March 2, 2023 • 40 mins
Did you know there’s a Patron Saint of (repentant) murderers? And another one for ugly people? In today’s episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore how some Catholic Saints became the holy intercessors for some — frankly, weird — things.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for the patron Saint
of our podcast, our super producer, mister Max Williams, the
patron Saint of all podcasts, Saint Maximus, Saint Maximus, I
love the wise. What would you be a patron saint
(00:48):
of noel? Oh? Gosh? What? Uh oh? Let me let
me think on that. Okay, okay, Ben, I've got um.
I think you know. I feel like I would be
a good patron saint of travel to obscure places. I
like it. I'll be the patron Saint of modesty, and
(01:11):
I'll be the best damn patron saint of modesty that
there ever was ever. No one could ever beat me
because I'm the patron Saint of modesty, right? Could I
be the patron Saint of difficult cats? Not like cats
that are the trouble, but like that demand a lot,
totally can't You could also be the patron Saint of
curling of folks. If you haven't put it together quite yet,
(01:35):
this is an episode about patron saints because we three
non popes are still very interested in so much of
Catholic history and patron saints in particular. We talked about
this a few times off air. For a lot of people,
I think the idea of saints in Christianity feels a
(01:57):
little bit odd, right because christian it is monotheistic. There's
only one God, right, so why would you pray to
someone else? Well, I mean, you don't see the same
canon of saints in Protestant Christianity as you do in Catholicism, right,
(02:17):
Like they're not like imbued with mystical powers per se,
right right, Yeah, And saints occur in other religions and denominations.
But I think most of us when we hear the
word saint, we think of a Catholic saint, and in Catholicism,
a saint as a person who is believed to have
a special connection with God, a closeness of sorts, And
(02:41):
the idea is that these saints can intercede on your behalf,
a kind of heavenly advocate and patron saints or advocates
for very particular stuff. It could be a nation, it
could be a town or a city, it could be
all kinds of stuff. Yeah, it could be like a
particular discipline, you know, crafts or whatever it might be.
(03:05):
And a lot of times folks that associate themselves with
these particular you know, disciplines or families or classes or
whatever it might be, may where either some sort of
talisman I guess let's call it. That might not be
the right term in Catholicism, but you know, some sort
of trinkets perhaps that represents that saint, like a Saint
(03:25):
Christopher's metal is a very popular one, for example. Yeah,
and saints also, of course, have other forms of veneration
and commemoration, like feast days. Here's the thing. You probably
have heard of patron saints. Saint Christopher's a great example,
but you might you've almost certainly not heard of all
of them. And if you're not Catholic, you might not
(03:48):
be aware that a lot of saints or patrons of
some really really specific or deeply weird stuff that you
wouldn't associate with sainthood and general. You know, it's true,
And before we dive into a list, this isn't going
to be sort of a saintlyalistical episode. I do think
(04:08):
the use of the word patron here is interesting and
it's always kind of fascinating me because you think of
like an individual perhaps as being a patron of the arts,
you know, or someone who perhaps finances something, a patron
of an individual cause perhaps, But a patron saint is
I guess the implication being that they somehow represent and
(04:33):
support some particular thing, right, Yeah, yeah. We don't mean,
of course, to disrespect in any shape, form or fashion,
the spiritual beliefs of the Catholic doctrine or any spiritual beliefs.
We have learned a lot with episodes like this, and
I'm doing that preface. I'm doing that disclaimer because when
(04:57):
I was growing up, one of the ways it was
explained to me as a kid was that patron saints
I could think of them as like mascots for specific things.
And that was another That was another kid who told
me that, and that kid went to Catholic school. So
I thought, yeah, Max is doing the nod. I thought, okay,
(05:18):
that checks out. You know, but we're both seven years old.
What do we know. Anyway, we thought we thought this
would be a strange exploration. We're only scratching the surface
here because there are a lot of patron saints and
they are the advocates for a lot of things, often
some of which aren't like good things, you know, yeah,
(05:40):
or what one might consider to be like a positive trait.
And that's very much so of our first entry into
this saintly listical. Yeah, and a lot of these saints
are patrons of more than one thing. We're just we're
focusing on one or two aspects. Yeah, we want to
introduce you to Saint Drogo, no relation to cal Drogo
(06:01):
of the Song of Ice of Fire. Saint Drogo is well,
bluntly put, the patron saint of UGO's and also delightful
coffee coffee, which is interesting and you know, and again
there may be other aspects um, but oh yeah, there
are there. Well, one for example, might be shepherds. And
(06:23):
it's odd here because there there's a bit of inherent
like almost judgment built into that, because it's almost like
are all shepherds ugly? You know? That's always thinking too,
because I like, I like envisioning the creation and patron
saints as a pitch meeting and someone's like, I don't know,
(06:44):
up shepherds, uh coffee, And someone's like ugly people and
he's like, yeah, yeah, them too, them too. Let's give
them something, let's give back to them. Yeah, and and
you know a lot of these saints are usually there's
a reason. It's not like it's just done willy nilly,
you know, a saint in well, first of all, a
saint isn't just some sort of like angel or celestial being.
(07:06):
A saint is someone who is sainted posthumously. Usually no,
always right, there's no canonized that's right, sort of the
way you might be knighted. Only that happens usually while
the person is still living. But this is something that
can only be bestowed this honor by the Catholic Church.
And there's probably some interesting meetings that go into those
(07:29):
kind of decisions right where they then decide which which
aspects of the saint represents. Saint Drogo was born as
Drogo of Seaborg on March fourteenth, eleven oh five. He
passed away on April sixteenth of eleven eighty six. Decently
long life for that period of time. Amazing, yeah, kind
of long life. You usually will only associate with members
(07:51):
of nobility because of their access to you know, better
healthcare for whatever it was at the time, or perhaps
members of the clergy, but for similar reasons. So he
is born into a pretty well placed family. He's a
Flemish noble. Feeling a little Flemish today. I think I've
had too much coffee. He was also he also is
(08:12):
known to some historical sources as drew On or Drukes
or Drogon again no relation to song Ice and fire.
Was a dragon perhaps or definitely an appoyeah. But we
also know that George R. Martin pulled a lot of
his names and even conflicts from historical figures, so this
(08:33):
doesn't surprise me one bit that we may we may
see more of these. Um. He was primarily a French citizen.
Um and but but he you know, much like our
story and stuff they don't want you to know about
a member of the Rockefeller family that kind of eschewed
a life of luxury, perhaps in favor of more like
(08:55):
self discovery or living a little bit more like you know,
the common folk. He wasn't all about that life of
luxury and being which you might call a shiftless lay about. Yeah,
this story is actually really tragic. So his father dies
before he's born, his mother dies in childbirth. He doesn't
learn the truth about what happened to his parents, until
(09:17):
he's ten years old, and that's still still though. Ten
is very young to lay that on a kid, right,
So he feels terrible about this, and at twenty years old,
he has this crisis of faith at kind of a
breaking point, and he gives away his money and his possessions,
his goods to the poor. He renounces his claim to
(09:41):
the estate so other heirs in the family can get it,
and he says, I'm going to live a life of
poverty and penance. I'm going to travel around to all
these different holy sites. He goes to Rome more than once,
and eventually he starts to kind of settle down. He
gets job as a shepherd for a wealthy woman named
(10:03):
Elizabeth de la Hare and Seaborg like you mentioned, and
which means Elizabeth of the Hair of the hair, Yeah,
legendary actually patron saint of champoo that lady and rabbits, yeah,
don't fact check the He liked this. It was kind
of like a retirement for him almost. He liked being alone.
