A few Wikipedians have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize data in articles about saints. These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!
This WikiProject aims primarily at standardizing the articles about people venerated by some Christians as saints or the blessed and making sure that they maintain a NPOV.
In the Roman Catholic Church the term "saint" refers to a person in heaven—however, since the 10th century, the title "Saint" is only given to persons who have been officially recognized (canonized) by the Church. Those given the title informally, prior to the establishment of the canonization process, are generally still considered both "saints" and "Saints."
Orthodox "canonization" is far less legalistic than is the Roman Catholic. In the Orthodox Church, lack of "official recognition" in no way, shape, or form, prevents someone from being a full-fledged Saint. This project should cover saints recognised by at least one Christian denomination.
Non-Christian Saints If there is an interest in including saints from religions other than Christianity, please propose those changes on our talk page and we can integrate them into the wikiproject.
In order to maintain a NPOV, it is essential that information concerning a particular saint as a historical person was separated from information about the veneration of this person as a saint in a given religious community or denomination. The best way to achieve this would be to divide an article into two parts: Life and Veneration.
However, saints are so diverse, that standardization cannot be pushed too far. Saints vary from important historic figures (popes, kings, philosophers, etc.) with well documented biographies to completely legendary ones. Therefore physical division of an article may not always be very practical. But even then there should be no doubt as to what is a historical fact, and what belongs to legends and tradition.
Structure
Life
This section should concentrate on the worldly matters and follow the same rules as any other biography. If possible, it should give the real name of the saint, his/her dates and places of birth and death, list his/her accomplishments, and so forth.
It would be preferable if the styles like "Venerable", "Blessed" or "Saint" were not used in this section for the sake of NPOV.
This section may also cover legendary matters (such as miracles performed by the saint during his/her life), but it should make clear that it belongs to tradition.
Of course, if necessary, this section may be subdivided or followed by another section, e.g dealing
with the person's accomplishments (Works, Writings or the like) or Death (especially in case of some martyrs).
This section should describe the development of the veneration or cult of the person in question after his/her death. Notably it should inform about who, where and when beatified and/or canonized the saint. It may also give some details concerning the cult, like its historical and geographic reach (some saints were more popular in some places and periods than others), as well as things like feast date, patronage (what he/she is a patron saint of), how he/she is traditionally depicted in religious art, etc.
Iconography and attributes
The canonical attributes of classical iconography of the saint should be described. If there are regional or era differences in those attributes, they should be discussed. Major artistic works depicting the saint should be linked.
If possible, reproduction of representative and major works should be inserted.
Hierarchy definition
People venerated in the Roman Catholic Church are generally divided into two categories: those who have been only beatified (the Blessed) and those who were also canonized (the Saints); though many saints venerated already in very early Christanity were not formally canonized. The Eastern Orthodox Church generally does not distinguish between the Blessed and the Saints.
That's because, in Greek and other Liturgical languages, the words for "Holy", "Blessed" and "Saint" are IDENTICAL. The concepts are likewise identical. "Blessed Theophan the Recluse" is an identical statement to "Saint Theophan the Recluse" or "Holy Theophan the Recluse". The legalistic Roman distinction between "Blessed" and "Saint" is without meaning to the Orthodox. Dogface 23:39, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Another line of division is between those venerated mostly because of the way they died (martyrs) and those venerated mostly because of the way they lived (confessors). Some saints will fall in both categories. When talking about some saints, it may be also important to give the saint's hierarchical position within the Church during his life (bishop, cardinal, pontiff) or another title awarded by the Church after the saint's death (e.g. Doctor of the Church).
Among the Orthodox, we recognize the following categories:
Prophets (those who spoke God's Will and Word before the Incarnation); Apostles (who accompanied Christ on earth); Equals-to-the-Apostles (who were instrumental in bringing a whole nation or region to Christ); Holy Hierarchs (Bishops and Priests); Venerable Monks and Nuns; Martyrs; Confessors (who suffered but did not die for the Faith); Good and True Rulers (who used their worldly advantages for great works of mercy), Unmercenaries (healers who work without compensation); Fools for Christ; Passion-bearers (suffered for the Faith and died, but were not specifically killed for being of the Faith); and the holy Angels. Dogface 23:39, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Saint XXX, St XXX, St. XXX or XXX in article titles?
General conventions that apply to this question are:
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) which says that we should "use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things."
Also note the "St. XXX" ("St XXX") are rather used for names of churches (e.g. St. Peter's Basilica), while "Saint XXX" should be used when writing about people (e.g. Saint Peter).
The infobox should be placed in the Veneration section. If the article is not divided into sections, it should be placed on top. It can be inserted using the template {{Infobox Saint}}.
