As a result of the project, a hypothesis about the connection between the development of saints’ cults and nation-building processes was constructed and tested (on the materials of the Baltic region, North-West Rus / Russian Empire / USSR). Notions of holiness and sacredness are an attribute of human culture. he views on the subject of how and why people become saints and their cults arise differ depending on religions, epochs, and historical context. Analysing them, one can not only reconstruct the peculiarities of beliefs, but also obtain characteristics of different aspects of the society development. Sociologist Pierre Deleuze formulated the principle of this analysis: saints are a construct consisting of society’s collective ideas of what holiness is. A saint is created by a society that formulates a demand for what it considers to be supernatural, miraculous and a moral paragon. Thus, cults of saints reflect the motivations, discourses, ideals of political, social, and cultural life.

From this point of view, of special interest is the formation of cults of so-called «national» saints and local saints. It is their constructed images that reflect local demands and ideals. The saints act as patrons of a city, diocese, region, individual settlement, monastery.

Based on the study of Scandinavian and North German saints’ cults, the hypothesis was suggested that these saints play a special role in the formation of local and national identities in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern times. During the Reformation, the official saints’ cults were rethought, but the veneration of individual characters did not disappear, but transformed into the cults of «local heroes» and later national heroes, based on which the discourse of national identity was formed. The development of nationalism always needs heroes as moral and ideological landmarks and models. Certain rituals are created around their cult, which serve as manifestation of loyalty and demonstration of national identity. A transition from purely religious to political veneration takes place, with saints turning into unification figures. At the same time the contamination of former saints and purely secular national heroes takes place, with the cult of heroes developing with the elements of sacredness, which are used as tools for this cult development.

The suggested hypothesis has only been partially confirmed. It may be more relevant to the history of Scandinavia and Northern Germany. However, on the more eastern material it shows less conformity. Based on the conducted research, we can distinguish the following patterns:

• using the cults of «our» saints to assert and declare unity, political and religious loyalty to the «metropolis» (Catholics of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Uniate Ruthenian Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth);
• developing the cults of «our» saints as a way of preserving identity in a foreign context (Orthodox Ruthenians of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth);
• turning to the veneration of the common Christian saint-protector, whose cult was widespread in the Baltic lands during that period; a peculiar «evocation» (appeal, «luring») of the heavenly patron to one’s side (the mid-16th century).
• the obvious connection of cults with the development of national identity (Poland, Northern Germany, Scandinavia);
• transformation of cults under the influence of the Reformation. A «quasi-cult substitution» in the Protestant tradition as in the case of Northern Germany and Sweden. The influence of Protestant monarchic cults on «proto-national» processes in the 17^th — 20^th centuries.
• saints’ cults as an element of state building and centralization (Rus / Russia).

Secularization of Russian culture during the imperial period was reflected in the development of saints’ cults in Russia in the 18^th — 19^th centuries. Starting from Peter the Great’s time, the tendency to «appoint» saints «to the service» of the empire, initiated and supported by the autocracy, became more and more evident. From the same time a special place is occupied by the emperors’ «patron saints» — St Nicholas and St Alexander Nevsky, in whose memory a number of churches were built within and beyond the Russian Empire.

In the 19^th — early 20^th centuries, in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which became a part of the Russian Empire, a whole complex of local cults developed, which were related to the Orthodox and Russian (as opposed to Catholicism and «Polonism») past of a particular area and maintained a particular local myth. Simultaneously, in the Orthodox and so-called «West Rusist» environment, the concept of the «Belarusian saint» developed, who at first was understood mainly as a patron of the area («Belaya Rus»), and after the 1890s as a prayer for the Belarusian people viewed as one of the branches of the Russian nationality.

The archival research has revealed that in the Soviet Union, despite the anti-religious campaigns of the late 1920s, 1930s, and 1950s, there were numerous local «places of memory» associated with the appearance of saints or the Mother of God, where large numbers of Orthodox believers regularly pilgrimaged. Ethnographers demonstrated the greatest academic interest in studying local saints’ cults from not so much historical as anthropological point of view, seeking to investigate the syncretic features of saints worship that retained to the greatest extent folk ideas and pre-Christian practices in the form of so-called «Orthodox paganism». However, these processes were indirectly connected with the problems of national or supranational (Soviet) identity formation. In them, the heroes’ cult came first, replacing almost completely the saints’ cult. The revival of the role of sainthood and saints for the identities formation began only in the post-Soviet period, as shown by the veneration of «new martyrs» in both the Orthodox and Catholic churches (e. g., mass canonizations after the 1990s in Poland).

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