Noria Litaker (History) recently published an article, in Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture. The article examines the construction and material presentation of Bavarian catacomb saints as well as the vitae written for them in 17th- and 18th-century Europe. It offers a new vantage point from which to consider how the intellectual movement known as the paleo-Christian revival and the scholarship it produced were received, understood, and then used by Catholic Europeans in an everyday religious context. The article demonstrates that local Bavarian craftsmen, artists, relic decorators, priests, and nuns – along with erudite scholars in Rome – were active in bringing the early Christian church to life and participated in the revival as practitioners and creative scholars in their own right.
