Saints be Praised!

The idea of saints may seem an old-fashioned concept today. Piety, sacrifice, deprivation; who does that now? Yet, this week Pope Francis put the Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi, creator of the staggering Sagrada Familia Cathedral, on the path to sainthood. So, not so old-fashioned after all. Besides, who among us hasn’t used a saintly totem — a crucifix, a metal token of St. Jude (patron saint of lost causes), a charm, or a rabbit’s foot on a key chain — as good luck? Many of our superstitions are tied up with saints. The oft-repeated “Touch wood,” when we wish to avoid bad luck, or to hope for good luck, or to confirm a promise, as Little Fey demonstrates in A Flight of Saints when she touches the wooden cross worn around her neck, comes from the belief that touching wood was akin to touching the Cross on which Christ was crucified.  

In medieval times, saints were integral to Christianity society. They were the local heroes of a diocese or province, and as word of their miracles and reputation spread, they were adopted and embraced further afield. Saints were models of ethical behaviour and integrity, revered for their sacrifice and unstinting faith in God when faced with torture or death. They were the earthly embodiments of Christ, known for the miracles or good deeds they performed, and for their self-sacrifice. In death, they were considered the intercessors between humans and the Almighty. Any issue or problem that vexed you could be leavened if you prayed to a saint.  If you were lucky enough to have a relic of a saint, that was money in the bank—materially and spiritually. Everything revolved around them, and feast days in their honour were established and became major holidays and excuses for revelry.

Although sainthood was a tacit arrangement as early as the third century, it wasn’t until 993AD that the pope was invested with the right to canonise saints and a process was put in place.  In order to be a saint, your life and faith were rigorously examined after your death to make sure you lived up to canonisation. Sanctity and miracles were at the top of that list.  The process was much faster than it is today. In 1235, for example, Elizabeth of Hungary who had died only three years earlier, was declared a saint. Nowadays, the Church won’t consider a candidate for canonisation until five years after their death, and then the process to sainthood can take another decade or even (in the case of Hildegard of Bingen) centuries. Of course, a pope can waive the five-year waiting period, as Pope John Paul II did in 2003 when he beatified Mother Teresa (now St. Terese of Calcutta); she was subsequently canonised in 2016 by Pope Francis. In addition to this week’s pronouncement about Gaudi, Francis has canonised 924 saints during his pontificate. The saints are firmly with us even in the 21^st century.

In A Flight of Saints, I used the saints as an act of rebellion against Church patriarchy. My protagonists already committed the crime of fleeing their convent and breaking their vows of loyalty and fidelity to their cloistered community, so what was to stop them from going further? When Gretchen speaks of being so afraid that she wants to return to the convent they’ve just fled, Lucia cleverly appeals to Gretchen’s prodigious knowledge of the saints to enlist her as the necessary creator of a female-only calendar of saints to spur them on their journey. Lucia further appeals to Gretchen’s rebellious tendencies by telling her to feel free to accord canonisation to her choices regardless of whether the Church has done so. In this way, our nuns-on-the-run make their own religion, one blessed with an abundance of female agency.

I chose female saints who would have been known during my characters’ lifetime, and who also reflected in some fashion the personalities of the five young nuns. A twelfth-century Benedictine missal from southern Italy, now housed in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vat. lat. 6082), was one source for my collection of saints, and also for referencing the “real” feast days that were taking place during our heroines’ journey.  (Those who pay attention to feast days will know that when the Roman Catholic Church revised the General Roman Calendar in 1970, many feast days were reorganised. For example, the Feast Day of Saint Lucia was moved from September 16 to December 13.)   

There’s a reason I chose the name Lucia for the novel’s main protagonist. St. Lucia of Syracuse is one of the most popular saints (and another personal favourite). Like many female saints, her story has a few variations, but the unifying detail is that she was murdered by a spurned suitor who accused her of being a Christian. Before her execution in Syracuse, Sicily, in 304AD during the Diocletianic Persecution, St. Lucia’s eyes were gouged out. In iconography, she is often depicted carrying her eyeballs on a tray.  

As Gretchen tells Lucia during a tender moment between the two in Speyer, Lucia’s name means “light.” Lucia is blind to her own faults while being snarky about the faults of her friends; and at times she is blind to reality. By the end of the story, Lucia has awakened, has grown in wisdom and knowledge.

I’ve long admired the saints, especially the female ones, which made writing this book all the more important to me. Though difficult to digest the unbearable torture they suffered, all of them were fearless and refused to crumble under the dictates of man or mob. They would rather face being burned to death in oil than capitulate to a man. These were gutsy women. As our Lucia comes to understand in A Flight of Saints, “I am a saint because I have suffered.” In which case, take a humble bow because that means all of us are saints.