Beyond exemplarity: The intercession of saints. A sketch

Focusing on traditions of the advocacy of saints for believers, the essay reconstructs a Christian, particularly Catholic, model of intercession. In the triangular structure of believer, saint, and God, intercession establishes a particular form of communicative exchange that differs from the modern, dialectical forms of communication and recognition between self and other. Instead, and distinct also from classical Roman understandings of advocacy, intercession foregrounds an eschatological community of friendship and mutual participation in the shape of a communio sanctorum . This, in turn, modifies also the function of the patronus and the patterns of affective life.