Decanonization or de-canonization (prefix de- ← preposition: down, from, awayWalter William Skeat. An etymological dictionary of the English language. Oxford /England : Clarendon Press / de- (prefix) – p. 154.Charles Annandale. The Imperial Dictionary Of The English Language. Vol 1 / 1905 / p. 669. – De- (de) – A commons prefix in English words, representing in most the Latin de, from, away from, down from + ← – list, catalogИстория канонизации святых в русской церкви / Голубинский Е. Е., заслуж. орд. проф. Моск. духовной акад. – 2-е изд., испр. и доп. – Москва : Имп. О-во истории и древностей рос. при Моск. ун-те, 1903. – 600 с. – С. 11.Ткачев Е. В. Канонизация. Православная энциклопедия. – М. : Церковно-научный центр «Православная энциклопедия», 2012. – Т. XXX. – С. 269–359. – ISBN 978-5-89572-031-8]CANON // Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 3; 1913. – P. 255–256. – The name Canon (κανών) means a norm or rule; and it is used for various objects, such as the Canon of Holy Scripture, canons of Councils, the official list of saints' names (whence "canonization"), and the canon or list of clerks who serve a certain church, from which they themselves are called canons (canonici).Canonization Christianity // Encyclopædia Britannica – Canonization, official act of a Christian communion – mainly the Roman Catholic Church but also the Eastern Orthodox Church – declaring one of its deceased members worthy of public cult and entering his or her name in the canon, or authorized list, of that communion’s recognized saints.Charles Annandale. The Imperial Dictionary Of The English Language. Vol 1 / 1905 / p. 386. – Canon – A catalogue of saints acknowledged and canonized in the Roman Catholic Church) is the exclusion of a person's name from a list or catalog of saints; it is the opposite of canonization.James A. H. Murray. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles: Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by the Philological Society. Volume II: C (1893)./ p. 76 – Canonization – The action of canonizing; esp. formal admission into the calendar of saints.Charles Annandale. The Imperial Dictionary Of The English Language. Vol 1 / 1905 / p. 386. – Canonization – The act of canonizing a person, the act of ranking a deceased person in the catalogue of saints, called a canon. Decanonization, the exclusion of a saint's name from the church calendar, was carried out in the Russian Orthodox Church,Religion and the Early Modern State Views from China, Russia, and the West./ James D. Tracy, Marguerite Ragnow. 2004 / p. 277Making martyrs East & West : canonization in the Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches / Cathy Caridi. – DeKalb, Ill. : NIU press, cop. 2016 / p. 135 in the Catholic ChurchSummon's Miscellany of Saints and Sinners// Parminder Summon / 2005 / p. 37Packy Jim Folklore and Worldview on the Irish Border / Ray Cashman. 2016 / p. 182Afterlives of the Saints. Stories from the Ends of Faith / Colin Dickey. 2012Catholicism Today. An Introduction to the Contemporary Catholic Church / Evyatar Marienberg. 2014 and in the Anglican Church.The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Fifth Edition Revised / David Farmer, David Hugh Farmer. 2011 / p. xviRichard Utz. The Medieval Myth of Jewish Ritual Murder: Toward a History of Literary Reception // Edited by Gwendolyn Morgan The Year’s Work in Medievalism. – BOZEMAN, MONTANA: Montana State University, 1999. – Vol. XIV. – p. 22–42.
Orthodox Church In the Russian Orthodox Church, the most famous case is the decanonization of the Right-Believing princess Anna of Kashin at the Great Moscow Synod in 1677–1678. The reason for the decanonization was the religious policy of the forcible introduction in Russia of the three fingers sign of the cross, instead of the older two fingers variant.Georgy Fedotov. Святые Древней Руси / Введение // Собрание сочинений : в 12 томах / Г. П. Федотов [сост., примеч., вступ. ст.:]. – Москва : Мартис : SAM and SAM, 1996. / Т. 8. – 2000. – 266 с. – ISBN 5-7248-0070-5Крест и круг : из истории христианской символики / Б. А. Успенский. – Москва : Языки славянской культур, 2006. – 488 с., л. ил., цв. ил. : цв. ил.; 22 см.; ISBN 5-9551-0108-X (в пер.); ISSN 1727-1630 /с. 90. – Московский собор 1678 г., принявший решение о деканонизации св. Анны Кашинской на том основании, что мощи ее сохранились с двуперстно сложенной рукой / с. 333 – „При патриархе Иоакиме (1675-1690 гг.) были случаи деканонизации святых на том, в частности, основании, что их мощи сохранились с двуперстно сложенной рукой. Так случилось с Анной Кашинской в 1678 г. и с Евфимием Архангелогородским в 1683 г. (см.: Голубинский, 1903, с. 166; Вургафт и Ушаков, 1996, с. 28, 92).“ / с. 365 – Анна Кашинская (в иночестве София) († 1368), жена кн. Михаила Ярославича Тверского; канонизирована в 1649 г., деканонизирована в 1678 г., вновь признана святой в 1909 г. The reforms that began under Alexis Mikhailovich and continued under Peter I and his followers demanded a political and ecclesiastical separation from the previous tradition and national culture, which included the decanonization of persons whose literary or hagiographic works contradicted the new religious policy. The veneration of the famous ecclesiastical writer and translator Maximus the Greek was suspended. Memorial days associated with 21 Russian saints were removed from the Typikon of 1682.