Christian Saints Quiz

Question: Which Christian saint wrote an account of her suffering in 3rd-century Carthage that was influential for centuries afterward?

Answer: Perpetua was a Christian martyr who wrote a journal recounting her trial and imprisonment that was continued by a contemporary who described Perpetua's death in 203. Her text is one of the rare surviving documents written by a woman in the ancient world.

Question: According to Roman Catholic tradition, who was the first pope?

Answer: St. Peter was, according to Roman Catholic tradition, the first pope.

Question: Which saint, known as the Angelic Doctor, has been recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as its foremost Western philosopher and theologian?

Answer: Thomas Aquinas, who has been called the Doctor Angelicus (Latin: “Angelic Doctor”), was an Italian Dominican theologian born in 1224/25. He is recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as its foremost Western philosopher and theologian, and he was canonized in 1323.

Question: The teachings of which Roman Catholic saint were condemned in 1277 by the university masters of Paris?

Answer: In January 1274 Thomas Aquinas was personally summoned by Pope Gregory X to the second Council of Lyon, which was an attempt to repair the schism between the Latin and Greek churches. On his way he was stricken by illness; he stopped at the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova, where he died on March 7. In 1277 the masters of Paris, the highest theological jurisdiction in the church, condemned a series of 219 propositions; 12 of these propositions were theses of Thomas. This was the most serious condemnation possible in the Middle Ages. He was, however, canonized in 1323.

Question: Which Roman Catholic saint received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1979?

Answer: Mother Teresa was the founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity—a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to the poor, particularly to the destitute of India—and the recipient of numerous honours, including the 1979 Nobel Prize for Peace. Within two years of Mother Teresa's death in 1997, the process to declare her a saint was begun, and Pope John Paul II issued a special dispensation to expedite the process of canonization. She was designated a saint in 2016.

Question: Which saint provided the model for church-state relations in the Middle Ages?

Answer: Ambrose was the bishop of Milan, a biblical critic, and the initiator of ideas that provided a model for medieval conceptions of church-state relations. Ambrose established the medieval concept of a Christian emperor as a dutiful son of the church “serving under orders from Christ” and so subject to the advice and strictures of his bishop.

Question: Which early Christian theologian eliminated from theology the belief in a coming kingdom of God on earth?

Answer: At the beginning of the 5th century, Augustine of Hippo, perceiving the danger of apocalyptic millennialism, developed new and more stringent ways to oppose it. Augustine argued that neither history nor chronology can be interpreted apocalyptically and that the millennium was not a future event but one that had already been set in motion by Christ. This interpretation radically reoriented Christian eschatology and eliminated from Christian theology the belief in a coming kingdom of God on earth. This ban on millennial thought so dominated the “official” theological writings of the early Middle Ages that most modern historians think that such thought disappeared entirely from Latin Christendom.

Question: Who is the patron saint of Scotland?

Answer: One of the Twelve Apostles and the brother of Peter, Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland and Russia.

Question: Which peasant girl led the French army at Orléans during the Hundred Years’ War?

Answer: Joan of Arc was a peasant girl who, believing that she was acting under divine guidance, led the French army in a momentous victory at Orléans that repulsed an English attempt to conquer France during the Hundred Years' War. She was subsequently burned as a heretic, in 1431, by the English and their French collaborators. She became France’s national heroine, and she was named a saint by Pope Benedict XV in 1920.

Question: Which saint is believed to have chased the snakes from Ireland?

Answer: Patrick is the patron saint and national apostle of Ireland. He is credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland during the 5th century and is probably responsible in part for the Christianization of the Picts and Anglo-Saxons. Before the end of the 7th century, Patrick had become a legendary figure; one legend holds that he drove the snakes of Ireland into the sea to their destruction.