Special Guest Blogger: St Hildegard von Bingen

Lock up your Communal Wine and wave those rosary beads in the air like you just don't care because St Hildeberg is coming to town for a night of Praise and Worship hymns that’ll have you shoving your fist in the air because i was the 12th Century's music maestro but when i wasn't rocking the aisles, i was writing down prophesies given to me directly from God and some bits of medical information.
The youngest of ten children, when i was 8 my parents placed me in the care of a Benedictine nun and not long after i began to experience visions and wrote them down and the nuns were so impressed that they made me the Superior but our little church got so popular, especially as i was very handy with the herbs and medicinal arts that we had to move to a new, bigger convent.
The Abbot assigned a monk to document everything i saw and the Pope himself got wind of it and my fame began to spread all throughout Europe and people traveled near and far to hear of my visions and seek help, especially men who seemed particularity afflicted with phlegm and we all know why, a certain man in a certain garden eating a certain forbidden fruit. Just saying if man had remained in paradise, he would not have had the flegmata within his body which introduces infirmities to the human body.
12th Century Medicine was particularly advanced, i knew all about the stones found in the gizzards of swallows hung around the patients neck cured epileptics, insanity and lunatic patients and mandrake root left in a spring for a day and then prayed over cured depression and for men experiencing problems with their testicles, they should burn a swallow’s egg in its shell, grind it to a powder, add some chicken fat, and mix until a paste and rub into their testicles.
It was about this time that i began composing my songs, you may have heard of 'Ordo virtutum' which was the very first Opera and a popular little ditty i knocked out and Pope Benedict XVI gave me the name Doctor of the Church which is pretty cool name although the rock n roll lifetyle caught up with me during
a four date hymn and anthem tour of Europe and i was found dead in my bed aged 81.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Bertha of Kent

When Ethelbert proposed to me he asked me if i wanted to help him rule over England and my first reaction was to say hell no, i'm a sophisticated French woman and your people live in huts made from their own dung and they pray to trees and things and would the occasional bath kill them but when he explained that he was only the King of Kent which is a small bit of it on the side, then i agreed as long as i didn't have to do any of that pagan nonsense and could stay Christian and have my own Church to pray in.
I was therefore the first Christian queen of England and hubby gave me a former Roman church in the City of Canterbury although it was only mine for a short while, a visiting Priest from Rome sent by Pope Gregory to bring Christianity to England took it over.
The Anglo-Saxon period followed the Roman withdrawal which left UK with a power vacuum that was filled by warlords with violence, foreign invasion and occupation and Pope Gregory expected me to not only convert Ethelbert but introduce Christianity myself but i said i'm not going into their dung houses, ugh, how disgusting. A commoners doody on the sole of my boot. I shall have to find a patch of grass to wipe it on! Probably get shunned in the Palace, sorry about the pong you fellas, trod in a peasant house and couldn't get rid of the whiff and anyway, the place is swarming with Anglo Saxons with massive battle-axes so i'm not doing it.
So he sent monk Augustine instead and i persuaded hubby to meet him and not immediately shove a sword into his stomach and he gave him the freedom to preach and live in Canterbury, in my church.
I did get the hump but then Pope Gregory wrote to me personally to thank me for my actions in giving him my church and not allowing my husband to gut Augustine as soon as he stepped off the boat and i was all you're very welcome, it was only a Church etc etc.
He did have some clever ideas about how to do it, allowing the Pagans to keep their weird festivals but changing the name and slipping in  Jesus instead of their pagan Gods but they never really noticed, too high on the fumes from their own dung houses probably.
As England went on to become a Christian country, i started off events which fundamentally altered the course of history in the British isles although i have since been canonized as a saint, they still haven't sorted out a feast day for me which is pretty shoddy seeing as i have been dead for over 1500 years.

Special Guest Blogger: St. Abraham Kidunaia

As a young man i had everything i could ever want, a wealthy family and an excellent education and a beautiful girlfriend but what i didn't have was any damned peace and quiet and so i said to my girlfriend look, you're a lovely girl and all that but i want to go live in a cave, stay a virgin and dedicate my life to God.
My bride accepted it a little too easily but i took my things and found a nearby building and blocked up the doors and windows, leaving just a small hole for food to be passed to me by my family.
Ten years later my peace was shattered by some neighbours who informed me that my parents were both dead and i had inherited immense wealth and their estates but i patiently explained that i lived in a bricked up building so what good was that to me and told them to give it all away.
Not long after there was another rude interruption to my peace when a bishop from the local diocese came for my help with some hoodlums in the area causing trouble so i reluctantly went and told them to stop being such sods and then prayed that God would send the village a decent pastor and returned to my solitude.
Finally some decent me time i thought but oh no, my niece had gotten herself into some trouble so off i went again and tried to convince her of the the error of her ways and convert her to change her life but she wouldn't so i dragged her home and built a cell near my own but far enough to not hear her wailing about being locked in a bricked up building and returned to my own.
So i said right, i don't care who dies, which relative is in trouble or if the town gets overrun by demons, don't disturb me and you know what, they never did and the next time i left my home was to go to my own funeral.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Longinus

