Living Saints

[Shifte]

How important are Living Saints? We're told that the birth and declaration of a Living Saint is something which heralds a great boon for the Imperium. They lead Crusades, inspire civvies to join in Holy Wars and always achieve some great ends. I feel like this is a subject area which has very little written about it. We don't know how common they are, we don't know much about the vast majority of them and we don't know how powerful they are in a personal level.

How do they compare to Astartes? How do they compare to Daemon Princes? Was Sebastian Thor a Living Saint? Are they female only? Are they all uniform (Celestine-clones) or do they vary greatly depending upon the person involved? Do they all have divine powers? Can one of them PLEASE have a set of wings already?!

This is a pretty open ended post. I'd like to have more information on Living Saints and their role within the Imperium. I'd love it if it got more attention in BL novels, too, although I'm not particularly optimistic on that front.

[Conn Eremon]

I don't think all Living Saints are like Celestine. At least, in my opinion and vision of 40k, I see Living Saints to be like Thor, Macharius, obviously the Beati. Not that all of those are Living Saints, but that this is the kind of impact they can have. Maybe they unequivocally change the Imperium, maybe they are remembered as heroes like unto those of the mythic past, maybe they defined a local area with their profound presence.

[Shifte]

Hrm. I also envisage that a real Living Saint could be dramatically different from another Living Saint. I'm curious about whether they all need to show miraculous powers or not, though. The Imperium has regular Saints, but I regular Saints can definitely be normal humans. Does a Living Saint have to display divine powers to be declared as one?

[The Red Thirst]

I think the difference in Living Saint and Saint is in the 'living' part (Duh :P)

But if you think about it this way it makes sense, in Catholicism I think that people can only be declared as a Saint after death because of their deeds in life.

 

In 40k a Living Saint is the same but their deeds are so great (performing great acts of faith and miracles) that they are declared Saints in life.

 

As Cormac mentioned above Living Saint arnt just confined at a Celestine type character, but technically can be any person of the Imperium, case in point Sebatien Thor

 

 

Here's a List on Lexicanum:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/List_of_Imperial_Saints#.U82iMPmSyao