(10:24):
He loved the solitude. And apparently he loved the solitude
because it gave him time to pray, So that's what
he was doing while he was shepherd. Ey well, and
let's also not forget the religious connection that shepherds have,
you know, the idea of Jesus being the shepherd and
his followers being his flock and all of that, and
(10:46):
also specifically actual shepherds, you know, watching their flocks by
night and all of that stuff. It's very big image
that that pops up in the Bible time and time again. Yeah,
and you know, part of these stories are quite possibly
embellished a bit. You know, we're telling you the official version,
(11:08):
but please realize that sometimes the stories may be considered
figurative or they may be considered works of fiction, and
we'll see a few of those in this episode as well.
But yeah, he's ticking all the boxes for good imagery.
He wants to tell people about the stuff he's learned
(11:28):
as a shepherd. So other folks in the in the
area will come to him and he'll diagnose their sheep.
He'll tell them if there's an illness and how to
address that malady. He can read the weather pretty well,
and people liked him, especially his boss, because he was
he was good, he had a good vibe, he was
(11:48):
helpful to be around. People also started thinking he had
superpowers and just about you, ever so slightly. Jesus himself
was a figurative shepherd, these all kinds of passages referring
to him as I'm pretty himself as being the good shepherd,
(12:08):
using all of these kind of sheep analogies, talking about
how the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
He who has hired hand and not a shepherd who
doesn't own the sheep, sees the wolf coming, leaves the
sheep and flees. We also see very important biblical figures
like Abraham and Moses, King David even and the Old
Testament prophet Amos, who are shepherds. So that's a very
(12:33):
important actual occupation in the Bible as well. But you're right,
I mean, he's very well liked and very much living
among you know, people who if he had played his
cards as they were dealt to him, would have been
considered like lesser than him. But instead he is very
much living amongst them and giving, you know, everything that
(12:55):
he has to help these these people. And you know,
he got a really good reppegea And to your point,
bend a bit. A part of that reputation had to
do with him having these kind of like supernatural abilities,
one of which was the gift of by location, which
is kind of what it sounds like. I mean, I
guess maybe in like you know X men terms, that
(13:17):
would be something to the equivalent of like teleporting or
being able to perhaps duplicate oneself, you know, like trying
to think of like an X man who had that
AUTI many were less. It's right, It's right there in
the name, folks. So yeah, this is Drogo is kind
of our biblical multiple man, the gift of by location,
(13:37):
because there were reports that he'd be seen in the
fields and simultaneously at church, so he was tending his
flocks with on the one hand and then you know,
doing his Bible studies on the other. Um. So there
was a kind of almost like a catchphrase that came
up among some of the kind of the common folk
of the area and this rural area in the region.
(14:00):
I'm not Saint Drogo. I can't ring the church hell
from Mass and be in the procession. Yeah, silly, I laughed.
Found that. Let's shout out to a Catholic dot org.
Oh yeah, and shout out to you Ben for this
wonderful research brief. This is really really fun one as
y'all will continue to discover. So Ben, why so far
(14:22):
this guy seems like a lovely fellow, you know, a
friend to the poor, a friend to the to the
lowly shepherd. Where does the ugly part come in? Yeah,
that's the question. So none of this has addressed physical appearance.
We don't shame people for their appearance here on ridiculous History,
but the reality is he is the patron saint of
(14:45):
unsightly people. That's another euphemism you'll hear, and it's because
he came down with some sort of extreme physical affliction.
Some stories will just say there was this unexplained condition
that of him, gross deformities like hus filled boils all
over his body, but not the plague. And then other
(15:06):
sources will say that he just had a real bonker's
bad hernia, and a bad hernia would maybe give you
like a hunch perhaps, or really bad posture. Perhaps it's weird.
Whatever it was really affected his appearance so much so that,
according to the story, he was cloistered up or put
(15:30):
into a solitary room, a cell you could call it,
but not like a prison, that was attached to the
church he went to all the time and for quite
a while, he only survived on barley, water and the Eucharist,
and this was given to him through a small window,
so he get food and water through this window. People
(15:50):
who were seeking prayers and counsel would come to him.
You see some jokes about kids coming to look at him,
almost like a freak show vibe, but I don't know
how much of that is actually true. He lives basically
like an anchorite there for forty five years, which is
a huge amount of time to spend in one room, right,
(16:13):
And eventually he passes away at eighty one years old.
And it's because of his appearance and his story that
he became known as the patron Saint of these different things,
like patron Saint of ugly people, because you were at
one point ugly but remains bious. I guess the coffee
(16:36):
thing's interesting, though. The coffee thing doesn't quite check out
because it's kind of anachronistic. He never had coffee in
his life. He had had no idea what it was,
that's right, Like, I mean, when did coffee really hit
the scene? That would have been something that came from
other lands, right, So coffee isn't really a thing for
(16:59):
your Peans at this time in the eleven hundreds. It's
a few centuries later we found a book Uncommon Grounds,
the History of Coffee. Now it transformed our world. Love
books about very specific things, and this guy, Mark Pendergrass,
the author, says that it probably wasn't until sometime in
(17:20):
the fifteenth century that someone roasted coffee beans, ground them
and made an infusion. Well, and to a point, it's
probably going to continue to come up. A lot of
these saints are given additional aspects many many, many years
after their saint hood. Oh you mean, like the multiple
(17:40):
Saints of the Internet. Correct, Yeah, definitely, definitely. But you know,
we also have modern saints, you know, of course, you know,
we'll get to that. Like I mean, Mother Teresa is
a saint, if I'm not mistaken, Yeah, you're right. She
was canonized fairly recently. I think twenty sixteen she became
a saint, Saint Teresa of Calcutta, that's right. So, yeah,
(18:03):
where did this coffee business come from? This is interesting? Yeah,
this one's kind of weird. Okay. So the some of
the first sources that associate Saint Drogo with coffee don't
come out until the eighteen hundreds, and it looks like
coffee house owners in the area kind of proactively claimed
(18:25):
Saint Drogo as their patron. But there's no reason, like
there's no solid source or something from the story of
his life. He may have just been a local saint
in the area and then people who own coffee houses
or sold coffee started saying, yeah, Saint Drogo patron saint
of coffee, and people went along with it. Yeah. He's
(18:48):
also often referred to a specifically as the saint the
patron saint of caffeine. Great, well, thank you for your service,
Saint Drogo. And also, you know, feels like we had
to talk about the possibly multiple patron saints of the Internet.
Saint Isidore of Seville. Also, you know, just spoiler alert,
(19:10):
born way before the internet was a thing. M Yeah,
perhaps it had invented the Internet along with al Gore,
at least in its in it's its conceptualization. Now I'm joking,
but yeah, it was Saint Paul, or Saint John Paul
the Second rather who bestowed this, uh, this particular aspect
upon Saint Isidore of Seville, because as a bishop, Saint
(19:33):
Isidore was a very important figure in creating early forms
of what we now know as universities. So more of
a patron saint of education, I guess, but it gets
a little more specific. Oh yeah, this guy wrote a
twenty book series where he tried to explain everything. It's
(19:57):
not even hyperbole. He tried to explain every everything, and
he thought that's what he books, that'll cover it. We're
talking about the origins of language to law, biology, agriculture,
history of the church, the stuff like how to build roads.