You probably know me as the Roman Centurion who pierced Christ with a spear but in my defence, we were rattling through a lot of crucifixions at that time and it was a Friday and the weather wasn't great and i just wanted to get home, it was fish for supper and besides, every criminal we stuck up gave some excuse, some argued that we had the wrong person, most said they were a victim of a mis-trial and we had more than a handful of the sons of god and with my bad eyesight, how was i supposed to know this was the actual one?
I had spent my life fighting alongside my fellow soldiers throughout the Roman lands but my eyesight was so bad that i was practically blind and ended up in Jerusalem helping out with crucifixions.
Crucifixion is a bit of a drawn out affair so my job was to poke them with a spear in the side to hurry things along as that was the only job i could do with such poor sight and when Jesus shouted down to forgive us for we know not what we do, i replied, i know exactly what i'm doing, i'm jabbing you in the side with my spear.
It was when the blood and water gushed out onto my face and my eyesight was miraculously cured that i began to suspect that this wasn't just any old hippy nailed up before me so when they took his limp, lifeless body down from the cross, i assisted in cleansing the guy's body before we shut him in a cave.
Turns out he came back anyway after three days when the stone was removed from the entrance of the tomb and when Christ walked out i began to ponder on what if this whole Christian thing is true so i converted, left the army and became a monk preaching about Jesus instead which wasn't a particularly wise move in 1AD Rome, the Emperor said he was disappointed and proved it by having me arrested and forcibly removing my teeth and tongue but i didn't let a little thing like that stop me and i drew pictures instead so they lopped off my head which did finally stop me.
The Christians, being a forgiving bunch, made me a Saint which is nice of them considering i was the guy who actually killed their saviour but what i did that day added another religious holiday to the calendar even if nobody actually knows what it is for.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Augustine

In the late 6th century, i was pottering around in Rome just doing everyday religious things when Pope Gregory came up with the great idea of sending a group of us to England to convert the whacky Anglo-Saxons from believing whatever nonsense they believed in and start believing in our Christianity instead.
The 6th Century Europe was a great time, we had the shiny new Georgian Calendar, matches had been invented and we were making clothes out of silk so the last thing i wanted to do was travel to rainy old England to try and convert a bunch of smelly Anglo-Saxons so halfway there we got cold feet and decided to turn back.
We sent a messenger saying we were coming back and Gregory sent his own replying no you ain't and that's why two years after we left, we arrived in Kent and were met by King Æthelberht.
Before he could balance our heads on a pike, we held up a silver cross and a panel painted with the image of Christ and said we would bring peace to his land, please don't chop us up and he never, actually was nice about it and gave us some land in Canterbury to use as a base.
Still having a head was the first obstacle passed but we still had to go around and tell the people who built huts out of their own dung that Jesus was the guy for them so we came up with the idea of sneakily allowing all the old, heathen festivals and beliefs to remain intact, but superimpose Jesus and Christianity on them.
It worked a treat because when we rolled up saying you look like a decent British bloke, i'll park the old booties on you if that's okay all they cared about was they could still get drunk as newts and stuff their ugly faces at certain times of the year so they didn't care who it celebrated so gradually, the main heathen feasts became days honouring Christ or one of the Saints who we had ready for any eventuality.
Over several centuries, all the big piss-ups were converted to Christian festivals so Imbolc became Candlemas, Sam-hain on 31 October when the dead relatives popped back for a visit quickly became All Souls’ Night, followed by All Saints’ Day and the 12-day festival of Yule at the end of December became Christmas, the celebration of Christ’s birth although we had to fudge the dates a bit for that one.
However, one festival that was so ancient and so deeply entrenched in the pagan psyche that we didn't dare change the name of was Easter although it became less in celebration of the goddess Eostre and more about Christ being crucified and we quickly mumbled something about the eggs and bunnies being some Jesus related thing.
I did such a good job that i was made the very the first Archbishop of Canterbury and kickstarted the whole rubbing out the original Gods and pasting in our own guy thing.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Asterius of Amasea

