Twins Cosmas and Damian – Patron Saints of Doctors

Saint Luke is the one commonly believed to be a patron saint of physicians. The less known are Cosmas and Damian, the only twin physicians to have been declared saints in the Catholic Church. In Poland, we have been recently observing a growing interest in these saint twins. This is mainly associated with a return to the tradition of the Apothecary Feast, celebrated on September 26, the day of Cosmas’ and Damian’s martyr death.

Local Rural Holidays of Russian Peasants as a System of Sacred Communication (based on the materials of the Nizhny Novgorod region)

Introduction. The article proposes a worldview approach for typologizing local religious holidays of the rural population of the Nizhny Novgorod region, in which they are considered as a system of communication between the human collective and the divine. Results. The life of the Russian peasant was built up in a constant dialogue with the divine, the mediators of this dialogue were the patron saints of the community, communication with whom was carried out through local holidays established in their honor. Various forms of celebration correlated in the worldview of Russian peasants with different reasons for turning to the patron saints, which allowed the author to distinguish two types of local religious holidays that differ in their functions: petition holidays and thanksgiving holidays. Discussion and Conclusion. The system of local religious holidays was not only an accessible mechanism of religious practices for Russian peasants, but also a traditional way of life support. The holidays of supplication and the holidays of thanksgiving, complementing each other in a number of functions, were closely connected with the life of the peasant community. The former was responsible for earthly goods and united people using common natural resources in religious communication, the latter ensured the spiritual kinship of members of tribal groups united in a single veneration of their patron saint. Every significant event in the secular and spiritual life of the peasant world found its expression in the local holiday calendar.

“Confession Seals the Mouth” The cult of St. John of Nepomuk – a Martyr of the Sacramental Mystery – on the Example of 15 Songs from the Collection of Catholic Devotional Hymns for Church and Home Use, Published in Pelplin in 1871 Selected Theological and Musical Issues

In the presented article, the author discusses 15 songs composed in honor of St. John of Nepomuk, coming from the Collection of Catholic Devotional Hymns for Church and Home Use, published in 1871 in Pelplin. The number of songs proves that the cult of St. John was widespread among Polish people. This Saint enjoyed extraordinary authority because he remained faithful to his priestly vocation until his martyrdom. He preferred to die than to reveal the secret of the holyconfession. Thus, St. John of Nepomuk remains the Patron Saint of Confessors until this day.

Camillus de Lellis (1550–1614), Patron Saint of Hospitals

Camillus de Lellis was an Italian nobleman born in 1550 who served as a soldier fighting the Turks. Three times between 1571 and 1584, his abscessed leg forced him to seek care in a Roman hospital; each time he worked there during and after his treatment. He was disgusted by the bad care in the hospital and decided a religious order devoted to helping the sick was the best way to better physical and spiritual care. In 1585, he founded the Ministers of the Sick, today called the Order of Saint Camillus. It gained full papal approval as a religious order in 1591. By 1607, it had 242 members working in ten leading Italian cities.

“To Believe in an Image (Again)”

In screen studies and photography studies, the name of the acclaimed film theorist and critic André Bazin is frequently invoked by scholars seeking to defend the import of analogue media on ontological grounds by citing photography's privileged connection to the real. This article seeks to unsettle Bazin's reputation as the patron saint of analogue recording by exploring the ontological implications of the concept of sense in Bazin's writings on neorealism. Placing Bazin's writings into dialogue with a selection of critiques that find the digital image to be lacking in historicity, negativity, and presence, and flag its potentially authoritarian impulses, this essay seeks to reframe Bazin's ontological project as a question of cinema's sense (rather than its essence) to mobilize a different set of conclusions that may in fact prove to restore faith in the digital image and its rapport with the real. By maintaining that what is often treated as a purely technological problem also harbors aesthetics implications, this article confronts the manifest skepticism that has pervaded the discourse around the digital since the 1990s, seeking an alternative outlook in Jean-Luc Nancy's work on sense, an ontological concept that evidences the political potentials (or potential politics) of Bazin's predilection for images, which are said to ameliorate our love for reality by transmitting the excessive sense of the world in its ambiguity, creativity, and unpredictability.

From Confessio to Calderón de la Barca: the Literary Evolution of St. Patrick’s Biography and the Question of his Legacy

In the following text, I will discuss the gradual erosion of historical accuracy in connection to a series of hagiographic texts concerning the biography of Saint Patrick, Ireland’s patron saint. I will outline each one against a wide historical and cultural backdrop and subsequently ascertain whether or not the changes that hagiographers introduced over the centuries have been detrimental to his legacy. The texts I have chosen to analyse can be separated into two major time periods: the first being the trio of works that construct the absolute basics of the Saint Patrick legend, all originating from the 5th to 7th centuries, which are the autobiographical Confessio, with its heavy focus on relaying a Christian moral about sin, and the historical sources Bishop Tírechán's Account of St. Patrick's Journey and Muirchú's Life of St. Patrick. With these early hagiographic texts serving as reference points, I will, however, primarily study two Spanish Patrician works from the 17th Century: Pérez de Montalbán’s 1627 work Vida y Purgatorio de San Patricio and Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s play El purgatorio de San Patricio, or The Purgatory of Saint Patrick in its English translation. Within my analysis I will determine whether or not the changes integrated into his story by Montalbán and Calderón in fact matter to the overall legacy of Saint Patrick in the modern-day and if they had any lasting impact to readers, bearing in mind that both texts, more or less, retain the essentials of his Christian message and promote him as an exemplary spiritual figure within history.

Mr Spectator and the Doctor

Joseph Addison and Henry Sacheverell were almost exact contemporaries. Born within two years of one another, both men attended Magdalen College, Oxford in their youth, and they both took up their studies at the college in the wake of the Glorious Revolution. From this moment onward, the lives and public careers of Addison and Sacheverell would be curiously intertwined. Scholarship and college life would bring them together as friends, but politics and public fame would pull them apart. A contrast between the agreeable Addison and the distasteful Sacheverell is commonplace in eighteenth-century studies, and not without reason. As perhaps the chief proponent of a new culture of ‘politeness’ for post-revolutionary Britain, Addison is well known for his friendliness, if not perhaps for his volubility, in company. Addison’s powerful reputation as the patron saint of eighteenth-century politeness did not sit well with his ties to Sacheverell, whose firebrand reputation was deeply controversial in his lifetime and only declined further as time went by. For this reason, the youthful friendship of the two Magdalen scholars has been a source of awkwardness for later commentators. This chapter places the friendship between Addison and Sacheverell within the context of post-revolutionary political and literary culture.

Addison as Translator

Joseph Addison and Henry Sacheverell were almost exact contemporaries. Born within two years of one another, both men attended Magdalen College, Oxford, in their youth, and they both took up their studies at the college in the wake of the Glorious Revolution. From this moment onward, the lives and public careers of Addison and Sacheverell would be curiously intertwined. Scholarship and college life would bring them together as friends, but politics and public fame would pull them apart. A contrast between the agreeable Addison and the distasteful Sacheverell is commonplace in eighteenth-century studies, and not without reason. As perhaps the chief proponent of a new culture of ‘politeness’ for post-revolutionary Britain, Addison is well known for his friendliness, if not perhaps for his volubility, in company. Addison’s powerful reputation as the patron saint of eighteenth-century politeness did not sit well with his ties to Sacheverell, whose firebrand reputation was deeply controversial in his lifetime and only declined further as time went by. For this reason, the youthful friendship of the two Magdalen scholars has been a source of awkwardness for later commentators. This chapter places the friendship between Addison and Sacheverell within the context of post-revolutionary political and literary culture