The "Odor of Sanctity." Veneration and Politics in Leonard Lessius's Cause for Beatification (Seventeenth-Twentieth Centuries)

© 2016 Rai. After his death in 1623, the Flemish Jesuit Leonard Lessius (Lenaert Leys, 1554-1623) became the object of public veneration-never approved by the Roman church-that aimed at promoting his beatification. The cult of this theologian, based on many supposed miraculous healings, increased in the seventeenth century but began to fade thereafter. The cult was revitalized in the nineteenth century, when some Flemish Jesuits began a "relic rush" in order to find Lessius's remains, with the hope of reopening the process of beatification; the cause was, however, definitively abandoned in the twentieth century. The records relating to Lessius's cause shed light on the policy of sainthood adopted by the new Society of Jesus and its connection with that of the old Society.status: publishe