Saint

For recommendations on how to abbreviate Saint, go to Saint (abbreviation).
AWE's articles on specific saints are listed in the category:saints.

In the UK, the term "Saint" is predominantly used among Christians. It is a title of honour, used for:

• a person with an elevated level of holiness ("heroic virtue", in the Roman Catholic catechism - often the martyrs, "faithful unto death").
• some of those contemporary with Jesus, such as his relatives Saint Anne and John the Baptist, and the Apostles.
• archangels - the archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael are venerated as Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael by some Christian groups. Some churches are dedicated to Saint Michael (the commander of the heavenly host [~ army] of angels), or Saint Michael and all angels.

In the early centuries of the faith, most saints were recognized by popular feeling that they had been exceptional people, and/or that miracles had occurred which they were believed to have caused. Now, they must be canonized by a church (usually the Roman Catholic church) before being officially recognized. Saints are regarded as being close to God, so they can intercede for (~ carry the prayers of) followers of their cults. Some saints are regarded as the special patrons of some institution, place or cause: pious travellers pray to Saint Christopher, their patron, as shoemakers to Saint Crispin; Saint Jude is the patron saint of lost causes. Saint Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, Saint Andrew of Scotland, Saint David of Wales, Saint George of England and Saint James of Spain. Many schools, hospitals and colleges are named after particular saints, like St John Fisher and St Thomas More, popular names for Catholic schools in the UK; Saint Catherine's College of Cambridge University; and Bart's Hospital in London.

Equivalents to saints are recognized in religions other than Christianity, for example Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and the Sufi tradition in Islam. In all of these, worshippers may congregate at particular shrines, tombs or temples associated with holy individuals and pray for their intercession with the Supreme Being recognized by their faith. Hindus recognize some individuals as mahatma (the Sanskrit word for "great soul" which was bestowed on Gandhi (1869-1948), the great teacher ) and paramahamsa (the Sanskrit word for "supreme swan"), while Buddhists hold the Arhats (literally translated as "worthy ones") in special esteem. A closer parallel might be the concept of sant found in North Indian religious tradition; it should be noted that sant is derived from the Sanskrit word for 'truth' and not from the Latin root of "saint". The term Sant is still sometimes loosely applied to living individuals in the Sikh and related communities.

Achieving the status of sanctity (~ saintliness) differs between religions, along with the definition of what a Saint truly is. The OED gives Saint as "prefix to the name of a canonised person": however it is only the Roman Catholic church, among west European churches, that canonizes people (adds them to the canon or list of Saints). This decision is made by the Pope after lengthy investigations into the person in question, one of the criteria being that at least three important miracles should be attributed to the intercession of the candidate, after death. The Church of England has recognized one saint - Saint Charles, "King and Martyr": King Charles I, following his execution in 1649. In more Protestant traditions, saint has been used with two tendencies: it has been common to refer to all dead Christians as 'Saints'; and in times of religious and political upheaval, 'Saint' has been used to mean 'people who agree with us'. Milton, begins his sonnet 'On the late massacres in Piedmont', which commemorates the victims of a sectarian slaughter, with the prayer

AVENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered Saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;

which conflates these two meanings.

Saints have given their names to

• dates. It was the medieval habit to date documents according to the religious calendar, in which every day of the year has a religious identity, most commonly the feast day celebrating a particular saint, perhaps the day of her death or birth. Battles and other public events were dated by saints' days, as Agincourt (1415) was fought on St Crispin's Day (25th October);
• institutions, like hospitals, schools and colleges;
• some families, like St Clair (pronounced SIN-clare IPA: /'sɪn klɛə/ - Scots spell it Sinclair) and St John ('SIN-jen', IPA: /'sɪn dʒən/) (you may want to see also Odd pronunciations of proper names - examples);
• some places, like Saint Vincent and Saint Lucia in the Caribbean - often recording the fact that they were 'discovered' by Europeans on a Saint's feast day.

Other European languages use different forms of the same word - the French saint looks the same but is pronounced differently, roughly as a nasal 'san' (IPA: /sɛ̃/), and changes for female saints - the feminine form is sainte, pronounced 'sant' (IPA: /sɛ̃t/); in several languages, females may be santa, while the male santo may be cut to San (as in the Spanish American San Francisco) or São (as in the Brazilian Portuguese São Paolo). The plural is santos, as in the Spanish name of the Feast of All Saints Día de todos los Santos.