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An examination of the art and the textual evidence surrounding the cult of Saint Demetrios in Thessaloniki reveals that early Byzantine veneration of Demetrios prioritized the sense of vision as a means of engaging with the saint and emphasized the human ability to perceive the divine with the spiritual senses. Thessalonian clerical and administrative elites, needing to articulate alternative ways to attain closeness with their saint when his bodily relics could not be accessed, promoted views of matter and the senses exemplified in the mosaics of Hagios Demetrios. With the appearance of myron (a combination of perfumed oil and blood) at Demetrios's shrine in the middle Byzantine era, possibly prompted by competition from rival saints, the cult rapidly refocused veneration toward this bodily relic and desire for physical contact with it. The dramatic change of emphasis from the visual and immaterial to the tactile and material as the basis for communicating with the saint is expressed in the design of reliquaries made to house this myron, which assert that vision is no longer sufficient to gain communion with the saint. The two groups of artworks—the early mosaics and the later reliquaries—provide differing sensory paradigms that guide their beholders and users toward the correct way to experience the divine. Through an analysis of the cult of Demetrios, this article seeks to nuance our understanding of the role of art, relics, and the senses in medieval saints' cults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines impression relics associated with Saints Peter and Paul: the apostolic knee prints now at the church of Santa Francesca Romana; a stone marked by Simon Magus, their foe; Christ's footprints at the church of Domine quo vadis; and the springs attributed to Paul's head at the abbey of Tre Fontane. These relics of Rome's most important saints attracted attention from Romans and non-Romans—from Gregory of Tours and Pope Paul I to Petrarch and Nikolaus Muffel. The article analyzes the cultural expectations and viewing habits that conditioned the identification of these relics and traces their reception over time. It argues that while the identification was spurred by preexisting knowledge of the saints' local actions, a site's unique features could lead viewers to alter those narratives to conform them to the physical evidence they saw on the ground, which might in turn drive subsequent historical accounts. In this process, texts, images, and topography were all evidence; a reading of one informed the reading of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]