He wanted to be he wanted to kind of create,
like you said, a university or a Wikipedia, kind of
(20:18):
an omnibus, right, Yeah, it's his magnampus. And so I
think there's some sand to this, this patronage, because he
clearly was a guy who saw the great potential of
sharing knowledge, and that's always commendable. Now, his book series
write about everything, of course not there's a lot of
things they had and quite figured out yet. But the
(20:40):
interconnectedness I think of knowledge is an important factor here too,
because it wasn't just you know, specifically how twos on
all this stuff. It kind of was attempting to sew
it all together in a similar way to what the
internet kind of does in a much larger scaled kind
of way. Yeah said. And there's folks who heard us
(21:03):
mentioned multiple saints of the Internet as we record today.
There's there's a person who is not quite an official
saint yet but is well on their way. The first
millennial who will in all likely to become a saint,
a boy named Carlo Acutis, who tragically passed away at
(21:24):
the age of fifty. Yeah. I mean pretty impressive though,
someone who to have made such an impact by such
an early age, and really sad to have been taken.
But during his brief time on planet Earth, he was
a big help in spreading the teachings of Roman Catholicism
(21:45):
on the internet. This is this is again a modern
saint before he tragically passed away due to leukemia in
two thousand and six, and one of his big supporters
was Cardinal Angelo. Bet you I believe b Ecciu, who
is the head of the Vatican's Saint making department. It's
(22:07):
just the thing, you know, And you got to imagine, Bet,
and I'd love to explore this briefly here what the
modern saint making department kind of looks like. I picture
it being a nomination process and then various members of
the clergy throughout the Roman Catholic world vote on who.
(22:27):
And then obviously a pope could probably just full scale
nominate someone themselves and just you know, make it so
with a wave of a hand. Yeah, So there is
a defined process. They're not just walking walking around the
Vatican vibes. Anybody can become a saint in the Roman
Catholic Church, so unlike say a priest, you don't have
(22:50):
to be male, etc. But the big thing is, as
we said, you can only become a saint after death.
And the first the first step is a formal request
for an individual to be considered for sainthood. It's submitted
to this tribunal in the Vatican, and the request has
to explain how the person lived a very pious life.
(23:12):
And then this tribunal will evaluate the story of this
person's life basically did they live in a saintly way?
And if this person passes the sniff test, I guess
the tribunal officially recognizes them as a servant of God.
(23:32):
Capitalisque capital g that's like level one. Yeah, and then
they're not there yet, You're not yet. No, No, then
you have to go to the Congregation for the Causes
of the Saints at the Vatican. This is a group
of cardinals, archbishops, bishops, theologians who study a person's life
(23:53):
and writing in depth to make sure it lines up
with the values of the Church. So in this second process,
to be heroically virtuous, they have the candidate has to
be found to have four cardinal virtues and three theological virtues.
It goes on, and then you finally get to beatification,
(24:15):
which is where you would be called blessed. Harlow acutis
is beatified now. And those cardinal virtues, which would be
like the opposite of cardinal sins, are prudence, justice, temperance,
and courage. And then those theological aspects our faith, hope
and charity. This really applies to Carlo because again by
you know, at such a young age, he became very
(24:37):
deeply religious. He grew up in a middle class household
in Milan, which of course is very much in that
world of the Vatican. You know, I mean it's not
right there, but you know, folks in this part of
the world very very very deferential to everything that goes
on in Vatican City. He would actually, you know, go
and mingle with the city's poor residence and actually give
(24:59):
his meager you know, pocket money to poor folks. And
he taught himself coding U which is no small feat.
And he actually would at the at the time, this
is in the early two thousands, set up websites. You know,
this was before like square space and things like that.
I mean, you know, that stuff was kind of you know,
(25:19):
we had like make your own website, kind of templatize
things at that point. But then in the earlier internet
days you definitely still had to you know, do some
HTML or whatever it might be. Um, this is a
little kind of on the cusp of that kind of stuff.
But he actually set up websites for priests and at
the age of ten he started to create like an
online kind of curated exhibit about religious miracles, which started
(25:43):
to really pick up steam and gain popularity after he
passed away. Yeah, yeah, and this and again this very impressive.
He's he's a whiz at the Internet, at coding. He
specifically created this online exhibit about miracles that absolutely exploded
(26:05):
after his death. Hundreds of parishiers around the world have
used the site he created for their own real life exhibits.
They printed out versions of this. In twenty nineteen, Pope
Francis pays tribute to Carlow and says that his use
of the Internet to communicate values and beauty was the
(26:26):
perfect antidote to the dangers of other stuff on the
Internet like social media, and Francis even the Pope quoted
this kid. Francis quoted Carlo by noting something he had
said during his lifetime. Everyone is born in original but
many die like photocopies. And after he cited this, Pope
(26:48):
Francis said, don't let this happen. I think it's pretty
amazing to be quoted by the Pope. It doesn't matter
whether or not you were Catholic. If the Pope was
ever like, I was listening to show Ridiculous History and
they introduced me to the term beefed up, and next
your camera went out for a second. I think the
(27:09):
Pope probably has more important stuff to do. But the
point we're getting to here is support for making Carlo
a saint is pretty widespread and unanimous. The beatification ceremony
was put off due to COVID nineteen but eventually got held.
Right now, he's on the way to canonization. Canonization is
(27:31):
the step after beatification, and when you get to these
areas of becoming a saint, we're talking miracles, posthumous miracles
that occur because someone prayed for your intercession. The miracle
attributed to Carlo occurred in twenty thirteen, the rapid and
inexplicable healing of a six year old Brazilian boy suffering
(27:51):
from a deformation of the pancreas. And you can read
a great La Times article all about Carlo. This is
from Tom Kington, June twenty eight, twenty twenty. A patron
saint of the Internet. The Pope is on it, so
we will soon have not one, but multiple saints of
the Internet. That's good, that's all. That's all well and
(28:12):
good because the internet's a big deal. But what about
another human pursuit, Noel, what about murder? We see that's
not a good one. But again you know it's uh,
(28:33):
everyone needs a saints, even even the most despicable amongst us.
And uh, you know, perhaps folks who are are in prison,
you know, for doing the most heinous of acts. Yeah,
there's a patron saint of not murderer or the act,
but of murderers. Right, Um, But again, like to what
I was getting at most importantly repentant. Yes, yeah, that's
(28:57):
the you have to feel bad about it. This is
the thing which I get. You know, you should feel bad.
Saint Julian the Hospitaller or Hospitaller Hospitaller patron saint of
repentant murderers, as well as clowns, circus workers, innkeepers, fiddle players, jugglers,
(29:18):
and people without children. See some of these, I just
feel like I I just kind of got tossed in there,
not necessarily based on any real life acts of these individuals.
I don't know. Man, juggling's cool. That's weird. That's a
weird flex. I always thought juggling was weird flex. When
I'm hanging out with people and they juggle, I enjoy it.
(29:39):
But it's a weird flex. Jonathan Strickling can juggle, at least,
surprising thing I've heard today. So can Alex Williams a
little bit. At least he took juggling classes for a bit.
It's tricky. It really requires some left brain right brain
kind of stuff. It's like rubbing your tummy and patting
your head or whatever, because you gotta kind of you know, uh,
synchronize and right hands and have them do things that
(30:01):
are completely disconnected from one another. So kudos to anyone
out there that has mastered the art of juggling. Or
I wonder if there's a patron saint of yo yoing there.
Maybe they're very well, maybe it's a matter of fact.
Let's see, you know, I don't believe there is dang
(30:28):
it yet, but we have to be the change sometimes.
