Reforming Canonization after the Council of Trent: Saints and Martyrs as Models of a Pure Christian Life

The Augustinian friar Angelo Rocca (1545–1620), also known as Camers or Camerinus, composed a treatise aiming to define the grounds for the claims to the pope’s inerrant authority in proclaiming sainthood. Rocca’s De canonizatione sanctorum commentarius of 1601 represents the first attempt to offer a systematic framework for the issue of canonization and to put the application of the decisions of the Council of Trent within the perspective of the new religious and institutional order of the Catholic Church that emerged in the decades following the Council and in connection with Pope Sixtus V’s reform of the Roman Curia in 1588. The Commentarius demonstrates a new attitude towards canonization, reflecting the changing definitions of sanctity in the Catholic doctrinal, pastoral, and legal framework. This article reconsiders the content of Rocca’s treatise, putting it within a larger historical chronology, which includes authors and doctrines of the first half of the sixteenth century. While Rocca directly quotes their work, he changes their original value and builds a completely new account of what sanctity is and why the papal declaration of it has to be considered inerrant.