The Lives of the Saints Volume 1 - St. Patrick's Basilica

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IX. 8. Another source of information, of which our author availed
himself in the composition of his work, was the _Acts of the
Beatification and Canonization of the Saints_.
The name of _Martyr_ was given by the ancient church to those who had
suffered death for the faith of Christ; the name of _Confessor_ was
applied to those who had made a public profession of their faith before
the persecutors. It was afterwards extended to those who had edified the
church by their heroic virtues. St. Martin of Tours is generally
supposed to have been the first saint to whom the title of confessor was
applied in the last sense.
Originally, every bishop had the privilege of canonizing saints, or
declaring them entitled to the honors which the Catholic church bestows
on her saints. The council of Cologne, cited by Ivo of Chartres, forbids
the faithful to show any public mark of veneration to any modern saint,
without the permission of the diocesan. A capitulary of Charlemagne in
801 is to the same effect.
Pope Alexander III. is supposed to have been the first pope who reserved
the exclusive privilege of canonizing saints to the holy see. It was
recognised by the church of France at a council at Vienne, in which the
bishops, addressing themselves to pope Gregory IX., expressly say, "that
no sanctity, however eminent, authorizes the faithful to honor the
memory of a saint, without the permission of the holy see."
The present mode of proceeding in the canonization of saints,
principally takes its rise from the decree of pope Urban VIII., dated
the 13th of March, 1625. By that he forbade the public veneration of
every new saint, not beatified or baptized; and particularly ordered
that no one, even in private, should paint the image of any person,
whatever might be his reputation for sanctity, with a crown or {}e of
light round his head; or expose his picture in any sacred place, or
publish a history of his life, or a relation of his virtues and
miracles, without the approbation of his diocesan: that if, in a work so
approved of, the person were called saint, or blessed, those words
should only be used to denote the general holiness of his life, but not
to anticipate the general judgment of the church. His holiness adds a
form of protestation to that effect, which he requires the authors to
sign, at the beginning and end of their works. This regulation of pope
Urban is so strictly attended to, that a single proof of the infraction
of it, and even the omission of a definite sentence that there has been
no infraction of it, makes the canonization of the saint impossible, and
invalidates the whole of the proceedings. The only exception is, in
favor of those saints who are proved to have been immemorially venerated
for a hundred years and upwards, before 1634, the year in which pope