Let's figure out how this guy becomes the saint of
repentant murderers. The story starts with a curse. He's born,
and he has a curse on him that says he
will commit patris side that he will kill his parents,
and he says, I don't want to do that, you know,
(30:49):
I don't want to be a person who kills people
in general, much less my mom and dad. So he
pulls a move like remember him forced up when Forrest
just starts running. It's like most of the movie, Yeah,
how can I forget? Yeah, So this guy, Saint Julian,
pulls a Forrest Gump. He walks away from home one
(31:12):
day and he just keeps walking for fifty days. Eventually
settles down and he marries a wealthy widow, and then
he becomes a night and he starts working for a king,
and the decades fly by, and sometimes Julian is looking
out from the ramparts of his castle and he says,
(31:33):
I guess I've outsmarted that curse. But he didn't know that.
Throughout all those decades, his parents have been searching for him,
and they finally found where he was. They found they
came across his castle, but unfortunately, at the time when
they discovered the castle, Julian was away on business, hunting business.
(31:57):
His wife, however, was there and welcome the family with
open arms. She was so excited to meet her in
laws for the first time that she gave them the
nicest room in the joint, the master bedroom. And Julian
comes home much much later from hunting. He finds the
couple in his bed and he immediately thinks it's his
(32:19):
wife with another man. He thinks she's chilling on him.
He goes nuts, he sees red. He murders both those people.
Oh wow, that's terrible. Oh that's a bummer. Yes, yeah,
it's a bit of a bummer. Yeah, like, yeah, that's
(32:40):
the story though. That's some Shakespearean stuff right there. You know,
and of his rex kind of stuff. His wife was
away at church at the time, and she tells him
what he did. Those people you killed, they're your parents.
Julian loses loses it, you know, he is sparing. He
(33:05):
is convinced that he has bound for hell. But according
to one version of the story, his wife encouraged him
and she said, well, I know that God is so
merciful and so kind and loving that if we serve
him all our lives without anger and without envy, I
do surely believe that he will grant us mercy. So
(33:25):
they spend the rest of their life trying to make
up for that. Yeah, I mean this, I get it.
This really clicks right with the whole How do you
become a patron saint of murderers? How how do you,
you know, canonize someone who has done, you know, one
of the most horrific acts that a human being could do,
one of the most cardinal sins of Catholicism. It would
(33:49):
have had to have been an honest mistake and very
tragic for that individual, and then led to a life
of utter penance and seeking to absolve one's self from
this heinous crime. But you know, we gotta wonder too,
like would this have been this probably would have been
(34:09):
considered man slaughter perhaps or you know, yeah, because it's
not premeditated. It's not premeditated, and it is technically you know,
I don't know. This guy also should have maybe been
the patron saying of jumping the gun. Yeah, a little bit.
It's not a bad point. Yeah. This. So Julian does
(34:30):
dedicate the rest of his life. According to the story
Dependence and Good Work, he starts a hospice at a
river crossing where a lot of crusaders travel, and he
took on the duty of ferrying people safely back and
forth across the river. You can also find one story
that says he took it a frozen leper one night
(34:52):
and said, look, it's cold. I can tell you've been
having a rough time for a while. Why don't you
sleep in my bed? And the leoper turned out to
be an angel in disguise, and the leper or the angel,
now said Julian, our lord hath sent me to thee
and sendeth the word that he accepted thy penance. Nice ending,
(35:13):
let's get a bow on it. Tricky thing. Though a
lot of people think this story is kind of a
bit of pious fiction because it's really tough to find
an historical basis for the specifics of this guy. Interesting
but still, but still, you know, if it's stories have power, right,
and there are repentant murderers of plenty throughout history who
(35:37):
have prayed for the intercession of Saint Julian. But no,
I don't feel I feel like we can't end on
it down note this, Let's keep this next one short,
but we gotta this is the perfect endingman. We've got
to talk about one very surprising patron saint. Correct, this
is Saint Lawrence, the patron saint of Comedians. Nothing better
(35:59):
than a cut up saints. During the third century, there
were seven deacons who served under Pope Sixtus the Second,
which is very confusing. Yes, it's like seventh, fifth in Rome.
And this was a tough place for Christians to exist.
(36:19):
As we know, the Roman Empire did not take kindly
to Christians, and they did, you know, gnarly things like
you know, nailed them to crosses. Emperor Valerian was was
reigning at the time, and he was no exception to
this rule, very very anti Christian and did horrible things
to them. And their bodies. What put Saint Lawrence in
(36:39):
his particular cross hairs and that of the Roman Empire
at large, was his belief that the Catholic Church was
sitting on treasures untold, not like of the you know,
religious varieties, or of the you know, spiritual variety. This
is like, you know, golden stuff. A Roman official asked Lawrence,
(37:01):
you know, like the location of the church's treasure, you
know that kind of stuff, and he responded by same,
behold in these poor persons, the treasures which I promised
to show you, to which I will add pearls of
precious stones, those widows and consecrated virgins, which are the
church's crown. He's like, the real treasures are people. This
(37:23):
is the original joke, you dirty Roman. And that was
a little bit of a snarky response at the time,
but he was working with a tough crowd, right. So
after he shoots his mouth off, he's put in prison again.
The Roman officials, their power structure at the time, doesn't
vibe with Christians. So Lawrence is sentenced to a cruel
(37:44):
death and the executioners strip him, They layhim out on
an iron grill. They pile all these coals under it.
They press heated iron pitchforks on his body and this
guy looks at them and says, look, wretch, you have
me well done on one side, turned me over and eat.
(38:04):
So that more of a medium, rare kind of guy.
But do you know, yeah, that's so that's the line
that made him the patron saint of comedians. I gotta
tell you he went out like a g Yeah, no doubt, man,
that's pretty amazing. Yeah, it reminds me of there's a
(38:28):
really great scene. There's some problematic language in it, but
I do think it's a very well acted scene in
True Romance where Dennis Hopper is character who is the
fat plays the father of Christian Slater, who's like, you know,
really pissed off them mafia and he's on the run.
And then then Christopher Walkin and his goons are grilling
(38:48):
Dennis Hopper's character and he just, you know, he tells
this story that has a punchline that is just you know,
like the most offensive thing to the people in the
room that could possibly be, and they all just start
laughing and laughing, laughing. But it's so they're laughing at
his audacity, you know, because he knows he's gonna die
(39:08):
no matter what, so why not go out with a
bang and say something that you know these folks basically
can't unhear. Oh, it's pretty pretty excellent scene, but it's
through the story and the thing that he's actually pointing
to is something that's a little it's that kind of
peak Tarantino, like, Oh, why you gotta use that word
so much? Guy? But it's it reminds me of this
(39:29):
one hundred percent. And this is just the beginning of
the story. There are many, many patron saints for many
many things. As a matter of fact, we paused off
air to check whether there was a patron saint of
Yo Yo's. I don't think any of us knew, but
there's so many out there that it was possible. So
(39:51):
we want to thank everybody for tuning in. We hope
you enjoyed this. We'd love to hear about your favorite
patron saints. Big big things as always to our super producer,
mister Backs Williams, big big thanks, Chris frosciotas here in
spirit as always Eaves, Jeff Cooke, Alex Williams who composed
this theme, m Yeah, and Jonathan Strickland. Aka The Quister.
