Saints in Christian denominations.

Delirium

How-do, people

Have a question about people becoming saints in the different Christian denominations.

Is it a thing in all denominations? Is there cross-denominational recognition of saints, e.g does CoI recognise RCC saints (and vice-versa)?

For those that do sainthood in their branch of Christianity, who in the church decides 'yay or nay' for a potential saint?

Avatar MIA

Delirium wrote: »

Is it a thing in all denominations? Is there cross-denominational recognition of saints, e.g does CoI recognise RCC saints (and vice-versa)?

Pre reformation yes, but don't think COI or COE have canonised anyone since. Stand to be corrected.

hinault

Avatar MIA wrote: »

Pre reformation yes, but don't think COI or COE have canonised anyone since. Stand to be corrected.

I think you're correct.

I think our own great Saint Patrick, his sainthood is recognised by most if not all traditions.

You are correct too only the Catholic Church can confer sainthood.

martinedwards

The protestant view varies.

Most are happy to call the old time saints by their honorific (Saint Nicholas etc) and of course the Apostles are pretty much all recognised.

the more recent ones, not so much.

We might really respect them, agree that they were great folk of faith, but Saint Salomone Leclercq? Most prods would say no.

Manach

There is the official mechanism of recognition by the Church but also a swell of opinion within the Saint's community. I was reading a book on Saints in the Anglo Saxon world, and it seemed that how the folk memory of a holy person as it is viewed by their community tends to focus on key aspects of their lives and how this fit into the pattern of what sainthood, the close relationship to God, should be. A lens.

Peregrinus

Originally - and by "originally" I mean for the first thousand years or so - sainthood was a bottom-up kind of thing, not a top-down process. Saints where those who were popularly acclaimed and venerated as such, but there was no formal canonisation process, just the gradual (or sometimes rapid) emergence of a cult around the individual concerned. So St. Mary, St. Peter, St. Andrew, St. John the Evangelist, St. James the Greater, St. James the Lesser, St. Paul, St. Barnabas, St. Matthew, St. Mark . . . none of them have ever been canonised.

Some saints, like the ones just mentioned, were universally venerated, but many more were venerated only locally. Ireland, as we know, is well-furnished with saints, most of whom are completely unknown elsewhere. The same would be true of many other countries. Of the many, main saints in the Litany of Irish Saints I think only two (St. Laurence O'Toole and St. Oliver Plunkett) have been formally canonised.

When canonisation started to emerge as a process, it was a local process, not one controlled or directed from Rome. When a popular cult grew up around some prominent local person, the local bishop would investigate, collect and weigh evidence, and then authorise (or refuse to authorise) the veneration of the person concerned.

It's only in relatively modern times that Rome has asserted control. Off the top of my head I can't say when this happened, but it's definitely a post-reformation thing. That's not to say that Rome didn't, in the medieval period, intervene in local canonisation processes, e.g., to settle disputes that had been appealed to Rome, but most canonisations proceeded with no involvement at all from Rome.

Which means that the various protestant traditions which diverged from Rome in the sixteenth century weren't rejecting any papal claims about exclusive saint-making; the popes were advancing no such claims. What they were doing was reforming local/national churches which were themselves engaged in saint-making.

For the most part, they stopped. The Protestant focus on the unmediated relationship between the individual and Christ left little room for saints, and the Protestant mistrust of images and icons left little room for the veneration of saints so, really, there didn't seem to be much point in saint-making.

The Anglicans, as always, steered a middle ground. They weren't quite as opposed to, or suspicious of, the veneration of saints as some of their more Protestant brethren - for example, they still had saints days in their liturgical calendar, and they continued to dedicate churches to particular saints - and while they have no formal process of saint making they have dabbled with the creation of new saints - King Charles the Martyr appeared in the Church of England calendar for a while, and he still has a couple of churches dedicated to him. The Presbyterians generally have little to do with saints, but will make exceptions for saints associated with Scotland - principally St. Andrew and St. Columba, both of whom have numerous Presbyterian churches dedicated to them.

Orthodox Christianity doesn't have canonisation; it has "glorification"; the process by which somebody's sainthood is recognised. Any bishop can formally glorify somebody for whom there is a cult of veneration, but in practice this is rarely done at the diocesan level; a glorification will be discussed and approved within the synod of the church before the bishop of the diocese concerned formally celebrates it.

