Odor of sanctity

The ethics of city party gangs, perfumed and rigged out in a frock coat and sprayed with the odors of sanctity, have characterized the public morals of investment bankers the world over.

As the odor of sanctity indicated the triumph of spiritual virtue over physical corruption, it was often considered able to heal physical ills. Numerous stories in saint lore refer to the healing power of the fragrance associated with a saint. […] The fact that corpses at this time were usually held to spread disease by their odor, made the curative power of the scents produced by the saint's corpse another example of how the natural order of bodily decay was reversed in the case of the saint through supernatural grace.

During the Middle Ages a sweet smell came to be expected of holy corpses, "and if the corpse of a servant of God did not emit 'the odour of sanctity,' the veneration might stop as quickly as it had begun." That expectation was registered and at once reinforced by the endless elaboration of the odor of sanctity in hagiography, where the trope tended to be literalized.