Assessing the significance of St Luke in the Middle Ages
(Please note that the King
James Bible has been used to interpret religious doctrine in this article, but
should be noted that this source was translated in 1611 and contemporary
scriptures used by the clergy were in Latin).
The cults of Saint Luke the evangelist and Archangel Michael are
significant as examples of interpreting the perceived instrumental power and
influential power of saints in the middle ages at different levels of medieval
society. Saints are fundamental in
leading an apostolic lifestyle, indeed, “For thou art an holy people unto the
lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto
himself, above all people that are on the face of the earth”. (Deuteronomy 7:6,
KJV).[1]
Furthermore, Rosenwein argues they provided a model of virtue and performed
miraculous works as intercessors on God’s behalf.[2] Archangel Michael status is founded in his
biblical role particularly in Revelations, often depicted as a commander holding a spear, which was used
to fight Satan. Conversely Saint Luke is venerated for
his authorship of biblical
scripture such as ‘The Gospel According
to Luke and the ‘Acts of the Apostles,’
the gospel of Luke and Acts make up a two-volume work which scholars call
Luke-Acts, jointly accounting for 27.5%
of the New Testament.[3]
Both are clear examples of imperative understood virtuous icons of glory
venerated throughout the Middle Ages.
Saints have a
significant role in society which included both the living and the dead, as
they themselves were “the very special dead”. [4]
As a special friend of God and Jesus Christ, Saints had influential and an
influential power on a social and political level. The Golden Legend provides a thirteenth century view of the saints.
Demonstrating how medieval society marvelled at the perceived strength, wonder
and courage of Archangel Michael leading a battalion of angels against Satan.
Furthermore, the source also references the hierarchal structure of angels, and
how Archangel Michael as an archangel, would be found in the third of the three
orders, the Hypophany.[5]
Thus demonstrated how hierarchical structures imperative to medieval society
and transcended into Christian doctrine and beliefs. Indeed, the Litany of the Saints, show a hierarchy of the
saints, to which they were ordered in their relationship to Jesus Christ with
Saint Mary as most significant as the mother of God, followed by the angels, prophets,
disciples, martyrs, clergy through to the laity.[6] It
demonstrates rigid categorization and understands different groups to be more
significant than others, indicative of contemporary taste. Therefore, saint were able to exercise divine power at
different levels, making veneration of a particular saint more useful than
another, and expected to respond appropriately to the Individuals demands
through prayer.
While intercession provides man saints an opportunity to receive
veneration, others such as Saint Luke offer alternative methods of communion
with Jesus Christ, through authorship of biblical scripture, indeed Luke
produced both The Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles. In which Luke was
able to provide a testimony of Jesus Christ’s miracles. Luke’s gospel is distinguished
for the human attributes given to
Jesus. Applauded as the compassionate saviour which Luke expresses Jesus’s undisputed
love for all people, reaching out for women, the poor and outcasts in society.
This particular emphasis was appealing to a clerical audience due to Jesus’s
humanist actions. Furthermore, The Golden
Legend recognises Luke’s symbolism through a sacrificial calf because he indulges
Christ’s priesthood.[7]
It is also important to recognise Luke’s Gospels significance to clergy as both
its humanist depiction of Christ, but also the gospel’s anti-Maronite doctrine.
Indeed, contemporary fears persisted to which Marcionism could threaten a
schism within the Church through to middle ages.[8]
This demonstrates how the saint’s attributes prescribed to a particular demographic
for veneration, but how saints could be useful to support a particular cause on
the wider geo-political sphere.
Saint Michael as an archangel takes an unusual position as,
arguably, the most purist and pious genre
of saints due to the nature of its sanctity formed in heaven as intercessors
on heaven and earth, its significants is perceived to be inimitable through its
typology. “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for
them who shall be heirs of salvation?” (Hebrews 1: 14, KJV).[9]
Indeed, contemporary’s perceived angels to act as spiritual messengers of God
in order to guide and protect God’s people and could continue to act as intercessors in the middle ages as they had
done in biblical times. The absence of a
psychical body, or attainable relics left the saint’s cult universally
deployable and adaptable to multiple localities. Indeed, Johnson supports that
the cult of Saint Michael was the largest in the British Isles after Saint
Peter, enjoying its greatest popularity in the Anglo-Norman period.[10]
The cult of Saint Michael can certainly be described as universal, which
Johnson argues three major Michealine cultic centres; Constantine’s Empire, the
Lombards and the Carolingians, appropriated Saint Michael as the commander of the
heavenly host in battle, as the patron saint of imperial ambition, to which such
legionary appreciations determined characteristics of the archangel through
earthly appreciations.[11]
Demonstrating how the saint’s cult can extend into legend to which they are
venerated as an iconic. Thirteenth century literature such as Gilte Legende, Saint Michael is praised for his attack
against Lucifer and the text encourages people to “make hym her special patron”
to be worshiped will “deliuer us, refreyning, in the Apocalips”.[12]
This demonstrates the extent to which legend played an important part in how
the saint’s cult was perceived as significant through extra-canonical, often legends
demonstrate how saints were understood, often inundated by theological misconceptions,
which determine the saint’s perceived instrumentality.
