"Legendary" Saints?

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Susan_Calvin

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Forgive me if I sound uninformed but I am just learning about the saints currently, and I don’t know much. Today I was reading about St. Ursula, and she is mentioned as being “legendary”. The article also mentioned that she was removed from the Roman calendar in 1969, though is still considered a saint. I further read that, after Vatican II, many saints were removed. (?) My question though is two fold: First, when a saint is considered legendary, does that mean they might not have existed at all, or simply that some stories about their lives are legends? And second, why were some saints removed? Are they still saints? What has happened to them?

I hope my questions make sense. Even if I could be pointed in the direction of an article to read I would be grateful.
 
If I recall correctly, the thing with St. Ursula and her gazillion virgin companions was that the whole story came from an old Roman inscription which was probably wrongly interpreted by folks in the Middle Ages. So there was probably some holy person at the bottom of it all, but she probably wasn’t a martyr princess with a gazillion virgin martyr companions.

There are a lot of named saints about whom we just don’t know very much, other than that they lived and died. This doesn’t stop people from telling stories about them, some of which may involve real traditions of their life, some of which are urban legends floating around, and some of which are just really good stories. There was probably a St. Catherine of Alexandria, but she probably didn’t convert a gazillion philosophers with her inspired argumentation. There was probably a St. Christopher, but he probably wasn’t a dogheaded man as portrayed in the Middle Ages. And so on.

Anyway, since the Church is concerned with God’s dealings with His people in history, and since saint legends without supporting evidence were something attacked by Reformation and atheist people, the Church has instituted several projects down the years dedicated to sorting out fact from legend about the saints. This culminated in the decision to take saints without a lot of historical info, like St. Catherine of Alexandria, off the Roman calendar.

This doesn’t mean that St. Catherine of Alexandria isn’t a valid saint. It just means that she’s not a saint that the Church points out for universal celebration, anymore.

It also doesn’t mean that saints’ legends are bad. A lot of them are darned good stories, and teach you something just as fairy tales do. It also doesn’t mean that all amazing miracle stories about saints are false and unhistorical. There are plenty of people alive today who can swear to the amazing miracles of Venerable Solanus Casey, which happened in broad daylight in ordinary everyday modern Detroit. It just means that the Church wants everybody to be clear on what is honest-to-God history and what is story or has no proof, and that it doesn’t want to claim anything that it’s not sure about.
 
The post before mine is a pretty good explanation. Sometimes the legends, such as George slaying dragons, belong more to mythology than to history. Obviously over the years, there really is a saint named George so there is no reason not to address prayers of intercession to George, whoever he might be and what ever he may really have done in his life to live a holy life.
With individuals like Francis and Patrick, on the other hand, while there are stories from their lives that cannot be verified, there are plenty of other stories that have been authenticated.
Patrick escaped slavery and returned to Ireland to convert the island. Did he rid Ireland from snakes? Are there any snakes in Ireland?
Francis was the son of a merchant who gave up his riches to follow Christ. Sometimes it is difficult to sift through the stories that surround his life. Think about the stories that surround our national heroes. All of us learned that that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, a story designed to teach children the importance of telling the truth, although it probably never happened.
 
Susan_Calvin said:
Forgive me if I sound uninformed but I am just learning about the saints currently, and I don’t know much. Today I was reading about St. Ursula, and she is mentioned as being “legendary”. The article also mentioned that she was removed from the Roman calendar in 1969, though is still considered a saint. I further read that, after Vatican II, many saints were removed. (?) My question though is two fold: First, when a saint is considered legendary, does that mean they might not have existed at all, or simply that some stories about their lives are legends?
Click to expand...

Both are possible, depending on the Saint.​

And second, why were some saints removed? Are they still saints? What has happened to them?
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I hope my questions make sense. Even if I could be pointed in the direction of an article to read I would be grateful.
Click to expand...

Most were removed from the Universal Calendar - this was done for a number of reasons:​

