Virtuous Magic

Since the earliest centuries the saints were woven into the fabric of people's lives. Through the rituals of the church year, the extraordinary and holy days of feasts, the 'red letter days', the presences of patron-saints and protectors in church buildings, communities and organizations such as the medieval guilds the saints were venerated, and pilgrimage was an important part of that veneration. Pilgrims set out to follow the way of the saints, their goal to arrive at the earthly location of spiritual power, hoping to draw on that power for themselves and attain a closer relationship with God.

Wendy Mulford and Sara Maitland argue that the saints today are potential spiritual resources whose presences through the traces they have left behind in the minds of the whole community of the faithful can be tapped by contemporary searchers. Here hagiography -- the writing up of saints -- has taken on the metaphorical shape of a pilgrimage a chronology and a geography of the boundaries, the borders and of the unboundaried, the wild space beyond the boundaries.

Forty four saints, all women, are looked at on two levels; historically and through imaginative interiority. A variety of forms -- poetry, story, sermon, quotation and commentary -- have been used to make accessible the lives of these saints, and in doing so a rich mix of history, theology and a profound spirituality illuminates some of the meaning of saints in both the lives of individuals and in the incarnation.