The revival and rehabilitation of the cult of saints—and, more specifically, patron saints—was a key part of the more visible aspects of the plan for re-Catholicisation of the Czech lands. The rehabilitation of local patron saints provided Catholic inroads into existing historical (or quasi-historical) figures from Bohemian history and through them Catholic reformers saw the opportunity to exploit existing patterns of devotions to achieve several goals at once: the Catholicisation of Bohemia's past and the restoration of Catholic orthodoxy to her present and future. These efforts provided a popular and enduring legacy in a variety of musical devotions—patterns that helped to create a body of musical works on the subject of Czech patron saints which drew upon both ancient and modern customs, Latin and vernacular texts, and both native and Italian musical styles and forms. In some cases, the combination of such a variety of traditions and practices resulted in vernacular devotional works without parallel elsewhere in Catholic Europe.

The cult of saints found a good deal of overlap between the superstitious Habsburgs and the superstitious Czechs. There was already a cult of saints in the Czech lands before the Counter-Reformation, primarily built around national patron saints, in particular Wenceslas [Václav], his grandmother Ludmila, Adalbert [Vojtěch], Ivan and Procopius [Prokop]. Although not quite ‘national’ saints, Cyril and Methodius as well as St Vitus ought to be considered in a similar sense.