  • some Saints were non-existent (Barlaam & Joasaph are a classic example)
  • some are known to have existed, but no reliable details survive
  • the Easter Cycle was being obscured by the slow but steady accumulation of feasts of Saints; in view of its importance, it was decided to trim the number of feasts, as these are far less important than it is. BTW, this is not a horrid modern idea dreamed up by those satanic beats who invented Vatican II - there was a similar tidying-up of the Sanctoral Cycle during the 16th century. Very few canonisations since 1969 have led to the celebration of entirely new feasts.
  • Most of the “absent” Saints still have feasts - but these are celebrated in the areas or by the groups in which devotion to them might be expected to be found, rather than by the Universal Church. St. George is patron of England, Greece, & Russia, so he is feast is important there.
  • The elaborate distinctions between various grades of feast have been simplified, which has led to a grouping together of feasts formerly grouped separately. The drawback with this is that it could lead to “overloading” the Calendar & obscuring the Liturgical Year - so many feasts are now optional that previously were not.
  • One of the purposes of the reform was that the universality of the Church might be more readily apparent: one way to do this was to cut out some of the Saints honoured in the diocese of Rome (such as many of the early Popes), & to include people like the Forty Martyrs of England & Wales, & the missionary Benedictine St. Columbanus (d.615).
  • Some feasts have changed date - St.Thomas Aquinas is now honoured not on the day of his death (7 March) but on the day of the translation of his relics (January 28). This has the further advantage that his feast can now avoid clashing with Lent - so instead of Lent displacing his feast, both can be observed.
To find out more, the best place to look is probably the Constitution on the Liturgy - more exactly, the section on the Calendar:
For more detail,
especially:
See also:
Hope that helps 🙂
 
Gottle_of_Geer said:
  • some Saints were non-existent (Barlaam & Joasaph are a classic example)
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Not strictly correct. To quote the Catholic Encyclopedia:The story is a Christianized version of one of the legends of Buddha, as even the name Josaphat would seem to show. This is said to be a corruption of the original Joasaph, which is again corrupted from the middle Persian Budasif (Budsaif=Bodhisattva).

Source: Catholic Encyclopedia - Barlaam and Josaphat.
Josaphat did exist, he was the Buddha. I think that it was a nice gesture of the Catholic Church to canonise the Buddha. 🙂 However it also probably explains why these two saints were removed from the calendar.

rossum
 
Strictly speaking, there probably were two holy guys named Barlaam and Josaphat. But since the only story we know about them is a story that’s told about the Buddha (and has a lot of legs in other folklore areas, including some Muslim storybooks, about other people), there’s no history to go with them.

However, it would be wrong to say that St. Josaphat is a Christianized version of the Buddha, as there is no evidence for this. Indeed, you can’t get any kind of Buddha vibe from his appearance in medieval culture.

I get kinda emphatic about this, as I used to buy that St. Brigit was a Christianized version of the goddess Brigit. But the more I learned about early Irish monasticism for women, and the more I learned about the goddess Brigit, the less they fit together. (The names are the same because the pagan Irish liked to use god and goddess names for their children, as indeed you’ll find Hindus doing even today and as other pagan Indo-European cultures did as well.) It was a great insult to a great woman, to pretend that she was just a made-up creature of myth and legend. And again and again, stuff that people had told me was a pagan survival has turned out to be a Biblical reference or a widespread European Christian custom or so on.

So I don’t want anybody else to be misled the way I was.
 
Thanks so much for all your detailed answers. The explanation and links are very helpful. The story about the Buddha is interesting though I’m not sure what to make of it either. In any event I really appreciate all the answers, I’ve learned a lot, thank you.
 
Susan_Calvin said:
The article also mentioned that she was removed from the Roman calendar in 1969, though is still considered a saint. I further read that, after Vatican II, many saints were removed.
Click to expand...
I’m rather curious… what other saints were removed from the calendar?
 
DebChris said:
The post before mine is a pretty good explanation. Sometimes the legends, such as George slaying dragons, belong more to mythology than to history. Obviously over the years, there really is a saint named George so there is no reason not to address prayers of intercession to George, whoever he might be and what ever he may really have done in his life to live a holy life.
With individuals like Francis and Patrick, on the other hand, while there are stories from their lives that cannot be verified, there are plenty of other stories that have been authenticated.
Patrick escaped slavery and returned to Ireland to convert the island. Did he rid Ireland from snakes? Are there any snakes in Ireland?
Francis was the son of a merchant who gave up his riches to follow Christ. Sometimes it is difficult to sift through the stories that surround his life. Think about the stories that surround our national heroes. All of us learned that that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, a story designed to teach children the importance of telling the truth, although it probably never happened.
Click to expand...
I happen to believe everything written about St. Francis of Assisi, even the wolf story. Why would such things be mere myths? Look how many amazing things happen in the Gospels. 🙂
 
The_Catholic said:
I happen to believe everything written about St. Francis of Assisi, even the wolf story. Why would such things be mere myths? Look how many amazing things happen in the Gospels. 🙂
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When I picture St. Francis, he is surrounded by birds and other animals. They are unafraid.
Have you read The Little Flowers of St. Francis? I do believe that God can do marvelous things through His people.
 
