A Cloud of Witnesses, Part 1

The saints, the variegated icons of Christ

In this and the next two posts, we look at those whom the church has designated “saints” — i.e., exemplary “holy ones” — a broad category that includes both human beings and angels. In this and the following post, I’ll be concentrating on a few particular “types” of human saints that appear in iconography. This is not intended to be a detailed, encyclopedic look at the subject, but a broad, unsystematic introduction.