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On 22 June 1845, a curious religious procession took place in the streets of Montreal. A “huge crowd” gathered to accompany through the city the body of a man exhumed from the Roman catacombs. His bones had been shipped to Montreal and placed in a wax figure representing a Roman soldier. Presumed to have died for his faith, this martyr was carried through the streets at arm’s length amid incense and hymns. Surprisingly, this procession was not an isolated one. From 1830 to 1930, the remains of dozens of presumed Christian martyrs extracted from the Roman catacombs were sent to Canada. In Halifax, Rimouski, Joliette, Toronto, and Windsor, they attracted the faithful and the curious. Adopted as powerful intercessors, these foreign saints would shape the beliefs, representations, and identity of generations of Catholics. Around their relics, a whole devotional universe would develop and maintain various and complex relations with society. These relics provide us with a unique window into nineteenth-century Canadian society. This thesis makes a significant contribution to historiography by exploring for the first time the topic of ultramontane devotions in Canada. It studies the deployment of the cult of Roman martyrs and their relics in the Canadian Church and reconstitutes the development of this devotion from a cultural history perspective. Using archival documents found on both sides of the Atlantic, this thesis examines how Canadians discovered, sought, and adopted this foreign devotion. In reality, this infatuation for Roman relics is primarily a transnational phenomenon that is part of the profound changes that the Catholic Church experienced in the nineteenth century, driven in particular by the Ultramontane movement. Therefore, it seeks to situate the presence of relics from the catacombs in Canada in its global context while considering its Canadian particularities. It rests on a considerable number of novel sources drawn from more than thirty archival centers. With the help of these documents, it examines the different facets that this devotion had, whether in cities or the countryside, among English-speaking or French-speaking communities or in predominantly Catholic or Protestant environments. The first chapter reveals the fascination with Christian Rome among nineteenth-century Canadians and the importance that the catacombs and their martyrs had in the minds of the Catholic faithful. The second chapter identifies the many networks uniting the Canadian Church with Rome, and more broadly with Europe, that allowed the acquisition and shipping of relics to Canada. It replaces this devotion in a larger framework by linking it to other manifestations of this expression of piety elsewhere in the world. It pays particular attention to the exchange of goods between the Italian peninsula and North America by studying the commercial routes that allowed the circulation of relics. The remaining three chapters are devoted to the presentation, the reception, and the adoption of catacomb saints in Canada. They examine the art of molding wax bodies containing relics and the symbolism of these recumbent-reliquaries, before describing the religious ceremony organized to mark the arrival of a new martyr. Finally, this thesis explores the faithful’s various expressions of piety: patronages, prayers, indulgences, and claims of miracles. It examines the attachment but also the opposition and the tensions provoked by Roman relics within society. This research demonstrates the influence that foreign religious devotions held in the spiritual lives of Canadians and the many connections uniting Canadian society with Europe. It also testifies to significant changes in the devotional universe of the nineteenth century. But above all, it highlights the profound transformations of both culture and mentalities and particularly of beliefs, emotions, and the idea of death. This study contributes to a better understanding of the religious past of several generations of Canadians by studying a devotion that has now completely been forgotten.