No Saints

No Saints tells a story of the Catholic Reformation from an unexpected vantage point. Instead of saints, it follows frauds, abusers, and opportunists whose lives—preserved in trial records and Inquisition casefiles—offer a different view of religious reform in the late sixteenth century. Set in Lisbon, one of the largest and most dynamic cities of early modern Europe, the book reconstructs the early phases of Catholic Reform through a series of striking cases drawn from archival documents. These sources preserve the memory of individuals largely forgotten by history: a Dominican nun who faked stigmata, a phony friar who convinced churchmen in Italy to supply him with relics, a widow who tricked Fray Luis de Granada into believing she was the recipient of miracles, and a disgraced Jesuit who abused children while running a home for orphan boys, among others. Taken together, these snapshots reveal how fraud and opportunism intersected with major themes of Catholic Reform, including the emergence of schools, the cult of relics, women’s piety, and the proliferation of healing shrines. By shifting attention away from exemplary models of sanctity, No Saints shows how the actions of marginal figures forced religious institutions to respond and, in doing so, helped shape the emerging structures of early modern Catholicism. Told through vivid archival episodes, this lively and engaging narrative will interest scholars and students of early modern Europe, Catholic history, and Iberian studies, as well as general readers curious about the lived realities of religious reform.