Method
Veneration
Overview
Veneration (Latin: veneratio; Greek: προσκύνησις proskýnēsis) is the practice of honoring people and articles of religious significance, for example, the veneration of saints and the veneration of relics.
To venerate a saint is to honour a person who has been identified as having a high degree of sanctity or holiness. Angels are shown similar veneration in many religions. Veneration of saints is practiced, formally or informally, by adherents of some branches of all major religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and Jainism.
Within Christianity, veneration is practiced by groups such as the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, all of which have varying types of canonization or glorification processes. The Catholic church teaches that believers have "always venerated the divine Scriptures just as [they] venerate the body of the Lord". In Catholicism and Orthodoxy, veneration for saints is shown outwardly by respectfully kissing, bowing or making the sign of the cross before a saint's icon, relics, or statue, or by going on pilgrimage to sites associated with saints. The Lutheran churches and Anglican churches commemorate saints on feast days throughout the liturgical year and often name churches after saints. In general, the veneration of saints is not practiced by Reformed Christians and Jehovah's Witnesses, as many adherents of both groups believe the practice amounts to idolatry.
Hinduism has a long tradition of veneration of saints, expressed toward various gurus and teachers of sanctity, both living and dead. Branches of Buddhism include formal liturgical worship of saints, with Mahayana Buddhism classifying degrees of sainthood.
In Islam, veneration of saints is practiced by some of the adherents of traditional Islam (Sufis, for example), and in many parts of places like Turkey, Egypt, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Other sects, such as Wahhabists, etc. abhor the practice.
In Judaism, there is no classical or formal recognition of saints, but there is a long history of reverence shown toward biblical heroes and martyrs. Jews in some regions, for example in Morocco, have a long and widespread tradition of saint veneration, as do Hasidic Jews.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Veneration is discussed.
If, however, the object of wonder be a man's prudence, industry, or anything of that sort, inasmuch as the said man, is thereby regarded as far surpassing ourselves, wonder is called Veneration; otherwise, if a man's anger, envy, &c., be what we wonder at, the emotion is called Horror. Again, if it be the prudence, industry, or what not, of a man we love, that we wonder at, our love will on this account be the…
Benedictus de Spinoza, Ethics
states what it is; names the idea
Further, regarding an image precisely as an image of some one, we do not stop at it; it carries us on to that which it represents. Hence the fact that religious veneration is paid to images of Christ in no sense means that there are various kinds of _latria_, nor different virtues of religion.
Aquinas Thomas, On prayer and the contemplative life
states what it is; author linked in the graph; names the idea
It is from our disposition to admire, and consequently to imitate, the rich and the great, that they are enabled to set, or to lead, what is called the fashion. Their dress is the fashionable dress; the language of their conversation, the fashionable style; their air and deportment, the fashionable behaviour. Even their vices and follies are fashionable; and the greater part of men are proud to imitate and resemble…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
states what it is; names the idea
And this custom, coming, I suppose, from apostolical tradition (like many other things which are held to have been handed down under their actual sanction, because they are preserved throughout the whole Church, though they are not found either in their letters, or in the Councils of their successors),--this most wholesome custom, I say, according to the holy Cyprian, began to be what is called amended by his…
of Hippo Augustine, Writings in Connection with the Donatist Controversy
states what it is; author linked in the graph
In this disposition, the imagination, passing, as is usual, from the consideration of the distance to the view of the distant objects, gives us a proportionable veneration for it; and this is the reason why all the relicks of antiquity are so precious in our eyes, and appear more valuable than what is brought even from the remotest parts of the world.
David Hume, Philosophical Works, v. 2
names the idea; opens on it
Related ideas
- Tirthankara
- Eastern Orthodox Church
- Rabbinic Judaism
- Anglicanism
- Hinduism
- Ambrose
- Hasidic Judaism
- Ashkenazi Jews
- Sephardic Jews
- Immaculate Conception
- Judaism
- John Calvin
- Jainism
- Menachem Mendel Schneerson
- Guru
- Kabbalah
- Bhakti movement
- Moksha
- Latin
- Middle Ages
- Catechism of the Catholic Church
- Maimonides
- Augustine of Hippo
- Thomas Aquinas
Place in the tradition
Part of Monotheism.