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1 Introduction They are everywhere, the saints. Not only in churches, along the road in wayside shrines, on identitification documents , or in civil registers, but also on placards at the entrances of cities and villages —close to 5,000 towns in France are named after saints. We also find them on the labels of cheeses, sweets, and wines. Saint Valentine, a priest and martyr of the third century, became the boon of flo rists; his feast day coincides with the opening of the bird mating season. Saint Patrick’s feast is a day of celebration, regardless of nationality, wherever the Irish have come. Queen Anne’s Lace, the flower, was once Saint Anne’s Lace, named after the patron saint of lacemakers, and Saint John’s Wort and St. John’s Bread are herbal remedies that honor the Baptist, precursor of Christ. Civic festivities, such as July 4 in the United States and November 5 in Great Britain, are always festooned with Catherine’s Wheel fireworks, named after the instrument of torture of the martyr Saint Catherine. And the references continue. Sports fans in the United States are all too familiar with the “Hail Mary.” The brief balmy days of autumn are St. Martin’s Summer in Europe. And before the English reverted to the Native American names of the Great Lakes, Lake Saint Joseph lay at the shores of the French trading post of Chicago. The majestic Saint Lawrence River flows along the history-laden Canadian east. And thanks to the Spaniards, the saints are very much present in parts of the United States: San Antonio, San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Ana, Santa Barbara, among many other cities and, of course, Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula (Our Lady, Queen of the Angels of Portiuncula), which is now a pithy Los Angeles. The saints are everywhere. It is only natural that they should have inspired the great masters of art, particularly during periods when commissions by the clergy abounded for artwork intended to elevate the faith of the people and provide them with examples to follow. Introduction 2 All religions honor those believers who have distinguished themselves by exemplary lives. However, Christianity, perhaps more than any other, has developed a doctrine of sanctity, and Roman Catholicism in particular has drawn parameters defining what constitutes a saint, determined the procedure by which a saint is declared to have reached that sublime state, and explained the role of saints as intercessors and protectors (despite the proverbial statement that “it is better to address oneself directly to God than to the saints”). Within the Roman Catholic Church, the term “communion of saints” expresses this fundamental, though little understood, notion in two ways. First, all good actions contribute not only to one’s own personal salvation, but also to that of others. The second pertains only to deceased saints: “We believe that the multitude of those [souls] gathered around Jesus and Mary in paradise forms the Church of Heaven,” wrote Pope Paul VI in his Credo of the People issued on June 30, 1968, adding that these souls “are where, in eternal beatitude, they see God as He is, and where they also, in different degrees, are associated with the holy angels in the divine rule exercised by Christ in glory, interceding for us and helping us in our weakness.” Pope Paul VI reminds us that the saints are associated with “the divine rule.” He also mentions “the multitude.” Indeed, in the eyes of the Catholic Church the saints are so numerous that it has gathered the anonymous saints into one single feast day: All Saints Day, November 1. It has also, on occasion, labored to limit the number of those saints venerated privately by the faithful, so that some have found themselves bereft of their patron saint. Let us see what history has to say. The first Christians to be considered saints by their communities were thought of as such not only because of their conduct or their piety, but also because they had testified to their faith by dying for it. The Greek term marturia, from which we take the term “martyr,” means “witness.” The first of these, Stephen, is honored on the day following Christmas, and this is not by coincidence. The Acts of the Apostles (a text probably written by the evangelist Luke that recounts the beginnings of the Christian community ) relates that Stephen was “a man filled with grace and power, who worked...

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