At this time of year you will likely hear many stories about how the Atheist's are trying to ban Christmas but i was way ahead of them and tried to get the whole thing cancelled over 1600 years before them.
That might be surprising to hear, considering i was a Saint and a Bishop but hang on to your rosary beads, because thing are about to get religious.
Let me explain, as shocking as it might seem, Christmas was not a Christian thing, it was a Pagan Roman thing despite what people will try and tell you, and as such, I said Christians should have nothing to do with a certain December day chosen to remix our boy Jesus with the birthday of their guy Mithras.
I become the Bishop of Amasea at a time when Christianity had overtaken the Roman pagan religions but it was still blurred with the Roman holidays of Saturnalia and Kalends and these Roman practices were still being celebrated, especially the gift-giving.
Now i’m not a fascist, i'm a Bishop. Fascists tend to dress up in black and tell people what to do but i wore gold coloured things so i tried to explain that gift giving was foolish and harmful which taught children to be greedy and the gifts made their minds sordid by capitalism which was an entrance to sin and the birth of Christ should be about being led into a life of light and uprightness.
The pagan custom of leaving food out for the gods in midwinter was co-opted as a Christian act, as was decorating the house with greenery but the pagan practice of giving gifts was spun by the church as emphasizing donations to the poor and celebrating the human nature of Jesus but because nobody was willing to give up their pagan celebrations and the idea of getting drunk for three days straight was too strong, my whinging completely tanked and went nowhere.
My drawing to their minds that they were just glorifying Paganism and their gods devastated the most deeply religious folk who displayed said devastation in their own unique way, by ignoring me and going right back to drinking and eating to excess and so the church accepted and accommodated it as part of their celebrations.
Nice job, Religion but be warned that Christmas will lead to an almighty implosion because even milk gets sour y’know. Unless it’s UHT milk, but there’s no demand for that because it’s shite.

Special Guest Blogger: St. Francis Xavier

It tough being a Saint and having your Feast Day in December because nobody really cares, all eyes are on the big day towards the end of the month but my story is great so put that mince pie to one side and read about how Francis Xavier changed the World, or the Asian bit of it anyway.
I wasn't really content with the Christian religions we had at the time, they just never seemed proactive enough in recruiting new soul's so six of us drew up a formula for a new religious order, the Society of Jesus, aka the Jesuits, with the idea of going out into the World and spreading the word of our God and his son and the Pope gave his blessing and told us to go ahead, so we did.
After a pilgrimage to Jerusalem was thwarted by war, me and my companions went to Rome instead and accepted a request that we bring Christianity to the Portuguese-run colonies overseas.
I wasn't too thrilled at being sent off to minister to the people of Asia, over here in Europe the world was a simpler place, everyone just took our word for things but on my 35th Birthday, straight after the cake and candles bit, i boarded a boat and headed to Japan where Shimazu Takahisa, the Daimyo of Satsuma, gave us a friendly reception and due to the language barrier i took along a painting of the Madonna and the Madonna and Child to help teach the Japanese about Christianity.
Unfortunately, the Japanese people were not easily converted. Seriously, have you ever tried converting somebody? It's way harder than it looks. Most of them completely refuse to stand still and let you change their minds on who created them. Totally unreasonable and anyway many of the people were already Buddhist or Shinto and they refused to believe that a God who had created everything, including evil, could be good. They also refused to believe in Hell, that really got numerous panties quite tightly knotted, it bothered them that their ancestors may be living in Hell.
I wasn't making much headway when the previously friendly Daiymo changed his mind and forbade the conversion of his subjects to Christianity under penalty of death so i packed up my paintings and went to China instead because damn it, i came all this way to convert somebody or that was the plan but as i was waiting for the boat i caught a fever and died, falling into a consignment of fruit destined for Europe.
What i am mostly known for though is the many miracles attributed to me, such as healing, raising the dead, creating and replenishing water supplies, stopping storms, casting out demons and evil spirits, returning sight to the blind, telling prophecies, and my personal favourite of a crab bringing back my crucifix that i carelessly dropped into the sea.
Despite devoting my life to God however, God wasn't such a huge fan of me and i assume i died as divine punishment for the crucifix on a crab thing but while i did not get to see how far my ideas spread, i certainly left an impression, unfortunatey it was on a dozen boxes of apples in a Japanese dockyard.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Andrew

When some long haired, bearded hippy called Jesus came along to mine and my bothers Peter house to rent a room we were not sure and when he heard we were fishermen and he made a joke about how he will make us fishers of men we both looked at each other and thought oh great, a comedian.
What isn't included in the Bible is just how awful his puns were and i was present on all of the important occasions but thankfully the people who put together the Bible left out the awful puns.
After a week of jokes about our net income, if we need a bigger boat his dad Noah's a man who has an ark and how he never really liked the Ocean because he always thought it was a little fishy, we told him nobody would take him seriously if he kept cracking such awful puns and he did tone it down a bit when he started out properly but he couldn't help himself sometimes.
When he offered the well water to the woman he really did say 'whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst' but he also said 'I would give Moses's coffee a miss though, Hebrews it' and 'Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, but the bit omitted was 'the ones who gather in Churches though are birds of pray'.   
The Last Supper was a laugh riot, that's me in the painting third from the end on the left with my hands up in surprise, he had just picked up the bread, blessed it, broke it into pieces and handed it around saying 'Take and eat as this is my body', we all refused at first and then he said 'take this bread of life or you are all toast'. You can see Matthew saying to the person writing it down off on the next table to leave that bit out.
As we all know he was crucified the next day (it being called the last supper is a clue) and we had to rewrite his last words as 'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do' because his actual last words were, 'Say what you want about these Romans but they sure have nailed this crucifixion lark, Nailed it! See what i did there?' 
I was crucified myself not long afterwards but i was put on a X shaped cross rather than the T shaped one Jesus died on but no coming back alive for me, my dad wasn't important enough obviously, but i did get to become part of the flag of somewhere called Scotland.
The story goes that Óengus II led an army of Scots into battle against the Angles, led by Æthelstan, and he prayed for victory and two white clouds formed an X shape in the sky and they took it that i was blessing them and they won the battle and was so grateful they made me their patron saint, set a white X against a blue background on their flag and named a golf course after me so i'm glad they paid such attention to wispy clouds and take them cirrus-ly. Bloody hell, he's got me doing it now!!

