odor of sanctity

Idioms  

1. Exaggerated or hypocritical piety, an assumption of moral superiority, as in This candidate puts off some voters with his odor of sanctity. This expression, originating in the medieval idea that the dead body of a saintly individual gives off a sweet smell, was used to describe saintliness in the mid-1700s. Today it is generally used ironically.

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Example Sentences

Fatefully, she dallied with Tenney, her second cousin, known to her since childhood, an earnest young man redolent of the “odor of sanctity” who had first courted another of her older sisters, Emily.

From New York Times

The odor of sanctity and the form of sound words are no nearer the living spirit than are those petrifactions which present an outline of men, but never again pulsate with life.

From Project Gutenberg

Whatever the motive, however, the effort was fruitless, for Fray Vicente was already dead in the odor of sanctity at the date of the bull.

From Project Gutenberg

He died in the odor of sanctity, was buried in the cathedral, and immediately he began to work miracles.

From Project Gutenberg

As Innocent III. declared, it was a disease of the Church immedicable by either soothing remedies or fire; and Peter Cantor, who died in the odor of sanctity, relates with approval the story of a Cardinal Martin, who, on officiating in the Christmas solemnities at the Roman court, rejected a gift of twenty pounds sent him by the papal chancellor, for the reason that it was notoriously the product of rapine and simony.

From Project Gutenberg