Salonen Kirsi, Katajala-Peltomaa Sari. Church and Belief in the Middle Ages: Popes, Saints, and Crusaders

Amsterdam University Press, 2016. — 276 p.The roles of popes, saints, and crusaders were inextricably intertwined in the Middle Ages: papal administration was fundamental in the making and promulgating of new saints and in financing crusades, while crusaders used saints as propaganda to back up the authority of popes, and even occasionally they ended up being sanctified. Yet current scholarship rarely treats these three components of medieval faith together. This book remedies that by bringing together scholars to consider the links among the three and the ways that understanding them can help us build a more complete picture of the working of the church and Christianity in the Middle Ages.Kirsi Salonen is professor of medieval and early modern history in the School of History, Culture and Arts Studies at the University of Turku. Sari Katajala-Peltomaa is a research fellow at the University of Tampere.