medieval saints – Going Medieval

My fav saints: St Margaret of Antioch

Friends, since I made you all think about death recently I thought I would keep it light for you real quick and talk to you once again, about one of my favourite saints – the good St Margaret of Antioch. I was thinking about her recently because I was writing up something about your good friend and mine, Joan of Arc. See, Margaret was such a cool saint that even noted badass Joan looked up to her, and claimed that Margaret was one of the voices that spoke to her and told her to go out there and beat up some English people. My love for several English people, and currently location in the capital of England notwithstanding, I do agree that probably it’s good to beat them up when they are in your backyard stealing your pig. So, I think it is probably good that she was out there inspiring anti-invader violence. ANYWAY! If she’s good enough for Joan, she’s good enough for you, so today we’re going to learn all about her and how you can spot her in medieval art.

On the 11,000 virgin martyrs, iconography, and beauty standards

The other week while wandering around the Cologne Cathedral (shout out to a legend) I came upon an extremely excellent altar in one of the side chapels. Built into its base were several perfectly identical reliquaries showing smiling, beautiful blonde women. I stopped to look at it, because, firstly I was absolutely amazing, and secondly it took me a second to realise what I was looking at. Have a look at her:

Sneak Peek: The Middle Ages, a Graphic History (out now!)

Friends, my comic is officially OUT in the UK! (Americans and Aussie/Kiwi friends have to wait until September, I am very sorry.) To celebrate, or tide you over in case you are still waiting I thought I would give you my loves a peek inside, and give you a better idea of what happens when you put 1100 years of history into 176 pages, with pictures.

My fav Saints: St Procopius of Sázava, a spooky saint

There are a lot of medieval ghost stories. So many, in fact, that there is a whole really great collection of them, Andrew Joynes’s Medieval Ghost Stories: An Anthology of Miracles, Marvels and Prodigies, which I unhesitatingly recommend if you want some more medieval ghost content in your life. To surprise and delight you, I was thinking back through some of my favs to do some casual Halloween posting. Should I do the ghost story about incest? Some of the great Icelandic revenant stories? How about my fav Emperor Charles IV’s poltergeist story that he just throws in randomly in the middle of his autobiography? That’s when I realised that actually some of my scary stories are directly related to one of my favourite saints – St Procopius of Sázava, aka Sv. Prokop. So that is who we are going to talk about today.