medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I tend to include dates of beatification and canonization when they're
striking---particularly soon after death, or a particularly long time
after---because I often wonder why it happened when it did.
Canonization can take such a long time for a variety of reasons. Most
often, there has been a continual popular veneration of the potential
saint, but there has been no particularly strong advocate for the Cause.
Before John Paul II re-organized and streamlined the canonization process,
it seems to have been next to impossible for a figure to be canonized
unless a major religious order supported the cause. One of the notable
changes with the reform of the canonization process is that now diocesan
bishops have a much larger say in the matter, and thus have a much greater
chance of winning universal acknowledgement for their local cults. When
nineteenth- or twentieth-century popes proclaimed a much earlier figure as
a saint, in many cases they seem to have done so because either 1) some
person or organization of power advocated the canonization, or 2) the
canonization particularly fit the pontiff's current "agenda" (such as a
strong emphasis on missionary endeavors, or an effort to show the RC church
as more inclusive, or an effort to acknowledge the holy people of an
underrepresented region).
Anyone care to take it from there? I confess that my knowledge of
post-Reformation Roman Catholicism is spotty at best.
Phyllis
>medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
>Dear Phyllis Jestice: Why are so many saints recognized like Simon
>Ballachi long after their deaths? He was four hundred years afte his
>death and I notgice that not a few are so designated, as, for
>example, a group of English martyrs. Yours, John Mundy
>
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Dr. Phyllis G. Jestice
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