Episode 599: The Horrible Lives and Deaths of the Saints - The Middle Ages

Summary

Episode Summary: Last Podcast On The Left – Episode 599: "The Horrible Lives and Deaths of the Saints - The Middle Ages"

Release Date: December 6, 2024

In Episode 599 of Last Podcast on the Left, hosts Marcus Parks, Henry Zabrowski, and Ed Larson delve into the macabre and often horrifying lives and deaths of saints during the Middle Ages. This detailed exploration uncovers the dark underbelly of sainthood, revealing how the Catholic Church manipulated the concept of sainthood to consolidate power, influence communities, and sustain its dominance in Western Europe.

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1. Introduction to Medieval Sainthood

The episode begins with a lighthearted banter among the hosts, quickly segueing into the serious topic of saints and their role in medieval Christianity. The hosts discuss how saints were pivotal in establishing Christianity as the predominant religion in the Western world, emphasizing their influence on power structures that lasted centuries.

Notable Quote:

Marcus Parks (02:05): "Today, however, we're going to explore how the saints of the Middle Ages played a huge role in the establishment of Christianity as the religion of choice for much of the Western world."

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2. The Canonization Process

Ed Larson provides an overview of the canonization process, explaining that there were two primary pathways to sainthood: martyrs and non-martyrs. Martyrs, who were killed for their faith, required only one miracle for canonization. In contrast, non-martyrs, recognized for their virtuous lives, needed two miracles.

Notable Quotes:

Ed Larson (04:38): "This was a process called canonization. These days, there are two lanes by which one can become a saint: martyr or non-martyr."

Henry Zabrowski (04:19): "That's the best part."

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3. Evolution and Centralization of Sainthood

As Christianity became more widespread, the number of martyrs dwindled, prompting the Church to broaden the criteria for sainthood. This expansion allowed the Church to centralize the canonization process, ensuring that only those who aligned with the Church's agenda could be recognized as saints.

Notable Quotes:

Ed Larson (08:05): "They packaged their famous podcast and then just give it to you, and then you suck it up like a bunch of dogs and pigs. And that's the change. That's the difference of when they took over canonization."

Henry Zabrowski (09:55): "That's how they got through everything. That's how I do it."

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4. Relics and Relic Trading

A significant portion of the episode discusses relics—the physical remains or personal effects of saints—and their central role in medieval Christianity. Relics were believed to contain "virtus," a mystical power that could perform miracles. The hosts explore how relics were meticulously preserved, traded, and used to attract pilgrims, often leading to conflicts and "holy robberies" between communities.

Notable Quotes:

Ed Larson (20:36): "The relics of the saints would also be locally traded between communities based on who was most in need of saintly virtus."

Henry Zabrowski (32:49): "These French always jump to a conclusion."

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5. The Role of Virtus and Miracles

"Virtus" was the term used to describe the supernatural power bestowed upon saints. It was believed that relics containing virtus could heal the sick and perform other miracles. The hosts discuss how peasants fervently sought these relics, leading to the commercialization of sainthood as relics became valuable commodities.

Notable Quotes:

Henry Zabrowski (20:54): "Which is going to make everybody super butthurt."

Ed Larson (35:00): "Nobody could pay, just hang out with it... it's like our old timey weed dealers."

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6. Controversial and Bizarre Saints

The episode highlights several saints with particularly gruesome or unusual stories, illustrating the often brutal methods through which individuals were martyred or canonized.

• Saint Faith (Saint Foy): Martyred at age 12 by the Romans for refusing pagan sacrifices.

  Notable Quote:

  Henry Zabrowski (31:20): "Saint Faith was the actual patron."

• Vilafortis: A rebellious woman who prayed to become ugly to avoid an unwanted marriage, resulting in divine punishment.

  Notable Quote:

  Ed Larson (39:18): "Because Vilafortis was a rebellious woman who disobeyed her father and rebelled against the idea that a woman is a thing to be traded."

• Saint Guinefor the Greyhound: A dog mistakenly believed to have killed a child, leading to his sainthood.

  Notable Quote:

  Henry Zabrowski (50:24): "C'est la vie."

• Joseph of Cupertino: Allegedly able to levitate, his miracles were likely misinterpreted gymnastics.

  Notable Quote:

  Ed Larson (62:30): "He has probably the widest span of patrons being both a patron saint of intellectual disabilities and astronauts."

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7. The Shift Towards Nobility and Clergy

As the Church sought to reinforce its authority, canonization increasingly favored nobility, royalty, and clergy over common folk. This strategic shift ensured that sainthood remained aligned with the Church's hierarchical structure, promoting the divine right of rulers and maintaining social order.

Notable Quotes:

Ed Larson (52:34): "But the point is, when dogs and farm workers started making the cut, the church realized that it needed to put the people in their place, both spiritually and socially."

Marcus Parks (53:54): "The dog ones probably sold a lot of amulets."

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8. The Organization and Industry of Sainthood

By the late Middle Ages, the process of canonization had become highly regulated and centralized. The Church established strict protocols for investigating miracles and ensuring the virtues of potential saints. This bureaucratic approach transformed sainthood into an industry, mirroring modern organizational practices.

Notable Quotes:

Ed Larson (43:08): "They could ask conditionally for more time... people were like, hey, there's this guy. He's amazing. Make him a saint. Why not?"

