The 23 chapters in this volume explore the material culture of sanctity in Latin Europe and the Mediterranean between c. 1000 and c. 1220, with a focus on the ways in which saints and relics were enshrined, celebrated, and displayed.

Reliquary cults were particularly important during the Romanesque period, both as a means of affirming or promoting identity and as a conduit for the divine. This book covers the geography of sainthood, the development of spaces for reliquary display, the distribution of saints across cities, the use of reliquaries to draw attention to the attributes, and the virtues or miracle-working character of particular saints. Individual essays range from case studies on Verona, Hildesheim, Trondheim and Limoges, the mausoleum of Lazarus at Autun, and the patronage of Mathilda of Canossa, to reflections on local pilgrimage, the deployment of saints as physical protectors, the use of imagery where possession of a saint was disputed, island sanctuaries, and the role of Templars and Hospitallers in the promotion of relics from the Holy Land.

This book will serve historians and archaeologists studying the Romanesque period, and those interested in material culture and religious practice in Latin Europe and the Mediterranean c.1000–c.1220.

John McNeill teaches at Oxford University’s Department of Continuing Education, and is Honorary Secretary of the British Archaeological Association, for whom he has edited and contributed to volumes on Anjou, King’s Lynn and the Fens, the medieval cloister, and English medieval chantries. He was instrumental in establishing the BAA’s International Romanesque Conference Series and has a particular interest in the design of medieval monastic precincts.

Richard Plant has taught at a number of institutions and worked for many years at Christie’s Education in London, where he was Deputy Academic Director. His research interests lie in the buildings of the Anglo-Norman realm and the Holy Roman Empire, in particular in architectural iconography. He is Publicity Officer for the British Archaeological Association and, in addition to this volume, co-edited the first and third volumes in the series: Romanesque and the Past and Romanesque Patrons and Processes.