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

    A Baroque painting of the martyr Saint Vitus rising from a cauldron with arms outstretched, as an angel descends bearing a martyr's crown before watching Roman soldiers.
    Saint Vitus
    A boy martyr's legend gave a real neurological disorder its name, Saint Vitus's Dance, through a strange medieval custom of dancing before his statue.
    A pencil and wash drawing of a crowned, haloed Duke Wenceslaus seated at a small oven, personally baking communion bread with tongs, while two attendants press wine in the background.
    Saint Wenceslaus
    A Bohemian duke was murdered by his own younger brother's men in 935, then became the "Good King" of a carol describing charity that never actually happened.
    A Renaissance panel painting of two haloed physician-saints in red hats kneeling beside a sleeping patient in bed, one of them touching his leg during a healing miracle.
    Saints Cosmas and Damian
    Twin physicians who treated the sick free of charge were later said to graft a dead man's leg onto a living patient — a legend arriving centuries later.
    An elderly woman in a blue robe holds a pair of golden pincers gripping a tooth, gazing calmly outward, in a Renaissance devotional panel painting.
    Saint Apollonia
    An elderly deaconess in Alexandria had her teeth violently knocked out by a mob, then chose the fire herself rather than renounce her faith under threat of it.
    A haloed woman bound to a pillar is scourged by a man raising a whip overhead, in a 17th-century engraving of her martyrdom.
    Saint Bibiana
    A Roman basilica built over her relics in the 5th century is essentially all that history can confirm about her — everything else is later, unverifiable legend.
    A bearded bishop wearing a mitre gazes upward toward a haloed vision of Christ, holding wool-combs, in a 16th-century engraving.
    Saint Blaise
    Almost everything told about this Armenian bishop, including the choking boy he's famous for saving, is later legend — yet the throat blessing built on it endures.
    An 18th-century engraving of Blandina being thrown upward by a bull in the Lyon arena as another bull charges nearby and crowds and officials watch from the amphitheater walls.
    Saint Blandina
    A young slave girl outlasted her torturers for days with one repeated line, then died in the Lyon arena in a pose witnesses said echoed the crucifixion.
    A medieval illuminated manuscript miniature showing a bound figure being tortured beside a cross while a winged devil looms above and flames burn below, illustrating the legendary Passion of Saint Boniface of Tarsus.
    Saint Boniface of Tarsus
    A Roman servant sent to Tarsus for holy relics converted at the sight of Christian suffering — then the Church struck his feast from the calendar in 1969.
    A sepia-toned oval portrait of a young boy with short dark hair, dressed in a dark jacket with a white collar and bow, looking directly at the viewer.
    Saint Dominic Savio
    A 12-year-old joined Don Bosco's Turin oratory, organized his own small club to help friends stay faithful, and was dead of illness within two short years.
    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.