before the consecration of the Host) the names of deceased saints and martyrs. Religious men of local celebrity were inserted for this purpose in local lists, called Diptychs, and names universally honoured throughout Christendom appeared in all such catalogues. The confessors and martyrs so honoured are now said to be canonized, that is, they have become enrolled among the number of Christian saints mentioned in the 'Canon,' whom it is the duty of every Catholic to revere, whose intercession may be invoked, who may be chosen as patron saints, and in whose honour images and altars and chapels may be set up.[1]
For a long time it was permitted to the local ecclesiastics to continue the custom of inserting such names in their 'Diptychs,' but about 1170 a decretal of Pope Alexander III. confined the power of canonization, as far as the Roman Catholics were concerned,[2] to the Pope himself. From the different Diptychs various martyrologies, or lists of persons so to be commemorated in the 'Canon,' were composed to supply the place of the merely local lists or Diptychs. For as time went on, it began to be considered more and more improper
- ↑ Pope Benedict XIV. in ' De servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonisatione,' lib. i. cap. 45; Regnier, 'De ecclesiâ Christi,' in Migne's Theol. Curs. Compl. iv. 710.
- ↑ Decret. Greg., Lib. iii. Tit. xlvi., confirmed and explained by decrees of Urban VIII. (13th March, 1625, and 5th July, 1634) and of Alexander VII. (1659).
