Glowing With the Radiance of Heaven: Roman Martyrs, American Saints, and the Devotional World of Nineteenth-Century American Catholicism

The veneration of relics of the saints in U.S. Catholic history is a much-neglected topic. Partly because scholars are often uncomfortable with aspects of material religion, but also given that relics are, in the narrowest sense, remains of the dead, relics are too often assumed to be lifeless objects or the focus of a 'primitive' piety. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, popes such as Pius IX gifted the entire bodily remains of newly discovered early Christian martyrs from the ancient Roman catacombs to priests and bishops of the young United States. Likely inspired by the phenomenally successful international cultus of catacomb martyr St. Philomena, Spanish and German-born clergy stationed in America modeled devotion to these saints and their relics. This phenomenon, and the promotion of "Roman"-style relic veneration in general, is an aspect of a Catholic religious revivalism often missing from American religious historiography. The largely foreign-born population of nineteenth and early-twentieth century American Catholic faithful, who at the time had no native American saints of their own to venerate, welcomed the presence of these "immigrant" saints into both their public and private devotional spaces. In order to demonstrate the pan-American importance of relics in this period, this article focuses on the shrines of St. Vibiana (Anglo-Spanish California) and St. Victoria (German-American Midwest).