saint misbehavin'
Or, seven old-timey saints who prove we just don't canonize the way we used to
Happy almost-holidays, my friends!
It’s been a real whirlwind of a November-December over here in Dirtbag Headquarters. So if you’ve noticed posts being a little sporadic over the past few months, that’s correct! They sure have! Know what else has been a little sporadic? Calling my parents to reassure them I am not deathly ill or stuck in a ditch! (Hi, Mom and Dad! I’m doing great!)
I have a lot of hope that the new year will involve less madness—specifically, hiring someone to help me at my day job so I don’t have to work as many 60-hour weeks. But I didn’t want to finish 2024 without sending out one last note!
First, the Seasonal Promo Facts:
Fagin the Thief is inching closer as we speak! Pub date is February 25, but preorders make great holiday gifts to yourself. Incredibly exciting things are in the works for early next year, and I can’t wait until I won’t get in trouble for telling you about them.
International ebook versions of Let the Dead Bury the Dead will be available all over the internet on January 7! Check your preferred e-retailers and score a copy with the cover I’m fully obsessed with.
Another book I’m excited about but did not write is The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf by Isa Arsén, pitched to me as “two Shakespearian actors in a lavender marriage experiencing shenanigans and betrayal in the desert, AKA a book written for Allison Epstein personally.” It’s out January 7 and I just got my grubby little hands on a copy, so if your jam resembles my jam, check that out.
OK, that’s it for now, on to the main attraction! This week’s newsletter isn’t a full dirtbag profile, but it is a brief foray into one of my favorite parts of old-timey history:
The Absolute Unhinged Shit the Catholic Church Used to Canonize People into Real Saints for!
Longtime (and even medium-time) readers will know that one of my favorite parts of medieval and renaissance European history is the weird shit the Pope used to get up to. But it wasn’t just popes! We really were dealing sainthood out left and right back in the day for the most whimsical—and, often, frankly unsettling—of reasons.
So kick back, relax, and enjoy a brief seasonal listing of seven of my favorite old-timey saints, perhaps listening to the most bangin Christmas song of all time as you do to crank up the holiday ambiance.
Saint Number One: Saint Bernard, The Saint Who Drank From The Virgin Mary’s Titties
This was the saint who inspired this week’s newsletter, because he made a surprise appearance in an earlier newsletter about Eleanor of Aquitaine and I’ve been obsessed with him ever since.
Bernard of Clairvaux was an ordinary Frenchman in the 11th century who started out as a monk and went on to become an abbott. He did a lot of the usual miraculous things: exorcising demons, healing the sick, spreading the gospel, etc. I don’t care about any of that.
What I do care about is the famous story of the time Saint Bernard prayed in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary, and the statue was so impressed by Bernard’s holiness that it came to life, pulled out her titty, and fired a shot of breast milk directly into Saint Bernard’s mouth, imbuing him with Holy Titty Wisdom.
There are dozens of artistic renditions of this moment, which is literally called the Lactation of Saint Bernard, and each is more delightful than the last. We have the “squirt gun” approach:
The “elementary school drinking fountain” approach:
And my personal favorite, the “right in the goddamn eye” approach.
I also enjoy the fact that Bernard is well-known for feuding with Semi-Famous Horndog Priest and Sexy Letter-Writer Peter Abelard. I had to read his love letters in college and I haven’t forgiven Abelard for being so weird in the decade since, so in this I am Team Bernard.
Saint Number Two: Saint Guinefort, the Saint Who Was a Dog
Now, you would be forgiven for assuming that Saint Bernard was the saint who was a dog. But no! It’s time for my favorite saint of all time: Saint Guinefort, Legendary Good Boy!
The story goes that in the 12th century, a knight left home and asked his greyhound Guinefort to watch over his baby. I don’t know what kind of Peter Pan shit was going on in 1300s Lyon, but none of the stories describe this as weird, so maybe this was standard babysitting behavior. Anyway, the knight comes back from his knightly activities to see the baby missing, the cradle knocked over, and Guinefort’s mouth covered in blood.
The knight kills Guinefort, because he’s an asshole who doesn’t think before he stabs. He then turns around to see the baby is absolutely fucking fine, while the corpse of a giant poisonous snake is covered in dog bites next to the cradle. Clearly the dog had risked his life protecting this baby—which I reiterate was none of this dog’s business, as Guinefort was by no means a licensed childcare professional—and then got martyred for his trouble.
All’s well that ends well, though: apparently God punished the knight for killing Saint Dog by burning his house down. Serves him fucking right.
Saint Number Three: Saint Denis, the Saint Who Took His Own Head for a Walk
One thing I feel like we do not appreciate sufficiently about old-timey saints is how needlessly goth they were. For instance: Saint Denis, yet another goddamn weird Frenchman, this time from the third century.
Saint Denis was one of those “wander around and convert people” kind of priests, and the rival religious leaders got pissed off at him for cutting into their market share. To shut him up, they cut off his head at the top of a hill in Paris, now known as Montmartre.
