• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Where Do Saints Come From?

A

Anonymous

Guest
not as in which town ;) but how did saint hood get started? was thinking about this last night (don't know why) and realised it's one of the many things i don't have a clue about.

no doubt there are a few of you out there who can tell me, so please do.
 
I don't know the answer but i wonder if it was some reflection of older 'pagan' religions that had god's and goddess and godlings for separate functions all answerable to one 'king' god e.g Jove/Zeus.
 
It's very much that old habit (as it were) in a new guise. That's why there are saints of things and of places.
 
It depends though. There are two types of saints, in the Catholic religion anyway.

1. Ones approved by the church. Investigations by a committee, etc and then made 'Blessed' and finally canonised as a 'Saint'. I think the present Pope is creating something like a dozen saints a week, the man has gone mad on it.

2. Local holy men or women, who had religious houses or abbeys or wells named after them and, over time, became seen as saints. Usually miracles are attributed to them. Often little or no documentary evidence these people existed. Some of these may stem from a Pagan origin (like St Brigid of Kildare).

Ireland has only 2 or 3 official saints I think, as approved by the Pope. However each county would have several traditional saints. St Patrick was never canonised.
 
Inverurie Jones said:
It's very much that old habit (as it were) in a new guise. That's why there are saints of things and of places.
Click to expand...

maybe cos of the Pilgrim trade... a good saint was worth money!..even a minor one could be appended to someone eles saint and made part of a station on a pilgrimage.
 
so any idea how it orininaget as a structure of the catholic church?

i have read that a lot of old pagan stories were rewritten to glorify the new christian religion but i didn't know that they never even bothered cnnonising these figures of lengend!
 
Sainthood

Many of the early saints were tortured by non-Christians (ie: Romans) in the most indescribable ways.

That they did not refute their beliefs under sufferance of such pain was seen as a good enough reason to honour their travails with a Sainthood by the proto-Christian church.

Saint Agnes and Saint Dorothy are good examples of this.

Blueswidow is also right about many demi-gods/goddess' being deisically transliterated into Christian Saints.

Eusebius wrote a fair amount about Martyrdom, early Christians etc but you're probably as well to web search for it.
 
Saints revisited

Find it unsavoury to reply directly below one of my other scribblings, but thought I'd share the take on Saints from a more Catholic-Centric POV.

Butler's lives of the saints (in 12 volumes, 1 for each month) is the definitive lexicon of all saints recognised by old mother Rome.

Interestingly, a number of saints have been gradually weeded out from this book, after the church decided there was not enough evidence of their existence to merit inclusion in the Sainthood rank and file.

I was also slightly concerned my original explanation was not entirely correct. Shouldn't have worried about that, it was right on the money.

The days of saints stemming from martyrdom are now nearly long gone (pencils driven into the ears of Catholic missionaries in the Far East notwithstanding), so most sainthoods of recent vintage are for generally "worthy" acts. A few miracleworkers still abound in the annals though.

Bought the July copy of Butler's for £2.99 from my local esoteric book store. Recommended for all good Catholics out there, or for those of us with an inquisitive nature.

I promise that's the last i'll post on the subject...

TMS
 
sidecar_jon said:
maybe cos of the Pilgrim trade... a good saint was worth money!..even a minor one could be appended to someone eles saint and made part of a station on a pilgrimage.
Click to expand...

cynical but probibly true.
 
Anonymous said:
i have read that a lot of old pagan stories were rewritten to glorify the new christian religion but i didn't know that they never even bothered cnnonising these figures of lengend!
Click to expand...

bridget/bride/brede?
 
Frideswide said:
bridget/bride/brede?
Click to expand...


St Brigid’s Day – a festival about fertility, protection and blessings

Clodagh Doyle, Keeper of the Irish Folklife Division, gives an introduction to St Brigid’s Day, an Irish festival which signaled the first day of spring iInfolk tradition. It was a time when people looked to St Brigid for blessings, protection and fertility for the year ahead.

Vid at:
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=405815463980776

Find out more about some of the customs and traditions associated with St Brigid’s Day in Ireland:
https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/News/St-Brigids-Day
 
I dont know if this has been said before (haven't read the whole thread, my bad), but when i was in Mexico and Peru, i was told that when the missionaries converted the native population, a lot of the time they just converted traditional figures of worship, fertility godesses etc.. into saints such as the Virgin Mary, so to the native population they were still worshiping their deities but the missionaries called them saints.
 
There is a bit of a misunderstanding that many have about the Roman Catholic idea of what a saint is. Properly speaking, anyone who went to heaven is a saint. Therefore the Church doesn't make anyone a saint, it only recognizes their sainthood.
 
I have to say Neil Gaiman in ‘American Gods’ got it bang on. People were killed very horribly in order to become intermediaries between the gods and normal people. Maybe they became god-like themselves. In Christian times people who had suffered and died very horribly for their faith became powerful intermediaries between deity and ordinary people. And that’s what saints are. You ask them to ask god for things.
 
I
Souleater said:
I dont know if this has been said before (haven't read the whole thread, my bad), but when i was in Mexico and Peru, i was told that when the missionaries converted the native population, a lot of the time they just converted traditional figures of worship, fertility godesses etc.. into saints such as the Virgin Mary, so to the native population they were still worshiping their deities but the missionaries called them saints.
Click to expand...
Isn’t that where some of these black madonna-type figures come from?
 
JaneD said:
I have to say Neil Gaiman in ‘American Gods’ got it bang on. People were killed very horribly in order to become intermediaries between the gods and normal people. Maybe they became god-like themselves. In Christian times people who had suffered and died very horribly for their faith became powerful intermediaries between deity and ordinary people. And that’s what saints are. You ask them to ask god for things.
Click to expand...
The vikings were alway more than happy to martyr christian priests quite horrifically here is a (long) list of them:-

https://catholicsaints.info/tag/martyred-by-vikings/
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top