Nick Park

Peregrinus wrote: »

Originally - and by "originally" I mean for the first thousand years or so - sainthood was a bottom-up kind of thing, not a top-down process. Saints where those who were popularly acclaimed and venerated as such, but there was no formal canonisation process, just the gradual (or sometimes rapid) emergence of a cult around the individual concerned. So St. Mary, St. Peter, St. Andrew, St. John the Evangelist, St. James the Greater, St. James the Lesser, St. Paul, St. Barnabas, St. Matthew, St. Mark . . . none of them have ever been canonised.

Some saints, like the ones just mentioned, were universally venerated, but many more were venerated only locally. Ireland, as we know, is well-furnished with saints, most of whom are completely unknown elsewhere. The same would be true of many other countries. Of the many, main saints in the Litany of Irish Saints I think only two (St. Laurence O'Toole and St. Oliver Plunkett) have been formally canonised.

When canonisation started to emerge as a process, it was a local process, not one controlled or directed from Rome. When a popular cult grew up around some prominent local person, the local bishop would investigate, collect and weigh evidence, and then authorise (or refuse to authorise) the veneration of the person concerned.

It's only in relatively modern times that Rome has asserted control. Off the top of my head I can't say when this happened, but it's definitely a post-reformation thing. That's not to say that Rome didn't, in the medieval period, intervene in local canonisation processes, e.g., to settle disputes that had been appealed to Rome, but most canonisations proceeded with no involvement at all from Rome.

Which means that the various protestant traditions which diverged from Rome in the sixteenth century weren't rejecting any papal claims about exclusive saint-making; the popes were advancing no such claims. What they were doing was reforming local/national churches which were themselves engaged in saint-making.

For the most part, they stopped. The Protestant focus on the unmediated relationship between the individual and Christ left little room for saints, and the Protestant mistrust of images and icons left little room for the veneration of saints so, really, there didn't seem to be much point in saint-making.

The Anglicans, as always, steered a middle ground. They weren't quite as opposed to, or suspicious of, the veneration of saints as some of their more Protestant brethren - for example, they still had saints days in their liturgical calendar, and they continued to dedicate churches to particular saints - and while they have no formal process of saint making they have dabbled with the creation of new saints - King Charles the Martyr appeared in the Church of England calendar for a while, and he still has a couple of churches dedicated to him. The Presbyterians generally have little to do with saints, but will make exceptions for saints associated with Scotland - principally St. Andrew and St. Columba, both of whom have numerous Presbyterian churches dedicated to them.

Orthodox Christianity doesn't have canonisation; it has "glorification"; the process by which somebody's sainthood is recognised. Any bishop can formally glorify somebody for whom there is a cult of veneration, but in practice this is rarely done at the diocesan level; a glorification will be discussed and approved within the synod of the church before the bishop of the diocese concerned formally celebrates it.

Most Evangelicals would take the view that all God's people are saints. Some Protestant churches have 'Calendars of the Saints' which include some pre-Reformation figures, but with many new 'saints' added since.

For example, the Lutheran Calendar of the saints includes Martin Luther King Jr (15 January), Martin Luther (18 February), the Wesley brothers (2 March), Harriet Tubman (10 March), Oscar Romero (24 March), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (9 April), Count von Zinzendorf (9 May), Nicolas Copernicus (24 May), John Calvin (27 May), Jan Hus (6 July), William Tyndall (6 October), Isaac Watts (25 November), Francis Xavier (3 December).

While I am not into the whole idea of limiting sainthood to a select few, I must admit that I like the Lutheran list. It's ecumenical, rather than narrowly sectarian, and and acknowledges those involved in social justice.

Peregrinus

Thanks. I didn't know that.

Obviously there's going to be some process by which people are suggested for inclusion in the Lutheran calendar, considered, and then either approved or not approved. If so, this is the Lutheran "canonisation" process, even though they don't (presumably) use that particular term. The main difference from the Catholic/Orthodox tradition is that the Lutheran process - I guess, but with a degree of confidence - doesn't involve a liturgical celebration at the end. But in substance what's going on in all three traditions is the same, we're recognising that the people concerned are in some respect exemplars of Christian faith. In no case are candidates made saintly by the process; they are already saintly, and the process recognises this.

As for all God's people being saints, well, in one sense, yes. (And the word is used in this sense in the New Testament.) But of course in another sense some of God's people are not very saintly at all, and certainly not saintly to an exemplary degree. But once you accept that canonisation/glorification/whatever you call it doesn't create holiness, but simply recognises and calls attention to holiness which is already manifest, then it follows that there have been many, many people of exemplary holiness who have never been "sainted" simply because they were quietly holy. As George Eliot puts it, "the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

(Which, of course, is why we have All Saints' Day, featuring I think in the liturgical calendars of all Christian traditions. Or, at least, all of the traditions that have liturgical calendars.)