medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Miracles are not required for canonization of martyrs, but evidence that the death was truly martyrdom rather than the victim of political violence etc. has to be provided via historical research. In the case of English Catholic martyrs, the government line was that they were political traitors; the legislation making certain acts of Catholic religious cult or belief treasonous crimes does make it fairly clear that the martyrs under Elizabeth and Henry VIII were dying for religious beliefs. They always insisted that they could accept Elizabeth or Henry as their rightful sovereign but could not accept the Elizabethan settlement which made the church in England a state church or, in the case of the martyrs prior to the Elizabethan settlement, could not accept the preamble to the Act of Succession and Act of Supremacy, which denied the authority of the bishop of Rome over the church in England. The excommunication of Elizbeth by Pius V complicated things even more.
Most of the English martyrs were beatified in the 1880s on the basis of existing cult, not on the basis of martyrdom, because, as I've mentioned before, of fears of inciting anti-Catholicism in western European governments. This leads to the next point: most of the beatifications in the 19thc were in fact on the basis of recognition of long-standing cult. When Urban VIII forbade in the 1640s public liturgical veneration for anyone whose case had not been investigated via the Congregation of the Rites (finally making stick what popes since Alexander III had attempted to make standard, namely, a uniform Roman investigation before elevation to liturgical veneration) and when Benedict XIV worked out in detail the procedures to be followed in such investigations, they exempted from the historical, canonical investigation process (interviewing witnesses etc. regarding a life of heroic virtue, examining alleged miracles based on seven criteria of empirical scientific evidence) saints who were already long dead in 1640 and for whom one could demonstrate (again by historical investigation) a long-standing cultus prior to the 1640s cutoff point but who had not at that point yet been accorded universal liturgical veneration. The simple reason for this was that one could not subject such cases to the same sort of witness interrogation and investigation that one could subject people who died at or after the 1640s. Nor could one subject claims for miracles worked by such long-dead saints long ago to the same investigation that one could subject recently occurring miracles. Hence at least beatification (carrying with it official public liturgical veneration in a single diocese or within a single religious order, sometimes in several dioceses, but not universally) could be approved if it could be shown that people had venerated this person for a long time in a particular locality without the rigorous procedrues which had not yet existed.
But proceeding to canonization (universal liturgical veneration) still would not take place without at least 2 more recent (hence capable of rigorous investigation) miracles. Hence a lot of these 19thc beatifications on basis of longstanding cult never moved beyond that stage because no new miracles either were alleged or, if alleged, passed scrutiny (Benedict XIV's rules for investigating miracles are extremely rigorous).
In the case of the English martyrs, after beatification on the basis of cultus existing., e.g., at Douai among the English Catholic exile community from the 16thc onward in the 1880s, historical investigation of their martyr status was carried out in the 1960s, resulting in their canonizations in 1970. The report of the investigation of martyrdom is very interesting, including among other documentation, the expense report submitted by the executioner for one of the executions. See Archdiocese of Westminster, Cause of the Canonization of Blessed Martyrs John Houghton, Robert Lawrence, Augustine Webster, Richard Reynolds, John Stone, Cuthbert Mayne, John Paine, Edmund Campion, Alexander Briant, Ralph Sherwin, and Luke Kirby, put to Death in England in Defence of the Catholic Faith (1535-1582), Official Presentation of Documents on Martyrdom and Cult, Sacred Congregation of Rites, Historical Section, vol. 148 (Vatican City: Vatican Polygott Press, 1968).
The reforms of 1983 reduced the number of miracles for beatification and canonization of non-martyrs to one each rather than the two (total of four) required under Urban VIII/Benedict XIV.
Thus, while it is possible for a non-martyr to be beatified without any miracles being proven, no non-martyr is to be canonized without at least one miracle. Even in the case of beatifications on the basis of existing cult, of course normally many miracles would have been reported, otherwise, no local cult is likely to have emerged. But in those cases, the alleged miracles would not have been investigated according to Benedict XIV's criteria.
