Anglicans and Saints
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Symphorian
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Canonisation in the history of the Church has not been limited to one particular method, notably the juridical model currently utilised by Rome. Orthodoxy has a different system.
In the late 1950’s an Anglican report ‘Saints and Heroes’ acknowledged that Anglican values as reflected in its practices about the Saints were closer to the autocephalous churches of Orthodoxy than to Rome.
The report said that “the cult of a true saint should be spontaneous, springing from the devotion of the people among whom he/she lived and worked; second, that a bishop or a synod — provincial, national or general — is the proper authority to control the cult.”
King Charles the Martyr was canonised by Convocation of the Church of England according to the three fold pre-10th custom. He died for the Church of England because he refused to abandon episcopacy. There are some churches in England dedicated to Charles and there have been a few alleged miracles ascribed to him. There is a small but active cultus.
The 1958 Lambeth Conference issued the following guidelines regarding the commemoration of Saints and heroes of the Christian Church in the Anglican Communion:
"The Conference is of the opinion that the following principles should guide the selection of saints and heroes for commemoration:
(a) In the case of scriptural saints, care should be taken to commemorate men or women in terms which are in strict accord with the facts made known in Holy Scripture.
(b) In the case of other names, the Kalendar should be limited to those whose historical character and devotion are beyond doubt.
(c) In the choice of new names economy should be observed and controversial names should not be inserted until they can be seen in the perspective of history.
(d) The addition of a new name should normally result from a wide-spread desire expressed in the region concerned over a reasonable period of time."
The current CofE Calendar contains several post Reformation Roman Canonised Saints as well as figures such as Florence Nightingale. To take Nightingale as an example, she is honoured for her humanitarian work with the poor and her nursing role in the Crimea. She is seen as a renewer of society and worked tirelessly towards this by lobbying Parliament. A formidable task for a woman of her time.
(It should be noted that the addition of Reformation or post Reformation era ‘Roman’ Saints such as Fisher, More etc are controversial amongst Evangelical/Low Church Anglicans).
I live in a Celtic region of Britain where many of our churches are dedicated to 5/6th century Celtic Saints. Many of these have probably not been formally canonized in the Roman sense but there is no doubt that we consider them Saints with a capital S and honour them as such.
In the late 1950’s an Anglican report ‘Saints and Heroes’ acknowledged that Anglican values as reflected in its practices about the Saints were closer to the autocephalous churches of Orthodoxy than to Rome.
The report said that “the cult of a true saint should be spontaneous, springing from the devotion of the people among whom he/she lived and worked; second, that a bishop or a synod — provincial, national or general — is the proper authority to control the cult.”
King Charles the Martyr was canonised by Convocation of the Church of England according to the three fold pre-10th custom. He died for the Church of England because he refused to abandon episcopacy. There are some churches in England dedicated to Charles and there have been a few alleged miracles ascribed to him. There is a small but active cultus.
The 1958 Lambeth Conference issued the following guidelines regarding the commemoration of Saints and heroes of the Christian Church in the Anglican Communion:
"The Conference is of the opinion that the following principles should guide the selection of saints and heroes for commemoration:
(a) In the case of scriptural saints, care should be taken to commemorate men or women in terms which are in strict accord with the facts made known in Holy Scripture.
(b) In the case of other names, the Kalendar should be limited to those whose historical character and devotion are beyond doubt.
(c) In the choice of new names economy should be observed and controversial names should not be inserted until they can be seen in the perspective of history.
(d) The addition of a new name should normally result from a wide-spread desire expressed in the region concerned over a reasonable period of time."
The current CofE Calendar contains several post Reformation Roman Canonised Saints as well as figures such as Florence Nightingale. To take Nightingale as an example, she is honoured for her humanitarian work with the poor and her nursing role in the Crimea. She is seen as a renewer of society and worked tirelessly towards this by lobbying Parliament. A formidable task for a woman of her time.
(It should be noted that the addition of Reformation or post Reformation era ‘Roman’ Saints such as Fisher, More etc are controversial amongst Evangelical/Low Church Anglicans).
I live in a Celtic region of Britain where many of our churches are dedicated to 5/6th century Celtic Saints. Many of these have probably not been formally canonized in the Roman sense but there is no doubt that we consider them Saints with a capital S and honour them as such.
