medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Dear John,

In addition to the replies from André-Yves and from Maddy, I would recommend, as an initial step, a simple count of the saints (and groups of saints) listed in the table of contents of the Acta Sanctorum.

If it suits your purposes, you may consider counting only the saints who are explicity named in relation to feast days, thus avoiding the question of how many tens or hundreds or thousands of anonymous saints were the object of cults.

A nice way to spend some time!

Best wishes, George

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George FERZOCO
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On 1 Jul 2013, at 08:17, André-Yves Bourgès wrote:

medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Hi John,

Just to emphasizes on Maddy's remarks.

In Britanny, the tradition says that in the sole cemetary of Lanrivoare, there are 7847 martyrs (in breton langage, the account is "Seiz mil, seiz kant, seiz ugent ha seiz"). My esteemed friend, Dr Gwenaël Le Duc, who sadly passed away in 2006, was thinking this counting could be a misunderstanding from the text of the vita sancti Goeznovei, in which we read "viri bellatores sex millia sexcenti sexaginta sex, qui numerus secundum Romanos efficit legionem". Such an account also appears out of Brittany in the Passio of the Agaune Martyrs.

Best from

Andre Yves Bourges


2013/7/1 John Shinners <[log in to unmask]>
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Though it could only be impressionistic, I wonder if anyone had ever seen an estimate of the total number of saints venerated in the Middle Ages?  If not, where would be a good place to start counting?

Thanks,
John


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John Shinners 
Professor, Schlesinger Chair in Humanistic Studies 
Saint Mary's College 
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 
Phone: 574-284-4494 or 574-284-4534 
Fax: 284-4855 
www.saintmarys.edu/~hust 
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