FREE ESSAY ON SAINTS

SAINTS

How did the work of the saints affect the people of the time? The work ofthe saints
affected the people of that time in incredible ways and in some instances there work is
still affecting usnow. In the following essay there will be various Saints listed with
there accomplishments and brief description ofthere past. One of the more popular Saints
of our time, was Saint Nicholas, who became a Christian prelate thatlived in the late 4th
century. Patron saint of Russia, traditionally associated with Christmas celebrations. He
was anative of Patara, formerly a city in the Asia Minor. Nicholas entered the nearby
monastery of Sion and afterwardbecame archbishop of the metropolitan church in Myra,
Lycia. He is said to have been imprisoned during thepersecutions of Emperor Diocletian
and to have attended the first Council of Nicaea. At the end of the 11th century
someItalian merchants transported his remains from Myra to Bari, Italy, where his tomb is
now a shrine. Nicholas is thepatron saint of children, scholars, virgins, sailors, and
merchants, and in the Middle Ages he was regarded bythieves as their patron saint as
well. Legend tells of his hidden gifts to the three daughters of a poor man who was
unableto give them dowries, was about to abandon them to prostitution. From this tale has
grown the custom ofsecret gifts on the Eve of Saint Nicholas. Because of the close
proximity of dates, Christmas and Saint Nicholas'sDay(Dec.6) are now celebrated
simultaneously in many countries. Santa Claus is physically known asbeing overweight,
jolly, and being bearded has the exact physical, and the same personality as Saint
Nicholas. It isthought that this figure that is loved by almost every little child in the
world is derived from Saint Nicholas. Saint Anselmwas another great Saint who's work
revolutionized philosophy as we know it. Out of his life work he is knownbest for his
argument of God's existence. Anselm was born in Aosta. In 1060 he joined the Benedictine
monasteryat Bec, in Normandy. Anselm was elected abbot of Bec. During these years he
acquired a reputation for learningand devotion. He composed the Monologium in which
reflecting the influence of St. Augustine he spoke of God as thehighest being and
investigated God's attributes. Encouraged by its reception, in 1078 he continued his
projectof faith seeking understanding, completing the Proslogium, the second chapter of
which presents the originalstatement of what in the 18th century became known as the
ontological argument. Anselm argued that even those whodoubt the existence of God would
have to have some understanding of what they were doubting. Namely, theywould understand
God to be a being than which nothing greater can be thought. Given that it is greater to
existoutside the mind rather than just in the mind, a doubter who denied God's existence
would be making a contradictionbecause he or she would be saying that it is possible to
think of something greater than a being than which nothinggreater can be thought. For
that reason, by definition God exists necessarily. Later philosophers Thomas Aquinas
andImmanuel Kant challenged his argument. Many following philosophers, Rene Descartes,
Baruch Spinoza, GottfriedLeibniz, and some contemporary philosophers have offered similar
arguments to Anselm's. Anselm gave tothe world almost a definition that there is a God,
and revolutionized the way people looked at God. His argument isstill very debated at
this time in many churches. One of the greatest 'inventions' of all time was invented by
aSpanish theologian, and archbishop called Saint Isidore of Seville (560-636). The one
man who introduced theworld to Encyclopedia's and Reference books. His most significant
work was Etymologiae, a remarkably comprehensiveearly encyclopedia. He was born in
Seville and was educated at a monastery. As archbishop, Isidore helped unifythe Spanish
church by converting the Visigoths, who had completed the conquest of Spain in the 5th
century, toorthodox Christianity from Arianism one of the most divisive heresies in the
history of the church. He also presidedover a number of important church councils. Most
notable among these was the fourth national Council ofToledo (633), which decreed the
union of church and state, the establishment of cathedral schools in every diocese,and
the standardizaton of liturgical practice. Among Isidore's writings is the Etymologiae,
in which heattempted to compile all secular and religious knowledge. Divided into 20
sections, it contains information that Isidoredrew from the works of other writers and
Latin authorities. The Etymologiae was a favorite textbook for studentsduring the Middle
Ages, and it remained for centuries a standard reference book. Isidore's other works
includetreatises on theology, Scripture, linguistics, science, and history. His
Sententiarum Libri Tres (Three Books ofSentences) was the first manual of Christian
doctrine and ethics in the Latin church. Isidore is the forefather of allmodern reference
and text books. His contributions added so much to the education to that time at also to
ours.Sometimes called the Angelic Doctor and the Prince of Scholastics, Saint Thomas
Aquinas (1225-74) an Italianphilosopher and theologian, whose works have made him the
most important figure in Scholastic philosophy and oneof the leading Roman Catholic
theologians. Aquinas was born of a noble family in Roccasecca, nearAquino, and was
educated at the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino and at the University of Naples.
