Patron Saint

as you know, if you read this piece of dung with any sem­blance of reg­u­lar­i­ty, i am crazy. i also fence. last night at mass instead of lis­ten­ing to the eucharis­tic prayer which i have heard prob­a­bly around 2,000 times in my life i got to think­ing. is there a patron saint for swords? so after the reces­sion­al i leapt silent­ly up four flights of stairs and wan­dered in the gen­er­al direc­tion of my room in a mad­cap quest to find this out. when i final­ly arrived at my room an hour lat­er i’d for­got­ten about it. but then i remem­bered and checked it out.

There is no patron saint for swords, but there are THREE for sword­smiths, Dun­stan, Mau­rice, and Michael the Archangel. so no dice. but, was there a patron saint for fenc­ing? yep, that is Michael the Archangel again. Some­thing about beat­ing the shit out of Lucifer with a sword and kick­ing his rebel­lious ass out of par­adise. oh yeah, that and being the gen­er­al of the heav­en­ly host. what you think angels just sit around all day and sing prais­es? they need to kick ass too.

when i was con­firmed as an adult in the Catholic church it is cus­tom­ary to accept a con­fir­ma­tion name of a saint who you think is a good match for you. I chose my bro Michael the Archangel. and then lat­er i became a fencer. albeit not a very good one, but at least i’ve got gump­tion.