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AngelusDomini
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Interestingly some Catholic saints have been recognised by the Anglicans before they were canonised by the Catholic Church - St Oscar Romero springs to mind. His statue is above the West Door of Westminster Abbey as one of the modern day martyrs.
Thanks for the comprehensive answer!
There is so much diversity in terms of organisation and style within the Anglican Communion that I did wonder if there would be an agreed upon method of canonisation.
I would imagine that the canonisation of Charles I was/is somewhat controversial.
There is so much diversity in terms of organisation and style within the Anglican Communion that I did wonder if there would be an agreed upon method of canonisation.
I would imagine that the canonisation of Charles I was/is somewhat controversial.
Tis_Bearself
Patron
The Catholic Church will not even start a sainthood process for a non-Catholic. Being a devout Catholic is a minimum requirement to be considered for Catholic sainthood.You do have to be Catholic to be canonised by the Catholic Church though right? Or could they canonise a non Catholic?
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Tis_Bearself
Patron
If they’re from the 5th or 6th century then they were almost certainly Catholic saints and in the Roman Martyrology (note that Martyrology just means list of saints, doesn’t mean they were all martyred). The Catholic Church did not have the same type of formal canonization process then that it does now, but there were still ways of having local holy people recognized as saints. There was no other Christian religion in the 5th/ 6th century in the Celtic areas, so if someone was considered holy, they were Catholic.
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Hey, they even have Saints Thomas More and John Fisher on their calendars.
Tis_Bearself
Patron
Right, the Anglicans recognize quite a few Catholic saints. Catholics do not recognize Anglican saints though.
There is no dispute that they were Catholic, but they were probably never formally canonised. We know very little about the lives of many of the Cornish saints in particular, for some we only have a name. For a couple we don’t even know if they were men or women, yet there are still churches dedicated to themSymphorian:
If they’re from the 5th or 6th century then they were almost certainly Catholic saints and in the Roman Martyrology (note that Martyrology just means list of saints, doesn’t mean they were all martyred). The Catholic Church did not have the same type of formal canonization process then that it does now, but there were still ways of having local holy people recognized as saints. There was no other Christian religion in the 5th/ 6th century in the Celtic areas, so if someone was considered holy, they were Catholic.
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Padres1969
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Stems from the more open “Universal Church” ideal I would think. Catholics are Christians too, and Anglicans with the broad tent approach to Christianity would I think be more willing to entertain non-Anglicans as saints than any other branch of Christianity (of those that recognize saints). I mean Thomas More for example was a wonder, if tragic, example of holding true to one’s beliefs, even if ironic in recognition by the very denomination that assisted in his execution and sainthood.
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BartholomewB
Guest
But he was not canonized as a saint by the Church of England. There is no such thing as canonization in the C of E. As the OP said, Anglicans recognize the same saints as the Catholic Church from before the Protestant Reformation, but that’s all. There have been no new saints since then.
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I think this is what I’m not getting a handle on. Why would the Church of England include Thomas More and John Fisher in the Calender of Saints and Heroes of the Christian Church? Is the Anglican Communion just taking a wider view of Christianity in this regard than the Catholic Church does?
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Padres1969
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Yes. The Anglican Church generally has a much wider view of Christianity than the Catholic Church, as do many protestant denominations. They are recognized because they are heroes of the Christian Church, even if not Anglicans. The Anglican view generally is that you don’t have to be Anglican to be of Christian virtue. As another poster is fond of pointing out, Anglicans are a motley bunch, and generally speaking try to be welcoming to all Christians viewpoints.
It’s part of why an Anglican church and service can be nigh nearly unrecognizable from a Tridentine Catholic mass and church building all the way to the other end of the spectrum like a modern evangelical service/church building and everything in between. My own Episcopal Church and it’s Rite 2 mass is often mistaken by passers by for a typical Catholic church building holding Catholic ordinary form mass, until the dean presiding stands up and you realize she’s a woman. The church down the street from mine is set up to hold an ad orientem Rite 1 mass that other than the lack of latin is hard to distinguish from a Tridentine Catholic mass. The first Anglican church I ever attended was on the other end of the spectrum with a very informal Rite 3 service. You’ll find the same diversity in what Anglicans believe once you get beyond the basic tenets of Christian faith.