(40:13):
Of course, Casey pegram who who may? Maybe I'll listen
to our spet Lana conversation with Dan k Rosser and
have a maybe it'll brighteness day a little bit. But Casey,
if you're listening, miss you, Bud talk soon. What would
Casey be a Patriot? Same time film? Oh yeah, no, wait,
that's that's an easy one. What about Jonathan Jugglings take
(40:35):
it peschi lence, there it is. We'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for the patron Saint
of our podcast, our super producer, mister Max Williams, the
patron Saint of all podcasts, Saint Maximus, Saint Maximus, I
love the wise. What would you be a patron saint
(00:48):
of noel? Oh? Gosh? What? Uh oh? Let me let
me think on that. Okay, okay, Ben, I've got um.
I think you know. I feel like I would be
a good patron saint of travel to obscure places. I
like it. I'll be the patron Saint of modesty, and
(01:11):
I'll be the best damn patron saint of modesty that
there ever was ever. No one could ever beat me
because I'm the patron Saint of modesty, right? Could I
be the patron Saint of difficult cats? Not like cats
that are the trouble, but like that demand a lot,
totally can't You could also be the patron Saint of
curling of folks. If you haven't put it together quite yet,
(01:35):
this is an episode about patron saints because we three
non popes are still very interested in so much of
Catholic history and patron saints in particular. We talked about
this a few times off air. For a lot of people,
I think the idea of saints in Christianity feels a
(01:57):
little bit odd, right because christian it is monotheistic. There's
only one God, right, so why would you pray to
someone else? Well, I mean, you don't see the same
canon of saints in Protestant Christianity as you do in Catholicism, right,
(02:17):
Like they're not like imbued with mystical powers per se,
right right, Yeah, And saints occur in other religions and denominations.
But I think most of us when we hear the
word saint, we think of a Catholic saint, and in Catholicism,
a saint as a person who is believed to have
a special connection with God, a closeness of sorts, And
(02:41):
the idea is that these saints can intercede on your behalf,
a kind of heavenly advocate and patron saints or advocates
for very particular stuff. It could be a nation, it
could be a town or a city, it could be
all kinds of stuff. Yeah, it could be like a
particular discipline, you know, crafts or whatever it might be.
(03:05):
And a lot of times folks that associate themselves with
these particular you know, disciplines or families or classes or
whatever it might be, may where either some sort of
talisman I guess let's call it. That might not be
the right term in Catholicism, but you know, some sort
of trinkets perhaps that represents that saint, like a Saint
(03:25):
Christopher's metal is a very popular one, for example. Yeah,
and saints also, of course, have other forms of veneration
and commemoration, like feast days. Here's the thing. You probably
have heard of patron saints. Saint Christopher's a great example,
but you might you've almost certainly not heard of all
of them. And if you're not Catholic, you might not
(03:48):
be aware that a lot of saints or patrons of
some really really specific or deeply weird stuff that you
wouldn't associate with sainthood and general. You know, it's true,
And before we dive into a list, this isn't going
to be sort of a saintlyalistical episode. I do think
(04:08):
the use of the word patron here is interesting and
it's always kind of fascinating me because you think of
like an individual perhaps as being a patron of the arts,
you know, or someone who perhaps finances something, a patron
of an individual cause perhaps, But a patron saint is
I guess the implication being that they somehow represent and
(04:33):
support some particular thing, right, Yeah, yeah. We don't mean,
of course, to disrespect in any shape, form or fashion,
the spiritual beliefs of the Catholic doctrine or any spiritual beliefs.
We have learned a lot with episodes like this, and
I'm doing that preface. I'm doing that disclaimer because when
(04:57):
I was growing up, one of the ways it was
explained to me as a kid was that patron saints
I could think of them as like mascots for specific things.
And that was another That was another kid who told
me that, and that kid went to Catholic school. So
I thought, yeah, Max is doing the nod. I thought, okay,
(05:18):
that checks out. You know, but we're both seven years old.
What do we know. Anyway, we thought we thought this
would be a strange exploration. We're only scratching the surface
here because there are a lot of patron saints and
they are the advocates for a lot of things, often
some of which aren't like good things, you know, yeah,
(05:40):
or what one might consider to be like a positive trait.
And that's very much so of our first entry into
this saintly listical. Yeah, and a lot of these saints
are patrons of more than one thing. We're just we're
focusing on one or two aspects. Yeah, we want to
introduce you to Saint Drogo, no relation to cal Drogo
(06:01):
of the Song of Ice of Fire. Saint Drogo is well,
bluntly put, the patron saint of UGO's and also delightful
coffee coffee, which is interesting and you know, and again
there may be other aspects um, but oh yeah, there
are there. Well, one for example, might be shepherds. And
(06:23):
it's odd here because there there's a bit of inherent
like almost judgment built into that, because it's almost like
are all shepherds ugly? You know? That's always thinking too,
because I like, I like envisioning the creation and patron
saints as a pitch meeting and someone's like, I don't know,
(06:44):
up shepherds, uh coffee, And someone's like ugly people and
he's like, yeah, yeah, them too, them too. Let's give
them something, let's give back to them. Yeah, and and
you know a lot of these saints are usually there's
a reason. It's not like it's just done willy nilly,
you know, a saint in well, first of all, a
saint isn't just some sort of like angel or celestial being.
(07:06):
A saint is someone who is sainted posthumously. Usually no,
always right, there's no canonized that's right, sort of the
way you might be knighted. Only that happens usually while
the person is still living. But this is something that
can only be bestowed this honor by the Catholic Church.
And there's probably some interesting meetings that go into those
(07:29):
kind of decisions right where they then decide which which
aspects of the saint represents. Saint Drogo was born as
Drogo of Seaborg on March fourteenth, eleven oh five. He
passed away on April sixteenth of eleven eighty six. Decently
long life for that period of time. Amazing, yeah, kind
of long life. You usually will only associate with members
(07:51):
of nobility because of their access to you know, better
healthcare for whatever it was at the time, or perhaps
members of the clergy, but for similar reasons. So he
is born into a pretty well placed family. He's a
Flemish noble. Feeling a little Flemish today. I think I've
had too much coffee. He was also he also is
(08:12):
known to some historical sources as drew On or Drukes
or Drogon again no relation to song Ice and fire.
Was a dragon perhaps or definitely an appoyeah. But we
also know that George R. Martin pulled a lot of
his names and even conflicts from historical figures, so this
(08:33):
doesn't surprise me one bit that we may we may
see more of these. Um. He was primarily a French citizen.
Um and but but he you know, much like our
story and stuff they don't want you to know about
a member of the Rockefeller family that kind of eschewed
a life of luxury, perhaps in favor of more like
(08:55):
self discovery or living a little bit more like you know,
the common folk. He wasn't all about that life of
luxury and being which you might call a shiftless lay about. Yeah,
this story is actually really tragic. So his father dies
before he's born, his mother dies in childbirth. He doesn't
learn the truth about what happened to his parents, until
(09:17):
he's ten years old, and that's still still though. Ten
is very young to lay that on a kid, right,
So he feels terrible about this, and at twenty years old,
he has this crisis of faith at kind of a
breaking point, and he gives away his money and his possessions,
his goods to the poor. He renounces his claim to
(09:41):
the estate so other heirs in the family can get it,
and he says, I'm going to live a life of
poverty and penance. I'm going to travel around to all
these different holy sites. He goes to Rome more than once,
and eventually he starts to kind of settle down. He
gets job as a shepherd for a wealthy woman named
(10:03):
Elizabeth de la Hare and Seaborg like you mentioned, and
which means Elizabeth of the Hair of the hair, Yeah,
legendary actually patron saint of champoo that lady and rabbits, yeah,
don't fact check the He liked this. It was kind
of like a retirement for him almost. He liked being alone.
