My dissertation argues that the early supporters of a candidate to sainthood, his acolytes, used miracles to knit people together into a social movement that created support for the candidate. By dictating the time and the places where canonization trials could occur the Church achieved control of the popular movements that the acolytes built in a community. In the strictly regulated environment of the Counter Reformation, the once abundant resource of miracles became part of the process of manufacturing saints that the Church used for perpetuating itself during a period of intense criticism. The evidence for my analysis comes from the archives of the Congregatio Sacrorum Rituum stored in the Vatican Apostolic Library and in Vatican Secret Archive.