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

    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.
    A 19th-century engraving of a blacksmith gripping the Devil's face with a pair of tongs inside a forge, framed within a giant horseshoe.
    Saint Dunstan of Canterbury
    Legend remembers him gripping the Devil's nose with a blacksmith's tongs. History remembers him rebuilding English monastic life almost from scratch.
    A dark 17th-century oil painting of a bearded bishop saint in black monastic robes and a white pallium marked with crosses, holding an open book inscribed with a Latin motto on charity.
    Saint Fulgentius of Ruspe
    Exiled to Sardinia by an Arian king along with sixty fellow bishops, this North African bishop became their spokesman and Augustine's closest theological heir.
    A medieval fresco roundel of a bearded bishop saint with a gold halo, wearing white clergy vestments marked with dark crosses, identified by a Cyrillic inscription as Germanus.
    Saint Germanus of Constantinople
    An aging patriarch refused to sign an emperor's order banning icons, gave up his throne rather than comply, and was vindicated decades after his death.
    A Baroque oil painting of a bearded, balding bishop saint in ornate robes, looking upward with one hand raised, painted in warm golden and red tones.
    Saint Gregory of Nazianzus
    The only theologian besides the Apostle John given the title "the Theologian" preached Trinitarian doctrine from a small chapel in a city run by his rivals.
    A Byzantine manuscript miniature of a bearded bishop saint with a gold halo, wearing dark-green and orange vestments, blessing with one hand and holding a jeweled Gospel book, standing before a domed building.
    Saint Gregory of Nyssa
    Basil the Great's younger brother mapped the soul's ascent to God through a final stage he called "luminous darkness," earning him the title Father of Mysticism.
    A medieval illuminated manuscript miniature of a bearded bishop saint in a mitre and orange cope, holding a crozier and reaching out to a man seated in a chest-like tomb.
    Saint Hilary of Poitiers
    Exiled to Asia Minor for defying an Arian emperor, this Gallic bishop wrote the first great Latin treatise on the Trinity and earned the name "Hammer of the Arians."
    A Baroque oil painting of an elderly bearded man in a red judge's robe and cap, raising one hand while a poor woman with children kneels before him seeking justice.
    Saint Ivo of Kermartin
    A trained lawyer who represented the poor for free instead of charging fees became the only judge or attorney the Catholic Church has ever canonized.
    A dark oil portrait of a bald, bearded monk-bishop in white Cistercian habit, clutching a double-barred archiepiscopal cross to his chest, with a mitre resting beside him.
    Saint Malachy of Armagh
    Ireland's first saint formally canonized by Rome died in the arms of his friend Bernard of Clairvaux, long before a false "papal prophecy" bore his name.
    A 10th-century manuscript illumination of a haloed bishop in purple vestments, hands raised, flanked by gold lettering reading "SCS NIZETIUS" against a red patterned background.
    Saint Nicetius of Trier
    A monastery abbot turned bishop who rebuked a Frankish king to his face for wrongdoing — and somehow kept the king's favor rather than losing his head.
    An engraving of a canopied Gothic tomb niche containing a carved recumbent effigy of a bishop, captioned "Next to it is the tomb of B. Oswald."
    Saint Oswald of Worcester
    He died as he had lived every Lent, kneeling to wash the feet of the poor — collapsing among them mid-service after decades rebuilding English monastic life.
    A medieval illuminated manuscript miniature showing a monk in blue presenting a book-shaped reliquary casket to a haloed bishop in red vestments holding a staff.
    Saint Pirmin of Reichenau
    A wandering missionary-bishop founded an island monastery on Lake Constance that became a great center of medieval learning — though much of his life is legend.