuminates the role that saintly relics and hagiography could play in the formation of Christian communities both within and beyond cloister walls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]