I was the Bishop of Formia in Italy at a time when the Roman Empire under Emporer Diocletian was doing its best to stamp us out before we got going and i was captured and imprisoned but an Angel came and freed me saying that i should leave Rome else i end up a God fearing Sheesh-Kebab so i fled to Turkey to continue my preaching and kept my head down for seven years.
I was quite happy converting Turks until another Angel came to see me and said that Diocletian was dead and i should return to Formia to pick up the conversion thing again so off i went but within days i was arrested a second time because the Angel forgot to tell me that the new Emperor, Maximian Hercules was even more of a Christian hater than his predecessor so the Emperor told me to give up the whole Christian thing or face being rolled down a hill in a barrel and i thought that doesn't sound too bad, might actually be quite fun so i took the barrel option which turned out to not be as much fun as i first thought.
They dropped me into a barrel of spikes and rolled it down a hill but the same Angel who came to me in Turkey appeared and healed my wounds so i popped my head up out the barrel and said, 'Sorry, still a Christian' so next they covered me in pitch and set it alight but the Angel kept the flames from burning me and the flames went out and i was getting a bit cocky, protected by Angels and that so i went 'Hey, still a Christian here' so next they cut open my stomach and wound my intestines around a winch and hoisted them out of my body and i looked at the Angel to help but he just shrugged in a sort of 'on your on with this one' type way and floated off.
I am predictably the patron saint of stomach ailments but also sailors who pray to me to protect them at sea in thunderstorms and the electrical discharges at the mastheads of ships were seen as a sign of my protection and came to be called 'Saint Elmo's Fire' after me and i assume anyone who gets their guts wrapped around a winch is said to be doing an Erasmus.
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