Saints Essay, Research Paper
How did the work of the saints affect the people of the time? The work of
the saints affected the people of that time
in incredible ways and in some instances there work is still affecting us
now. In the following essay there will be
various Saints listed with there accomplishments and brief description of
there past. One of the more popular Saints
of our time, was Saint Nicholas, who became a Christian prelate that
lived in the late 4th century. Patron saint of
Russia, traditionally associated with Christmas celebrations. He was a
native of Patara, formerly a city in the Asia
Minor. Nicholas entered the nearby monastery of Sion and afterward
became archbishop of the metropolitan church
in Myra, Lycia. He is said to have been imprisoned during the
persecutions of Emperor Diocletian and to have
attended the first Council of Nicaea. At the end of the 11th century some
Italian merchants transported his remains
from Myra to Bari, Italy, where his tomb is now a shrine. Nicholas is the
patron saint of children, scholars, virgins,
sailors, and merchants, and in the Middle Ages he was regarded by
thieves as their patron saint as well. Legend tells
of his hidden gifts to the three daughters of a poor man who was unable
to give them dowries, was about to
abandon them to prostitution. From this tale has grown the custom of
secret gifts on the Eve of Saint Nicholas.
Because of the close proximity of dates, Christmas and Saint Nicholas’s
Day(Dec.6) are now celebrated
simultaneously in many countries. Santa Claus is physically known as
being overweight, jolly, and being bearded has
the exact physical, and the same personality as Saint Nicholas. It is
thought that this figure that is loved by almost
every little child in the world is derived from Saint Nicholas. Saint Anselm
was another great Saint who?s work
revolutionized philosophy as we know it. Out of his life work he is known
best for his argument of God’s existence.
Anselm was born in Aosta. In 1060 he joined the Benedictine monastery
at Bec, in Normandy. Anselm was elected
abbot of Bec. During these years he acquired a reputation for learning
and devotion. He composed the Monologium
in which reflecting the influence of St. Augustine he spoke of God as the
highest being and investigated God’s
attributes. Encouraged by its reception, in 1078 he continued his project
of faith seeking understanding, completing
the Proslogium, the second chapter of which presents the original
statement of what in the 18th century became
known as the ontological argument. Anselm argued that even those who
doubt the existence of God would have to
have some understanding of what they were doubting. Namely, they
would understand God to be a being than
which nothing greater can be thought. Given that it is greater to exist
outside the mind rather than just in the mind, a
doubter who denied God’s existence would be making a contradiction
because he or she would be saying that it is
possible to think of something greater than a being than which nothing
greater can be thought. For that reason, by
definition God exists necessarily. Later philosophers Thomas Aquinas and
Immanuel Kant challenged his argument.
Many following philosophers, Ren? Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried
Leibniz, and some contemporary
philosophers have offered similar arguments to Anselm?s. Anselm gave to
the world almost a definition that there is a
God, and revolutionized the way people looked at God. His argument is
still very debated at this time in many
churches. One of the greatest ?inventions? of all time was invented by a
Spanish theologian, and archbishop called
Saint Isidore of Seville (560-636). The one man who introduced the
world to Encyclopedia?s and Reference books.
His most significant work was Etymologiae, a remarkably comprehensive
early encyclopedia. He was born in Seville
and was educated at a monastery. As archbishop, Isidore helped unify
the Spanish church by converting the
Visigoths, who had completed the conquest of Spain in the 5th century, to
orthodox Christianity from Arianism one
of the most divisive heresies in the history of the church. He also presided
over a number of important church
councils. Most notable among these was the fourth national Council of
Toledo (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 he
attempted to compile all secular and religious
knowledge. Divided into 20 sections, it contains information that Isidore
drew from the works of other writers and
Latin authorities. The Etymologiae was a favorite textbook for students
during the Middle Ages, and it remained for
centuries a standard reference book. Isidore’s other works include
treatises on theology, Scripture, linguistics,
science, and history. His Sententiarum Libri Tres (Three Books of
Sentences) was the first manual of Christian
doctrine and ethics in the Latin church. Isidore is the forefather of all
modern 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 Italian
philosopher and theologian, whose works
have made him the most important figure in Scholastic philosophy and one
of the leading Roman Catholic
theologians. Aquinas was born of a noble family in Roccasecca, near
Aquino, and was educated at the Benedictine
monastery of Monte Cassino and at the University of Naples. He joined
the 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 vain
attempt to make him abandon his chosen
course. She released him in 1245, and Aquinas then journeyed to Paris to