During the crusades Saint Luke experienced a sanctified inventio,
and was moved from Constantinople to Padua in Italy. Luke is depicted as with pen in his hand, near
an ox, symbolic of Christ’s sacrifice. His body, lied in Abbey of Santa Giustina, and provided a pilgrimage
site, demonstrating how Luke’s cult had been translated to Italy and extended
to western Christendom. Thus providing physical relics for devotion which could
be disseminated and act as a vector for miraculous functions. Geary argues the
significance of relics as a symbolic value to when illiterate society could
appreciate with substantial local irregularity in veneration; as it was impossible
to steal a relics old function in its original locality, of new appreciation
for a saint had to come from “extraneous symbols induced along with the
relics”.[13] Indeed,
the devotion to a particular saint so some extent depended on the understood religiosity
of audience’s perception of the saint’s power attained through cultic devotion.
The extent to which saint’s experience of furta sacra was seemingly widespread in
response to post-Carolingian Europe which needed to look to local saints for authority
and order as competing nobilities feuded against one another and weakened
political and cultural horizons. Geary argues this provided the conditions to
allow a pan-European phenomena of
saint’s cults throughout western Christendom, facilitated by papal
insistence on Saint Peter’s successor’s dignity, and the increasing prominence of the ‘cult of
Christ’ celebrated through the Eucharist; which was further expanded in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries through expansion of commercial activities.[14]
The translation of saint’s from east to west is indicative of a cultural shift
of Christian authority from east to west, which a saint’s cult expanded through
access to relics which provided Western Christendom with a saint’s attributes they
could model their worship.
Thus it would seem devotion to saint could be
rejected without a relic or to which a shrine could deploy the cult. However,
Saint Michael’s locality remains in heaven which thus gives Michael the
opportunity to become a universal by not being limited to a locality to which
his relics must be acquired. Johnson argues that the archangel’s ‘asomatic limitations’
restricted Archangels to possess a hagiographic dossier resting on graphic descriptions
of saints founded on legends.[15]
However, some material relics were veneration, indeed Mont Saint Michael in
Normandy claimed to possess Saint Michael’s sword and shield, and this demonstrates
how a saint’s narrative could be manipulated, possibly to legitimize the
monastic site as a pilgrimage center, central to economic motivation.
Overall, hierarchy is central to the saints, as was necessary to
apply hierarchical relations to the divine as conceivable to society which
depended upon hierarchal relations through tight social orders in order to
recreate a power structure of the
celestial which could then transfer their perceived power though intercession
on earth. The attraction of a particular devotion to a saint can be seen
through the imitability and inimitability of a saint which often correlates to
the power of a saint and the charisma of the saint generated through their
legend. Relics can then be used as physical entities as instruments of
veneration in exchange for divine intercession. Saints acted as both pious
models of Christian virtue and powerful intercessors ordained to perform miracles
and understood to be active. Saints demonstrate how medieval society saw
itself, to which aspired and it modelled itself. Saint’s interact within a
power structure to which power was understood to disseminate from an omnipotent
and omnipresent God, to which Saints acted within a co-ordinated system of
hierarchy and obedience to which mirrored society in western Christendom.
Saints provided intercession for their veneration as well as a module of virtue
like Christ. They play a small part in the wider cult of Christianity. They demonstrate how individual virtuous
choices, to which medieval society can imitate respected methods demonstrated
through the typology such as virginity, confession, evangelism or Martyrdom.
Qualities appreciated by a waring society that understood chivalry and faith to
be aspirational. Therefore saints stood as contrary of the Devil who anticipates
sinfulness of humanity, which is understood to be as much preordained in real
life as in biblical scripture, ever since Eve picked the apple from the tree of
knowledge in genesis.
