Skip to main content

Saint Corona


One of the side effects of being married to a Catholic is that you learn of various saints you might never otherwise have heard of.  And it turns out, lo and behold, that there is a St. Corona.  And, what is more, she is the patron saint of treasure hunters and... epidemic victims.

Well, there is apparently some debate about the latter.  You can find quite a bit about it online.  Here is one piece, more interesting and less polemical than many, about her relics, which are being restored and will go on display in a cathedral in Aachen, Germany.

And you can even order holy cards of St. Corona.  I have some, in fact.  Protestant readers may not know what I am referring to, but Catholics have a kind of mania for holy cards, which typically have a picture of Christ, a saint, or some other holy person on one side and a short prayer on the reverse.  You can almost always find random examples near the entrance of a Catholic church.  They range from the quite attractive and tasteful to the extremely kitschy.

I always take one or two along when I find them, especially ones I haven't seen before.  And then I use them as bookmarks.  So at this point there are many books in my office that a reader will open, to discover a holy card inside.  I kind of like the idea.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

E-mail Wit on a Lazy Sunday Afternoon

It seems as though practically every business where I've ever bought anything in the past decade sends me e-mails about their products, specials, deal-of-the-week, etc.  Normally I delete them immediately, without a second glance. But one this afternoon made me hesitate.  I received a "Walgreens Weekly Ad" e-mail.  Its subject line read as follows: "We can't stop lowering prices." So instead of hitting "delete," I sent a quick reply: "In that case, I think I'll wait and shop next week." I have no idea whether or not that reply will go to a real e-mail address and be read by an actual human being.  But I hope so.
5 comments
Read more

Non capisco!

About once a week I get an e-mail from something called the Italian Cultural Institute in New York.  I don't know why.  I know nothing about them and have no idea how I got on their mailing list.  But I generally take a quick look at the e-mail, because every now and then I see something interesting. The other day I got one of these and saw what appeared to be a potentially interesting lecture today.  It was by a professor named Stefano Jossa, currently at Royal Holloway, the University of London.  He was going to be speaking on his new book, in Italian, but the title of which in English would be The Most Beautiful in the World: Why Love the Italian Language .  It sounded intriguing, it was free, all you had to do was register and get a Zoom link.  So I did. It turned out that the lecture was actually being sponsored not by the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, but rather by the one in Montreal.  But who cares, right?  As long a...
4 comments
Read more

Pandemic and Globalization: Some Thoughts

I have been promising to jot down a few thoughts on the coronavirus pandemic and globalization.  A few days ago I read an essay by John Gray, arguing that the pandemic marks a turning  point, one that will prompt a move away from liberalism, free trade, and globalization.  Gray is a thoughtful and interesting writer, and you can find his essay here -- although I don't think it is particularly compelling. Gray's analysis fits into a broader political narrative that has already been gaining traction over the past few years: that we are seeing a retreat from liberal politics and from the globalized world order as countries move increasingly in nationalist, populist, and even authoritarian directions. National populism (which can but need not be authoritarian) is a real phenomenon, in the USA, across the West, and to some extent even globally.  We see it in the election of Donald Trump, in Brexit, and in the rise of various national populist parties in the democr...
2 comments
Read more