§ 99. The Worship of Saints.
Comp. vol. III. §§ 81–87 (p. 409–460).
The Worship of Saints, handed down from the Nicene age, was a Christian substitute for heathen
idolatry and hero-worship, and well suited to the taste and antecedents of the barbarian races, but
was equally popular among the cultivated Greeks. The scholastics made a distinction between three
grades of worship: 1) adoration ( ), which belongs to God alone; 2) veneration ( ), which
is due to the saints as those whom God himself has honored, and who reign with him in heaven;
3) special veneration ( ), which is due to the Virgin Mary as the mother of the Saviour and
the queen of all saints. But the people did not always mind this distinction, and the priests rather
encouraged the excesses of saint-worship. Prayers were freely addressed to the saints, though not
as the givers of the blessings desired, but as intercessors and advocates. Hence the form "Pray for
us" (Ora pro nobis).
The number of saints and their festivals multiplied very rapidly. Each nation, country,
province or city chose its patron saint, as Peter and Paul in Rome, St. Ambrose in Milan, St. Martin,
St. Denys (Dionysius) and St. Germain in France, St. George in England, St. Patrick in Ireland, St.
Boniface in Germany, and especially the Virgin Mary, who has innumerable localities and churches
under her care and protection. The fact of saintship was at first decided by the voice of the people,
which was obeyed as the voice of God. Great and good men and women who lived in the odor of
sanctity and did eminent service to the cause of religion as missionaries or martyrs or bishops or
monks or nuns, were gratefully remembered after their death; they became patron saints of the
country or province of their labors and sufferings, and their worship spread gradually over the entire
church. Their relics were held sacred; their tombs were visited by pilgrims. The metropolitans
usually decided on the claims of saintship for their province down to a.d. 1153.^518 But to check the
increase and to prevent mistakes, the popes, since Alexander III. a.d. 1170, claimed the exclusive
right of declaring the fact, and prescribing the worship of a saint throughout the whole (Latin)
Catholic church.^519 This was done by a solemn act called canonization. From this was afterwards
Wie der Gestirne helle Shaar,
Die ihren Schöpfer wandelnd loben
Und führen das bekränzte Jahr.
Nur ewigen und ersten Dingen
Sei ihr metall’ner Mund geweiht,
Und stündlich mit den schnellen Schwinger
Berühr’ im Fluge sie die Zeit.
Dem Schicksal leihe sie die Zunge;
Selbst herzlos, ohne Mitgefühl,
Begleite sie mit ihrem Schwunge
Des Lebens wechselvolles Spiel.
Und wie der Klang im Ohr vergehet,
Der mächtig tönend ihr entschallt,
So lehre sie, dass nichts bestehet,
Dass alles Irdische verhallt."(^518) Sometimes also bishops, synods, and, in cases of political importance, kings and emperors. The last case of a
metropolitan canonization is ascribed to the archbishop of Rouen,a.d.1153, in favor of St. Gaucher, or Gaultier, abbot of Pontoise
(d. April 9, 1130). But Labbe and Alban Butler state that he was canonized by Celestine III. in 1194. It seems that even at a
later date some bishops exercised a limited canonization; hence the prohibition of this practice as improper by Urban VIII. in
1625 and 1634.
(^519) The occasion of the papal decision in 1170 was the fact that the monks of a convent in the diocese of Lisieux worshiped
as a saint their prefect, who had been killed in the refectory by two of their number in a state of intoxication.