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 ‘martyrs’
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 »
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 [...]
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. Expeditus
Posted in Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged hackers, historical confusion, martyrs, nerds, procrastination makes it happen, saints on May 30, 2008 | 15 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. 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. Genesius of Rome
Posted in History, Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged martyrs, the Roman Empire on April 11, 2008 | 10 Comments »
St. Genesius of Rome lived in the late third century, mostly under the reign of the emperor Diocletian. He was an actor by trade, which probably means that he was lowborn and not a Roman citizen–the Romans thought about actors differently than we do. Since acting was essentially lying, the Roman logic goes, actors were [...]
St. Addai, the Apostle of Edessa
Posted in History, Obscure Saint Blogging, Religion, tagged dubious history, Jesus' homies, martyrs on April 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I love me some apocryphal historical confusion, I really do. Around 30 CE, Abgar V, King of Osroene (part of modern Turkey, on the upper Euphrates) suffered from some incurable disease. Historians differ (as they do) on what disease it was, but most say either leprosy or gout. He heard about Jesus’ healing miracles, and [...]
