Blog

    Stories of saints, biblical events, angels, and sacred places.

    A medieval illuminated manuscript miniature of King Edmund tied to a tree, his face turned upward, as a row of Viking archers draw their bows and fire arrows into him.
    Saint Edmund the King
    A teenage king refused to share England with Viking invaders and was shot full of arrows — though the earliest source says only that he died in battle.
    A 19th-century color illustration of a young mounted king in red being offered a cup by a woman in a red cloak at the gate of Corfe Castle, surrounded by attendants and guards.
    Saint Edward the Martyr
    A teenage king was stabbed to death on horseback at Corfe Castle, and centuries of chroniclers blamed his stepmother — though historians argue about it.
    A Renaissance painting of a richly dressed hunter on horseback surrounded by hounds, encountering a stag in a dark forest with a glowing crucifix fixed between its antlers.
    Saint Eustace
    A Roman general chased a stag through the woods and found a glowing crucifix between its antlers, in a legend whose own historical basis is uncertain.
    A Renaissance gilded panel painting of a young haloed saint against a gold background, framed by carved Gothic arches, from an altarpiece depicting Saint Genesius.
    Saint Genesius of Rome
    A comic actor mocking Christian baptism on stage for Diocletian had a real conversion mid-performance, refused to recant, and never left the stage alive.
    A fragmentary Byzantine icon of an elderly bearded bishop with a halo, holding a small cross, his name inscribed in Greek beside him.
    Saint Ignatius of Antioch
    Under armed guard on the road to execution, this bishop wrote seven letters that survive today as some of the earliest Christian writing outside the Bible.
    A Jesuit missionary priest with a visible scar on his forehead, hands folded in prayer, in a 19th-century devotional portrait.
    Saint Isaac Jogues
    Mohawk captors cut off his thumbs so he could never hold the Host again. He got papal leave to say Mass anyway, then went back to the mission that killed him.
    A bishop in a gold mitre and richly embroidered cope holds a crozier, lit dramatically against a dark background, in a Baroque devotional portrait.
    Saint Januarius
    A vial of his dried blood has liquefied in public, on and off, for six centuries. Naples still gathers to watch it happen — no one claims to know why.
    A young Jesuit scholastic kneels in prayer holding a crucifix, rosary, and prayer book, gazing up toward a picture of the Madonna and Child, in a 17th-century engraving.
    Saint John Berchmans
    He never worked a miracle, never left seminary, and died at 22 of an ordinary fever. His whole path to sainthood was refusing to skip the boring parts.
    A bearded man in a philosopher's cloak gestures with raised fingers, in a 16th-century engraved portrait evoking a 2nd-century Christian teacher and apologist.
    Saint Justin Martyr
    A pagan philosopher who tried Stoicism, Aristotle, and Plato before an old man on a beach pointed him toward Christ — and he never took off the philosopher's cloak.
    A young woman in a red robe stands calmly over a defeated dragon, holding a cross-tipped staff, with a lamb beside her, in a Baroque oil sketch.
    Saint Margaret of Antioch
    Legend says a dragon swallowed her whole in a prison cell and she burst out unharmed. The Church calls her Acts "entirely fabulous" — and removed her feast in 1969.
    A 17th-century oil portrait of Archbishop Oliver Plunkett in an embroidered cope, holding a crucifix beside his bishop's mitre.
    Saint Oliver Plunkett
    Archbishop Oliver Plunkett was hanged, drawn, and quartered at London's Tyburn on perjured testimony during England's Popish Plot — its last Catholic martyr.
    An elderly bearded bishop with a halo, wearing cross-patterned vestments, in an Orthodox fresco of Polycarp of Smyrna.
    Saint Polycarp
    Roman officials begged an 86-year-old bishop to save his life with one sentence. His answer became one of the earliest, most reliable martyr accounts on record.
    A Baroque oil painting of the young martyr Saint Quentin, bare-chested and bleeding, gazing upward as Roman soldiers torture him with a spike and mallet.
    Saint Quentin of Amiens
    A Roman senator's son was tortured with iron spikes and boiling oil before his legendary beheading in Gaul, an account modern scholars view with skepticism.
    A Baroque painting of the young Jesuit novice Saint Stanislaus Kostka, dressed in a dark cassock, kneeling with hands crossed at his chest as an angel offers him Holy Communion.
    Saint Stanislaus Kostka
    A Polish nobleman's son walked roughly 450 miles disguised as a beggar to join the Jesuits after his own brother beat him for wanting a religious vocation.
    A young woman in a red robe holds a golden plate bearing her own severed breasts, gazing upward, in a Baroque devotional painting.
    Saint Agatha of Sicily
    Ancient Sicily venerated her as a martyr centuries before anyone wrote down what happened to her — and what got written down later is where the trouble starts.
    A robed man kneels in prayer at the foot of an executioner's block, watched by soldiers, in a medieval illuminated manuscript scene of a martyrdom.
    Saint Alban of Britain
    A pagan Roman citizen swapped cloaks with a fugitive priest, walked out to face the soldiers in his place, and became Britain's first recorded Christian martyr.
    A young Jesuit novice in a white surplice stands beside an angel with outstretched wings near a stone column, in a Baroque devotional painting.
    Saint Aloysius Gonzaga
    An Italian nobleman gave up his inheritance to become a Jesuit, then died at 23 after nursing plague victims by hand during Rome's 1591 outbreak.
    A haloed woman in a green robe and red cloak holds a martyr's palm frond and a book, standing before a hillside landscape, in a Renaissance panel painting.
    Saint Anastasia
    The Church gives her a Mass all her own on Christmas morning, yet its own encyclopedia admits the story told about her life rests on no historical foundation.
    A close-up detail of a medieval Latin manuscript page recording, in a monastery chronicle, the 1009 martyrdom of Bruno on the border of Rus and Lithuania.
    Saint Bruno of Querfurt
    This missionary bishop's brutal 1009 martyrdom, recorded in an old monastery chronicle, also gave us the earliest known written record of the name Lithuania.
    A 19th-century engraving of a bishop saint gesturing toward a group of women religious gathered near a monastic building, illustrating his founding of a convent under his sister's leadership.
    Saint Caesarius of Arles
    A single Gallic bishop's forty years in one city helped settle a doctrinal dispute over grace and free will that had divided Western Christianity for over a century.