nt, on the criterion by which the day of his
festival should be adjusted in the calendar. Technically, to make a
saint, there should be an act of pontifical jurisdiction, all the more
solemn than any secular judicial act as the interests affected are more
momentous; but only a small number of the saints stand on record in the
proceedings of the Vatican. In fact, the great body of them were in the
enjoyment of their honours hundreds of years before the certifying
process was adopted, and to investigate all their credentials was far
too weighty a task to be attempted. It is taken for granted that they
have been canonised, and if it be difficult to prove that they have gone
through this ceremony, they hold their ground through the still greater
difficulty of proving that they have not. Some of those whose sanctity
is established by this kind of acclamation are so illustrious, that it
would be ludicrous to suppose even the Vatican capable of adding to
their eminence--more so, to imagine any process by which they could be
unsanctified; such are St Patrick, St George, and St Kentigern. But
there is a vast crowd of village or parochial saints firmly established
within their own narrow circles, but as unknown at the court of Rome as
any obscure curate working in some distant valley, or among the poor of
some great city. In such a crowd there will naturally be questionable
personages. St Valentine, St Fiacre, St Boniface, St Lupus, St Maccesso,
St Bobbio, St Fursy, and St Jingo, have names not endowed with a very
sanctimonious sound, but they are well-established respectable saints.
Even Alban Butler, however, has hard work in giving credit to St
Longinus, St Quirinus, St Mercurius, St Hermes, St Virgil, St Plutarch,
and St Bacchus. It is the occurrence of such names that makes Moreri
speak of the Bollandist selection as rather loose, since it contains
"vies des saintes bonnes, mediocres, mauvaises, vrayes, douteuses, et
fausses."

The saint's festival-day is generally the anniversary of his death, or
"deposition," as it is technically termed; but this is by no means an
absolute rule. Few compilers deserve more sympathy than those who try to
adjust saints' days by rule and chronology, since not only does one
saint differ from another in the way in which his feast is established,
but for the same saint there are different days in different countries,
and even in different ecclesiastical districts--the diocese of Paris
having, for