Tag: saint
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The healing oil of Saint Walburga
Christopher DuffinLondon, England Born in what is now Devon around 710, Walburga (also spelled Walpurga) was educated at Wimborne Abbey in Dorset, eventually becoming a nun there. In the 740s she joined her brothers, Willibald and Wunibald, who responded to a call from their uncle, St. Boniface (680–755), to become part of the Anglo-Saxon evangelical…
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Santa Margherita da Cortona
Susan Brunn PuettJ. David PuettChapel Hill, North Carolina, United States From humble beginnings to years as a mistress, Margherita altered her path to become a tertiary Franciscan penitent, attending the ill and poor, founding a hospital, and devoting herself to Christ. She was in the vanguard of several other women of the late Middle Ages…
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Can headless martyrs really walk? The belief in cephalophores in the Middle Ages
Andrew WodrichWashington, DC “By the temple of Mercury, [he was] beheaded with [an] axe. And anon the body of St. Denis raised himself up, and bare his head between his arms, as the angel led him two leagues … unto the place where he now resteth, by his election, and by the purveyance of God.”1…
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St. Audrey Etheldrida
JMS PearceHull, England, UK Medicine is full of strange tales, some with unforeseen ramifications. I recently discovered that the origins of the useful word “tawdry” surprisingly lay in a tumor of the throat—nature unspecified—of a seventh-century saint. St. Audrey, Etheldrida, or Æþelðryþ, born c. 636 AD, was an English princess generally referred to as Audrey,…
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Pantaleon or Pantaleimon—A most noble physician
Maria MonteiroPorto, Portugal As information about the life of Saint Pantaleon is entangled with tradition, it difficult to distinguish myth from facts. Nevertheless, according to several sources, Pantaleon was born c. AD 275, son of the rich pagan Eustorgius of Nicomedia. His name means “a lion in everything.” Later he would be renamed Pantaleímon (from…
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Life-giving doctors: The hard decision of self-surrender
María Belén EyheramonhoBuenos Aires, Argentina While thinking of medicine as an honorable profession and of the patient-doctor relationship under the light of the human dignity of every person, three legendary figures come to mind: Dr. Giuseppe Moscati, Dr. Gianna Beretta Molla, and Dr. Jérôme Lejeune. Throughout this essay, as I present a short biographical review…