IN HER bestselling anthologies Storyland and Wild, the medievalist Amy Jeffs brought myths and legends from England’s distant past to a wider audience. In her new book, Saints, she shifts her focus to the later Middle Ages, introducing readers to 40 holy men and women who were widely venerated by medieval Catholics — ranging from well-known individuals such as Edward the Confessor and Thomas Becket, to obscure (and in some instances legendary) figures such as Ia, a missionary who crossed the Irish Sea on a leaf.
Organised by month, according to their feast days, each saint is introduced in a short narrative focusing on a key episode from their life. The selection is an eclectic one, so that stories of a baby gestated in a man’s thigh, a pilgrim tricked into self-castration by the Devil, and a village saved from a hungry flock of geese nestle alongside descriptions of preserved corpses, miraculous resurrections, and gruesome martyrdoms.
Each tale is paired with a short essay offering further insights into medieval religion and life. Jeffs, an art historian, is particularly good on the material culture of the period, providing vivid accounts of illuminated manuscripts, bejewelled reliquaries, and the paintings that decorated every medieval church. She also describes the wax models (many of them representing body parts) left as offerings by grateful pilgrims, and the vast quantities of tourist tat produced by major shrines. Cheap tin badges sold in such quantities that one Johannes Gutenberg invented a stamping machine to speed up their production.
© amy jeffsOne of the author’s illustrations. This is for “The Unfortunate Executioner”, on the martyrdom of St Alban
Above all, Saints gives the reader a keen sense of what was lost at the Reformation — not just the many images, shrines, and human remains destroyed by royal commissioners, but a world in which belief in the power of the saints permeated every aspect of life.
Across medieval Europe, women in labour begged St Margaret for a speedy delivery, and carpenters referred to the mix of glue and sawdust used to fill holes as “St Anne’s brains”. Ordinary Christians believed that seeing an image of St Christopher would protect them from sudden death, and that pouring Candlemas wax into an enemy’s footprints would make his feet rot.
Illustrated with Jeffs’s own paper cut-outs (including a particularly striking image of St Alban’s executioner, whose eyes fell out as he beheaded this early Christian martyr), Saints would make an ideal gift for anyone who hankers after this lost world, is fascinated by history, or simply enjoys a good story.
Dr Katherine Harvey is Research Fellow in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London.
Saints: A new legendary of heroes, humans and magic
Amy Jeffs
Riverrun £30
(978-1-5294-1661-9)
Church Times Bookshop £27