I offer to the list another useful saint, actually with an active cult, in
Normandy at least. We found him in Lisieux last summer: St. Expedit,
officially invoked in emergencies, and against procrastination.
His story varies from dictionary to dictionary, but runs more or less like
this: in the 17th (or 18th) century, a community of nuns in Paris
received from Rome a box of bones, presumably relics. On the wooden box
was stenciled "spedito" (var. "spedite"), which they took to be the name
of the saint therein....he was supposed to have been martyred in ?Silicia,
if I remember correctly. His statue in Lisieux presents a
nineteenth-century version of a Julius Caesar portrait, in the Augustus of
Primaporta pose & with similar armor. Under his left foot he crushes a
raven, whose cry in latin is "cras, cras" -- "tomorrow, tomorrow"; in his
raised & extended right hand he holds a cross inscribed "hodie".
Although we haven't yet called upon him in emergencies, he works
beautifully when invoked in traffic jams, and when one is ordering
inter-library loans. I introduced him to a colleague who declares,
however, that she prefers Sta.Procrastinata, of whose cult she is a
fervent member. I haven't yet extracted Sta.P's legend from her, but will
try to get it for the list...
Elizabeth McLachlan, Art History, Rutgers University
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