medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I suspect that if you look in the on-line Catholic
Encyclopedia, the case of Pius X will be spelled out.
These days usually medically unexplained cures after
prayers to the saintly candidate qualify as miracles.
Nothing like the colorful days of yore....
MG
--- Dennis Martin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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
=== message truncated ===
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