continue his studies. He studied under the
German Scholastic philosopher Albertus Magnus, following him to
Cologne in 1248. Because Aquinas was heavyset
and taciturn, his fellow novices called him Dumb Ox, but Albertus
Magnus is said to have predicted that ?this ox will
one day fill the world with his bellowing.? Aquinas was ordained a priest
about
University of Paris in 1252. His first writings, primarily summaries and
amplifications 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 work
concerning the sacraments of the church, known as
the Sententiarum Libri Quatuor (Four Books of Sentences), by the Italian
theologian Peter Lombard. In 1256
Aquinas was awarded a doctorate in theology and appointed professor of
philosophy 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 became
involved in a controversy with the French
philosopher Siger de Brabant and other followers of the Islamic
philosopher Averro?s. 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 truth
people must depend upon sense
experience. Early in the 13th century the major works of Aristotle were
made available in a Latin translation,
accompanied by the commentaries of Averro?s and other Islamic
scholars. The vigor, clarity, and authority of
Aristotle’s teachings restored confidence in empirical knowledge and gave
rise to a school of philosophers known as
Averroists. Under the leadership of Siger de Brabant, the Averroists
asserted that philosophy was independent of
revelation. Averroism threatened the integrity and supremacy of Roman
Catholic 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 other
scholars had attempted to deal with
Averroism, but with little success. Aquinas succeeded. Reconciling the
Augustinian emphasis upon the human
spiritual principle with the Averroist claim of autonomy for knowledge
derived from the senses, Aquinas insisted that
the truths of faith and those of sense experience, as presented by
Aristotle, are fully compatible and complementary.
Some truths, such as that of the mystery of the incarnation, can be known
only through revelation, and others, such
as that of the composition of material things, only through experience, still
others, 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 thought
toward the apprehension of such
immaterial realities as the human soul, the angels, and God. To reach
understanding of the highest truths, those with
which religion is concerned, the aid of revelation is needed. Aquinas’s
moderate realism placed the universals firmly
in the mi! nd, in opposition to extreme realism, which posited their
independence of human thought. He admitted a
foundation for universals in existing things, however, in opposition to
nominalism and conceptualism. More
successfully than any other theologian or philosopher, Aquinas organized
the knowledge of his time in the service of
his faith. In his effort to reconcile faith with intellect, he created a
philosophical synthesis of the works and teachings
of Aristotle and other classic sages, of Augustine and other church
fathers, of Averroes, Avicenna, and other Islamic
scholars, of Jewish thinkers such as Maimonides and Solomon ben
Yehuda ibn Gabirol, and of his predecessors in
the Scholastic tradition. This synthesis he brought into line with the Bible
and Roman Catholic doctrine. Aquinas’s
accomplishment was immense, his work marks one of the few great
culminations in the history of philosophy. After
Aquinas, Western philosophers could choose only between humbly
following him and striking off in some altogether
different direction. In the centuries immediately following his death, the
dominant tendency, even among Roman
Catholic thinkers, was to adopt the second alternative. Interest in Thomist
philosophy began to revive, however,
toward the end of the 19th century. In the encyclical Aeterni Patris (Of
the Eternal Father, 1879), Pope Leo XIII
recommended that St. Thomas’s philosophy be made the basis of
instruction 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 departures
from it. Thomism remains a leading school
of contemporary thought. Among the thinkers, Roman Catholic and
non-Roman Catho! lic alike, who have operated
within the Thomist framework have been the French philosophers
Jacques Maritain and ?tienne Gilson. St. Thomas
was an extremely prolific author, and about 80 works are ascribed to
him. 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 Summa
Theologica (Summary Treatise of Theology,
1265-73), in three parts (on God, the moral life of man, and Christ), of
which the last was left unfinished. Summa
Theologica has been republished frequently in Latin and vernacular
editions. In the thousands of years that Saints
have been affecting our lives with there countless theories, and inventions
nobody has ever thought about the
heartache, and time it took to produce these discoveries. In the three
Saints that are listed there is a common thing
between them (which is most likely common with most Saints), they had
to work hard for there Recognition in
Saint-hood. For example in the case of Saint Isidore, he worked and
contributed immensely in the church as an
Archbishop and theologian for many years. In this case Isidore did not
just write the Etymologiae, he also firmly
contributed to the church also. As you can clearly see in the essay, the
work of these particular Saints affected the
people of there time tremendous ways. Also if the Saints wouldn?t of
contributed to the world with there outstanding
work are modern world would of been altered in tremendous ways.