medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I suspect that responses to this query will span centuries, places, and be
quite difficult to formulate. For instance, I have *heard* that Saint Elmo
(Erasmus) is patron of those suffering from stomach distress for the
following reason: the saint was usually depicted with the instrument of
his/her martyrdom (if à propos) and, since Saint Elmo was already patron
of sailors, he was accompanied by a winch with a rope coiled around it. In
popular belief, this represented his intestines and he was thus alleged to
have been disemboweled to death. Hence his patronage of those suffering
intestinal distress. IF this is true, and if so, WHEN the belief sprang
up, would be beyond my ability - and, I suspect, anyone else's - to
pinpoint. I hope I'm wrong since I'd love a definitive response to your
question.
MG
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Thanks to all who responded to my request for Reformation Martyrs! I now
> have
> a good collection of possibilities to present to my student. My next query
> concerns "official" patronage, by which I mean patronage announced by the
> papacy
> in connection with canonization. As we all know, the dictionaries of
> saints
> contain lots of info. about who is patron of what, but no indication of
> the
> age of the tradition. I have noticed that some post-reformation
> canonizations
> are quite explicit: the new Saint X is declared patron(ess) of the
> Americas,
> or whatever. My query: How old is this practice? Is Thomas Becket, for
> example,
> explicitly stated in the canonization process to be patron of anything in
> particular? Could any of you who do happen to run across such explicit
> statements
> establishing a patronage of some sort please let me know, on or off list?
> Thanks,
> Meg
>
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