15th Century Catholics: Saints they ain’t
This year I am going to be teaching one of my children a history of the Church through the lives of the saints. I’m picking two or three saints from each century since the Church was founded to represent how men and women throughout the years have best followed Christ in their time and culture. I have found this Wikipedia page of extreme help. It lists all the saints in chronological order, divided by century.
A few (admittedly trivial) statistics I gathered:
- First Saint to die: Joseph (this does not include saints who died before Christ was born, such as Anne and Joachim)
- Saint most recently born: St. Gianna Beretta Molla (1922)
- Saint who most recently died: St. Josemaria Escriva (1975)
- Century with the most saints: 4th century (531!)
- Century with the least saints: 15th century (only 30)
I find it interesting that the 15th century has the least number of canonized saints, for the division of Western Christendom immediately followed it in the 16th century. Would so many souls have decided to leave the Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation if they had more examples of saints living within the Church during the 15th century?
The 4th century gets the distinction as the “most holy” century with 531 canonized saints. Two distinctive events of that century produced this large number of saints: the persecution of Diocletian at the beginning of the century led to numerous martyr-saints, and the later legalization of Christianity brought internal debates into the open, creating a need for great theologians like Athanasius, Basil and Gregory Nazianzen to defend the faith against powerful heresies.
For the really geeky out there (like me), here is a chart showing the number of canonized saints by century:
My own favorite “saint centuries” are the 1st (of course), 4th, 13th (can’t beat Francis, Clare, Dominic and Thomas Aquinas), and 20th. If you have a favorite “saint century,” feel free to leave it in the comments.
Update: A number of people have commented on the fact that these numbers don’t really reflect the exact number of saints through the centuries (either due to Wikipedia’s unreliability or the anonymity of many saints or all the machinations that are involved in getting someone officially canonized). This is true. The above information is not intended to be scholarly, but instead just a fun look at canonized saints through the ages. We can be very thankful that heaven is full of a large number of saints unknown to us who constantly intercede on our behalf.
You’re right you can’t beat Clare, but I live in the 20th century. Oh, you mean St. Clare of Assisi, right.
Yeah, I would have to say the 13th century is my favorite. For me, Francis is the ultimate in saints.
Thanks for putting together these statistics. Holy Line Graph, that’s cool.
It would be interesting to look at the population of Catholics in each century as well… then you might be able to come up with a “holiness” factor.
Dear Eric:
Having been born in Hong Kong, China (I am a convert), I notice right away that this wikipedia page omitted a lot of the individual names in the “group martyrs”. Currently the number of canonized martyrs from the four major East Asian nations are:
China – 120, Korea – 103, Vietnam – 117, Japan – 42
They are scattered over several centuries, so they are pretty hard to track. You also remember that because of the utter (for Westerners, unthinkable) brutality and severity of the persecution (continuing to this day in North Korea and somewhat less so in China), most records are lost, so most Asian martyrs would not be recognized even though they are saints in Heaven. The best estimates that I have for the total number of martyrs are:
Korea (Kingdom+North Korea, all denominations, ongoing) 300,000+; Japan (mostly Catholics) 2-300,000; Vietnam (mostly Catholics) 130-300,000; China (all denominations, ongoing) 100,000′s to 1,000,000′s (nobody have the exact number). I hope that if your parish church celebrate the Feast Days of the Martyrs of China, Korea, Vietnam and Japan, you understand it is the tip of the iceberg.
Ching
Ching has a good point. The martyrs of Vietnam and Japan came to mind for me as well. It is a curious phenomenon of the latter centuries that Catholics could be and were executed in such extreme numbers, yet this can not be reflected well in these statistics because of the anonymity of those saints.
Wikipedia is not the best source of information. The Vatican website or EWTN or the Catholic Encyclopedia would be better choices, I believe
The 16th century, for sure, with the counter-reformation generation of Saint Ignatius, Beatus Anchieta and Saint Therèse D’Àvila. Or even the own martyrs of Reformation, like Saint Thomas More and Saint John Fisher.
Several points come to mind. (1) “Canonization” was done very differently in the early Church. (2) These days a huge percentage of saints are canonized because they have founded new orders, and their followers push through the cause. I would expect fewer such canonizations when the religious were expected to simply join an existing order. (3) How much attention the Vatican pays to canonizing saints depends on what other problems it has to deal with. Likewise, some saints causes may be hampered by political considerations. Just look at the cause of Pius XII today. (4) Most saints are never officially canonized. They are remembered on Nov. 1.
Anciao,
You are correct: the 16th century did produce some tremendous saints. Sts. Teresa of Avila and Thomas More are two particular favorites of mine.
Wow Eric. Doing something like this never occurred to me! Very interesting.
For those interested in the Church in Japan, I recommend Takashi Nagai’s book “A Song for Nagasaki” recently re-printed by Ignatius.
It is a lovely book.
Interesting statistics for what they are worth..
I suspect that the reason for the low number of saints in the fifteenth century may have little or nothing to do with a lack of holiness.
During the middle ages, saints were canonized often due to popular devotion to them that would spring up in an area where the saint lived and then persist for a few years, possibly a few generations, until it gained critical mass and the cause could be submitted to Rome.
When half of Europe splits from the Church by embracing a doctrine that, in part, viciously rejects devotion to the saints; and when wars engulf both Catholic and PRotestant alike; well, it ought not to be surprising that popular devotion to recently-deceased saints either was suffocated under Protestant reticence or was disrupted by the chaos that ensued.
Very likely, the fifteenth century saints are unknown because there were few people left in their home countries who remembered to pray to them or to pass on their tales.
NSUBUGA JOSEF
I agree with some one who say that most saints are not canonised and the process of canonisation is not very clear almost to every one. like in Uganda many people believe that Fr.Bill joseph was asaint but they have not canonised him.And there is no process being done for his cause to be canonised as asaint.so there many saint we don’t know, then don’t say that in the 16th century holiness was at a low degree.
Since a Catholic is unable to be sure of who or who is not a saint in their own life; how can one determine that of whom they know little to nothing about in many cases and by their own rules cannot possibly know?