Description
Numerous saints were held to have lived, breathed and performed miracles across Britain, from only decades after Christ’s death, up to the eve of the Reformation, with all of its consequent destruction.
In medieval narratives, these saints are given nature’s blessing: a salmon finds Cadog’s handbook, the Thames parts for Alban, geese fill the sky to converse with Werbaugh. Moreover, they fit the medieval view of British history at large. St Cadog and King Arthur are contemporaries; St Mungo meets Merlin in the woods; St Alban is implicated in the Roman persecution of Christians. And while there was no single history accepted across its islands and diverse populations, these stories do enable us to reconstruct a long, obsolete view on Britain’s deepest past.
Through passages of narrative, deeply researched explanation and beautifully illustrated by the author with thirty paper-cutouts, Saints retells stories that enjoyed centuries of popular appeal among medieval Christians but were suppressed when their shrines were destroyed. These stories embraced the darkness of their heroes: sinister saints who sacrificed their followers and women who communed with geese, saints whose decapitated heads spoke to wolves.