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Catherine of Alexandria

I was born into nobility in Alexandria, Egypt which at the time was one of the finest cities in the world, and a center of learning and culture as well as faith, mostly faith to be fair, but because of my privileged birth, i naturally received the best and most exclusive education available at the time and the newest religion, Christianity, which was the new thing around town and one day i was instructed by my teacher to pray to Christ, fast and keep vigil for the entire night and to tell the class about it the next day.
Being a good girl, i did and during the night experienced a vision of Mary, the Mother of the Lord and the Christ-child who gave me a golden ring and told me to spread the word of God.
Not too long after this, i came across a public event held at a pagan temple and the Emperor Maxentius was directing the killing of animals as sacrifices so i went up to him and gave him an awful earful about killing God's creatures.  
Now Maxentius was not known for his ability to take an earful without removing something from the earful giver but rather than send my head skittering across the temple floor, he ordered fifty of his foremost philosophers to debate their truth against mine.
Back and forth we went, my Bible teachings against whatever toilet roll book they had until the Emperor grew bored and ordered all fifty of his philosophers be beheaded.
As they knelt awaiting the executioner, i made the sign of the cross on their heads with oil and they looked up at me and asked if they converted to my faith, would my God protect them from their fate, i said 'nah' and to prove my point 50 heads with oily marks on them went rolling away.
The Emperor had another fate for me and devised a wheel of spikes which he planned to torture me on until i changed my mind on the whole God thing by spinning me around on it but the moment i touched the device, it fell apart.
My lack of slow and painful death only further maddened the emperor who rather confusingly tried to win me over by proposing marriage but i refused so he reverted to a good old fashioned head chopping but the spiked wheel is a popular symbol often associated with me.
The pyrotechnic Catherine wheel, which rotates with sparks flying off in all directions, took its name from the wheel they tried to kill me on which on reflection seems a tad inappropriate.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Columbanus

I was never much of a people person, i was much more at home communicating with animals and the more dangerous the better but in Ireland the most dangerous thing we had was a badger after Saint Patrick had driven all the snakes out so i bopped around Ireland for a few decades and decided to try my hand in Europe so got permission to travel to the continent.
I made a home in the forests of Gaul and my Irish version of Catholicism was pretty well received and the community expanded and drew more pilgrims, so i would often disappear for weeks on to avoid the crowds to a cave miles away with a messenger who would run between me and the commnunity.
Just me, an out of puff messenger and the lovely cute animals but over time my influence grew and the Frankish bishops didn't like that my version of Catholicism was ever-so slightly different to theirs, mostly the dates of Easter as they used a different calendar to us Irish folk and they also objected to my haircut. Seriously, they complained about my hair style which was shaved at the top and a thin ring of hair going around the head.
The King sent soldiers to drive me back to Ireland but i managed to escape and went on a Europe wide tour across France, Austria and into Lombard, Italy where i was given a secluded tract of land in the Mountain forests and set about converting the people of Northern Italy and spending time with the animals.
I would roam the forests with birds flying around my head and landing on my shoulders while squirrels would run up and down my robes and nest in my cowl but i wasn't some sort of hippie because my control over animals didn't stop with the adorable ones.
While walking through the forest one day, i was confronted by a dozen hungry wolves, probably attracted by all the tasty birds and squirrels that followed me around everywhere to be fair, but they laid down and allowed me and my menagerie to pass unharmed.
Another time i went to a cave for a bit of a lay down but it already had a resident, a whacking great hibernating bear but it was a very nice cave so i woke it up and ordered it to leave the cave which it did. After seeing what it had left in the corner i wish i had also told it from now, do your business in the woods buster.
I later came across another bear, might have been the same one, they all look the same to me, which was feasting on the carcass of a deer so deciding that i had got enough picking pine needles out of my feet, nicely asked the bear not to harm the skin of the deer so that i could use it to make a new pair of shoes.
My final bear interaction was to tie a plow to one and get it to plow the monasteries fields so you would assume that when i died later i would be the Saint of bears or animals or even embarrassing haircuts (the mullet, come on, your telling me that's not worth asking for help to sort out) but they put me in charge of hearing the prayers made by motorcyclists due to my traveling although i am depicted in most stained glass windows as palling around with a bear and not some leather clad greaser on a Harley Davidson.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Marina the Monk

