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Canonization - History

According to some writers the origin of beatification and canonization in the Catholic Church is to be traced back to the ancient pagan apotheosis. In his classic work on the subject (De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione) Benedict XIV examines at the very outset and refutes this view. He shows so well the substantial differences between them that no rightthinking person need henceforth confound the two institutions or derive one from the other. It is a matter of history who were elevated to the honour of apotheosis, on what grounds, and by whose authority; no less clear is the meaning that was attached to it. Often the decree was due to the statement of a single person (possibly bribed or enticed by promises, and with a view to fix the fraud more securely in the minds of an already superstitious people) that while the body of the new god was being burned, an eagle, in the case of the emperors, or a peacock (Juno ? sacred bird), in the case of their consorts, was seen to carry heavenward the spirit of the departed (Livy, Hist. Rome, I, xvi; Herodian, Hist. Rome, IV, ii, iii).

Apotheosis was awarded to most members of the imperial family, of which family it was the exclusive privilege. No regard was had to virtues or remarkable achievements. Recourse was frequently had to this form of deification to escape popular hatred by distracting attention from the cruelty of imperial rulers. It is said that Romulus was deified by the senators who slew him; Poppae owed her apotheosis to her imperial paramour, Nero, after he had kicked her to death; Geta had the honor from his brother Caracalla, who had got rid of him through jealousy.

Canonization in the Catholic Church is quite another thing. The Catholic Church canonizes or beatifies only those whose lives have been marked by the exercise of heroic virtue, and only after this has been proved by common repute for sanctity and by conclusive arguments. The chief difference, however, lies in the meaning of the term canonization, the Church seeing in the saints nothing more than friends and servants of God whose holy lives have made them worthy of His special love. She does not pretend to make gods (cf. Eusebius Emisenus, Serm. de S. Rom. M.; Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XXII, x; Cyrill. Alexandr., Contra Jul., lib. VI; Cyprian, De Exhortât, martyr.; Cône. Nie., II, act. 3).

The true origin of canonization and beatification must be sought in the Catholic doctrine of the worship (cuZius), invocation, and intercession of the saints. As was taught by St. Augustine (Quost. in Heptateuch., lib. II, n. 94; contra Faustum, lib. XX, xxi), Catholics, while giving to God alone adoration strictly so-called, honour the saints because of the Divine supernatural gifts which have earned them eternal life, and through which they reign with God in the heavenly fatherland as His chosen friends and faithful servants. In other words, Catholics honour God in His saints as the loving distributor of supernatural gifts. The worship of strict adoration, is given to God alone; the worship of honour and humble reverence, is paid the saints; the worship of hyperdulia, a higher form of dulia, belongs, on account of her greater excellence, to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Church (Aug., Contr. Faustum, XX, xxi 21; cf. De Civit. Dei, XXII, x) erects her altars to God alone, though in honour and memory of the saints and martyrs.

While private moral certainty of their sanctity and possession of heavenly glory may suffice for private veneration of the saints, it cannot suffice for public and common acts of that kind. No member of a social body may, independently of its authority, perform an act proper to that body. It follows naturally that for the public veneration of the saints the ecclesiastical authority of the pastors and rulers of the Church was constantly required.

For several centuries the bishops, in some places only the primates and patriarchs (August., Brevic. Collât, cum Donatistis, III, xiii, n° 25 in P. L., XLIII, 628), could grant to martyrs and confessors public ecclesiastical honour; such honour, however, was always decreed only for the local territory over which the grantors held jurisdiction. Still, it was only the Bishop of Rome's acceptance of the cultus that made it universal, since he alone could permit or command in the Universal Church [Gonzalez Tellez, Comm. Perpet. in singulos textus libr. Deer. (Ill, xlv), in cap. i, De reliquiis et vener. Sanct.]. Abuses, however, crept into this form of discipline, due as well to indiscretions of popular fervour as to the carelessness of some bishops in inquiring into the lives of those whom they permitted to be nonoured as saints. Towards the close of the eleventh century the popes found it necessary to restrict episcopal authority on this point, and decreed that the virtues and miracles of persons proposed for public veneration should be examined m councils, more particularly in general councils. Urban II, Calixtus II, and Eugemus III followed this line of action. It happened, even after these decrees, that "some, following the ways of the pagans and deceived by the fraud of the evil one, venerated as a saint a man who had been killed while intoxicated".

Alexander III (1159-81) took occasion to prohibit his veneration in these words: "For the future you will not presume to pay him reverence, as, even though miracles were worked through him, it would not allow you to revere him as a saint unless with the authority of the Roman Church" (c. i, tit. cit., X, III, xlv). Theologians do not agree as to the full import of this decretal. Either a new law was made (Bellarmine, De Eccles. Triumph., I, viii), in which case the pope then for the first time reserved the right of beatification, or a pre-existing law was confirmed. As the decretal did not put an end to all controversy, and some bishops did not obey it in as far as it regarded beatification (which right they had certainly possessed hitherto), Urban VII published, in 1634, a Bull which put an end to all discussion by reserving to the Holy See exclusively not only its immemorial right of canonization, but also that of beatification.