Therefore, it is the prevalence of sin within medieval society presences saints as idealistic, whom
lived a sinless life, avoided purgatory, and immediately join Jesus in heaven
as a special friend of God. This
understanding of a saint therefore made veneration of one important as they
could assist an individual on earth to perform a miracles in order to pass the
gates of heaven. A society which established the saint’s power in the divine
therefore automatically had established the saint’s power on earth. This
allowed them to become social and political instruments in a society which
believed earthy relics could enhance the closeness between saints; which in
turn brought them closer to Jesus as a ‘mutual friend’. The closeness of the
saint to Jesus, determined his power in both heaven and earth. With the
prospect of those who venerated expecting successful and frequent intercession
and expecting to increase their prospects of reducing their time in purgatory.
Saint Michael, as an archangel, his power is not contested and we see his understood
power on the hierarchy through the Liturgy
of Saints as testimony to his perceived power, in comparison to Saint Luke.
Therefore Archangel Michael’ veneration is experienced in through understanding
his closeness to God as a heavenly divine creation. Therefore it is not surprising
that physical relics of the Archangel have been found in Mont Saint Michael for
example even though they theologically cannot exist on earth; to provide useful
tools in harnessing the Saints power for political and personal needs. This
supports the notion that powerful saint’s veneration and cult was in response
to a violent post Carolingian world which power and authority were less certain,
intrinsic to a society which relied on power relations.
Word Count: 1928.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Books:
R.
Carroll & Stephen
Prickett, The Bible: Authorized King James Version, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
W. G, Ryan
(Translator), Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, (Princeton, New Jersey, 1993).
R. Hamer, Gilte Legende, (Oxford: Oxford University Press and Society, 2012).
Websites:
W. Fitzgerald & O. Praem. The Litany of Saints in the Liturgy, http://www.adoremus.org/1108LitanyofSaints.html, (accessed 30 November 2015).
Secondary Sources
Books:
B. H.
Rosenwein, 3rd Ed, A Short
History of the Middle Ages, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). p31.
E. M,
Boring. An Introduction to the New
Testament: History, Literature, Theology. (Westminster: John Knox Press,
2012).
S.
Ozment, Age of Reform, 1250-1500,
(USA: Yale University Press, 1980).
R. F, Johnson. Saint Michael The Archangel In
Medieval English Legend.( Woodbridge:
Boydell Press, 2005).
J. Adair, The Pilgrims’ Way: Shrines and Saints in Britain and Ireland, (Hamshire:
Thames and Hudon, 1978).
P. Brown. The Cult of Saints,
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981).
P. J, Geary, Furta Sacra. (New
Jersey: Princeton University Press).
S. Farmer & B. H. Rosenwein. Monks
and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts, Religion in Medieval Society: Essays in Honor of
Lester K. Little. (USA: Cornell University Press, 2000).
J. H. Lynch & P. C. Adams, 2nd
Ed, The Medieval Church: A brief history.
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2014).
G. Tellenbach, The Church in Western Europe from the Tenth to the early Twelfth
Century, (Cambridge: Cambridge Univerity Press, 1993).
[1] R.
Carroll & Stephen
Prickett, The Bible: Authorized King James Version, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Deuteronomy 7:6.
[2] B. H. Rosenwin, 3rd Ed, A Short History of the Middle Ages, (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2009). p31.
[3] E. M, Boring. An Introduction
to the New Testament: History, Literature, Theology. (Westminster: John
Knox Press, 2012). p556.
[4] P. Brown. The Cult of Saints: The Rise and function of
Saints in Latin Christianity. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009).
p69.
[5] W. G, Ryan
(Translator), Jacobus de Voragine, The golden Legend, (Princeton, New Jersey, 1993). pp201-211.
[6] W. Fitzgerald & O. Praem. The
Litany of Saints in the Liturgy, http://www.adoremus.org/1108LitanyofSaints.html, (accessed 30
November 2015).
[7] W. G, Ryan (Translator), Jacobus de Voragine, The
golden Legend, (Princeton, New
Jersey, 1993). p248.
[8] S. Ozment, Age of Reform, 1250-1500, (USA: Yale University
Press, 1980). P65.
[9] R.
Carroll & Stephen
Prickett, The Bible: Authorized King James Version, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Hebrews 1: 14.
[10] R. F, Johnson. Saint
Michael The Archangel In Medieval English Legend.( Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005). p32.
[11]R. F, Johnson. Saint
Michael The Archangel In Medieval English Legend.( Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005). p106.
[12] R. Hamer, Gilte
Legende, (Oxford: Oxford University Press and Society, 2012). pp368-371.
[15] R. F, Johnson. Saint
Michael The Archangel In Medieval English Legend.( Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005). p4.
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