As the child of wealthy parents, i didn't want for anything but after my mother died my very devout Christian father raised me and as i approached marriageable age, my father intended to find me a husband and then retire to the Monastery of Qannoubine in the Kadisha Valley of Lebanon.
When i learned of his plan i asked why can't i live as a monk with him and he explained as monks are men it literally took balls to become a monk and i didn't own a pair of them so i hatched a plan and shaved my head, changed into men's clothes and called myself Marinos and he was like all whatever, Monks wear baggy robes and aren't in the habit of poking about at each other's genitals so took me with him to the monastery.
The other monks never suspected i wasn't male and attributed my soft voice to long periods of prayer so i got away with it pretty easily for a while and all was sweet up until my father died and i was given more responsibility by the Abbot such as attending business with other monasteries in the area.
One day, the Abbot sent me to attend to some business in another region but as the journey was long, i was to spend the night at an inn.
That night, the only other lodger was a soldier of the eastern Roman front who disappeared into the room of the inn keeper's daughter, seduced her several times from what i could hear through the thin walls, and as neither of them used protection because it hadn't been invented yet, instructing her to say that if she got pregnant, then to blame the cute young smooth-faced monk monk down the hall.
As it turns out she was and she did blame me and the Abbot banished me from the Monastery and i could have explained that anatomically it couldn't have been me but my mouth, unlike the innkeepers daughters legs, stayed firmly shut and i decided to take responsibility for the baby and the monastery expelled me for getting a woman pregnant and i lived outside the gates as a beggar taking care of the kid.
The other monks convinced the Abbot to allow me to return as long as i did all the cooking, cleaning and carrying water in addition to regular monastic duties and caring for the child which i did until i became ill and died.  
The Abbot ordered that my body be cleaned, my clothes changed and that i be transferred to the church for prayers and it was while they were undressing me for burial they made a discovery which made them feel like dicks, or rather not feeling one, which alerted them that i was a woman, so no penis and therefore no pregnancy
I have not yet been assigned anything to be patron saint of but there is talk of me becoming the saint of something called the LBGT community which as far as i am aware is women who like a Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich only they have a little extra gherkin.

Special Guest Blogger: St. Homobonus

Jesus was no fan of Capitalism, saying to his disciples: 'Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven' and then went off on a tangent about humped desert animals and needles and the Bible contains many mentions poo-pooing money and material gain so the underlying theme is that if you are a Capitalist, God and Jesus hates you so with this in mind, one of the leading capitalists to emerge in Europe was me and i'm a Saint.
I was born Omobono Tucenghi in Italy but i was proud to gain the Latin name Homobonus due to being a Homo (good) Bonus (man) and i was very much a homo man, actually such a massive homo man that people still speak about me today especially in the business world because i was not only a successful homo man but also an awesome businessman and am now the patron saint of business people, tailors, shoemakers and cloth-workers.
My family were very wealthy and i took over from my father in the world of tailoring but i had the idea of instead of spending hours hunched over a smock sewing it myself, just sell the cloth and let the people do it themselves and they did, i didn't even have to stitch the cloth together.
Soon i had more money than i knew what to spend it on, there are only so many top of the range horse and carts you can own so i retired and began on my life of being even more homo by giving it away to the Church and the poor, share the wealth i always say.
Apart from spending the day doing many homo things, i would frequently partake in the Eucharist every day and was famous for really getting into it but one day while attending the mass i felt a pain in my chest and i collapsed back onto the floor arms outstretched and the attendees present thought nothing of it, just assumed i was prostrating myself in the form of a cross looking up at the statue of Jesus on the wall but i was actually dying but they weren't to know until i was still there in the same position the next morning.
I am often depicted clutching a money bag, showing my huge homo side but if you want to meet me personally then my head is preserved in the church of Saint Giles in Cremona because you know...Catholics.

Special Guest Blogger: St. Denis of Paris

Life as a missionary can be tough, especially if it's in third century Paris under Roman rule where the Christians had almost vanished thanks to the head choppy ways of Emperor Decius.
If your only knowledge of Christian saints is that holidays and cities are named after them, hang on to your hat because some of us guys went down in history because we had superpowers like functioning without heads.
I was sent by Pope Fabian along with six other missionaries to Gaul to convert the Pagan's and increase the Christian population again so we found a nice place on the River Seine and set about the business of converting.
I don't want to blow my own trumpet but i was good, a bit too good actually because i was made the Bishop of Paris but the Pagan priests became alarmed over their loss of followers to my side of the religious fence so they called in the Roman's to put a stop to our little game.
The Emperor sent threats and started dropping tactful hints in the form of a goddamn executioner standing outside my window swinging a huge sword but undeterred i continued to convert Parisians to Christianity which resulted in me being beheaded which to some could be considered a handicap but not me, i carried on undeterred. You could say i was a head of my time...ba dum tss.
I picked up my own severed head, dusted it down and washed it in a spring because all that blood was not a good look for a Priest and i walked for about six or so miles preaching all the way through the mouth of my severed head which i was carrying.
At this point i should point out that headless missionaries are not a familiar sight in Paris so credit must go to those who stayed to listen to my message of salvation and saw past the headless guy walking toward them with blood spurting from a ragged neck stump, carrying his own own head.
I carried on walking until i reached a spot that looked nice and promptly dropped dead thereby forever giving artists the problem of where to put my halo in paintings. Many discussions must have gone on whether it goes where the head used to be or where the head is now in my hands.
Fun fact: I am the patron saint of people suffering from headaches which is nice but as usually happens, i thought of something cool to say way too late and have always regretted not saying on my walk from my execution 'See guys, Christians are head and shoulders above all the rest of those other religions' but the moments passed now.

