How to Finance a Counter-Reformation Saint: the Alms for the Canonisation of Isidore Agricola and Ferdinand III, 1592–1688

Abstract

The paths to sainthood of the cults of Isidore Agricola and Ferdinand III exhibit a unique phenomenon of collaboration across the Spanish empire for the canonisation of multiple Counter-Reformation saints. An analysis of their financial records may reveal a network of alliances that could account for the overwhelming number of Iberian saints canonised in the seventeenth century. The role of Spanish America in the construction of a renewed imperial identity is also examined, demonstrating that it capitalised on the urgency of these devotions to advance its own cults while arguing for the centrality of their territories to the expansion of Catholicism.