What is Canonization? How is it done? What does it import to a Catholic? How does it differ from beatification? What is meant by the title of Venerable, and by the Holy See decreeing that a man has practised virtue in an horoic degree? What is the amount of authority attaching to each of these acts of the Church, and in what sense are they acts of the Church? What sort of obligation, if any, do they lay Catholics under what sort of value, considered simply as questions of evidence, have they to others? And what sanction, if any, do tho biographies of the saints borrow from the fact, that the Church has made their cultus matter of precept or permission. And what sort of authority do the peculiar formation and jealous scrutiny of the processes give them, simply as human testimony judicially sifted. This book proposes to answer these important questions.