In all these cases we are talking about miracles performed after death, since, it is possible for a person to perform a miracle during his lifetime yet before death to apostasize, given free wil. Declaring someone a saint is a declaration that this person is truly present in heaven (many others are present in heaven but their presence is not clearly known to those on earth) enjoying the beatific vision, enjoying the presence of God who is utterly holy, hence, they would be holy themselves (sancti), since nothing unholy can abide God's presence.
Martyrs are exempt from the requirement altogether because the point of miracles is to demonstrate that the person is truly in God's presence in heaven and capable of acting as an intercessor with God. One may have lived a very holy life up to the point of death and at the last moment, turn away from God. Two ways of being sure that someone did not turn away from God at the last moment (since no human being can be sure what is going on in a dying person's heart) are (1) miracles performed by intercession in heaven after the person's death and (2) martyrdom. A martyr clearly has remained faithful to God up to and into death, since he not only says he's wililng to die for his faith but he actually goes ahead and does, acts out, his belief. That's as close as observers can get to seeing into his heart at the point of death. Hence from the earliest martyrs onward, Christians were convinced that someone who truly died a martyr would immediately enter God's presence. However part of the Christian understanding of martyrdom was that one does not seek out martyrdom but lets it come to one. Polycarp, for instance (the oldest surviving detailed martyrdom account, from about AD 165) initially fled to the country but when the police came after him, did not resist. Polycarp's story became exemplary (and includes all the elements of the cult of saints, relics etc.). Moreover, church leaders like Origen and others denounced those who deliberately sought out martyrdom. (There's a very practical reason invovled here: someone who deliberately seeks to become a martyr probably is operating out of pride and, in the first place, is more likely to get cold feet and apostasize, causing harm to himself and scandal to everyone else, and, second, if operating out of pride, is sinning.) True martyrs are those who do not seek it out but who don't flinch when it comes to them. Robert Bold got it right in _A Man for All Seasons_ when he has Thomas More say to his daughter Margaret: (I'm paraphrasing, Bolt's rhetoric is far better): we have to use our wits to do everything we can to avoid martyrdom, that's what God gave us brains for; if there's a way I can swear the oath I must swear it and you, Margaret must do the same; but if it comes to it that there's no way out that does not sinning, then we must stand to our tackle, "if we have the spittle for it" (that much at least, I think is verbatim). He had asked Margaret, who, in Bolt's poetic license, has learned of the act of Parliament before he had, what the precise wording of the oath was; she asked, what does the wording matter, we can't take it. At that point he tells her that the wording matters greatly; something similar occurs in the scene where his family visits him in the tower and he says that if the government opened a tiny crack he'd fly through it like a bird but if it comes to it, he believed he could stand up to death like a man, if he knew that his family understood why he was doing it. At that point Bolt has Alice More say that that's precisely what angers her: she doesn't see why it had to come to this. This of course, is what a lot of people still say about More: he was stubborn, proud etc. and it need not have come to his death. I mention this to illustrate how the question of pride is involved on all sides of the question of martyrdom and how the Church at least, has tried to distinguish martyrdom from suicide.
Finally,as regards Pius X (another posting on this thread), I don't know his case in detail, but there would have had to have been authenticated miracles involved. One has to get ahold of the official _positio_ and the dossier for his beatification and canonization. The miracles will be dealt with there. He certainly was not canonized on the basis of martyrdom.
I must underscore, however, once more, that most of the dossier of any saint in modern times (after Urban VIII) will deal with evidence for a life of heroic _caritas_ and other virtues.
Dennis Martin
>>> [log in to unmask] 12/05/01 03:38PM >>>
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
>I have always understood Thomas More to have been canonized without
>miracles because of his willingness to die for his convictions.
>Tom Izbicki
>
I believe that martyrs always get a free pass or is that just martyrs before
formal canonization procedures were set up?
Jo Ann
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