Special Guest Blogger: St Francis of Assisi

First off my name was the very Italian Giovanni, but my father was a lover of all things French so he nicknamed me Francesco which was shortened to Francis but that wasn't what he called me when i began giving away the profits of his silk store after a vision told me to help out funding the rebuilding of a local Church.
When he found out i run and hid in a cave for about a month but got hungry and stank so i returned home and he locked me in a storeroom but my mother let me out so i ran away again to a local Priest but my dad took legal proceedings to stop any inheritance i was due so broke, destitute and still stinky, i wandered as a beggar in the hills behind Assisi before ending up with a bunch of monks who gave me a job carrying stones for the restoration of their monastery.
Over the course of two years i had restored several ruined chapels in the countryside around Assisi but being surrounded by all that religious paraphernalia had an effect and i decided that i should bring the word further afield and luckily for me the crusades were going on at the time so i set off for Jerusalem to try and convert the Muslims and end the war.
On the first attempt we were shipwrecked off the Italian coast and the second time i fell ill and had to return but third times the charm and i rocked up in Egypt at the Sultan of Egypt's place.
Kindly, he quit bisecting Crusaders long enough to grant me an audience and i told him all about how Jesus knocked Muhammad into a cocked hat and to prove it i had a brainwave to invite a group of his Muslims and me as a Christian to walk into a fire and see who came out unscathed.
I'm gonna say that there is a good chance that i didn't think that through completely, i cannot emphasize enough how little I was thinking to be fair but thankfully they all refused before i turned a crispy shade of burnt to a cinder but the Sultan was so impressed by my maniac plan that he didn't turn me into a Christian kebab and instead gave me permission to preach Christianity unhindered in his lands which is quite decent of him considering he was in the midst of fighting a bunch of Christians who were trying to kill him.
What i am most known for is my relationship with animals, not in a welsh sheep farmer type way, i would communicate with them, telling one wolf to stop eating the local townsfolk and preaching to the woodland animals but when you turn up at your kids Nativity Play and sit through an awful version of Little Donkey while wearing your best tea-towels on their heads, you can thank me because i also came up with that.
I used real animals so the audience could use all their senses, mostly smell, those animals really didn't care where they went.
I probably would have come up with some more cool stuff as well only God had other plans and he gave me a vision of an angel being crucified which started up my stigmata and i died weeks later to start a new career as the patron saint of animals so be nice to them, especially wolfs, my favourite furry thing but i wouldn't give one a cuddle, it will rip your face off. Cute though.

Special Guest Blogger: St. Joseph of Cupertino

I was not never the brightest kid, my teachers were said to have been totally shocked at just how much more uncleverer i was than the other kids and the Friars said i was too unclever to be a Friar in their Friary but they did give me this great job mucking out the stables. Only one problem, it was a terrible job but i spent years shoveling horse poop about until they said i could join them in the Friary as long as i did nothing and stayed at the back quietly out of sight.
Problem with that was i could fly and would soar above them at functions and wave and they didn't like that, thinking i was showing off but i can't help it if God gave me the power of flying.
I always had a thing with God, when i was a kid he would give me these really vivid visions and my mum said it was because i was born in a stable just like God's boy, him because his mum got caught short while out riding on her donkey but me because my dad died and we got kicked out our home and it was the nearest place with a roof.    
So flying, that's pretty cool right, most Saints would have used their God given powers to heal the sick, feed the hungry or something good but i just soared into the sky and flew over crowds of people like a superhero in a Friars robe.
During a procession on the feast day for St. Francis of Assisi, i was just helping out, walking around like the rest of you humans, when i suddenly became overwhelmed by the spirit and soared into the air, hanging out over the crowd until one of my superiors ordered me to come down.
They said i wasn't flying, but climbing up really high on things and then jumping off and shouting 'look at me, i'm flying' but them and the many eye-witnesses who saw me climb up and jump off things are mistaken, i was actually flying like a penguin or whatever.
The Friars put up with it for a while and then said i was being too disruptive so they put me in a cell and i was forbidden from joining in anywhere where there was people, the words that they said sound passive, but also aggressive. I feel like there should be a term for that.
Some nice men from the Inquisition came to pay me a visit and they took me to another Franciscan friary in the region to watch me fly and they were so impressed that they handed me over to some other Friars who looked after me and let me make my own rye bread which contained something called ergot but i think i was allergic to it because every time I eat more than 8 loaves i'd barf.
God may have made me fly but he didn't stop me from dying but i was made the patron saint of the mentally handicapped which is probably something cool like other people like me who can fly like flying machines or astronauts so every time you look up at the moon, think of me as i will be looking at a moon. Not the same moon, obviously. That's impossible.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Cyprian of Antioch

