It is said that a flight of white doves
coming no one knew whence
accompanied her body to the tomb
and long hovered over her resting place.
He is said to have met his death
while defending from ill-usage
a woman who had appealed to him
for help.
She was suspended head downwards
over a fire and suffocated by its smoke.
In his wanderings
he was often taken
for a lunatic
rather than a pilgrim.
She was killed by cage torture at Kwang-sia.
On his return
he was captured
and burnt alive
at Nagasaki.
She and her sister were tortured
and were together cast into the flames
with their hands cut off
and were crowned after ending
a mighty contest.
The last years of his life
were again a period
of intense humiliation,
misunderstanding and
physical suffering –
he died in obscurity
at Ubeda
An actor and musician –
they were brought to Alexandria
bound hand and foot
and cast into the sea.
Of good family she led a worldly self-
indulgent life in the married state.
He was martyred
by a mob of schismatics.
She and her nurse were torn to pieces
with iron combs.
After his death a rose tree
grew out of his mouth and it is said
that the name of Mary
was written on the leaves
of one of the roses.
When she was fourteen
she secretly left her home
and against the wishes of her family
she died a victim of loving self-immolation.
He was favored with ecstasies
and heavenly visions and the angels
were wont to come and cook for him.
She sanctified herself by the daily practice
of the domestic virtues.
At a pagan celebration he pulled off
the golden hand of an idol broke it up
and distributed the pieces among the poor
and was forthwith burnt at the stake.
She was fastened to the tail of a horse
and dragged by her feet
through the streets of Alexandria
till she died.
He was totally blind for forty years
but fifteen days before his death
his eyesight was restored.
She was scourged to death for her charity.
His heart however was in the kitchen
whither he returned in his old age.
Nothing else is known about her.
In 1621 he was struck by lightning
but this only seemed to increase
his marked serenity of manner.
She was a nun at Pavia
when Odoacer the king of the Heruli
dragged her into captivity – she was
ransomed by her brother
and returned to Pavia.
It seems however that the whole story
is a pious romance.
He valiantly confessed Christ
before the tribunal of the Moorish
Caliph of Cordova
was beheaded
and his body thrown to the dogs.
Martyred while a catechumen
and thus baptized in his own blood.
She fell into ecstasy for the first time
at the ceremony of profession.
The lector who was at the moment
intoning the Allelujah
had his throat pierced by an arrow.
A Moorish maiden of Cordova
sheltered by St. Eulogius
and both were flogged and beheaded.
Murdered in his monastery
by a band of marauding Bedouins.
He was killed
by an Arian woman
who threw a tile
at his head.
And for eighteen years he and his wife
lived as brother and sister.
She proved a very incapable superior
and was deposed
treated with un-Christian cruelty
by her successor and forgotten by all –
thus she lived 39 years
without ever complaining.
He was cruelly tormented
and partially flayed alive
and finally put to death
by a gang of Cossacks
at Janov near Pinsk.
Condemned to death
for being reconciled
with the Church and
executed at Darlington.
A slave girl in the household
of a Roman patrician.
His mother assisted at his execution
and received his falling head into her lap.
She was martyred
along with her brother
somewhere on the Hellespont
by being tied to wild horses
and so pulled to pieces.
Modern writers query the truth
of all the above statements
admitting merely that there was a virgin
of this name.
He had much to endure
in the persecution of Diocletian
but appears to have died in peace.
Sometime wife of the emperor Diocletian.
He was betrayed, racked
and martyred at Tyburn.
A widow martyred in the Holy City –
her ‘acts’ are worthless.
In his youth he had a very
adventurous career under Drake
in the West Indies – condemned
for his priesthood and suffered
at Tyburn.
She was slain by the marauding Picts
or Saxons.
About whom
nothing else
is known.
A Dutch soldier of licentious life
who after the death of his wife
led a life of most austere penance –
he lived in a hollow tree near Valkenburg
and the neighboring monasteries
were scandalized by his eccentricities.
Tied to a tree
his body was made
a target for the Roman archers
and he was finally dispatched
with clubs.
Though in a state of almost continuous
supernatural vision she was in no way
visionary but a most practical
and level-headed religious.
He is the least prolific
but the most profound
of the Great Cappadocians.
She would give her food and clothing
to the poor
and sometimes her master’s too – for this
she was at first misunderstood
and maltreated
but she ended by gaining the confidence
of the whole household.
He opposed the Iconoclasts zealously
and suffered much at their hands.
Many doubt whether he has
a true claim to the title
of either saint or martyr.
She abandoned herself completely
to worldliness and vanity – one day
on looking into a mirror
she saw instead of her own reflection
the figure of a demon.
He died of starvation in a dungeon
into which he had been thrown by robbers.
Five maidens deliberately
left to perish in a burning ship.
He voluntarily joined the martyrs
and was thrown into the sea
by the French Calvinist pirates.
One of the most famous
of the Western virgin-martyrs.
Twice reprimanded by St. Gregory
for his iconoclastic tendencies.
His heroic exertions
in ransoming captives
and his preaching and writing
against Islam were rewarded
with his martyrdom at Granada.
A farmer’s daughter
she was the mistress of a young nobleman
for nine years – in his sudden death
she saw a judgment from heaven
and publicly confessing her sins
in the church of Cortona
she placed herself under the direction
of Franciscan friars.
Though not a very successful monarch
he was revered as the founder
of numerous hospitals and churches.
He was beheaded
while seated in his chair
during the celebration of his Mass
in the catacombs.
Refusing to plead
she was condemned to the horrible sentence
of being pressed to death.
He is said to have been sewn up
in a leathern sack together with a dog
and a serpent and cast into the sea.
He died while engaging
in his daily practice
of washing the feet of twelve
poor men.
His existence is certain
but his ‘acts’ are
thoroughly uncertain.
She became the loyal friend and supporter
of St. John Chrysostom
whose exile and suffering she shared.
An aged monk
who undertook
the reclamation of
fallen women and
caused great scandal
by the methods
he employed.
He was tortured
and beheaded
in the gardens of Osaka.
From childhood her life was an exact replica
of that of St. Catherine.
At the age of fifty
he left his family
with their consent
and for nineteen years
lived as a hermit at Ranft
without any food
besides daily communion.
She was raised from the dead
by St. Peter.