The open Catholic saints database.
A structured reference for canonized saints of the Roman Catholic Church — searchable by name, feast day, and category. Freely browsable and queryable via API.
SaintDB is an open database of Catholic saints, compiled from liturgical calendars, the Roman Martyrology, and hagiographic tradition. It is maintained as a public resource for researchers, developers, and the faithful.
Each saint record contains a structured set of fields: canonical name, feast day, dates of birth and death, cause of death, biography, associated prayers, and categorical tags. Saints are classified across twelve categories — martyr, doctor, founder, mystic, bishop, pope, monk, nun, virgin, confessor, apostle, and evangelist.
Records are aggregated from the Roman Martyrology, Butler's Lives of the Saints, and the Ökumenisches Heiligenlexikon. All records are subject to ongoing editorial review and enrichment. If you notice an error or omission, please reach out via the Contact page.
All data is accessible via a public REST API. The API supports full-text search, letter-by-letter browsing, tag filtering, and pagination. See the Documentation section for complete endpoint reference.
SaintDB is built on the conviction that knowledge about the saints belongs freely to the Church and to the world. The catalogue is provided without authentication requirements or rate limits. We ask only that you cite the source when reproducing records.
List saints with pagination, optional letter filter, and one or more tag filters.
Retrieve a single saint record by numeric ID. Returns all fields including biography and prayers.
Full-text search across saint names and biographies. Uses PostgreSQL tsvector ranking with trigram similarity fallback.
Edit a single field on a saint record. Changes are audit-logged.
Lightweight health check. Returns {"status":"ok"} without querying the database.
What began as a small personal research project has grown into a structured database of over ten thousand canonized saints. This post introduces the project, its data model, and our plans for the year ahead.
Saint names appear across centuries and languages in bewildering variety. "Caecilia," "Cecilia," "Cécile" — these are the same person. This post covers how we built a multi-strategy search system using PostgreSQL tsvector ranking and pg_trgm trigram similarity to handle the full orthographic spectrum of sanctoral nomenclature.
More entries coming soon.
Questions, corrections, and contributions are welcome. The best way to reach the SaintDB team is by email.