This research seminar investigates the role of art in the Christian cult of saints and relics in Europe from Late Antiquity to the central Middle Ages (c.250-1200). It seeks to understand the impact of the cult on art and the impact of art on the cult. The centrality of saints and relics in late antique and medieval Christian art, doctrine, worship, and ritual has long been acknowledged, even while there is a long tradition, originating in late antiquity itself, disparaging it as either outright idolatry or tied to the beliefs of the uneducated masses, exploited by the elites as a form of social control. The seminar begins by examining the religious centrality of the cult of relics in late-antique and medieval Christianity and the socio-historical contexts of its origins and development, as well as the perceptions and historiographical traditions that have accompanied the phenomenon. The visual re-presentation of saints and relics itself is examined primarily in the context of the communal veneration of the holy in churches and shrines. This phenomenon mostly took the form of reliquaries, liturgical objects, illuminated manuscripts (and their covers), wall paintings, mosaics and architectural sculpture. Although the audience for some of these artworks was sometimes restricted, we investigate them in the context of the public promotion of the cult locally and through pilgrimage, the role of local ecclesiastical and lay patronage, church liturgy, and urban and extra urban processional liturgies. Local "realities" in north-western Europe and the Mediterranean will be analyzed in the context of or as a foil to the unique conditions in Rome, including the city's primary role in an international network of saint veneration. The investigation will also focus on the deployment and meaning of iconic representations, of pictorial narrative, of materiality, and of media. The course will include two Friday or Saturday site visits (to be determined). The seminar also provides an opportunity to consider broader questions: do artifacts and images provide evidence that is absent from texts? should art be understood as its own ideological discourse/construct or as evidence? how do we define evidence vs discourse? what implications could such a debate have in interpreting medieval art in the “service” of the cult of relics?