Perhaps a dumb query from an amateur medievalist:
In reading medieval history I am occasionally a bit shocked by references to
saints in ordinary contexts. E.g., "[King David of Scotland] applied to the
defence and administration of Scotland the energy which his English mother,
St. Margaret, had shown in religious reform." (Powicke, _Thirteenth
Century_, p. 574) Perhaps people may sometimes regard their mothers or
fathers as saints, but was this ever (in the Middle Ages) true in their own
lifetimes? Was canonization exclusively postmortem and formal (i.e., not by
popular acclamation in advance of death)?
Al Magary
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