ABSTRACT
Elements of such procedures can be discerned in the twelfth century or even earlier. Typically, interested parties such as the leaders of a religious order, the local bishop, nobility or city authorities petitioned Rome in favour of the canonization. A commission of inquiry was then appointed to investigate the candidate’s suitability, its results were submitted to the Curia for consideration, a bull of canonization was issued, and a life and miracles which summarized the findings thus became the major source for the saint’s ministry. Some of these bulls reach us as part of the extant papal registers, while others are inserted into the lives of the relevant saints, whose authors were interested in encouraging the cult and enhancing their subject’s reputation. one canonization, that of the Spanish bishop, Rosendo, in 1172 is unusual in that it was performed while Hyacinth was still a cardinal, whereas another, that of Ladislaus of Hungary, perhaps in 1192, is referred to in a biography, although no extant bull survives.
