Saints were also models to be emulated. As early as the first martyrdom literature, the writers took pains to point out how the martyrs were imitators of Christ and models of steadfastness in faith and perseverance even to death. Athanasius ends his classic life of Antony, who, as we have seen, was praised as a martyr every day of his life, by holding up his life both as a template for “what the life of the monk ought to be" and, further, as a persuasive example to pagans that the demons are not gods as they believe but evil forces overcome by the triumph of Christ. In that latter sense, it is clear that Athanasius saw the life of Antony as having an apologetic value. Readers of Saint Augustine’s Confessions will remember how much Athanasius’ Life of Antony meant to Augustine and his circle of intellectual aristocrats. “We were stupified,” Augustine wrote, “as we listened to the tale of wonders you had worked within the true faith of the Catholic Church especially as they were most firmly attested by recent memory and had occurred so near our own time”.
Saints were also considered to be patrons in heaven. In a feudal society, in which there was a strong hierarchical structure of class dependent on class, to have a patron (the local lord, the beneficent landowner, the prince or king) was to enjoy protection. That notion of patron was extended to the saint, who now stood as an intercessor in heaven. This emphasis on the patron gave rise to the widespread custom of designating a particular saint to be the patron of a given occupation (Saint Crispin for shoemakers; Saints Cosmas and Damien for physicians; Saint George for warriors, and so on) or to be invoked in case of a particular need (Saint Apollonia for toothache). Guilds, towns, fraternal organizations, and farms all had their particular patrons. Parishes were named for particular saints, and well into our own day children would choose an additional patron saint’s name at the time of their confirmation.
Many saints were held up as models of Christian virtue and practice; in other words, their personae were as important for the lessons they exemplified as for their thaumaturgical capacities. The medieval canon of saints includes any number of kings and queens who serve as models of Christian leadership, just as model prelates, monks, and nuns are templates of authentic holiness. Even simple lay people (rarely) were canonized for their holy lives, such as the simple Saint Omobono (died 1197) of Cremona. Omobono was a married businessman who devoted himself to his family but also was centrally concerned with the needs of the poor. His rapid canonization (two years after his death) is almost without parallel in the medieval period where the distinguished path of holiness was to be found via the established orders of the religious life or in the clerical state.
More typically, however, saints came from the educated classes with an over-representation of those who were from the clerical or religious ranks or the aristocracy. Dante’s Paradiso is peopled by such saints who not only serve as such models but also typify the heavenly circles that Dante is visiting. Such emblematic figures also afford the poet opportunity to issue prophetic judgments on those who were the anti-types of the virtues that the saints possessed. Thus, to cite an example, Saint Peter excoriates the pope who was the protector of his own tomb in Rome: “My place [i.e. Saint Peter’s in Rome] which in the sight of God is empty / has made of my tomb a sewer of blood and filth / so that the Perverse One [Satan] who fell from here above now takes comfort there below”.
Liturgical Memory of the Saints