DebChris said:
When I picture St. Francis, he is surrounded by birds and other animals. They are unafraid.
Have you read The Little Flowers of St. Francis? I do believe that God can do marvelous things through His people.
Click to expand...
I have a biography on St. Francis from Omer Englebert and supposively it’s one of the most (if not best) acurate descriptions on the Saint.
 
rossum said:
I think that it was a nice gesture of the Catholic Church to canonise the Buddha. 🙂
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Some “saints,” as I understand, were identified as such simply by the faithful in antiquity. I do not believe actual “canonization” was involved on the name in question.
 
MarcoPolo said:
Some “saints,” as I understand, were identified as such simply by the faithful in antiquity. I do not believe actual “canonization” was involved on the name in question.
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In the early Church, saints were “canonized” by acclamation. I am not sure when the actual process with which we are familiar developed.
 
DebChris said:
In the early Church, saints were “canonized” by acclamation. I am not sure when the actual process with which we are familiar developed.
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According to this article: ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/CACANONI.htm

the first canonization that they have records of with a papal mandate occurred in 973 of St. Udalricus. It seems that the modern process we’re most familiar with, including the opening of causes and gathering evidence didn’t become really codified until 1234 under Gregory IX.

ChadS
 
As an Englishman I was always disappointed that we had the ‘legendary’ St George as our patron saint. I wished that St Edward the Confessor would be made our patron saint:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

Imagine my shock, then, when I read an account of a recent exorcism in Spain in which the priest invoked St George’s intercession to help drive out a particularly stubborn evil spirit: nicenetruth.com/home/2008/11/an-account-of-a-recent-exorcism-in-spain.html (warning- this is strong stuff, read it only if you are feeling stouthearted):
When the girl hears Father Fortea invoke the name of St. George, she grunts and then turns her eyes up into their sockets, arches her body, and rises completely off the mattress. I can’t believe it…Of all of the saints and angels, the name of St. George is the most effective for this demon
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Now, from here, I came across this account of the St George ‘legend’ from an Orthodox source (as you may know, St George is highly revered among the Orthodox): youtube.com/watch?v=SsxeBBcqQgQ This account unveils the historical basis for the legend.

So, my conclusion? There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. I abide by the revision of the Roman Calender, but think that there is a strong historical basis to many of the legends, which have their own didactic purpose.
 
I haven’t been well the last couple of weeks so I haven’t posted much but thanks to all who have contributed to this thread. Its been really interesting reading about the saints, I appreciate all the insight and links! 🙂
 
Susan
One interesting book is called The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine. It is all about medieval saints and is a mixture of truth and legend that sprang up around these fantastic people. But, as one person pointed out, they may be legend or miracles. When people read about St. Padre Pio 500 years from now, many of the things he did by the grace of God will seem fantastic and legendary too. You can also go to a Catholic book store and find a saint of the day book, which can give you a little snapshot of lots of saints, then read more in depth about the ones that attract you. More interesting to me, and I think you may find them interesting too, are the early church fathers; St. Polycarp, St. Irenaeus, St. John Chrysostum and St. Augustine just to name a few. Then there are the mystics…Well, that’s the thing about the catholic faith. It is ever ancient and ever new.
 
rossum said:
Not strictly correct. To quote the Catholic Encyclopedia:
The story is a Christianized version of one of the legends of Buddha, as even the name Josaphat would seem to show. This is said to be a corruption of the original Joasaph, which is again corrupted from the middle Persian Budasif (Budsaif=Bodhisattva).

Source: Catholic Encyclopedia - Barlaam and Josaphat.
Josaphat did exist, he was the Buddha. I think that it was a nice gesture of the Catholic Church to canonise the Buddha. 🙂 However it also probably explains why these two saints were removed from the calendar.

rossum
Click to expand...

I did think of pointing that out 🙂 I decided to restrict myself to the issue of the credentials of the alleged Saints purely as Saints - & there were no Christians being honoured under those names 😃​

If we must have imaginary Saints, let’s hear it for St. Guinefort, or even St. Murgen:
A Church with mermaid-Saints can truly be called Catholic - & possibly Hindu 😉
 
redhen said:
My favourite mediaeval legendary saint has to be St. Guinefort.

fordham.edu/halsall/source/guinefort.html

St. Guinefort, was, um … a Greyhound. 😉
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There’s a picture of the Holy Hound at the link on him I posted - in colour.​

I wonder if there’s any objection to taking his name in Baptism or Confirmation, or to devotion to him. Better him than some of the two-legged Saints.

He would an ideal Patron Saint of animals, because he is one. Unlike all these heavenly patrons who have zero connection or very little to the things or persons they are patrons of: St. Francois de Sales is far too clean-living to be a credible patron for journalists, & never was one anyway.

If an imaginary Saint with a fake bio like Philomena of Mugnano can be canonised, a quadruped of undoubted reality & blameless antecedents should be a push-over for canonisation 😃
 
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