Fake Saints and the Selective Recreation of Holiness examines how communities construct idealised figures by filtering out human complexity. It explores the way flawed individuals are polished into symbols of purity, revealing more about cultural desire and control than genuine sanctity. Manufactured holiness tells us less about saints and more about the stories we choose to believe.
Fake Saints and the Selective Recreation of Holiness
Holiness should be pure, a life of integrity, sacrifice, and spiritual depth. Hebrews 12:14 puts it plainly: make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy, because without holiness no one will see the Lord. Yet the Church’s history, especially within Roman Catholicism, shows that holiness has often been discovered by accident, assembled by committee, or created to meet a need.
When I visited Saint‑Malo in December 2025, having travelled by ferry from Portsmouth to Saint‑Malo, I was reminded on a cold and windy day in the rain how easily the sacred and the theatrical can blur.
Curated sanctity
Holiness should be something clear and uncompromising. Scripture treats it as non‑negotiable, a calling that shapes every part of life. The Church’s own history tells a more complicated story. Sanctity has often been improvised, encouraged, or quietly manufactured. The Roman Catholic Church in particular has moments where holiness seems to have been discovered rather than lived, and sometimes even curated by committee.
Dubious relics
The persistence of dubious relics and saints of uncertain provenance is difficult to ignore. John Calvin (1543) famously dismissed relics as vain trifles, and his words still work as a sharp critique of the Church’s tendency to elevate objects and stories that do not always withstand scrutiny.
In our own time, the rapid canonisation of Carlo Acutis shows how modern pressures can shape sanctity. Carlo was clearly a good and devout young man, a valid saint by any measure, although the speed of his canonisation raised eyebrows. His elevation arrived at a moment when the hierarchy needed saints with contemporary appeal. Holiness, yes, but also a touch of PR and Vatican glamour.
Lesser Saints
Then there are the lesser saints, the ones who never make headlines. They emerged from local cults, accidents of history, or papal attempts to catch up with popular devotion. Their stories are full of doubt, controversy, and pious frauds that would make a modern fact‑checker despair. Alongside them sit the secular saints the Church refuses to acknowledge, people like Matthew Shepard or even Danny Lockin, whose lives speak to sacrifice and injustice but fall outside the usual ecclesiastical categories.
A real example
Saint Célestine in Saint‑Malo is a perfect example of confected holiness. She lies in a stone alcove in the cathedral, serene behind glass. Except she isn’t who she claims to be. Her remains were taken from the Roman catacombs, moulded in wax, dressed, and presented as a saint. A discreet panel admits that the bones may not belong to the person they represent, or even to the same person at all. There’s no hagiography, no reliable biography, not even a clear identity. The name itself sounds pious and conveniently Catholic.
This was part of the great catacomb saint enterprise of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Anonymous skeletons were exhumed, encased in wax, dressed in finery, and shipped across Europe as early Christian martyrs. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and France all received their share of glittering holy imports.
More fake saints
Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Nazarius and Celsus and St Gervase and St Protase are all part of the imagination of Ambrose of Milan who raised to the altars some fictitious characters. The reasons for the decison is clear and it’s all to do with promoting, facilitating and enabling the spread of the faith and the power of Milan.
More recently, the ludicrous jewelled saints of Bavaria are the most spectacular examples. These skeletons, crowned with gold and covered in gemstones, look like the improbable offspring of a monarch and a haberdasher’s window display. Their identities were invented, their virtues embroidered, and their stories crafted to reassure a post‑Reformation Church that holiness was still abundant.
None of them were known martyrs. Their names were assigned. Their biographies were ‘optimistic’ at best. Their jewelled ribs and silk‑wrapped skulls were not just relics but theological arguments made physical.
What does the Church do about fake saints?
Here lies the fascination. The Church publicly condemned superstition while privately elevating unidentified bones into dazzling icons. Holiness has often been shaped as much by imagination as by history.
Fast forward to 2025 and Saint Célestine remains in Saint‑Malo. There’s no fuss, no doctrinal crisis, just a quiet acceptance that a possibly fictional saint is still good enough to keep on display. She sits in her alcove like a relative no one quite knows how to introduce.
Modern Cathédrale Saint-Vincent-de-Saragosse de Saint-Malo
Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Saint‑Malo Cathedral itself reflects this tension. Rebuilt after wartime bombing, it now houses modern art that leans towards the mythic and the elemental. Stark lines and abstract forms sit comfortably within medieval walls, even though the Church often laments the spiritual emptiness of the modern world.
The post‑Vatican II liturgical art movement has produced many questionable pieces, and the altar at Saint‑Malo is one of the most striking. Designed by Étienne Pirot, its bronze symbols of the four Evangelists draw attention away from the sacrifice of the Mass.
Selective reality creates a strange rigidity. The Church is firm when it chooses to be firm and flexible when it suits. It opposes progressive cultural trends while preserving relics of uncertain origin. It defends tradition while filling historic spaces with modern art that earlier generations would not recognise. It demands strict belief while allowing mistakes to remain in display cases.
Perhaps this is the point. Ecclesiastical holiness, measured against the holiness of God, has always been a negotiation. Part faith, part story, part convenience. Fake saints persist because they once served a purpose and now cannot easily be removed. Modernist art is installed because someone decided it was spiritual enough. The Church, like any institution, curates its image, even when that image is stitched together from contradictions.
Summary
In the end, the fake creations of Ambrose of Milan, the catacomb saints, the jewelled saints, the lesser saints, and the tomb of Jacques Cartier the modern discoverer of Canada remind us that faith has never been tidy.
Saint Guinefort, the dog saint, shows that folk religion has always had a place. Holiness has been gilded, guessed at, stitched together, and sometimes invented. These glittering skeletons whisper the same truth: the line between the sacred and the theatrical has always been thinner than we like to admit.
Further Reading
FAQ
Catacomb saints were produced to reassure the faithful after the Reformation, offering visible proof of early Christian martyrdom even when the identities were unknown.
The Church itself admits that Saint Célestine’s remains may not belong to the person claimed. They’re part of a wider tradition of embellished or invented relics.
Many relics became part of local devotion. Removing them would cause pastoral disruption, so they remain as historical artefacts rather than verified saints.