Saints and a Snow Day

This post has little to do with life in Georgia but it has a lot to do with being retired. When you’re retired you have time to follow your whims and fancies. This is particularly true when you live in a place that has an occasional snowfall followed by black ice that causes every organized activity within 100 miles to be cancelled and strands you at home for two or three days.

With that as background, during the last snowfall I started researching the lives of several Christian saints. My research was not entirely random. The church I go to has 16 chairs which bear the names of 16 saints in needlepoint. We’re talking some really obscure saints with names like Anselm, Cuthbert, Swithun, Etheldreda, Chad, Botulph, and Alpherge. I was curious about what these saints did that led them to be needlepointed on the back of chairs in a small Episcopal church in the middle of southern Appalachia. One thing led to another, and I decided to write a little booklet on these saints just in case someone else wonders who these saints are.

As I did my research I noticed that many saints are patron saints meaning that they are recognized as protectors or guiding spirits of certain nations, places, crafts, activities, occupations, animals and even natural phenomena. Some of the things that saints are patrons of are curious, humorous or downright bizarre. For instance, St. Alphege is the patron saint of kidnap victims, and St. Edmund is the patron saint of torture victims, pandemics and wolves. Pandemics? Wolves? Since when do wolves and pandemics need a guiding spirit? The lawyer in me wondered whether there was a possible heavenly jurisdictional conflict between Alphege and Edmund in the case of a kidnap victim who is tortured.

This piqued my interest, and I started to explore all the things that one could be the patron saint of.

There is a large category of patron saints who oversee occupations, activities or situations. Some of these have fairly narrow areas of responsibility. For instance there are patron saints for charcoal-burners (St. Alexander of Comana), arms dealers (St. Adrian of Nicomedia), fireworks makers (St. Barbara), flight attendants (St. Bona of Pisa), brush makers and basket makers (St. Anthony), bird dealers (St. John), bar tenders (St. Amand), ice skaters (St. Lidwina) and medical record librarians (St. Raymond of Penyafort). Even pawnbrokers have a saint—St. Nicholas of Myra.

Accountants and bankers have a saint (St. Matthew). So do astronomers (St. Dominic and St. Chad), doctors (St. Luke), pharmacists (St. James the Less, St. Cosmas and St. Damian), engineers (St. Joseph), journalists (St. Francis de Sales), librarians (St. Jerome), nurses (St. John, St. Agatha, and St. Raphael), philosophers (St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Justin), radiologists (St. Michael), scientists (St. Albert the Great) and writers (St. Lucy). But there are not, apparently, any saints for politicians, stockbrokers or IRS employees.

St. Cecilia watches over organ builders. I guess piano makers are out of luck. St. Paul takes care of tent makers. When’s the last time you met a tent maker? St. Giles is the patron saint of spur makers. How’s that for a narrow niche? What are there, eight spur makers in the world?

Then there is St. Malo, the patron saint of pig-keepers. For the life of me I cannot find the connection between pig-keeping and St. Malo but if you’re a pig-keeper I suppose it’s comforting to know that you have a patron saint. Imagine Malo’s reaction when he received his job assignment after passing the pearly gates? “Pig-keeper? You got to be kidding me. That’s how I’m rewarded for all my saintly efforts on earth?”

Servicemen of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces have a patron saint (St. Barbara) as do soldiers of the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers (St. Eligius) and Italian prison officers (St. Basilides). Those are pretty darn specific saint assigments. I was almost expecting to find a patron saint for left-handed fast food workers who work at the Dairy Queen in Blue Ridge.

Saints Barbara and Eligious, by the way, are multi-talented saints. Barbara is also the patron saint of miners, artillerymen, military engineers and firemen, Italian marines, architects, builders, foundry workers, mathematicians, geoscientists and stonemasons. Eligiusis is also the patron saint of metal-workers, jewelers, mechanics, taxi drivers, farriers, harness makers, numismatists, veterinarians, farmers, farmhands, and husbandry. Barbara and Eligious are the utility infielders of sainthood—they can play any position and protect any cause or occupation. If I’m ever in trouble and can’t remember the name of the saint for my exact predicament, I’m going with Barbara and Eligious.

