Saint

• 1. Introduction

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  Saint is a word old enough to have traveled through three languages before it reached English. It came from the Latin sanctus, meaning holy or consecrated, passed through Old French as seint, arrived in Middle English, and carried its meaning intact the whole way. But the concept it names is far older than any of those languages, and far wider than any one religion.

  The Greek word for the same idea, hagios, appears 235 times in the Greek New Testament alone. The King James Version renders it as holy or saints in different passages. That frequency tells us something: the question of what makes a person holy, and how communities should respond to such a person, is not a marginal question. It sits near the center of how human beings have organized their deepest beliefs.

  Across the world's major religions, from Catholicism to Islam, from Sikhism to Buddhism, communities have pointed to certain individuals and said: this person has reached something the rest of us have not. What they mean by that, how they recognize it, and what they expect from such a person in return, differ in fascinating ways. Those differences are what this documentary explores.

• 2. A Word and Its Roots

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  The English word hallow is synonymous with saint, derived from the Old English halig, the same root as the word holy itself. That connection survives today in Allhallowtide, the period that includes All Hallows' Eve, more commonly known as Halloween, and All Hallows' Day.

  The Latin sanctus had a prior life before Christianity. It was originally a technical term in ancient Roman religion. As Christianity spread and the word traveled with it, sanctus became the vessel for a very different set of ideas about holiness, and the modern word saint carries that layered history into every language that borrowed it.

  Historians of religion tend to use the term saint in a broader way than any single tradition permits, applying it to figures such as the Hindu rishi, the Sikh bhagat or guru, the Shintoist kami, the Taoist immortal or zhenren, the Jewish tzadik, the Islamic wali, and the Buddhist arhat or bodhisattva. John A. Coleman of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, identified what he called family resemblances shared by saints across cultures: they serve as exemplary models and extraordinary teachers; they are regarded as wonderworkers or sources of benevolent power; they are understood as intercessors; they often refuse material attachments; and they possess a special relation to the holy. The anthropologist Lawrence Babb, writing about the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba, put it differently, describing such figures as the focal points of spiritual force-fields who exert powerful attractive influence on followers and touch the inner lives of others in transforming ways.

• 3. The New Testament Collective

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  Paul's letters use the word saints in a way that would surprise many modern readers. Writing in the Apostolic Age, Paul addresses entire communities, not exceptional individuals, as saints. In his letter openings and closings he greets the saints at Corinth, at Rome, at Philippi, at Colossae. In 1 Corinthians 6:2, he makes the equation explicit, identifying the saints with you, so that hagioi functions as a self-designation for all Christians.

  The only clearly singular use of saint in the New Testament is in Philippians 4:21, where the phrase every saint is distributive rather than selective. Scholars observe that the predominant usage marks the church as a people set apart for God, not an elite subgroup within it. Hebrews and Jude use the term for believers as well; Revelation uses it with an emphasis on prayer and endurance.

  Paul also invokes the saints in practical terms. He urges aid for the saints, including the poor in Jerusalem, referencing this shared designation in passages such as 1 Corinthians 16:1, 2 Corinthians 8:4, and Romans 15:26. The later practices of Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism developed their distinct approaches to recognizing exemplary individuals, but those practices stand apart from this original New Testament sense of the word. The divergence between that early collective meaning and the later individual one is where many of the disagreements between Christian denominations begin.

• 4. Canonization and Its History

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  On the 3rd of January 993, Pope John XV became the first pope to proclaim a person a saint from outside the diocese of Rome. Acting on a petition from the German ruler, he canonized Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg. Before that moment, venerations of saints had been local, spontaneous affairs, confirmed by whichever bishop held authority in a given area.

  The centralization of that power was gradual. Pope John XVIII permitted a cult of five Polish martyrs. Pope Benedict VIII declared the Armenian hermit Simeon of Mantua to be a saint. It was not until Pope Innocent III that the papacy reserved exclusive authority to canonize saints, requiring local bishops to seek the Pope's confirmation. Walter of Pontoise holds a specific historical footnote: he was the last person in Western Europe to be canonized by an authority other than the Pope, when Hugh de Boves, the Archbishop of Rouen, canonized him in 1153. A decree of Pope Alexander III in 1170 then formally reserved the prerogative of canonization to the Pope within the Latin Church.

  The formal process, once established, became lengthy. There are four major stages: an investigation of the candidate's life by an expert, submission of an official report to the relevant bishop, evaluation by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints of the Holy See, and finally the title Venerable. Beatification follows, giving the candidate the title Blessed and allowing regional liturgical veneration. At minimum, proof of two miracles through the candidate's intercession is required before canonization. According to the church, a medical recovery must be instantaneous, not attributable to treatment, and must not return, to qualify as a miracle. The case of American deacon Jack Sullivan illustrates this: in 2000, he claimed that John Henry Newman, then a blessed, had interceded with God to cure his spinal stenosis in a matter of hours. In 2009, a panel of theologians concluded that Sullivan's recovery was the result of his prayer to Newman.

  Alban Butler published Lives of the Saints in 1756, covering 1,486 saints. The latest revision of that book, edited by Herbert Thurston and Donald Attwater, contains the lives of 2,565 saints. Robert Sarno, an official of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, has stated that an exact total number of saints is impossible to give.

