Sacramentals, relics, healing and superstition in the late Middle Ages

Benedictions and exorcisms were popular late medieval thaumaturgic practices whose rituals and objects were approved by the Church. Called ‘sacramentals’ to distinguish them from sacraments proper, they nevertheless remained poorly defined in the popular imagination. This chapter discusses debates around acceptable use of sacramentals and the increasing scrutiny of licit devotion, piety and healing. Dismissal of sacramentals was associated with Waldensian and Hussite heresies; conversely, excessive reliance on them could prompt accusations of superstition, even idolatry. This is shown by two distinct but related cases: the anti-Waldensian inquisition in Brandenburg and Pomerania (1393–94), balancing dissident criticism against clerical expectations of sacramental use, and a controversy over thaumaturgic use of wine in Vienna (1436), which pitted St Stephen’s Cathedral and the university theology faculty against a Franciscan preacher.