I find it interesting and gratifying that brewers have at least six patron saints: Amand, Arnold of Soissons, Augustine of Hippo, Boniface, Luke and Dorothea of Caesarea. With all those patron saints looking over brewers, how can you explain a beer like Old Milwaukee?

The legal arena is well represented with St. Yves (lawyers), St. Thomas More (lawyers and court clerks), St. Nicholas of Myra (judges and lawyers in Paris bar; also pawnbrokers and archers—go figure), St. Genesius (attorneys, barristers and lawyers), St. Ivo of Kermartin (judges), St. John of Capistrano (judges) and St. Catherine of Siena (jurors). Genesius, incidentally, is also the patron saint of actors, comedians, clowns and theatrical performers of all kinds, which kind of makes sense.

It’s good to know that there is a patron saint for difficult marriages and separated spouses (St. Edward). I best he’s a busy little saint. On the more positive side there are also saints for engaged couples (St. Agnes), married women (St. Monica), mothers (St. Anne and St. Monica), fathers (St. Joseph), housewives (St. Anne and St. Martha), widows (St. Frances of Rome), singles (St. Andrew) and old maids (St. Andrew). Alas, I could not find a saint for desperate bachelors needing a date or middle-aged men having a midlife crisis.

Health issues are well represented: cancer patients (St. Peregrine Laziosi), eye disorders (St. Clare of Assisi), eye trouble (St. Lucy), headaches (St. Theresa of Avila), poisoning (St. Benedict), rheumatism (St. James), skin diseases (St. Anthony), snake bites (St. Hilary of Poitiers), sore throats (St. Blaise), stomach disorders (St. Timothy), abdominal pain and appendicitis (St. Erasmus), angina sufferers (St. Swithbert), heart ailments (St. John), arm pain (St. Amalburga) and bacterial disease and infection (St. Agrippina). St. Scholastica is the patron saint of convulsion in children (but not convulsions in adults?). It strikes me that there are a whole lot of ailments, like irritable bowel syndrome, persistent sexual arousal syndrome and restless leg syndrome, that don’t have a patron saint. Whoever hands out the saint assignments better get busy.

I was happy to learn there is a saint for desperate situations (St. Jude Thaddeus). I wish I had known that long ago. There is a saint for lost articles (St. Anthony of Padua). Good to know the next time I lose my keys.

Believe it or not, there are three saints whose job it is to provide protection against mice: St. Gertrude, St. Servatus and St. Ulric.

As far as I can tell, while there are procedures for determining whether a person is a saint in the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches (not true in the Anglican Church), there is no official process for designating a saint’s patronage. It appears that a saint become the patron saint of something by popular acclaim and tradition. So it seems to me that if you’re feeling left out because your occupation, ailment, situation or status has no patron saint, you can simply pick a saint and make him or her your patron saint.

If that’s the case, then I’m torn between St. David and St. Swithun. David is the patron saint of Wales. His symbol is a leek which is also the national symbol of Wales. His best-known miracle is report­ed to have taken place when the ground on which he stood rose up to form a small hill when he was preaching to a large crowd. One commentator observed that it is difficult to "con­ceive of any miracle more superfluous" in that part of Wales than the creation of a new hill. I like leeks, and I find the concept of superfluous miracles interesting.

St. Swithun lived in the ninth century in England. His best known miracle was restoring a basket of eggs that workmen had maliciously broken. He appeals to me because as a trial attorney it often occurred to me that my job was to put the eggs back together after someone else had broken them. A long-held superstition declares it will rain for forty days if it rains on his feast day. I guess he was the Punxsutawney Phil of his day.

There you have it—patron saints in a nutshell. I bet you can’t wait until the next snow day when I have time to research some other arcane subject.