Joan of Arc
Peasant girl who said God's voices sent her to war, and whose answers survive in two trial records.
Joseph of Cupertino
Friar whose reported flights in ecstasy brought crowds, the Inquisition, and decades of enforced seclusion.
Sabbatai Zevi
Smyrna kabbalist hailed as Messiah across the Jewish world in 1665-66, who converted to Islam before the Sultan.
Baal Shem Tov
Healer and mystic of Podolia whom Hasidism remembers as its founder, and whom Polish tax clerks recorded.
Nachman of Breslov
Great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, storyteller and mystic whose grave at Uman draws thousands each Rosh Hashanah.
Ahmad al-Tijani
Algerian-born scholar whose claim of a waking meeting with the Prophet founded the Tijaniyya order.
Handsome Lake
Seneca chief whose 1799 visions, written down that week by a Quaker, began the Longhouse religion.
Swaminarayan
Gujarat reformer whose talks were recorded in his lifetime and whom a British bishop met at Nadiad.
Seraphim of Sarov
Russian hermit whose 1903 canonization, driven by the tsar, rested on healing reports and disputed texts.
Joseph Smith
American seer who published the Book of Mormon and was killed by a mob at Carthage, Illinois.
The Bab
Persian merchant who claimed to be the awaited Qa'im and was shot in Tabriz in 1850.
Bernadette Soubirous
Miller's daughter questioned by police, prosecutors and bishops after reporting eighteen visions at a Pyrenean grotto.
Emir Abd al-Qadir al-Jazairi
Sufi scholar who fought France in Algeria, then sheltered Damascus Christians in 1860 and wrote mystical works.
Ramakrishna
Bengali temple priest whose ecstatic states and conversations were recorded almost day by day by a schoolteacher.
Nakayama Miki
Yamato farm wife who became the Shrine of God in 1838 and was detained into her late eighties.
Baha'u'llah
Persian exile whose claim to be the Promised One founded the Baha'i Faith.
Charbel Makhlouf
Lebanese hermit unknown in life, famous after his tomb reportedly began to seep and cures followed.
Waris Ali Shah
Celibate Sufi of colonial Awadh in yellow, who drew Hindus, Muslims and Europeans to Dewa.
John of Kronstadt
Married parish priest famed for healing by prayer, and later aligned with Russia's antisemitic far right.
Sai Baba of Shirdi
Fakir of a Shirdi mosque who told a court commissioner that his caste was God.
Amadou Bamba
Senegalese Sufi teacher whom France exiled twice and whose order became a pillar of Senegalese life.
Wovoka
Paiute ranch hand whose 1889 vision gave the Plains nations the Ghost Dance.
Chofetz Chaim
Radin scholar whose books on speech and Jewish law made him the saint of Lithuanian Orthodoxy.
El Niño Fidencio
Barefoot healer of a northern Mexican hacienda, visited by the president in 1928 and never canonised.
Ajahn Mun
Wandering forest monk whose disciples held him an arahant and whose bones reportedly turned to crystal.
Black Elk
Oglala healer of the great vision who became a Catholic catechist and a candidate for sainthood.
Ramana Maharshi
South Indian sage who taught self-inquiry, testified in court, and refused amputation for his sarcoma.
Simon Kimbangu
Kongo Baptist catechist whose five months of healing in 1921 brought a death sentence and thirty years in prison.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Indian yogi in America, watched by the British, whose unchanged embalmed body became a modern claim.
Xuyun
Chan master said to have lived 119 years and to have survived a near-fatal beating at Yunmen in 1951.
Said Nursi
Kurdish-born scholar of Turkey whose Risale-i Nur was repeatedly prosecuted and whose grave the army emptied.
Therese Neumann
Bavarian stigmatic who said she lived without food; her family refused the hospital test the Church demanded.
Padre Pio
Capuchin friar whose wounds were examined by doctors, doubted by the Holy Office, and venerated by millions.
Neem Karoli Baba
Elusive north Indian guru whose Western devotees, especially Ram Dass, carried his name abroad.
Anandamayi Ma
Bengali woman saint with no guru, whose trances and sayings were recorded from 1925 by daily diarists.
Baba Sali
Moroccan rabbi and kabbalist whose Negev grave became one of the great pilgrimage sites of modern Israel.
Menachem Mendel Schneerson
Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, who built a worldwide outreach network and became the centre of a messianic dispute.
Mother Teresa
Founder of the Missionaries of Charity, canonized on miracles her patient's own doctors disputed.
Yitzhak Kaduri
Baghdad-born Jerusalem kabbalist and amulet maker, drawn into Israeli politics near the end of a very long life.
Sathya Sai Baba
South Indian guru of millions, famed for materializations, and a contested case of alleged fraud and abuse.