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Mike,
In this posting you said you were looking for information on a French saint, St. Emeline.
I recently ran across your article when looking up the saint myself. None of the resources you pointed to have information on her, though they're pretty comprehensive. I eventually managed, fortuitously, to track her down.
She died in 1178, and has only been beatified (so she's Blessed Emeline). Prior to 1170, saints could be canonized by the bishop or primate of a region, rather in the way it's still done in the Eastern Churches. Such decrees, however, only permitted public veneration in that region, and the right of universal veneration had to be granted by the pope (since he alone has universal jurisdiction). In 1170, Pope Alexander III ended the practice of local canonization in the Western Church.
This might explain why Blessed Emeline has never become St. Emeline. Her cultus may have never risen to the level of getting the pope's attention, and there were no formal processes in place. That's speculation, however. I also don't know what beatification meant back then.
The current four-step process:
- Servant of God ==>
- Venerable ==>
- Blessed ==>
- Saint
was — I think — only instituted in the reign of Benedict XIV in the early 18th century. In French, she's called la bienheureuse Emeline d'Yèvres. The key to finding her was looking through French web pages.
Here's a page on her in English:
Here's a French page, run through Google translate:
And a short book, in French, on her life:
If you still have contact information for Matthew, who originally asked the question, perhaps you could pass this on to him, in case he never found what he was looking for.
— Reuben Slife
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