There are really three stages of maturity for a boy in the Western world. There's the stage when you really want to play with toys, the stage when you find out your toys are not as much fun as they used to be and the stage when you discover girls and you really, really want to do things with them but getting laid is never easy. That said, as a pagan sorcerer called a theurgist, i made it a little easier with the demons i controlled, the 3rd century way to get her shit-faced and sorry in the morning.
My road to redemption and Sainthood begins like all great stories with an attempted rape using demon minions when a man came to me and said that he had his lustful eye on a certain wench called Justina and could i use my black arts to cast a spell to get her to bump fuzzies with him and despite him having the face not even a mother could love, i took his money and accepted the challenge.
I sent a few of the minor demons her way and waited for the confirmation that the deed had been done but she batted them away so i sent a few more of my more reliable spells her way and again she stood firm and kept her legs firmly at half past 6 and after i dug deep and conjured up the most sexually explicit spell i could and she still refused to buckle, the customer came to see me to ask for his money back and i went to see her and demanded to know how she could ward off the dozens of hell spawned sexual assaults i sent her way and she showed me that by making the sign of the cross, she was able to repel the evil spirits.
I had assumed it was to do with the man being so ugly he would make a bulldog cry so i was surprised when she said it was God protecting her and as Christianity was becoming more popular and my business would be heading down the gurgler with the use of a simple hand gesture, i became a priest and became firm friends with Justina.
The problem with becoming a priest in the time of Emperor Diocletian was that he got a bit head-choppy with them and when he found out he had both of us seized, taken to Damascus to be tortured and beheaded on the bank of the river Gallus.
I did write a book of powerful spells for praying or invoking Saints and included a few of the, let's call them love spells, but i can't be held responsible for any results of using these spells or any resulting husbands or wives who you thought would be your one true love but turn out to be huge douches.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Symeon the Stylite

It takes some doing to be deemed too fanatic a Christian that your own religion shun you but that's exactly what happened to me and how i ended up perched high up on pillars for the last 37 years of my life.
As a child in Syria, i heard some quotes attributed to Jesus and i liked the sound of them so as soon as i turned 16 i arrived on the doorstep of a local monastery and demanded they admit me which they did but i had a real hate-on for the pussified way they lived their lives and i considered their fasting and praying a bit too extravagant so i took too fasting for days on end and standing as long as i possibly could until i passed out and as that made them look bad they told me to leave the monastery.
Out on my own i decided to shun the luxuries of the early 5th century life by shutting myself in a little ramshackle hut for three years but the hut proved too expansive and extravagant for me so i packed up my loincloth and moved to a crevice in a rock in the desert.
Soon pilgrims arrived to bring me goat’s milk and flat bread and seeking my counsel and to say prayers while emptying my waste bucket which cut heavily into my own praying time so i clambered up onto a stone pillar with a little platform on top and sat there instead.
Still they came and asked me questions so i kept clambering onto higher and higher pillars until i found one 50ft high with a 3m platform but the pilgrims still came, and this time with ladders.
The goats milk and bread was gratefully received but despite me saying just leave the milk and sod off, they wanted to know things and occasionally a woman would appear on the top rung and women...ergh..cooties, so i let it known no women are allowed near my rock erection.
To keep from falling, i tied a rope around my leg, which gradually sank into my flesh and the sore got worse but i refused to remove the rope and refused to come down for treatment when i got an ulcer which became infected and led to my death but i inspired many other worshipers to follow my example and, for a while, seeing Christians living a top a pillar was a common sight in Syria although some forgot to bring a bucket and you really wouldn't want to be standing under those pillars when nature called and a bare backside appeared over the edge of the platform, from 50ft up the solids land with a very wet splat.

Special Guest Blogger: St Moses the Black

I assume that in the 1700 years since i was alive black people are now treated the same as whites but back in my day blacks were treated as sub human and a lower order than the whites so not unexpectedly we went off the rails sometimes and i was considered a bad apple on account of all the murdering and robbing i did but i started off as slave of a government official in Egypt who dismissed me for theft and suspected murder of another slave.
I say suspected because there was no such thing as reasonable doubt or burden of proof then and anyone could be found guilty of any number of crimes and the victim could not speak up prove my innocence mostly due to him being dead from having my knife in his neck at the time, but still.
In order to make ends meet i became the leader of a gang of bandits and we would roam the Nile Valley, spreading terror and violence and as i was a large, imposing figure, not many people resisted when i waved my knife in their face and demanded their money.
On one occasion a man caught me making my getaway which annoyed me immensely so i ran back but seeing a huge black man waving a knife screaming that he was going to kill him gave him a clue of what was about to happen and he had the sense to make a run for it to fetch the authorities so instead i killed four of his sheep and ran off to escape.
Obviously, a big black man ugly enough to make an onion cry covered in sheep's blood wasn't going to be that hard to find so i hid out amongst some monks in a colony in the desert and i was impressed that they fed me and accepted me so i asked to join them, became a Christian, was baptized and joined the monastic community.
One time the Abbot ordered the brothers to fast but some brothers came to me saying they were hungry so i prepared a meal for them but some neighboring monks reported to the Abbot that i was breaking the fast and when he arrived he took one look at me and backed out babbling that he just realised that the divine commandment of hospitality out-ruled his orders to fast. Damn straight it did.
Some years later a group of thieves wanted to rob the monastery where we were living but i caught them off guard and singlehandedly beat them all to a pulp and dragged their bloodied bodies to the chief monk to ask what to do because after-all it wasn’t a monkly thing to kill them and the head of the monastery said to forgive them and send them away, which surprised the robbers so much that they all apologised, converted and became monks too.
My death at 75 was a noble act, another group of bandits attacked the monastery and the brothers wanted to defend themselves, but i told them to retreat rather than take up weapons and i would stay behind to fight off the warriors so i stood there alone and prayed for Gods arse kicking help.
Now God might be good but he isn't that good because a 75 year old man screaming 'come on then, you want a piece of me' to a horde of tooled up warriors ended about as well as you imagine.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Louis of France

