Category talk:Saints

Should we find a way to separate out "Saints by Date" and "Saints by Name"? Maybe also "Saints by Location"? It would be clearer if we separated them, but what is the best way to do this? Thanks, FrJohn

I would think that most of this is automatically taken care of by the internal Search function of the wiki. As far as dates are concerned, there is the Church Calendar article and of course the Search function does that, too. --Rdr. Andrew 16:03, 18 Jan 2005 (CST)

Greek saints?

Where is article for Greek saints? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MshKlimek (talk • contribs) .

There is not currently such an article. There is also not yet such a category. The difficulty with this idea in particular is that Greek is a term that would be hard to delimit. How far back does that go? Is every saint in the ancient Eastern Roman Empire considered "Greek"? How should we properly define such a category? —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs 05:02, June 1, 2007 (PDT)

No disrespect intended, however, there is nothing wrong with that. Technically, if you were of the Byzantine Era then you were classified "Greek" so therefore this history and term usage should be respected and not changed merely because we have in the last 20 years to become so politically sensitive. On another note, if the moderators (you) still do not want to do it thats ok but consider that there are indeed many saints who are of Greek origin (born/martyred in Greece). For example, I have added Saint Philothei of Athens and this category does not exist to honour this Country ... it almost feels as if there is a prejudice torwards Greece which is not right ... We should respect this country just as much as any other Country since it too has contributed much to Orthodoxy ... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ixthis888 (talk • contribs) .

It's not so much a question of whether the modern Greek state has contributed saints to Orthodoxy, which she certainly has. It's that a category given as "Greek saints" would almost necessarily be too broad to be useful. Categories are meant to limit and exclude so as to make browsing easier. (All this is aside from the fact that, to the Fathers, Greek (Hellene) was a term for pagans, not for Christians. Roman was the term that the so-called "Byzantines" used for themselves. It was not until the last century or two of the Empire that Hellene started regaining currency among Christians.)

So it's not a prejudice against Greece -- it's that there are far too many saints who might in some sense be considered "Greek" to make the category in any sense useful. Its contents might be only slightly smaller than the "Saints" category itself.

Perhaps a "Greek saints" category (or, better yet, "Modern Greek saints") might be useful if it were limited to the modern Greek state (as founded in 1821), though I'd predict that managing it to remain thus limited would prove a rather large and annoying task. (Something tells me that any saint with a remotely Greek name would end up getting included, and there'd be endless nationalistic battles "claiming" various saints.) —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs 18:20, January 14, 2008 (PST)