Way before a dude named Prince was making Purple Rain, there was a martyr in Alexandria, Egypt, named Apollonia. Nothing, apparently, is known of her life, besides the fact that she was a Christian virgin who lived in Alexandria. Some sources say she was an older lady, but other sources say that’s a mistranslation, and [...]
Archive for the ‘Obscure Saint Blogging’ Category
St. Apollonia
Posted in Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged Egyptian saints, maidens, martyrs, persecution, Roman Empire, saints, virgins on July 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
St. Nicholas of Japan
Posted in Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged bishops, Czar Nicholas II, Eastern Orthodoxy, Japan, Otsu Incident, Russian Orthodoxy, Russo-Japanese War on July 20, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Sometimes I purposefully pick a saint that doesn’t seem to have too much weird stuff going on in the hopes that I can post on him or her in a quick, timely fashion. I’m never right. There’s always too much interesting historical stuff in the way. St. Nicholas of Japan was, in fact, a Russian. [...]
St. Hiatus
Posted in Obscure Saint Blogging, tagged hold your horses on July 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Hello fervent readers of Friday Obscure Saint blogging! Just popping in to say that there won’t be an obscure saint (or, probably, much else) for this week or next week. Henry & I are moving house–literally–and packing all your things and then unpacking them somewhere else is kind of a time suck. Hopefully we’ll be [...]
Saints Sergius and Bacchus
Posted in Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged gay marriage, gay saints, gays, lesbians, lgbtq, martyrs, Roman Empire, soldiers on June 20, 2008 | 3 Comments »
This past Monday, California became an even better place than it already was, because gays and lesbians started getting married legally. So, in honor of that fact, this week we’re talking about Saints Sergius and Bacchus, officially the patron saints of Christian nomads, and unofficially the patron saints of gay marriage and military gays. I, [...]
St. Vincent de Paul
Posted in Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged douchebags in the name of God, France, Richmond, saints, slaves, the poor, the South on June 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Since I’m at my parents’ house right now, in lovely Spotsylvania, Virginia where I grew up, I thought I’d do a Southern-type saint. There’s no patron saint of the Civil War that I can find. I did, however, see someone call the Civil War the “War of Southern Liberation” for the first time in my [...]
St. Etheldreda
Posted in Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged abesses, maidens, Old English, political marriages, queens, sexless unions on June 7, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Yeah, I’m late this week. Also I haven’t posted anything since the last Obscure Saint Blog. St. Etheldreda, nicknamed St. Audrey, is one of a great many Anglo-Saxon saints from long long ago whose real names are completely impossible to think about, let alone pronounce: Æthelthryth. Yeah, you try it. She was one of the [...]
St. Expeditus
Posted in Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged hackers, historical confusion, martyrs, nerds, procrastination makes it happen, saints on May 30, 2008 | 16 Comments »
Patron saint of procrastinators, and one who generally hurries things along. The story of Expeditus is extraordinarily confused, and ends with the Catholic church basically admitting that this guy never lived. He starts showing up in martyrologies–big lists of martyrs–in the eighteenth century in Italy, well before 1781. Unfortunately what the martyrology said was that [...]
St. Christina the Astonishing
Posted in Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged madman, madwomen, maidens, miracles, mystics, purgatory on May 23, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Astonishing. Astonishing! Also known as Christina Mirabilis, which is fancy Latin, she was born in the town of Saint-Trond in 1150 CE, in the diocese of Liege, in Belgium because apparently if a saint is going to appear in the blog on Obscure Saint Friday, they must be Belgian. She, along with her two sisters, [...]
St. Simeon, fool-for-Christ
Posted in Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged ascetics, Eastern Orthodox, fools for christ, madmen, the desert on May 16, 2008 | 4 Comments »
I think Simeon’s on the left. I have a serious weakness for the ascetic saints, probably because I think they mine the depths of insanity much more than any others. I mean, helping the poor and all that is just what Christians are supposed to do, right? But starving yourself in the desert while living [...]