Святость в эпоху Петра Первого / Наумов А. Е. // Именно в его время мы сталкиваемся с довольно необычным для Восточной церкви допущением в церковную жизнь деканонизации, идущей вслед за изменением церковной политики. Ярким примером этого является преп. Анна Кашинская, которая была прославлена в 1650 г., а ее деканонизация была проведена патриархом Иоакимом в 1677 г. <...> И преп. Максим Грек, местное прославление которого совершилось по благословению патриарха Иова в 1591 г., был деканонизирован, вероятно, устным запрещением, по таким же причинам. <...> в XVIII в. оказались деканонизированы десятки подвижников. During the reign of Peter I, the veneration of the martyrs Anthony, John, and Eustathius, who wore beards and suffered under a clean-shaven pagan knyaz, was stopped.Борьба за святость / Глеб Чистяков // , 12.02.2013 After 1721 the number of new canonizations sharply decreased (only 2 new saints were canonized). In the 18th century there was a decanonization of a number of locally revered saints. However, in the 19th century, church veneration of many locally venerated saints was restored. Hegumen Andronik (Trubachev) believes that the most pernicious were not specific decanonizations, but the very admission of decanonization into church life as a possible norm, a rule implemented due to a change in church policy.игумен Андроник Трубачев / Канонизация святых в Русской Православной Церкви / Православная энциклопедия «Азбука веры». 2019. – „после 1721 г. резко сокращается число канонизаций (всего 2) и начинаются деканонизации (их было, конечно, гораздо более 8)“. „В XVIII в. произошла деканонизация ряда местночтимых святых, а в XIX в. церковное почитание многих местночтимых святых было восстановлено.“ „Но наиболее пагубным являлись не эти конкретные деканонизации, а само допущение деканонизации в церковную жизнь как возможной нормы, правила, осуществляемого в силу изменения церковной политики. Уже по другим причинам, но в силу того же взгляда в XVIII в. оказались деканонизированы десятки подвижников.“
In the 20th century, some of the names of previously decanonized saints were returned to the church calendar. The re-canonization of Anna of Kashin took place in the Russian Orthodox Church in 1909. However, most of the ancient Russian ascetics, whose veneration was terminated during the "struggle against Raskol", remained forgotten.Борьба за святость / Глеб Чистяков // , 12.02.2013
In 2013, 36 saints, New Martyrs who suffered from repression during the Soviet era, were decanonized. Their names were removed from the 2013 Russian Orthodox Church calendar without explanation.Karin Hyldal Christensen. Review THE MAKING OF THE NEW MARTYRS OF RUSSIA Soviet Repression in Orthodox Memory. International Journal of Orthodox Theology 9:1 (2018) / Routledge, 2017Memory Politics and the Russian Civil War Reds Versus Whites / Marlene Laruelle, Margarita Karnysheva. 2020Деканонизация: горькая правда / А. Кураев // , 14.12.2012.Из календаря РПЦ исчезли некоторые святые // Известия, 14.12.2012.«Инициатива «деканонизации Новомучеников» в РПЦ МП полностью принадлежит игумену Дамаскину (Орловскому)» – доктор исторических наук, агиограф Новомучеников СЕРГЕЙ БЫЧКОВ // , 19.02.2013.
Catholic Church
There are several examples of decanonization in the Catholic Church throughout the centuries. Among the saints decanonized were Kakwykylla, Wilgefortis, Werner, Liban and a host of others deemed to be legendary figures with no historical veracity. The official position of the church is that persons may still maintain private devotions to these saints, however they are forbidden from public veneration as there is no sufficient evidence for their existence.
On February 14, 1969, Pope Paul VI, through the apostolic letter Mysterii Paschalis, removed the names of a number of saints from the General Roman Calendar, based on a lack of documentary evidence of their lives. These included popes Telesphorus, Hyginus, Lucius I, Anicetus, Soter, Caius, Cletus, Eleutherius, Felix I, Victor I and Zephyrinus, as well as saints Dorothy, Maris, Martha, Abachum and Audifax, Faustinus and Jovita, Basilides, Cyrinus, Nabor and Nazarius, Tryphon, Respicius, and Nympha, Sergius and Bacchus, Apuleius, Placid and Companions, Eustace and Companions, Cyprian and Justina, Boniface of Tarsus, Marcellus, Alexius, Symphorosa, the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, the Seven Holy Brothers, Margaret of Antioch, Catherine of Alexandria, Barbara, and Ursula.Calendarium Romanum (1969)
Pope Paul VI also removed Simon of Trent from the Roman Martyrology in 1965.
Anglican Church On 16 November 1538 Henry VIII issued a proclamation declaring that all images and pictures of Thomas Becket were to be "put down," and all mention of him in calendar and service book to be erased.
In 1966, the Anglican Church excluded Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln from the books of locally revered saints.Richard Utz. The Medieval Myth of Jewish Ritual Murder: Toward a History of Literary Reception // Edited by Gwendolyn Morgan The Year’s Work in Medievalism. – BOZEMAN, MONTANA: Montana State University, 1999. – Vol. XIV. – p. 22–42.
In 1859 after Parliament passed the Anniversary Days Observance Act, the commemoration of Charles I (known in the calendar as "Charles, King and Martyr, 1649") was removed, effectively decanonizing Charles.
Challenging the possibility of decanonization