Thomas Plassmann

For the most part, contributions to Martyrology are made by the
surviving adherents who make claims to the same tenets as the deceased
without having taken that fatal final step. Few biographi of saints
have been written by doubters -- Cioran being the exceptional proof of
this rule.

The authorship here is ambiguous. The Editor notes: "The text is
based on authorized sources, a chief one being Alban Butler's Lives of
the Saints" [viii]. But the text provides richer historiography and
context than Butler was able to provide. Includes semiotic material,
even in the description accompanying the Illustrations.

The Illustrations consist of 48 colored reproductions of
paintings, distributed at the convenience of the printer [every 16
pages] through the book. The Index indicates the facing page of each
illustrated Saint, some of which are wonderful "finds". For example it
is refreshing to see Rembrandt's depiction of Saint Paul as a gentle
bearded elder Jew [112] instead of the beady-eyed shaven Roman gentile
seen in other selections.

In many cases, the "biographical" text is immediately followed by
selections from the subject's writings or transcriptions. For example,
we find the translated archival transcriptions of the trial of Jeanne
d'Arc, as she wrote nothing. For Saint Paul we have some 14 letters of
his letters secured in the New Testament, and so the Editor apparently
chose not to reproduce any of them.
The book is not overloaded with the literature of the subjects.
Members of the sanctified who wrote prodigiously are reduced to slim
excerpts. For example, Saint Augustine is represented with only a few
pages from the Confessions, and City of God.
Father Plassmann, in his Introduction, reveals his most Catholic
faith and care in his catalog of 68 Saints, whose stories are presented
in chronological order. Of course, it is not "historical" -- it is not
based on cross-referenced evidence.
For example, while claiming that "The record of the Passion of
St. Perpetua, St. Felicitas, and their Companions is one of the great treasures of martyr literature" (which is true), the text goes on to
claim that it is "an authentic document preserved for us in the actual words of the martyrs. That cannot be true: There was no "great African city of Carthage", in the year 203..." [11]. Carthage was destroyed in the Third Punic War
shortly after 146 b.c., and all of its citizens were sold into slavery. Thus, it seems unlikely that a Judge Hilarion, a Roman procurator, could
condemn the companions to the wild beasts of the arena. Indeed, the
martyrdom of Christians in Roman arenas has almost no physical
corroboration, and is absent from all known contemporary Roman records. Virtually all of the martyrs so recounted were victims of other Christians persecuting them after the fall of the Roman Empire for their various "heresies".

The Introduction admits that the practice of veneration was not
adopted by the "infallible" Popes until the year 993 [xi]. And even
then, in the early centuries, most of the then-designated saints were former Popes [xiii] -- not the galaxy of martyrs emerging from more
lowly classes more lately venerated.
The Introduction assures us that only approved authors and reliable sources have been followed [x]. This is especially reassuring
in light of the deluge of legend which hag-rides and usurps the
"revealed truth" and the "bent for the historical" long practiced by
the pontiffs since St. Clement set the pace by assigning scribes to
write down the acts of the martyrs.

The ecclesiastical attitude of careful documentation and
elevation is certainly at work in the continuing, and well-defined
progressive stages of veneration, which now dooms so many cults of
spontaneous devotion. It turns out, like the history of God himself,
the process of beatification and canonization is a fascinating story
of liturgical rules, ecclesiastic authority, and jurisdictional
disputation descending upon the "holy men" and martyred women. Nota
bene, Damian Blaher (1949) prepared by the Church while WWII was being fought. For those familiar with this process, there can be little doubt
that hardly a tribunal in the world handles its cases with such
"painstaking care, critical exactitude, and relentless objectivity"
[xii]as the Sacred Congregation of Rites employs in selecting
candidates for veneration.
Of particular interest to me is the claim that "utter humility is a requisite for sanctity". This is a standard that all "Pious" and almost all "saints" fail. There are many "humble" men and women, and almost NONE of them have been canonized.
Finally, what proof of "miraculous" intervention has ever been established. This requirement if applied must make canonization impossible.
Thus, the task of
searching out and proclaiming these Saints, these most wonderful of the "works of God", seems insurmountable: (1) The truly Righteous can hardly reveal themselves without disqualification for being Self-serving. (2) There is NO mechanism in society which pulls, or even allows, the cream to ascend to the top of this bucket of crabs. (3) The peerage rarely recognizes greatness, and never recognizes humility as a virtue of those it adores. And (4) how many actual miracles can be proved using hard actual "evidence"? What is the proof that a miracle was performed, ever, by God Himself, much less one of his lesser minions!… (más)