ABSTRACT
Saints came in many guises. A standard medieval typology reprised by Jacobus de Voragine in Legenda Aurea split them into apostles, martyrs, confessors and virgins. In modern historiography, virtuous kings and nobles, learned bishops, hermits, mendicants and female ascetics have all been isolated as distinctive types of saint, and have sometimes been seen as archetypal of particular periods and regions. There were perdurable practices and assumptions about saints and relics with roots reaching back through the early medieval period into late antiquity. In late medieval churches, the saints were integrated into visual schemes focused on the figure of Christ. Depictions of saints often filled out lower portions of screens that divided chancel from nave, evoking their role as intercessors with Christ, who hung from the rood cross immediately above them. The allure of the established martyrs also explains the appeal of new martyrs by blood in the later Middle Ages.
