Lidwina was born in Holland in 1380, the daughter of a nobleman and a peasant woman. At an early age she’d already decided to join a convent and lead a holy life, which like I keep saying on this blog, wasn’t such a terrible choice when your options are a) spend all day praying or [...]
Posts Tagged ‘maidens’
St. Lidwina of Schiedam
Posted in Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged Catholicism, maidens, martyrs, medieval saints, Roman Catholicism, saints on July 3, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Blessed Columba of Rieti
Posted in Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged anorexia mirabilis, Catholicism, holy anorexia, maidens, renaissance saints, saints on December 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Technically, Columbia of Rieti is not a saint. Technically she gets the title “Blessed,” which is one rung below sainthood on the Catholic Ladder of Holiness. The process of beatification is simultaneously quite thorough and totally haphazard, as best as I can tell, and anyway her technically non-beatified status doesn’t make her any less interesting. [...]
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 »
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 [...]
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. 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, [...]
But does it have widgets?
Posted in Miscellany, Sex, tagged abstinence, bad jokes, bafflement, maidens, marriage, One Star on May 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Abstinence Clearinghouse-which I guess is like Publisher’s Clearinghouse, but if you win instead of a million bucks you get no sex?-recently launched a blog, which I of course checked out since I love kitsch. Mostly it’s full of irritating news and eye-rolling slogans (“Free love is pretty expensive!”) but one post in particular actually [...]
St. Dymphna
Posted in Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged Catholicism, Escaping the Pagans, incest, Irish saints, maidens, martyrs, medieval saints on May 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Dymphna was a young lady in Ireland sometimes during the 7th century CE. Her father was a pagan Irish chieftain Damon, and her mother was his beautiful Christian wife whose name has been lost. When Dymphna was about 14, her mother died. After searching all over Western Europe and not finding a woman as beautiful [...]
St. Aldegundis
Posted in Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged Belgium, Catholicism, maidens, medieval, nuns, saints, Satan, visionaries on April 25, 2008 | 1 Comment »
St. Aldegundis, also known as Aldegonde, Aldegund, or Adelgondis, was born in Flanders in 639 CE, in the county of Hainaut, which straddled the borders of modern Belgium and France. Her parents, Walbert and Bertilia, and her sister, Waldetrudis, are also all saints. In fact, her nieces and nephews by Waldetrudis: also all saints. They [...]
The Abstinence Rose Is Like A Tractor
Posted in Sex, tagged abstinence, American Fundamentalism, maidens, One Star, the grammar police on April 2, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Whatever else I think about the notion of abstinence until marriage, this picture of the “Abstinence Rose Pin” offends my writerly sensibilities. I saw it on Feministing a while back, and I knew there was something wrong with that simile that I couldn’t exactly name. I solved that problem the way I solve all my [...]
Friday Obscure Saint Blogging: St. Wilgefortis
Posted in History, Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged debunked saints, maidens, Roman Catholicism on March 28, 2008 | 7 Comments »
And now for a fun and exciting weekly feature of the Illegiterati: Friday Obscure Saint Blogging. Every Friday, I’ll pick an obscure saint, usually from either Roman Catholicism or some sort of Christian Orthodoxy, and write about them. First up is St. Wilgefortis. I can’t tell when she lived, but her cult came about sometime [...]
