Definition of "canonise"

[T]hat a rhetorician, like Libanius, a Pagan even to madneſs, ſhould think the Chriſtians capable of attempting the life of Julian, is not ſurpriſing. [...] But that an eccleſiaſtical hiſtorian, like Sozomen, ſhould be tempted to canoniſe ſo deteſtable an action, might perhaps not be credited on my aſſertion.

1784, [Jean-Philippe-René] de La Bléterie, “History of the Emperor Jovian”, in John Duncombe, transl., Select Works of the Emperor Julian, and Some Pieces of the Sophist Libanius, Translated from the Greek. […], volume II, London: […] J[ohn] Nichols; [f]or T[homas] Cadell, […], page 271

Fifty-eight years ago Jolyon had become an Eton boy, for old Jolyon's whim had been that he should be canonised at the greatest possible expense.

1921 September, John Galsworthy, “Old Jolyon Walks”, in To Let, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, part III, page 229

Nay, where pilgrimages are not successful, they begin to canonise saints, not in honor of the saints—for they are sufficiently honored without canonisation—but in order to draw crowds and bring in money.

1947, Martin Luther, “An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate: 1520”, in [Charles M. Jacobs?], transl., Three Treatises: An Open Letter to the Christian Bobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate. A Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. A Treatise on Christian liberty, Philadelphia, Pa.: Muhlenberg Press, page 131

The European library only achieves its characteristic design in 1843, with the separation of reading areas from bookstacks first attempted in library architecture at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève at the Université de Paris. [...] [Anthony] Panizzi's British Museum Reading Room (stacks surrounding a central reading room) canonised the procedure, which dominates even the more recent tower stacks, in which librarianship triumphs over ideological and economic divides, [...]

1998, Sean Cubitt, “Reading the Interface”, in Digital Aesthetics, London, Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, page 9

American are perhaps more obsessed with the idea of royalty than our long-lost British brothers; our taste for anything royal, never satiated in a true democracy, manifests itself in the canonising of celebrities and their families and mass idealisation of political dynasties like the Kennedys.

2012, Jessica A. Fox, chapter 13, in Three Things You Need to Know about Rockets: A Real-life Scottish Fairy Tale, 1st trade paperback edition, New York, N.Y.: Marble Arch Press, Atria Publishing Group, published August 2013, page 122