Pre-Congregation
is my term for the
Beatification
and/or
Canonization
of
saints
and/or
beati
prior to the institution of the modern investigations performed by the
Congregation for the Causes of Saints
. It designates those
beati
who were
canonized
by local
bishops
,
primates
, or
patriachs
, often as a result of popular devotion.
In terms of this web site, it means that the dates for
beatification
and/or
canonization
are not available. If the dates were ever recorded, those records are long lost, or simply not available to me. Sorry.
The
Catholic Church
canonizes
or
beatifies
only those whose lives have been marked by the exercise of heroic virtue, and only after this has been proved by common repute for sanctity and by conclusive arguments. The chief difference, however, lies in the meaning of the term
canonization
, the
Church
seeing in the
saints
nothing more than friends and servants of God whose holy lives have made them worthy of His special love.
For several centuries the
bishops
, in some places only the primates and patriarchs could grant to
martyrs
and confessors public ecclesiastical honour; such honour, however, was always decreed only for the local territory over which the grantors held jurisdiction. Still, it was only the
Bishop of Rome
‘s acceptance of the cultus that made it universal, since he alone could permit or command in the
Universal Church
.
Towards the close of the
eleventh century
the
popes
found it necessary to restrict episcopal authority on this point, and decreed that the virtues and miracles of persons proposed for public veneration should be examined in councils, more particularly in general councils.
Pope
Urban VII
published, in
1634
, a
Bull
which put an end to all discussion by reserving to the Holy See exclusively not only its immemorial right of
canonization
, but also that of
beatification
.
– Catholic Encyclopedia