(10:24):
He loved the solitude. And apparently he loved the solitude
because it gave him time to pray, So that's what
he was doing while he was shepherd. Ey well, and
let's also not forget the religious connection that shepherds have,
you know, the idea of Jesus being the shepherd and
his followers being his flock and all of that, and
(10:46):
also specifically actual shepherds, you know, watching their flocks by
night and all of that stuff. It's very big image
that that pops up in the Bible time and time again. Yeah,
and you know, part of these stories are quite possibly
embellished a bit. You know, we're telling you the official version,
(11:08):
but please realize that sometimes the stories may be considered
figurative or they may be considered works of fiction, and
we'll see a few of those in this episode as well.
But yeah, he's ticking all the boxes for good imagery.
He wants to tell people about the stuff he's learned
(11:28):
as a shepherd. So other folks in the in the
area will come to him and he'll diagnose their sheep.
He'll tell them if there's an illness and how to
address that malady. He can read the weather pretty well,
and people liked him, especially his boss, because he was
he was good, he had a good vibe, he was
(11:48):
helpful to be around. People also started thinking he had
superpowers and just about you, ever so slightly. Jesus himself
was a figurative shepherd, these all kinds of passages referring
to him as I'm pretty himself as being the good shepherd,
(12:08):
using all of these kind of sheep analogies, talking about
how the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
He who has hired hand and not a shepherd who
doesn't own the sheep, sees the wolf coming, leaves the
sheep and flees. We also see very important biblical figures
like Abraham and Moses, King David even and the Old
Testament prophet Amos, who are shepherds. So that's a very
(12:33):
important actual occupation in the Bible as well. But you're right,
I mean, he's very well liked and very much living
among you know, people who if he had played his
cards as they were dealt to him, would have been
considered like lesser than him. But instead he is very
much living amongst them and giving, you know, everything that
(12:55):
he has to help these these people. And you know,
he got a really good reppegea And to your point,
bend a bit. A part of that reputation had to
do with him having these kind of like supernatural abilities,
one of which was the gift of by location, which
is kind of what it sounds like. I mean, I
guess maybe in like you know X men terms, that
(13:17):
would be something to the equivalent of like teleporting or
being able to perhaps duplicate oneself, you know, like trying
to think of like an X man who had that
AUTI many were less. It's right, It's right there in
the name, folks. So yeah, this is Drogo is kind
of our biblical multiple man, the gift of by location,
(13:37):
because there were reports that he'd be seen in the
fields and simultaneously at church, so he was tending his
flocks with on the one hand and then you know,
doing his Bible studies on the other. Um. So there
was a kind of almost like a catchphrase that came
up among some of the kind of the common folk
of the area and this rural area in the region.
(14:00):
I'm not Saint Drogo. I can't ring the church hell
from Mass and be in the procession. Yeah, silly, I laughed.
Found that. Let's shout out to a Catholic dot org.
Oh yeah, and shout out to you Ben for this
wonderful research brief. This is really really fun one as
y'all will continue to discover. So Ben, why so far
(14:22):
this guy seems like a lovely fellow, you know, a
friend to the poor, a friend to the to the
lowly shepherd. Where does the ugly part come in? Yeah,
that's the question. So none of this has addressed physical appearance.
We don't shame people for their appearance here on ridiculous History,
but the reality is he is the patron saint of
(14:45):
unsightly people. That's another euphemism you'll hear, and it's because
he came down with some sort of extreme physical affliction.
Some stories will just say there was this unexplained condition
that of him, gross deformities like hus filled boils all
over his body, but not the plague. And then other
(15:06):
sources will say that he just had a real bonker's
bad hernia, and a bad hernia would maybe give you
like a hunch perhaps, or really bad posture. Perhaps it's weird.
Whatever it was really affected his appearance so much so that,
according to the story, he was cloistered up or put
(15:30):
into a solitary room, a cell you could call it,
but not like a prison, that was attached to the
church he went to all the time and for quite
a while, he only survived on barley, water and the Eucharist,
and this was given to him through a small window,
so he get food and water through this window. People
(15:50):
who were seeking prayers and counsel would come to him.
You see some jokes about kids coming to look at him,
almost like a freak show vibe, but I don't know
how much of that is actually true. He lives basically
like an anchorite there for forty five years, which is
a huge amount of time to spend in one room, right,
(16:13):
And eventually he passes away at eighty one years old.
And it's because of his appearance and his story that
he became known as the patron Saint of these different things,
like patron Saint of ugly people, because you were at
one point ugly but remains bious. I guess the coffee
(16:36):
thing's interesting, though. The coffee thing doesn't quite check out
because it's kind of anachronistic. He never had coffee in
his life. He had had no idea what it was,
that's right, Like, I mean, when did coffee really hit
the scene? That would have been something that came from
other lands, right, So coffee isn't really a thing for
(16:59):
your Peans at this time in the eleven hundreds. It's
a few centuries later we found a book Uncommon Grounds,
the History of Coffee. Now it transformed our world. Love
books about very specific things, and this guy, Mark Pendergrass,
the author, says that it probably wasn't until sometime in
(17:20):
the fifteenth century that someone roasted coffee beans, ground them
and made an infusion. Well, and to a point, it's
probably going to continue to come up. A lot of
these saints are given additional aspects many many, many years
after their saint hood. Oh you mean, like the multiple
(17:40):
Saints of the Internet. Correct, Yeah, definitely, definitely. But you know,
we also have modern saints, you know, of course, you know,
we'll get to that. Like I mean, Mother Teresa is
a saint, if I'm not mistaken, Yeah, you're right. She
was canonized fairly recently. I think twenty sixteen she became
a saint, Saint Teresa of Calcutta, that's right. So, yeah,
(18:03):
where did this coffee business come from? This is interesting? Yeah,
this one's kind of weird. Okay. So the some of
the first sources that associate Saint Drogo with coffee don't
come out until the eighteen hundreds, and it looks like
coffee house owners in the area kind of proactively claimed
(18:25):
Saint Drogo as their patron. But there's no reason, like
there's no solid source or something from the story of
his life. He may have just been a local saint
in the area and then people who own coffee houses
or sold coffee started saying, yeah, Saint Drogo patron saint
of coffee, and people went along with it. Yeah. He's
(18:48):
also often referred to a specifically as the saint the
patron saint of caffeine. Great, well, thank you for your service,
Saint Drogo. And also, you know, feels like we had
to talk about the possibly multiple patron saints of the Internet.
Saint Isidore of Seville. Also, you know, just spoiler alert,
(19:10):
born way before the internet was a thing. M Yeah,
perhaps it had invented the Internet along with al Gore,
at least in its in it's its conceptualization. Now I'm joking,
but yeah, it was Saint Paul, or Saint John Paul
the Second rather who bestowed this, uh, this particular aspect
upon Saint Isidore of Seville, because as a bishop, Saint
(19:33):
Isidore was a very important figure in creating early forms
of what we now know as universities. So more of
a patron saint of education, I guess, but it gets
a little more specific. Oh yeah, this guy wrote a
twenty book series where he tried to explain everything. It's
(19:57):
not even hyperbole. He tried to explain every everything, and
he thought that's what he books, that'll cover it. We're
talking about the origins of language to law, biology, agriculture,
history of the church, the stuff like how to build roads.
