| Description | Accompanying description reads:
'The process of beatification was regularised and reserved to the Holy See as early as 1170. In 1634 Urban VII minutely described the process whereby a candidate is declared venerable as well as the stringent examination by postulator and promoter which had to take place before beatification was solemnly promulgated. Canonisation followed after further investigations. Nevertheless, Urban VII did not want to prejudice the case of those who were the object of a cultus already, out of common consent or custom. These were called "equipollent" as was the case with the Catholic martyrs of the Reformation in England and Wales.
In 1874 Cardinal Manning opened the process of 353 martyrs. These were subsequently reduced to 309 with others remaining as "dilati". Leo XIII beatified 54 of these on 4 December 1886 on account of a set of prints of the martyrs of the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth which were in turn based on frescoes, destroyed in the French Revolution, in the Venerable English College, Rome. Indeed, two of those beatified had not even been submitted by Cardinal Manning but were beatified solely on the evidence of the prints.
Leo XIII also signed the introduction of the cuase of 261 of the remaining martyrs as declared on this poster. Several from Manning's list who were left out were introduced in May 1895. Some of these martyrs were canonised in 1935 and 1970 and many more beatified in 1983'. |