• 5. Orthodox and Oriental Paths

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  The Eastern Orthodox Church defines a saint as anyone in Heaven besides God, whether recognized on earth or not. Under that definition, Adam and Eve, Moses, the prophets, and archangels all carry the title Saint. Sainthood, in this understanding, does not require moral perfection; the Orthodox Church counts among its saints Mary of Egypt, Moses the Ethiopian, and Dismas, the repentant thief crucified alongside Jesus Christ, all of whom had lived in great sin before their humility and repentance.

  The Orthodox process of recognition begins locally. Saints are typically recognized first by the community that knew them, then confirmed by the wider Church through the Holy Spirit. The formal step is glorification, a service in which the saint is given a day on the liturgical calendar. Crucially, the Orthodox Church does not require demonstrated miracles as Catholicism does; evidence of a virtuous life and prior local veneration suffices. The Church's position is that glorification does not make the person a saint; they already were one, and the Church is catching up to that fact.

  The Eastern Orthodox Church also uses the title Hosios, or in its feminine form Hosia, for saints who lived monastic or eremitic lives, equivalent to the standard title of Saint.

  The Oriental Orthodox churches operate separately, each with its own process. The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, for example, requires that at least fifty years pass following a prospective saint's death before its pope may canonize them. The Armenian Apostolic Church, the Tewahedo Church, the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church, and the Syriac Orthodox Church each follow their own distinct procedures.

• 6. Protestant Disagreements

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  Philip Melanchthon, the author of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, approved the honoring of saints in Lutheran practice under three conditions: thanking God for examples of divine mercy, using saints as examples to strengthen faith, and imitating their faith and other virtues. Lutheran doctrine stops there. Evangelical-Lutherans hold that saints pray for the Christian Church in general, but that prayers directed to saints are prohibited because saints are not mediators of redemption.

  The Augsburg Confession's Article XXI, titled Of the Worship of the Saints, criticized the invocation of saints directly. The Catholic response came in the Confutatio Augustana; the Lutheran counter-response came in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession. That exchange shows how much formal theological weight was placed on this question in the sixteenth century.

  Anglicanism occupies a middle position that has generated its own internal disputes. One of the Church of England's Articles of Religion on the subject of purgatory condemns what it calls the Romish Doctrine concerning the invocation of saints as a fond thing vainly invented, grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God. Yet Anglo-Catholics within Anglicanism draw a distinction between two different acts: asking a saint to pray for you, and asking a saint directly for a benefit. The theologian E. J. Bicknell articulated this distinction, noting that medieval practice had collapsed the two, and that the condemned form was the conflation, not the simpler request for intercession. Unusual examples of liturgical invocation of saints appear in the Korean Liturgy of 1938, the liturgy of the Diocese of Guiana from 1959, and the Melanesian English Prayer Book.

  Methodists honor and admire saints but do not venerate them. Many Methodist churches are named after saints, including the Twelve Apostles and John Wesley, though most Methodist congregations are named after geographical locations. The 14th Article of Religion in the United Methodist Book of Discipline echoes the Anglican rejection, condemning the invocation of saints as vainly invented and repugnant to the Word of God.

• 7. Saints Beyond Christianity

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  Islamic saint veneration has a distinct trajectory. In Sunni Islam, saints came to be defined in the eighth century as a group of special people chosen by God and endowed with exceptional gifts, such as the ability to work miracles. Classical Sunni scholars recognized these individuals as people loved by God who had developed a close relationship of love toward Him. Veneration of saints became, by some accounts, one of the most widespread Sunni practices for more than a millennium.

  Medieval critics were not silent. Ibn Taymiyyah, who opposed the practice of grave visitation, nonetheless stated emphatically: The miracles of saints are absolutely true and correct, and acknowledged by all Muslim scholars. The Quran has pointed to it in different places. That position did not survive intact into the modern period. The Salafi movement, beginning in the twentieth century, opposed the veneration of saints in a manner that Christopher Taylor has compared to the Protestant Reformation, seeking to curtail visiting graves, seeking intercession, and honoring relics. Despite that opposition, living saints with large followings continue to exist, primarily within the Sufi orders. Well-known figures named in the source include Sheikhs Nazim Al-Haqqani, Hisham Kabbani, and Mehmet Adil of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order, as well as Habib Umar bin Hafiz of the Ba'Alawi Tariqat and Muhammad al-Yaqoubi of the Shadhili Tariqa.

  In Sikhism, the concept of sant or bhagat is found in the Sri Guru Granth Sahib. Figures such as Kabir, Ravidas, and Namdev are known as Sants or Bhagats. A Sant is distinguished from a Guru in Sikh understanding; Sants have attained enlightenment through God realization, while Gurus such as Guru Nanak compiled the path to that enlightenment in the scripture itself.

  In African diaspora traditions including Cuban Santeria, Haitian Vodou, Trinidad Orisha-Shango, Brazilian Umbanda, and Candomble, Catholic saints or at least their images were adopted and identified with the spirits or deities of those traditions. The name Santeria was originally a pejorative term applied to those whose veneration of saints deviated from Catholic norms. In Tibetan Buddhism, the tulkus, understood as reincarnates of deceased eminent practitioners, are honored as living saints on earth. Among Druze communities in central Mount Lebanon, Saint George and Saint Elijah hold particular importance; the scholar Ray Jabre Mouawad has noted that Druzes were drawn to these warrior saints because they confronted enemies and prevailed, resembling the values of their own militarized society.