But did that stop Saint Denis? The fuck it did! This dead-ass man picked up his head, carried it under his arm like a football, and strolled multiple miles to the place where he wanted his body to be buried, preaching what sounds like a deeply annoying sermon the whole way.
This leads to a lot of truly wonderful French statuary in which Saint Denis is pictured holding his head and looking really fucking pissed off about it:
This statue of Saint Denis would like to speak to your manager, please.
Saint Number Four: Saint Catherine, the Saint Who Made Sweet Sweet Love to Jesus
Saint Catherine of Siena Hive, we ride at dawn!!
*looks around*
Am I really the only member of the Saint Catherine of Siena Hive? Ugh. Fine.
Catherine was a 14th-century mystic who joined a convent at age 16 because she loved God, which is different than the reasons most people in this newsletter join a convent (lesbianism, murder, petty crime, swordfighting, dressing up a sex worker as Marie Antoinette to steal her jewelry, etc.). Her parents probably weren’t too mad about this really, as Catherine was their 23rd child, a sentence that makes me exhausted simply to type.
Many weird things happened to Catherine in her convent. One of them is that she was treating a woman with a breast ulcer and—for reasons utterly unbeknownst to me—decided to pierce the ulcer and then drink the pus with a ladle. I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum, but I am here to yuck this. She was also supposed to have prayed so hard she would start levitating, which is dope.
More famously, though, Catherine later published a book of her mystical visions, including the one in which she joined with Jesus Christ himself in a “mystical marriage,” which included a full-body, X-rated union with Jesus. Her wedding ring in this mystical marriage was Christ’s foreskin.
Catherine of Siena died in 1380, age 33, of what appears to have been religious-induced anorexia. I think she is the weirdest and most fascinating woman in Christian history and I am at any moment eight minutes away from beginning a novel about her.
Saint Number Five: Saint Olga, the Saint Who Burned Down a Whole Village with Flaming Pigeons
I’m not going to tell the whole story of Badass Saint Olga of Kyiv here. We’ve covered that in this publication already.
However, no list of weird-ass saints would be complete without Olga, who was so pissed off at the rival army who killed her husband that she staged a series of Wile E. Coyote attacks on their army, before attaching the precursor of a Molotov cocktail to the legs of 5,000 pigeons and then setting them loose on an enemy city, burning it to the ground.
It’s simply the most incredible battle tactic I have ever read about, and I don’t blame the church for canonizing her out of sheer respect.
Saint Number Six: Saint Lucy, the Saint Who Carried Around Her Eyes in a Special Eye-Bowl
God, we simply do not give Saint Lucy the credit this bitch deserves for her style and panache.
Lucy was a very early Christian back in 4th-century Roman days who wanted to devote her virginity to God. Her mom, no doubt dismissing this nun fervor as “kids these days,” tried to get Lucy engaged to a rich nobleman. She pushed back, going off on a renegade life of being a good person, giving away money, etc.
This pissed off Rome, who ordered Lucy to be defiled in a brothel as punishment. Lucy then started shit-talking the emperor, who had her eyes gouged out and then had her murdered. Miraculously, when they went to bury her, her eyes were back!
I mean, she was still profoundly dead. But the eyes had returned. Which is something.
This is all very upsetting, admittedly, and I wouldn’t bring it up if old-timey artists hadn’t been so needlessly goth about the whole thing. I mean! Look!
And look!
Just fuckin LOOK AT THIS GOTH-ASS LADY AND HER LITTLE PLANT WITH EYES
I can’t say enough how much I love this Dr. T.J. Eckleburg of a saint.
Saint Number Seven: Saint Veronica, the Saint Who Made the First Jesus Merch
Saint Veronica allegedly offered Jesus her veil to wipe his brow while he walked to his crucifixion. When he handed it back, the veil had his face miraculously imprinted on it.
Every picture of Saint Veronica at the crucifixion makes me laugh like a seven-year-old at a fart joke. I am desperately immature and this is my sense of humor.
There are many, many more wonky saints out there, and I warmly encourage you to share your personal favorites in the comments. There will never be a day I’m not delighted to learn about another weird saint.
Thanks for joining me, my friends! I hope you all have a lovely holiday season, should you celebrate something around this time, or a restful end of December if you don’t. I’ll be back in the new year with more handcrafted nonsense for your enjoyment.
Until next time, be well, and let Saint Veronica be your sign to take advantage of any merch opportunity that might come your way,
-Allison
Saint Barbara after converting, refused a marriage her father arranged. He then had her imprisoned and tortured, before personally executing her. Leaving the scene he was struck by lightning and blasted to smithereens, and for this Saint Barbara became the patron of rocketeers, artillerymen, miners, chemical engineers, all others who work with explosive, and Lebanon.
I cannot get away from tit pus. I just can't. I feel like this trauma will be staying with me...