He wanted to be he wanted to kind of create,
like you said, a university or a Wikipedia, kind of
(20:18):
an omnibus, right, Yeah, it's his magnampus. And so I
think there's some sand to this, this patronage, because he
clearly was a guy who saw the great potential of
sharing knowledge, and that's always commendable. Now, his book series
write about everything, of course not there's a lot of
things they had and quite figured out yet. But the
(20:40):
interconnectedness I think of knowledge is an important factor here too,
because it wasn't just you know, specifically how twos on
all this stuff. It kind of was attempting to sew
it all together in a similar way to what the
internet kind of does in a much larger scaled kind
of way. Yeah said. And there's folks who heard us
(21:03):
mentioned multiple saints of the Internet as we record today.
There's there's a person who is not quite an official
saint yet but is well on their way. The first
millennial who will in all likely to become a saint,
a boy named Carlo Acutis, who tragically passed away at
(21:24):
the age of fifty. Yeah. I mean pretty impressive though,
someone who to have made such an impact by such
an early age, and really sad to have been taken.
But during his brief time on planet Earth, he was
a big help in spreading the teachings of Roman Catholicism
(21:45):
on the internet. This is this is again a modern
saint before he tragically passed away due to leukemia in
two thousand and six, and one of his big supporters
was Cardinal Angelo. Bet you I believe b Ecciu, who
is the head of the Vatican's Saint making department. It's
(22:07):
just the thing, you know, And you got to imagine, Bet,
and I'd love to explore this briefly here what the
modern saint making department kind of looks like. I picture
it being a nomination process and then various members of
the clergy throughout the Roman Catholic world vote on who.
(22:27):
And then obviously a pope could probably just full scale
nominate someone themselves and just you know, make it so
with a wave of a hand. Yeah, So there is
a defined process. They're not just walking walking around the
Vatican vibes. Anybody can become a saint in the Roman
Catholic Church, so unlike say a priest, you don't have
(22:50):
to be male, etc. But the big thing is, as
we said, you can only become a saint after death.
And the first the first step is a formal request
for an individual to be considered for sainthood. It's submitted
to this tribunal in the Vatican, and the request has
to explain how the person lived a very pious life.
(23:12):
And then this tribunal will evaluate the story of this
person's life basically did they live in a saintly way?
And if this person passes the sniff test, I guess
the tribunal officially recognizes them as a servant of God.
(23:32):
Capitalisque capital g that's like level one. Yeah, and then
they're not there yet, You're not yet. No, No, then
you have to go to the Congregation for the Causes
of the Saints at the Vatican. This is a group
of cardinals, archbishops, bishops, theologians who study a person's life
(23:53):
and writing in depth to make sure it lines up
with the values of the Church. So in this second process,
to be heroically virtuous, they have the candidate has to
be found to have four cardinal virtues and three theological virtues.
It goes on, and then you finally get to beatification,
(24:15):
which is where you would be called blessed. Harlow acutis
is beatified now. And those cardinal virtues, which would be
like the opposite of cardinal sins, are prudence, justice, temperance,
and courage. And then those theological aspects our faith, hope
and charity. This really applies to Carlo because again by
you know, at such a young age, he became very
(24:37):
deeply religious. He grew up in a middle class household
in Milan, which of course is very much in that
world of the Vatican. You know, I mean it's not
right there, but you know, folks in this part of
the world very very very deferential to everything that goes
on in Vatican City. He would actually, you know, go
and mingle with the city's poor residence and actually give
(24:59):
his meager you know, pocket money to poor folks. And
he taught himself coding U which is no small feat.
And he actually would at the at the time, this
is in the early two thousands, set up websites. You know,
this was before like square space and things like that.
I mean, you know, that stuff was kind of you know,
(25:19):
we had like make your own website, kind of templatize
things at that point. But then in the earlier internet
days you definitely still had to you know, do some
HTML or whatever it might be. Um, this is a
little kind of on the cusp of that kind of stuff.
But he actually set up websites for priests and at
the age of ten he started to create like an
online kind of curated exhibit about religious miracles, which started
(25:43):
to really pick up steam and gain popularity after he
passed away. Yeah, yeah, and this and again this very impressive.
He's he's a whiz at the Internet, at coding. He
specifically created this online exhibit about miracles that absolutely exploded
(26:05):
after his death. Hundreds of parishiers around the world have
used the site he created for their own real life exhibits.
They printed out versions of this. In twenty nineteen, Pope
Francis pays tribute to Carlow and says that his use
of the Internet to communicate values and beauty was the
(26:26):
perfect antidote to the dangers of other stuff on the
Internet like social media, and Francis even the Pope quoted
this kid. Francis quoted Carlo by noting something he had
said during his lifetime. Everyone is born in original but
many die like photocopies. And after he cited this, Pope
(26:48):
Francis said, don't let this happen. I think it's pretty
amazing to be quoted by the Pope. It doesn't matter
whether or not you were Catholic. If the Pope was
ever like, I was listening to show Ridiculous History and
they introduced me to the term beefed up, and next
your camera went out for a second. I think the
(27:09):
Pope probably has more important stuff to do. But the
point we're getting to here is support for making Carlo
a saint is pretty widespread and unanimous. The beatification ceremony
was put off due to COVID nineteen but eventually got held.
Right now, he's on the way to canonization. Canonization is
(27:31):
the step after beatification, and when you get to these
areas of becoming a saint, we're talking miracles, posthumous miracles
that occur because someone prayed for your intercession. The miracle
attributed to Carlo occurred in twenty thirteen, the rapid and
inexplicable healing of a six year old Brazilian boy suffering
(27:51):
from a deformation of the pancreas. And you can read
a great La Times article all about Carlo. This is
from Tom Kington, June twenty eight, twenty twenty. A patron
saint of the Internet. The Pope is on it, so
we will soon have not one, but multiple saints of
the Internet. That's good, that's all. That's all well and
(28:12):
good because the internet's a big deal. But what about
another human pursuit, Noel, what about murder? We see that's
not a good one. But again you know it's uh,
(28:33):
everyone needs a saints, even even the most despicable amongst us.
And uh, you know, perhaps folks who are are in prison,
you know, for doing the most heinous of acts. Yeah,
there's a patron saint of not murderer or the act,
but of murderers. Right, Um, But again, like to what
I was getting at most importantly repentant. Yes, yeah, that's
(28:57):
the you have to feel bad about it. This is
the thing which I get. You know, you should feel bad.
Saint Julian the Hospitaller or Hospitaller Hospitaller patron saint of
repentant murderers, as well as clowns, circus workers, innkeepers, fiddle players, jugglers,
(29:18):
and people without children. See some of these, I just
feel like I I just kind of got tossed in there,
not necessarily based on any real life acts of these individuals.
I don't know. Man, juggling's cool. That's weird. That's a
weird flex. I always thought juggling was weird flex. When
I'm hanging out with people and they juggle, I enjoy it.
(29:39):
But it's a weird flex. Jonathan Strickling can juggle, at least,
surprising thing I've heard today. So can Alex Williams a
little bit. At least he took juggling classes for a bit.
It's tricky. It really requires some left brain right brain
kind of stuff. It's like rubbing your tummy and patting
your head or whatever, because you gotta kind of you know, uh,
synchronize and right hands and have them do things that
(30:01):
are completely disconnected from one another. So kudos to anyone
out there that has mastered the art of juggling. Or
I wonder if there's a patron saint of yo yoing there.
Maybe they're very well, maybe it's a matter of fact.
Let's see, you know, I don't believe there is dang
(30:28):
it yet, but we have to be the change sometimes.
