A few Ireland Information Guide users (well, actually one so far) have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize data in articles about saints. These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!
| Table of contents |
This WikiProject aims primarily at standardizing the articles about people venerated by some Christians as saints or the blessed and making sure that they maintain a NPOV. In the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, a saint is a person who has been officially recognized (canonized) by the Church. This project should cover saints recognised by at least one Christian denomination.
The parent of this WikiProject is the WikiProject Biography.
No descendant WikiProjects have been defined.
No similar WikiProjects have been defined.
In order to maintain a NPOV, it is essential that information concerning a particular saint as a historical person were separated from information about the veneration of this person as a saint in a given religious community or denomination. The best way to achieve this would be to divide an article into two parts: Life and Veneration.
However, saints are so diverse, that standardization cannot be pushed too far. Saints vary from important historic figures (popes, kings, philosophers, etc.) with well documented biographies to completely legendary ones. Therefore physical division of an article may not always be very practical. But even then there should be no doubt as to what is a historical fact, and what belongs to legends and tradition.
This section should concentrate on the worldly matters and follow the same rules as any other biography. If possible, it should give the real name of the saint, his/her dates and places of birth and death, list his/her accomplishments, and so forth.
It would be preferable if the styles like "Venerable", "Blessed" or "Saint" were not used in this section for the sake of NPOV.
This section may also give cover legendary matters (such as miracles performed by the saint during his/her life), but it should make clear that it belongs to tradition.
Of course, if necessary, this section may be subdivided or followed by another section, e.g dealing with the persons accomplishments (Works, Writings or the like) or Death (especially in case of some martyrs).
This section should describe the development of the veneration or cult of the person in question after his/her death. Notably it should inform about who, where and when the saint was beatified and canonized. It may also give some details concerning the cult, like its historical and geographic reach (some saints were more popular in some places and periods than others), as well as things like feast date, patronage (what he/she is a patron saint of), how he/she is traditionally depicted in religious art, etc.
People venerated in the Roman Catholic Church are generally divided into two categories: those who have been only beatified (the Blessed) and those who were also canonized (the Saints); though many saints venerated already in very early Christanity were not formally canonized. The Eastern Orthodox Church generally does not distinguish between the Blessed and the Saints.
Another line of division is between those venerated mostly because of the way they died (martyrs) and those venerated mostly because of the way they lived (confessors). Some saints will fall in both categories. When talking about some saints, it may be also important to give the saint's hierarchical position within the Church during his life (bishop, cardinal, pontiff) or another title awarded by the Church after the saint's death (e.g. Doctor of the Church).
| Blessed or Saint + name | |
|---|---|
| An image (icon, statue, etc.) | |
| Titles (see Hierarchy definition above) | |
| Born | Date, place |
| Died | Date, place |
| Venerated in | Denomination(s) or "All Christianity" |
| Beatified | Date, place |
| Canonized | Date, place |
| Major shrine | Usually the site of the saint's relics or major icon |
| Feast | Date |
| Attributes | Usually pontifical, episcopal, etc. insignia, tools of martyrdom and so forth |
| Patronage | People, places, diseases... |
| A short hymn or prayer associated with the saint | |
The table should be placed in the Veneration section. If the article is not divided into sections, it should be placed on top.
The template has been used so far in:
Stanislaus of Szczepanów