Saints (was)Re: SCA vs Mundane

[Cecily Garland]

According to Saints Preserve Us! (Everything you need to know about
every Saint you'll ever need by Sean Kelly & Rosemary Rogers , Raymond
Nonatus is the patron saint of Catalonia, Childbirth, children,
midwives,
obstetricians, and pregnant women and is also invoked against false
accusations (as in "it couldn't possibly be mine"?).  He was delivered
by
surgeons after his mother's death in labor.  He became a monk in
Barcelona
(which is in Catalonia, if I remember my Olympics correctly).  He did
all kinds
of stuff, trying unsucessfully to get martyred, and made Cardinal just
before he died
in 1240.

Catherine of Alexandria was an Egyptian queen who studied philosophy,
converted to Christianity, and turned down the marriage proposal of the
Roman
Emperor Maxentius.  He took it hard and ordered her stretched out on a
spiked wheel.
Lightning-wielding Angels appeared and destroyed the wheel, but
Catherine was
beheaded anyway. She is the patron of a whole bunch of groups, including
librarians,
schoolgirls, spinsters, students and universities.

According to Kelly and Rogers, the patron of College Students is Gabriel
Possenti,
whose day is February 27.  His father was a lawyer and his mother had 13

children.  "Twice in his teens, he was afflicted with serious
illlnesses. and on both
occasions vowed to enter the priesthood, if cured, but on recovery, he
delayed
his decision."  When a picture of Our Lady of the Sorrows spoke to him,
he decided
it was time.  Until he died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-two, he
tortured himself
by being wrapped in chains set with sharp points.  He was confirmed as a
Saint
and Patron of college students in 1932.

I hope you found these stories interesting- I thought it was a neat
book.

Best Wishes, Cecily

njones at ix.netcom.com wrote:

> Daniel mentioned:
> > S. Thomas Aquinas is well-known.
> > I found nothing there for C. of A.
> > Drew a blacnk on Nonnatus ("unborn"?  Hrm.  Must be a good story.)
>
>
> I want to say that Catherine of Alexandria was the Libriarian
> of Alexandria and was devoutly pagan until converted by
> some Bishop.  And she was martyred by being tied to chariots
> and pulled to itty bitty pieces.  Thus we get her symbol of
> the Catherine Wheel.
>
> Of course, I could be (and probably am) wrong.
>
> Gio,
> who has misplaced his Book of Saints otherwise he
> would look up her acta.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ansteorra.org/pipermail/ansteorra-ansteorra.org/attachments/19970508/00d9b325/attachment-0003.htm>