Curated category
Anglican saints
- Thomas AquinasThomas Aquinas was the youngest of nine children, and his family had a plan for him. His brothers would be soldiers. He would follow his uncle Sinibald…
- Nicolaus CopernicusNicolaus Copernicus spent his final years in a small tower at Frombork, on the Baltic coast of Royal Prussia, watching the sky with a quadrant, a triquetrum…
- John the ApostleJohn the Apostle spent the last moments before Jesus's arrest walking through the Garden of Gethsemane, one of only three men Jesus chose to witness his…
- IrenaeusIrenaeus was a Greek bishop who, around the year 180, sat down to dismantle a rival vision of Christianity that promised secret wisdom to a chosen few.
- OrigenOrigen of Alexandria was, by any measure, one of the most restless minds the ancient world produced. He wrote roughly 2,000 treatises over a lifetime that…
- Augustine of HippoAugustine of Hippo was born on the 13th of November 354 in Thagaste, a small town in Roman North Africa that today is Souk Ahras, Algeria.
- John CalvinJohn Calvin once described God's predestination as a decree dreadful indeed, writing in Latin, "Decretum quidem horribile, fateor." This was a man who could…
- Ignatius of LoyolaIgnatius of Loyola was born Iñigo López de Oñaz y Loyola in a castle in the Basque municipality of Azpeitia, the youngest of thirteen children in a minor…
- John ChrysostomJohn Chrysostom collapsed and died at Comana Pontica on the 14th of September 407, on a road he never chose to walk. He was being marched toward Pitiunt, a…
- Samuel JohnsonSamuel Johnson was touched by Queen Anne on the 30th of March 1712, when he was barely two years old, in a ritual meant to cure the scrofula scarring his…
- Basil of CaesareaBasil of Caesarea once told a prefect of the emperor, "Perhaps you have never yet had to deal with a bishop." The prefect, a man named Modestus, had been…
- Francis of AssisiGiovanni di Pietro di Bernardone was a young man who loved fine clothes, spent money lavishly, and delighted in the songs of troubadours.
- Gregory of NyssaGregory of Nyssa wrote something no one in the ancient world had written before him: a direct, unequivocal argument that slavery itself was sinful.
- Gregory of NazianzusGregory of Nazianzus once compared himself to the Prophet Jonah, begging to be thrown overboard. "Seize me and throw me," he told a council of 150 bishops in…
- John WesleyOn the evening of the 24th of May 1738, John Wesley went very unwillingly to a religious society on Aldersgate Street in London.
- Thomas CranmerThomas Cranmer was born on the 2nd of July 1489 in the village of Aslockton in Nottinghamshire, England, a younger son from a modest gentry family with deep…
- John of the CrossJohn of the Cross was born Juan de Yepes y Álvarez on the 24th of June 1542, in Fontiveros, a small Castilian town of around 2,000 people, into a family of…
- Edward the ConfessorEdward the Confessor died on the 5th of January 1066, and within a year, England had been torn apart. Three men would claim or hold the throne he left vacant.
- Martin LutherMartin Luther stood before the Diet of Worms on the 17th of April 1521, a German priest summoned to answer for his own books. The Emperor Charles V presided.
- Francis XavierFrancis Xavier died early in December 1552, in a small hut on the Chinese island of Shangchuan, fourteen kilometres from the mainland he so badly wanted to…
- Teresa of ÁvilaTeresa of Ávila was born Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada on the 28th of March 1515, and she died either just before midnight on the 4th of October…
- JeromeJerome, the early Christian priest and scholar also known as Saint Jerome, once described crawling through the catacombs beneath Rome.
- Charles I of EnglandCharles I walked to his own execution on the morning of the 30th of January 1649 wearing two shirts. He had chosen them deliberately: the day was bitter…
- Thomas MoreThomas More climbed the scaffold at Tower Hill on the 6th of July 1535 and, finding the structure so rickety it might collapse, told the waiting official: "I…
- John WycliffeJohn Wycliffe died in his church at Lutterworth, but the men who hated him would not let his body rest. In 1428, more than forty years after his death, his…
- Thurgood MarshallThurgood Marshall walked into the Supreme Court as an advocate 32 times and walked out a winner 29 of those times. That record alone would make him one of…
- Bartolomé de las CasasBartolomé de las Casas stood on the shores of Hispaniola in 1502 as a slave owner and land holder, his encomienda rich with gold and Indigenous labor.
- William TyndaleWilliam Tyndale died with a prayer on his lips. Tied to a stake outside Brussels in the autumn of 1536, he called out in a loud voice: "Lord!
- John FisherJohn Fisher entered the world around the 19th of October 1469 in Beverley, Yorkshire. His father Robert worked as a prosperous mercer who died in 1477 when…
- Søren KierkegaardSøren Aabye Kierkegaard was born on the 5th of May 1813 in Copenhagen, the youngest of seven children in a family that was both prosperous and haunted.
- Florence NightingaleFlorence Nightingale was born on the 12th of May 1820 at the Villa Colombaia in Florence, Tuscany, and was named after the city of her birth.
- Sergius of RadonezhSergius of Radonezh was baptized Bartholomew, a boyar's son from a village near Rostov Veliky, and he died on the 25th of September 1392 as the most…