Several times during this discussion of learned sanctity, Catherine of
Alexandria has been mentioned as a patron of the learned. Farmer, in his
*Oxford Dictionary of Saints* (4th edition; Oxford, 1997)
Appendix I, identifies her as the patron saint of philosophers
and of students. In M. Gibson's *Saints of Patronage and Invocation*
(Bristol, 1982) she is identified as the patron saint of
philosophers and, by contrast, of schools and educational institutes.
Yet, according to Farmer and Gibson, Catherine is not the only saint
associated with learned activity. Albert the Great, for example, is
listed by both scholars as the patron saint of scientists. (To
take an example of an individual educational institution, the University
of Paris, with which my own studies are concerned, had its own patron
saints and within it each of the four nations had patron saints).
Yet, as indicated in Catherine's case, some disparity exists between
scholars' attribution of specific types of patronage to individual saints.
To give another related example, Farmer differs from Gibson in listing
Bede and Jerome as the patron saints of scholars. Whilst it is
recognisably difficult to arrive at a fully comprehensive list of saints who
may be classed as patrons of learned activity, how is it that two
modern scholars have attributed different types of patronage to these
saints? From my own perspective it raises the question of when and by
whom saints such as Bede and Jerome came to be regarded as patrons of
scholars. (I am currently looking at the sermones de sanctis preached by a
group of thirteenth-century learned men and have, thus far at least, not
found any preached on the feastday of either saint). I wonder whether
Bede and Jerome were continuously invoked by scholars throughout the
medieval period? Was it the case that earlier medieval saints associated
with the patronage of learning were 'ousted' by those from the later
period? To give an example, Gibson cites Thomas Aquinas and John the
apostol as, amongst others, patrons of theologians. Was it the case that
during the later medieval period the former was increasingly invoked as
patron of theologians in preference to the latter? Finally, to what
extent did medieval scholars invoke saints whom modern scholars have
identified as being, in some way, patrons of learning? Was it the case,
as I suspect, that more often that not veneration of a particular saint
was determined by factors such as the individual scholar's place of origin
and links with order?
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