He joinedthe Dominican order while still an undergraduate in 1243, the year of his
father's death. His mother,opposed to Thomas's affiliation with a mendicant order,
confined him to the family castle for more than a year in a vainattempt to make him
abandon his chosen course. She released him in 1245, and Aquinas then journeyed to Paris
tocontinue his studies. He studied under the German Scholastic philosopher Albertus
Magnus, following him toCologne in 1248. Because Aquinas was heavyset and taciturn, his
fellow novices called him Dumb Ox, but AlbertusMagnus is said to have predicted that
'this ox will one day fill the world with his bellowing.' Aquinas was ordained a
priestabout 1250, and he began to teach at the University of Paris in 1252. His first
writings, primarily summaries andamplifications of his lectures, appeared two years
later. His first major work was Scripta Super Libros Sententiarum(Writings on the Books
of the Sentences, 1256?), which consisted of commentaries on an influential
workconcerning the sacraments of the church, known as the Sententiarum Libri Quatuor
(Four Books of Sentences), by the Italiantheologian Peter Lombard. In 1256 Aquinas was
awarded a doctorate in theology and appointed professor ofphilosophy at the University of
Paris. Pope Alexander IV (reigned 1254-61) summoned him to Rome in 1259,where he acted as
adviser and lecturer to the papal court. Returning to Paris in 1268, Aquinas immediately
becameinvolved in a controversy with the French philosopher Siger de Brabant and other
followers of the Islamicphilosopher Averroes. Before the time of Aquinas, Western thought
had been dominated by the philosophy of St. Augustine,the Western church's great Father
and Doctor of the 4th and 5th centuries, who taught that in the search for truthpeople
must depend upon sense experience. Early in the 13th century the major works of Aristotle
weremade available in a Latin translation, accompanied by the commentaries of Averroes
and other Islamicscholars. The vigor, clarity, and authority of Aristotle's teachings
restored confidence in empirical knowledge and gaverise to a school of philosophers known
as Averroists. Under the leadership of Siger de Brabant, the Averroistsasserted that
philosophy was independent of revelation. Averroism threatened the integrity and
supremacy of RomanCatholic doctrine and filled orthodox thinkers with alarm. To ignore
Aristotle, as interpreted by the Averroists,was impossible, to condemn his teachings was
ineffective. He had to be reckoned with. Albertus Magnus and otherscholars had attempted
to deal with Averroism, but with little success. Aquinas succeeded. Reconciling
theAugustinian emphasis upon the human spiritual principle with the Averroist claim of
autonomy for knowledgederived from the senses, Aquinas insisted that the truths of faith
and those of sense experience, as presented byAristotle, are fully compatible and
complementary. Some truths, such as that of the mystery of the incarnation, can be
knownonly through revelation, and others, such as that of the composition of material
things, only through experience, stillothers, such as that of the existence of God, are
known through both equally. All knowledge, Aquinas held,originates in sensation, but
sense data can be made intelligible only by the action of the intellect, which elevates
thoughttoward the apprehension of such immaterial realities as the human soul, the
angels, and God. To reachunderstanding of the highest truths, those with which religion
is concerned, the aid of revelation is needed. Aquinas'smoderate realism placed the
universals firmly in the mi! nd, in opposition to extreme realism, which posited
theirindependence of human thought. He admitted a foundation for universals in existing
things, however, in opposition tonominalism and conceptualism. More successfully than any
other theologian or philosopher, Aquinas organizedthe knowledge of his time in the
service of his faith. In his effort to reconcile faith with intellect, he created
aphilosophical synthesis of the works and teachings of Aristotle and other classic sages,
of Augustine and other churchfathers, of Averroes, Avicenna, and other Islamic scholars,
of Jewish thinkers such as Maimonides and Solomon benYehuda ibn Gabirol, and of his
predecessors in the Scholastic tradition. This synthesis he brought into line with the
Bibleand Roman Catholic doctrine. Aquinas's accomplishment was immense, his work marks
one of the few greatculminations in the history of philosophy. After Aquinas, Western
philosophers could choose only between humblyfollowing him and striking off in some
altogether different direction. In the centuries immediately following his death,
thedominant tendency, even among Roman Catholic thinkers, was to adopt the second
alternative. Interest in Thomistphilosophy began to revive, however, toward the end of
the 19th century. In the encyclical Aeterni Patris (Ofthe Eternal Father, 1879), Pope Leo
XIII recommended that St. Thomas's philosophy be made the basis ofinstruction in all
Roman Catholic schools. Pope Pius XII, in the encyclical Humani Generis (Of the Human
Race, 1950),affirmed that the Thomist philosophy is the surest guide to Roman Catholic
doctrine and discouraged all departuresfrom it. Thomism remains a leading school of
contemporary thought. Among the thinkers, Roman Catholic andnon-Roman Catho! lic alike,
who have operated within the Thomist framework have been the French philosophersJacques
Maritain and Etienne Gilson. St. Thomas was an extremely prolific author, and about 80
works are ascribed tohim. The two most important are Summa Contra Gentiles (1261-64;
trans. On the Truth of the Catholic Faith,1956), a closely reasoned treatise intended to
persuade intellectual Muslims of the truth of Christianity, and SummaTheologica (Summary
Treatise of Theology, 1265-73), in three parts (on God, the moral life of man, and
Christ), ofwhich the last was left unfinished. Summa Theologica has been republished
frequently in Latin and vernaculareditions. In the thousands of years that Saints have
been affecting our lives with there countless theories, and inventionsnobody has ever
thought about the heartache, and time it took to produce these discoveries. In the
threeSaints that are listed there is a common thing between them (which is most likely
common with most Saints), they hadto work hard for there Recognition in Saint-hood. For
example in the case of Saint Isidore, he worked andcontributed immensely in the church as
an Archbishop and theologian for many years. In this case Isidore did notjust write the
Etymologiae, he also firmly contributed to the church also. As you can clearly see in the
essay, thework of these particular Saints affected the people of there time tremendous
ways. Also if the Saints wouldn't ofcontributed to the world with there outstanding work
are modern world would of been altered in tremendous ways.