SAINTHOOD. Saint is a designation that Christianity has used to recognize individuals deemed to have lived lives of heroic virtue and who, as a result, dwell eternally with God. They therefore may be venerated in a public cult. Historians of religion have liberated the category of sainthood from its narrower Christian associations and have employed the term in a more general way to refer to the state of special holiness that many religions attribute to certain people. The Jewish ḥasid or tsaddiq, the Muslim walīy, the Zoroastrian fravashi, the Hindu ṛṣi or guru, the Buddhist arahant or bodhisattva, the Daoist shengren, the Shintō kami, and others have all been referred to as saints.

The Category of Sainthood

The problem for the historian of religions is whether the term sainthood so broadly applied retains any meaning. Can a category that grows out of one religion be properly and...