It's a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack.

Monday, February 10, 2014

St. Paganus?

According to Catholic Online, February 10 is the feast of St. Paganus, a Benedictine in Sicily who eventually became a hermit and died in 1423.

I have been unable to locate anything more about this saint. Apparently though he is mentioned on page 40 of A Benedictine Martyrology: being a revision of Rev. Peter Lechner's Ausführliches Martyrologium des Benedictiner-Ordens und seiner Verzweigungen by Alexius Hoffmann, O.S.B. (Collegeville, MN: St. John's Abbey, 1922).

 Love the name, though! Holy Pagan!


February 10 is more notably the feast of St. Benedict's sister, St. Scholastica. Scholastica is the patron saint of nuns, convulsive children, and is invoked against storms and rain. The last one is because she is said on one occasion to have forced her brother to remain with her for a visit by praying up a storm (pun intended) to prevent him from being able to return to his monastery. You might think she would be the one to call on FOR a storm and not against one, but that's the way it is with saints. You notice in the image above a monk is looking up into the sky from which rain falls in torrents.

I find no historical reason to connect her with convulsive children, but perhaps it is the association with the tempestuous thunderstorm.


No comments:

Post a Comment