Talk:Saint Lucifer

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[edit] Banished... to Thebes

Thebes, Greece, or Thebes, Egypt? Hajor 02:21, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thebes, Egypt. Sorry for not having made that clear. My source, and this should answer the "disputed" as well, was The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (1961 ed.) for details of the theological controversy, and a French (I will write more here when I go to where the book is to get its precise authors and date of imprimatur) Lives of the Saints. However, the status as saint was from a work with both a nihil obstat and imprimatur, so it's safe to assume that his status as saint was granted, at least to VCII. Whether he has been reexamined since then or not, I do not know, but I do know that he is little talked about, at least because of the sort of man he was as his name. I'm not generally one to make things up. Essentially, his beatification came from being a voice of orthodoxy. Opposing Julian the Apostate alone put him in a favorable position in church history. Geogre 19:47, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
No apologies necessary, thanks for the clarification. One of the regular tasks I've adopted here is going through the what-links-here list for Thebes every so often -- great way of getting a load of classical-world related articles onto your watchlist. What was the "other article under a different name" referred to in your edit summary? Hajor 20:41, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

By the way, I found and specified the source for the "saint" title for the figure. There is still, though, a really active question of whether this fellow has been reviewed and demoted post VC2. It's possible, although usually the demotions have taken place for the legendary saints (Christopher, e.g.) and not the polemicists. I wrote this article long ago, when I was on a "saint a day" campaign. During that, I found quite a few saints who were really no more than controversialists, and some of them quite...well, political...so there's no accounting for when and whether the canonization takes place. The other article is Lucifer Calaritanus. I need to look into which should merge where. No biggie if "my" article is totally obliterated by that one, if it's better. Geogre 15:03, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Not the last word on the canonization

The two articles have been merged, as the Lucifer Calitanus article had less in it than Saint Lucifer. However, that article, which did not specify its sources, had an interesting line about 19th century misunderstandings of "Luciferians" and a subsequent scandal about the saint. That has been incorporated into a new final paragraph in Saint Lucifer. Despite finding few sources for a specific canonization of Lucifer, there are fewer yet for the re-evaluation or demotion of him. Consequently, the 1951 Omer Englebert's Lives must be taken as documentary evidence, as it was submitted, reviewed, and accepted by censors. It's the best we can do for now. Any evidence of reevaluation or demotion would be welcome, however. Geogre 17:16, 1 August 2005 (UTC)