Certain Sainthood

Canonization and the Origins of Papal Infallibility in the Medieval Church

Abstract

Donald S. Prudlo, Certain Sainthood: Canonization and the Origins of Papal Infallibility in the Medieval Church, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2015, pp. xii + 217. 978-0-8014-5403-5.
Today we take for granted that, in the Catholic church, only the pope officially declares someone to be a saint. Yet this has been the case only since about 1170, when Pope Alexander III began to reserve the declaration of sanctity to the papacy. Before that date, and therefore including at least half the saints we know and many of the best known — Peter, Paul and the other Apostles, Martha and Mary Magdalene, the two Augustines, of Hippo and of Canterbury, and saints from the
British Isles, Patrick, Hilda of Whitby, Bede and Boniface — were canonized (declared to be saints) by popular acclamation without any formal intervention of the papacy.