January 11 -- St. Vitalis of Gaza

Vitalis was a seventh century monk and hermit who left the wilderness of Gaza to go to the teeming, corrupt metropolis of Alexandria. He was sixty years old at the time, but suddenly felt a strong vocation for a peculiar form of missionary work.

He'd find work as a day laborer and then spend all his wages on a prostitute in the evening. Shocking, I know, but it is less so than it sounds. He'd hire the companion with the stipulation that she spend the whole evening with him and that they NOT have sex. If she was willing, he talked about God's mercy, forgiveness of sins, and salvation. He also stipulated that she NOT discuss what had happened after they parted the following morning. I have to admire his indifference to reputation as he sought to save these women.

Naturally he was in for some gossip. Who was this hard-working old man that spent all his money on hookers? Why was he with a different woman every night? Some said he had hired every prostitute in the city. Apparently the local leaders of the Church knew what he was doing and approved, but no one made his secret mission public, which is what undid him in the end.

He was leaving a brothel one morning. A brief misunderstanding of some kind with another man led to a sound clout on Vitalis' head. He made it back to his home, but collapsed there and died. If I were making this up (and I guess I am making up this part of it), I'd have the angry assailant extracting revenge for the salvation of the man's preferred whore. He'd either be a pimp who lost his top earner or a john who would never again exploit his favorite hooker.

January 10 - St. Peter Orseolo

Peter Orseolo was a Venetian, son of one of the best families. He became an admiral by age twenty, ridding the Adriatic of pirates. I figure that's an important thing for a commercial center that was built on an archipelago.

His father had served as Doge of the Most Serene Republic of Venice, but was not holding the office on August 11, 976 AD, when angry Venetian partisans locked the sitting doge, Pietro IV Candiano, in his palace and set it on fire. Their intention was to kill Pietro and his son, which they did. They did not intend to burn down half the city, but they did that also. Good thing Venice is on islands or the whole place might have burned down.

Peter was elected doge the following day. He dedicated all his energy and much of his money to rebuilding the city. First were the orphanages and hospitals and other forms of aid to the neediest. Later came the rebuilding of St. Mark's Cathedral.

On September 30, 978, Peter quietly slipped away in the night without even telling his family where he was going. Having exhausted himself with the restoration of the city, he became a Benedictine monk in the Pyrenees. Even his wife thought this was fair, though of course she was pretty well set.

January 9 - St. Fillan

St. Fillan (Faolan) was the abbot of a monastery sometime in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. His left arm used to glow when he wanted to read but had no candle or lamp. The bone from this arm, called the Mayne, was sent to Robert the Bruce just before his victory over the English army at Bannockburn in 1314. Fillan's bell and crozier (staff) are still in the Museum of Scotland; the bell, called the Bernane, was placed above the head of those suffering migraines to relieve them. It used to fly through the air when Fillan called it to him. St. Fillan's pool, a pond near his abbey, was used for the treatment of the mentally ill. They were tied up and dunked, and then left in the ruins of the abbey overnight. If they were free of the ropes by morning, they were cured.

January 8 - Blessed Edward Waterson

 Off by one:  Yet again, I seem to have been misinformed.  Blessed Edward was executed on January 7, and so that is apparently his real feast. 

One easy conclusion from the lives of many saints is that if you want to stay alive, don't put too much of a premium on your religious identity. Edward Waterson was a young sixteenth century English merchant. Traveling with other merchants in Turkey, Edward was befriended by a wealthy Turk who offered his daughter in marriage if the young Englishman would convert to Islam. I'd like to think the girl was tempting; it would make the story better, but the account I have doesn't really say one way or the other.

Anyway, Edward declined the offer and eventually headed back home, stopping first in Rome. There, he contemplated his Christianity a little more and converted to Catholicism. It's a pity he didn't meet a Patriarch in the East somewhere; his fellow countrymen probably would have been less threatened by an Orthodox Englishman than a Catholic one. But he was ordained in Rome, and since Catholic priesthood was a capital crime in England under Her Majesty Elizabeth Regina Prima, he was sent to prison, abused, and beheaded.

January 7 -- St. Raymund of Penafort

Like so many of these saints, Raymund wanted to hang around the monastery, reading and praying. Sometimes, if he felt like stretching his legs, he'd go evangelize among the Moors and Jews of Spain, or he'd contend with the heretics. It was the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, so there were still plenty of Moors, Jews, and heretics in Spain, and unlike his Dominican heirs, Raymund didn't light his theological opponents on fire.

He did however get called away from these joyous to be the confessor for Pope Gregory IX. Once Ray was in Rome, Pope Gregory decided to take advantage of his doctorates in canon and civil law by asking him to codify all the papal decrees. The resultant law code served the Vatican (and the rest of the Catholic world) for centuries.

Raymund tried to return to the quiet life, but the people of Aragone tried to make him their bishop. He dodged that bullet, but was selected as the third leader of the Dominican Order. He wrote a new constitution for the Order, putting in a clause which allows the leader of the Order to retire at 65 if he wishes. Raymund wished so, and did so, promptly after his 65th birthday. I like a guy who uses his constitutional powers to get out of a job, especially if he then goes out to plant churches and monasteries throughout Spain.