It’s part of why an Anglican church and service can be nigh nearly unrecognizable from a Tridentine Catholic mass and church building all the way to the other end of the spectrum like a modern evangelical service/church building and everything in between. My own Episcopal Church and it’s Rite 2 mass is often mistaken by passers by for a typical Catholic church building holding Catholic ordinary form mass, until the dean presiding stands up and you realize she’s a woman. The church down the street from mine is set up to hold an ad orientem Rite 1 mass that other than the lack of latin is hard to distinguish from a Tridentine Catholic mass. The first Anglican church I ever attended was on the other end of the spectrum with a very informal Rite 3 service. You’ll find the same diversity in what Anglicans believe once you get beyond the basic tenets of Christian faith.
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GKMotley
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Motley be the crew.
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ReaderT
Guest
Correct. Martin Luther King Jr. was made a saint as a Baptist pastor. (That was before it came out that he was a womanizer / cheated on his wife)
One Episcopal church even has icons of non-Christian “dancing saints” like Gandhi and Malcolm X.
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Padres1969
Guest
Well not saints, heroes of the Church.
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Bithynian
Guest
Very different. It’s important to set it in context: serious theological reappraisal of the commemoration of saints and martyrs only began to take place in the 19th century due to the Catholic Revival (i.e. the Oxford Movement), in which many Pre-Reformation beliefs and practices were reintroduced. Some Anglican provinces and dioceses (e.g. Nigeria, Uganda and Sydney) remain very evangelical. To a large extent in these churches, commemoration of saints is kept at a minimum, and is more seen as a bit of curious, arcane history.
Even in those Anglican churches more shaped by the Catholic Revival, Pre-Reformation practices and beliefs were often recontextualised according to Anglican theological emphases. Generally, global Anglicanism does not approach saints in a manner of veneration that is comparable to Catholicism or Orthodoxy. It is more shaped by the Anglican (but not exclusively Anglican) theology of ante-Nicene (i.e. pre-325 AD) martyrdom; early saints were overwhelmingly martyrs.
In that time period, there are two standout features about the traditions:
(1) In the NT and extra-biblical literature, Christians routinely referred to themselves as a “church” of “foreign aliens” (πάροικοι paroikoi) and “strangers” (ξένοι xenoi) whose citizenship (πολίτευμα politeuma) is elsewhere, broadly analogous to Abraham’s descendants being aliens in a foreign land (Gen 15:13); and
cont.
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Bithynian
Guest
(2) The abundance and distinctiveness of early Christian martyrdom accounts. The martyr was intimately associated with the self-identification of the Church: the “foreign alien” martyr, who refuses offerings to the pagan imperial order (which saw itself as the embodiment of ‘The Sacred’ without compare), who is then killed and passes from his “sojourning” (that is, living as a foreign alien) to his “citizenship” in heaven. In connection to this, churches routinely circulated martyrdom accounts, addressed from “the church of foreign aliens living in X” to “the church of foreign aliens living in Y”: this recognition of martyrs was seen one aspect of communion.
It’s particularly notable that these martyrdoms were almost universally associated with miracles that emphasise the heightened, perfected holiness of the matyr: in the case of Polycarp, his death was compared to the sweet aroma of bread (that is, the Eucharist). In many ways, these miracles were analogous to God telling Moses that “I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all my wonders” (Ex 3:20): in the case of the wonders he performed for Polycarp, it was a demonstration of the superiority of the Lord’s divine presence over that of the pagan empire.
With all that in mind, when Anglican churches commemorate a particular saint, the emphasis in most cases is not that “he (or she) died for the Anglican church” (which, in the case of John Fisher is untrue) or that “he (or she) is in heaven and is able to intercede for us”, but more so that “he (or she) died in great holiness in the divine presence of the Lord”.
It’s particularly notable that these martyrdoms were almost universally associated with miracles that emphasise the heightened, perfected holiness of the matyr: in the case of Polycarp, his death was compared to the sweet aroma of bread (that is, the Eucharist). In many ways, these miracles were analogous to God telling Moses that “I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all my wonders” (Ex 3:20): in the case of the wonders he performed for Polycarp, it was a demonstration of the superiority of the Lord’s divine presence over that of the pagan empire.
With all that in mind, when Anglican churches commemorate a particular saint, the emphasis in most cases is not that “he (or she) died for the Anglican church” (which, in the case of John Fisher is untrue) or that “he (or she) is in heaven and is able to intercede for us”, but more so that “he (or she) died in great holiness in the divine presence of the Lord”.
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