I managed to get a lot done in my life from being the King of France for nearly 25 years to somehow getting a city in a place that didn't exist for another 500 years named after me and between that fighting the British and managing to go on multiple Crusades which is how i managed to get myself a Sainthood, literally crusading my way into the Church's big book of Saints.
Both my parents were religious zealots and when my father died and i inherited the throne i was expected to continue his strict religious oversights as the 'lieutenant of God on Earth' which came with the crown.
As a bit of a pray wasn't going to cut it, i introduced new laws which made blaspheming punishable by mutilation of the tongue and lips and ordered the burning of some 12,000 manuscript copies of the Talmud and other important Jewish books but the Pope wasn't satisfied and suggested that i join in on the crusades against the Muslims currently going on in the Middle East.
By the time i got my act together the Christians were on Crusade number seven and with hindsight i maybe should have asked more questions about what had happened at the other six over the previous hundred years but you know how it is when you are going on a trip abroad so off we went to Egypt with a thousand of my best men and we were swiftly captured by the Egyptian army and more than the entire yearly revenue for all of France had to be paid for my ransom which was a tad embarrassing.
Being that massive ransoms for captured Kings who make almighty cock-ups of Crusades are expensive, i kicked out all the Jews who were charging interest on loans in France which now had to be paid to me instead of them so i put away the Francs i earned and the Pope came along again and said such a shame about the seventh crusade but i have a feeling that an eighth would be super successful.
Probably to nobody’s surprise, number eight worked out even worse than the first time and my army managed to land in Africa, where my brother Charles persuading me to attack Tunis where i promptly came down with a fatal case of dysentery and died.
As per the customs of the time, my heart and intestine were removed and the flesh was boiled from my body and the bones and human offal was transported back to France for burial.
Despite being really, really bad at Crusades, nevertheless, with all the mangled blasphemous tongues and the faint smell of burning Jewish books in the air all in the name of God, i managed to get myself venerated as a Saint, potentially only one of a few Saint's ever who died of the squirts on his way to war.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Genesius

It is said that the Bible is a humourless book but i don't know, it had Samson in it and he brought the house down.
As you can probably guess by that brilliant intro, i am the patron saint of comedians which is pretty cool considering some of the things some of my fellow Saints are patron of but how i became one is a real thigh slapper.
I had a reputation as one of Rome's greatest comedy actors and my act was mocking the Christians, my joke about all the atheists are lucky God's not real and the difference between Jesus and a picture of Jesus is that it only takes one nail to hang the picture always went down a storm and i was hired by Emperor Diocletian to star in a play that made fun of Christian Baptism and i was there on the stage just about to launch into my joke about a Christian, a pagan and a Jew walk into a tavern when i suddenly felt a huge weight on my chest.
I lay down and above me a bunch of Angels floated down and they were holding a huge book which they said contained all my sins against God and the only way to save my soul was to be baptized straight away which i did, right there and then on the stage in front of Emperor Diocletian.
Being a Christian in 4th Century Rome was about as popular as being a bacon sandwich salesman in Judea and it was safe to say that the Emperor was not too impressed by my conversion and my subsequent refusal to carry on making jokes about Christians therefore laying aside my favourite joke 'What time of day was Adam created? Just a little before Eve'!
Diocletian had me arrested and tortured to force me to renounce my new found faith but i said no and he said that was fine and we went and had a drop of wine at his place and a good laugh about the whole thing- just kidding, he chopped my head off but i had the last laugh because i was made a Saint of comedy.
A few of my acquaintances have asked why i was made the patron saint of comedians when my big act of sainthood was to stop a comedy performance but i point out that Jerry Seinfeld has his own show on the Comedy channel so what's their point.
Well that's my story and i will end with Amen, i could say Awomen but then that's why we have Hymns instead of Hers. Thank you and i'm here for eternity. Is this thing on? Seriously, could you turn this thing on?