Well officially saint making, or canonization by the Vatican, did not start until the 11th century, but you will find as early as the 2nd century, the veneration of saints was allowed in as it is claimed was began by the pagan converts and came into the church. Basically what these 'converts' were doing the same thing they had done for centuries before and the 'veneration of Saints' was transferred from idol worship. Here is something that makes clear what they did...
The ancient Romans worshiped gods and goddesses involved with every aspect of life. Jupiter, the chief of the gods, was the god of rain and storms, while his wife, Juno, was the goddess of womanhood. Minerva was the goddess of handicrafts and wisdom; Venus, of sexual love and birth; Vesta, of the hearth and sacred fires; Ceres, of farming and harvests.
The Greeks considered Mercury, whom they called Hermes, to be the messenger of the gods, but the Romans worshiped him as the god of trade, with businesspeople celebrating his feast day to increase profits. And there were other popular deities: Mars, god of war; Castor and Pollux, gods of sea travelers; Cronos, the guardian of time; and of course Cupid, god of love, whose magic arrows caused both human beings and immortals to fall in love.
Pagan gods were made Christian saints.
Bacchus became St. Bacchus, and Dionysius
became St. Denys or Denis."
-(Charles G. Berger, Our Phallic Heritage
[NY, NY: Greenwich Book Publishers, Inc., 1966],
p. 154-155).
"The Virgin [Mary] was given the title
Queen of Heaven and is depicted wearing
a blue robe decorated with stars and
standing on a crescent Moon. This image
is almost identical to pagan representations
of the goddess of love Ishtar who was
worshipped by the Babylonians."
-(Michael Howard, The Occult Conspiracy:
The Power of Secret Societies in World History
Ancient statues of mother and child formerly known as the Pagan gods Isis and Horus became Mary and baby Jesus and the old forms of worship came into the church.
Here is the excuse given to why 'idol worship' was allowed in.....
'In attempting to retain new converts from paganism and bring in more, devotion to all the various gods was at length replaced by devotion to "saints."
Yet it should be realized that all members of the early Christian Church were regarded as saints, meaning people sanctified or set apart to God. Paul greets the church at Philippi as "all the saints in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:1). However, it wasn't long before "saints" in the Roman tradition began to take on the meaning of a special class of martyrs or performers of heroic virtue.
In the second and third centuries it became common for local congregations to honor the death of a martyr by celebrating the anniversary of his or her demise. The congregations, by this time having accepted the pagan Greek falsehood of the immortality of the soul and having lost the biblical understanding that those dead in their graves "know nothing" (Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10), would then offer prayers to the dead for intercession with God.
Thus the meaning of "saint" changed from the biblical use of the word to refer to any member of the Church to referring to a deceased person declared to be a saint by the bishop of Rome. The evolution from the early Church's recognition of all members being "saints" to the veneration and worship of the dead is rooted in the early mixture of paganism with Christianity. The populace throughout the Roman Empire was not only accustomed to the worship of the Greek and Roman pantheon, but to cultic worship of local deities. It was an easy step for Christian congregations rife with paganism to replace the customs of local cults with the worship of dead martyrs.'
The list of 'saints' grew as each area with new converts were given their local dieties or 'martyrs' or anyone they could get someone to say something to qualify him or her as a 'saint' and a process set for it, and it just goes on and on from there.
Saints A to Z: 'A' - Saints & Angels - Catholic Online
