Honestly this whole patron saint rabbit hole started when I was writing last week’s post about Italian traditions. Kept seeing references to Saint So-and-So protecting specific things – like Saint Anthony helping find lost car keys. Got me thinking… are there weirder ones? Grabbed my coffee yesterday morning and just dove in.
The Initial Deep Dive Mess
Started simple: Googled “strange patron saints”. Ended up on these old Catholic forum threads. Total info overload. Spent like two hours scrolling through obscure lists, cross-referencing with Catholic encyclopedia sites (those things look like they haven’t been updated since ’98, by the way). My browser had like twenty tabs open – felt like a detective board in a cop show. Needed a smarter plan.
Filtering Out The Truly Bizarre
Decided my rule was simple: the saint’s patronage had to make me actually say “What?!” out loud. No “protectors of farmers” or “helpers of students”. Nah. I wanted the ones making people scratch their heads for centuries. Dug deeper into specific names that kept popping up.
Here’s the wild top 5 I landed on:
- Saint Libentius of Speyer: Patron saint… of prostitutes? Yup. Found medieval references where they actually prayed to him. Blew my mind.
- Saint Drogo: Patron of ugly people and coffee houses? The ugliest patron I’ve ever seen? Okay. And coffee shops? That felt random until I read he protected taverns too. Total craziness.
- Saint Fiacre: He’s famous… for hemorrhoids? Seriously? Found old French texts calling him the helper for that specific “delicate” problem. Laughed out loud in the quiet library. Felt awkward.
- Saint Foy (Faith): Patron saint of people getting their chickens stolen?!? Found this insane medieval legend where her statue literally chased down a thief. Who comes up with this stuff?
- Saint Apollonia: They pulled all her teeth out? So now she’s the go-to saint for toothaches? Makes sense in the creepiest way possible. Dentists love her, apparently.
Writing The Weird Bits Down
Sitting at my kitchen table today assembling this, just shaking my head. It was a struggle not to make the whole post just screaming “WTF?!” The hardest part was picking ONLY five. Seriously considered adding Saint Polycarp protecting dysentery sufferers… but nope. Five strange saints is already pushing sanity.
Final thoughts? The internet is an amazing place for finding these forgotten stories. Also, humanity has always been weirdly specific about needing divine help for very… peculiar problems. Makes you wonder what future archaeologists will think of us praying to find lost phones. Anyway, coffee’s gone. Signing off.