Let's figure out how this guy becomes the saint of
repentant murderers. The story starts with a curse. He's born,
and he has a curse on him that says he
will commit patris side that he will kill his parents,
and he says, I don't want to do that, you know,
(30:49):
I don't want to be a person who kills people
in general, much less my mom and dad. So he
pulls a move like remember him forced up when Forrest
just starts running. It's like most of the movie, Yeah,
how can I forget? Yeah, So this guy, Saint Julian,
pulls a Forrest Gump. He walks away from home one
(31:12):
day and he just keeps walking for fifty days. Eventually
settles down and he marries a wealthy widow, and then
he becomes a night and he starts working for a king,
and the decades fly by, and sometimes Julian is looking
out from the ramparts of his castle and he says,
(31:33):
I guess I've outsmarted that curse. But he didn't know that.
Throughout all those decades, his parents have been searching for him,
and they finally found where he was. They found they
came across his castle, but unfortunately, at the time when
they discovered the castle, Julian was away on business, hunting business.
(31:57):
His wife, however, was there and welcome the family with
open arms. She was so excited to meet her in
laws for the first time that she gave them the
nicest room in the joint, the master bedroom. And Julian
comes home much much later from hunting. He finds the
couple in his bed and he immediately thinks it's his
(32:19):
wife with another man. He thinks she's chilling on him.
He goes nuts, he sees red. He murders both those people.
Oh wow, that's terrible. Oh that's a bummer. Yes, yeah,
it's a bit of a bummer. Yeah, like, yeah, that's
(32:40):
the story though. That's some Shakespearean stuff right there. You know,
and of his rex kind of stuff. His wife was
away at church at the time, and she tells him
what he did. Those people you killed, they're your parents.
Julian loses loses it, you know, he is sparing. He
(33:05):
is convinced that he has bound for hell. But according
to one version of the story, his wife encouraged him
and she said, well, I know that God is so
merciful and so kind and loving that if we serve
him all our lives without anger and without envy, I
do surely believe that he will grant us mercy. So
(33:25):
they spend the rest of their life trying to make
up for that. Yeah, I mean this, I get it.
This really clicks right with the whole How do you
become a patron saint of murderers? How how do you,
you know, canonize someone who has done, you know, one
of the most horrific acts that a human being could do,
one of the most cardinal sins of Catholicism. It would
(33:49):
have had to have been an honest mistake and very
tragic for that individual, and then led to a life
of utter penance and seeking to absolve one's self from
this heinous crime. But you know, we gotta wonder too,
like would this have been this probably would have been
(34:09):
considered man slaughter perhaps or you know, yeah, because it's
not premeditated. It's not premeditated, and it is technically you know,
I don't know. This guy also should have maybe been
the patron saying of jumping the gun. Yeah, a little bit.
It's not a bad point. Yeah. This. So Julian does
(34:30):
dedicate the rest of his life. According to the story
Dependence and Good Work, he starts a hospice at a
river crossing where a lot of crusaders travel, and he
took on the duty of ferrying people safely back and
forth across the river. You can also find one story
that says he took it a frozen leper one night
(34:52):
and said, look, it's cold. I can tell you've been
having a rough time for a while. Why don't you
sleep in my bed? And the leoper turned out to
be an angel in disguise, and the leper or the angel,
now said Julian, our lord hath sent me to thee
and sendeth the word that he accepted thy penance. Nice ending,
(35:13):
let's get a bow on it. Tricky thing. Though a
lot of people think this story is kind of a
bit of pious fiction because it's really tough to find
an historical basis for the specifics of this guy. Interesting
but still, but still, you know, if it's stories have power, right,
and there are repentant murderers of plenty throughout history who
(35:37):
have prayed for the intercession of Saint Julian. But no,
I don't feel I feel like we can't end on
it down note this, Let's keep this next one short,
but we gotta this is the perfect endingman. We've got
to talk about one very surprising patron saint. Correct, this
is Saint Lawrence, the patron saint of Comedians. Nothing better
(35:59):
than a cut up saints. During the third century, there
were seven deacons who served under Pope Sixtus the Second,
which is very confusing. Yes, it's like seventh, fifth in Rome.
And this was a tough place for Christians to exist.
(36:19):
As we know, the Roman Empire did not take kindly
to Christians, and they did, you know, gnarly things like
you know, nailed them to crosses. Emperor Valerian was was
reigning at the time, and he was no exception to
this rule, very very anti Christian and did horrible things
to them. And their bodies. What put Saint Lawrence in
(36:39):
his particular cross hairs and that of the Roman Empire
at large, was his belief that the Catholic Church was
sitting on treasures untold, not like of the you know,
religious varieties, or of the you know, spiritual variety. This
is like, you know, golden stuff. A Roman official asked Lawrence,
(37:01):
you know, like the location of the church's treasure, you
know that kind of stuff, and he responded by same,
behold in these poor persons, the treasures which I promised
to show you, to which I will add pearls of
precious stones, those widows and consecrated virgins, which are the
church's crown. He's like, the real treasures are people. This
(37:23):
is the original joke, you dirty Roman. And that was
a little bit of a snarky response at the time,
but he was working with a tough crowd, right. So
after he shoots his mouth off, he's put in prison again.
The Roman officials, their power structure at the time, doesn't
vibe with Christians. So Lawrence is sentenced to a cruel
(37:44):
death and the executioners strip him, They layhim out on
an iron grill. They pile all these coals under it.
They press heated iron pitchforks on his body and this
guy looks at them and says, look, wretch, you have
me well done on one side, turned me over and eat.
(38:04):
So that more of a medium, rare kind of guy.
But do you know, yeah, that's so that's the line
that made him the patron saint of comedians. I gotta
tell you he went out like a g Yeah, no doubt, man,
that's pretty amazing. Yeah, it reminds me of there's a
(38:28):
really great scene. There's some problematic language in it, but
I do think it's a very well acted scene in
True Romance where Dennis Hopper is character who is the
fat plays the father of Christian Slater, who's like, you know,
really pissed off them mafia and he's on the run.
And then then Christopher Walkin and his goons are grilling
(38:48):
Dennis Hopper's character and he just, you know, he tells
this story that has a punchline that is just you know,
like the most offensive thing to the people in the
room that could possibly be, and they all just start
laughing and laughing, laughing. But it's so they're laughing at
his audacity, you know, because he knows he's gonna die
(39:08):
no matter what, so why not go out with a
bang and say something that you know these folks basically
can't unhear. Oh, it's pretty pretty excellent scene, but it's
through the story and the thing that he's actually pointing
to is something that's a little it's that kind of
peak Tarantino, like, Oh, why you gotta use that word
so much? Guy? But it's it reminds me of this
(39:29):
one hundred percent. And this is just the beginning of
the story. There are many, many patron saints for many
many things. As a matter of fact, we paused off
air to check whether there was a patron saint of
Yo Yo's. I don't think any of us knew, but
there's so many out there that it was possible. So
(39:51):
we want to thank everybody for tuning in. We hope
you enjoyed this. We'd love to hear about your favorite
patron saints. Big big things as always to our super producer,
mister Backs Williams, big big thanks, Chris frosciotas here in
spirit as always Eaves, Jeff Cooke, Alex Williams who composed
this theme, m Yeah, and Jonathan Strickland. Aka The Quister.
(40:13):
Of course, Casey pegram who who may? Maybe I'll listen
to our spet Lana conversation with Dan k Rosser and
have a maybe it'll brighteness day a little bit. But Casey,
if you're listening, miss you, Bud talk soon. What would
Casey be a Patriot? Same time film? Oh yeah, no, wait,
that's that's an easy one. What about Jonathan Jugglings take
(40:35):
it peschi lence, there it is. We'll see you next time, folks.
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