Henry Zabrowski (42:54): "They just needed more time. It was also because the people were asking for it."

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9. Critique and Satirical Commentary

Throughout the episode, the hosts employ humor and satire to critique the Church's manipulation of sainthood. They draw parallels between medieval practices and contemporary issues, highlighting the absurdity and corruption inherent in the system.

Notable Quotes:

Henry Zabrowski (40:22): "It's almost like you should then definitely stay because that's your trial. Congratulations."

Marcus Parks (66:50): "Can you be eaten by wolves? But this is like how we got like St. Edward, who was a king."

Henry Zabrowski (69:54): "Go kill somebody at the hotel and ask for forgiveness at St. Peter's. Hail Satan."

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10. Conclusion and Future Episodes

The episode wraps up with the hosts teasing future content, including a three-part series and upcoming live shows. They maintain their irreverent humor, ensuring that while the subject matter is dark, the delivery remains engaging and entertaining.

Notable Quotes:

Henry Zabrowski (68:00): "Next week we begin a very large series that I'm very, very excited for. It's going to be a three parter."

Marcus Parks (69:48): "Nicole Blankenship. She's a fan that we lost this week, patron saint of Last Podcast Network."

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Key Takeaways:

• Manipulation of Sainthood: The Catholic Church strategically expanded and centralized the canonization process to maintain power and influence.

• Economic Motivations: Relics and relic trading became lucrative, intertwining faith with economic interests.

• Bizarre Saints: Many saints have grisly or inexplicable stories, reflecting the complex interplay between faith, power, and societal norms.

• Shift in Focus: Over time, sainthood shifted from grassroots veneration to an elite, institutionalized process favoring the powerful.

• Satirical Lens: The hosts use humor to expose and critique historical religious practices, making complex and dark topics accessible and engaging.

This episode serves as a fascinating, albeit unsettling, exploration of how religion and power dynamics shaped the concept of sainthood during the Middle Ages. Through meticulous research and their characteristic humor, the hosts illuminate the often-ignored darker aspects of religious history.

Transcript

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[Henry Zabrowski]

Do you want to listen to Last podcast on the Left? Without ads, do you want extra content? Do you want to see what it's like behind the scenes? Patreon.com lastpodcast on the left.

[Marcus Parks]

There's no place to escape to.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This is the last podcast on the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Oh, shit. You know who should be a saint? Who? The guy who invented shoe inserts. Dr. Scholl. Saint Scholl of the very limited. Yes. Dr. Scholl.

[Ed Larson]

No, actually, I think it'd be Dr. Saint Joel. Yes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He did not go to 15 years of uncomfortable foot school to be Mr. Saint Joel. And he's one of the very few Jewish saints.

[Ed Larson]

You're only saying this because we're currently in New York and we're walking a lot right now, aren't you?

[Henry Zabrowski]

My back really hurts. My back. My back hurts. My penis hurts. But I think that's because of my jeans.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, or it's because you yank it so much when you're away from your wife.

[Henry Zabrowski]

My wife just got back and so I can retire old gripper for the next you're going to get.

[Ed Larson]

Welcome to Last podcast on the Left. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with the gripping Henry Zabrowski.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Not gripping as much anymore because I'm back at the married life.

[Ed Larson]

Very nice. And I'm here with Ed Larson, who I assume has not been gripping since we arrived in New York City.

[Marcus Parks]

I've been flopping.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's actually a problem. He needs to go to a doctor. He needs to get his new penis bone inserted.

[Ed Larson]

And today we're going to be expanding upon the world of the Catholic saints.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yay.

[Ed Larson]

By popular demand.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We're seriously this whole story. And I was just in the Met for like I went through and I did not understand how much Saint Merch would be at the Met.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah. It's all because, like, I guess because the last time I went, I was. We were in the middle of doing all this research and now I went and I was like, it's a whole room of reliquaries where you go and you really just see just how, like, how do you put it? It literally is merch. Like it's, it's, it's fun. And fanfare.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. They wouldn't paint normal people. You gotta be a saint to get painted back.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Unless you had the money and then you could pay to be painted. But that didn't happen till later on. I got it. And then I got the impression that a lot of times you didn't even look like the person that they painted.

[Ed Larson]

Many times.

[Marcus Parks]

Impressionist.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Thank you. Me and Jimmy Fallon.

[Ed Larson]

So in our last installment on the Saints, we covered the role that they played in the development of early Christianity during and immediately after the largest instances of Christian persecutions perpetrated by the Romans. We went up until like 400 AD or so.

[Henry Zabrowski]

There's some good words here. I like persecutions perpetrated together.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Marcus has plenty of $10 words.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He does.

[Ed Larson]

Hey, these are more $7 words. I save the $10 words for the pros.

[Marcus Parks]

I need you to do more couple later. I probably won't know.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I really hope that you do some Cormac McCarthy. Like the blood it drives the moon, it stares the boy he sucks the.

[Marcus Parks]

Girl in my car. Cross state lines.

[Ed Larson]

Today, however, we're going to explore how the saints of the Middle Ages played a huge role in the establishment of Christianity as the religion of choice for much of the Western world.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Good for them.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. In addition to how they helped the establishment of power structures that lasted for centuries in Europe and how much of it involved corpses and murder. Yay.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's the best part.

[Ed Larson]

A lot of corpses.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It almost is a feature that you have to die to be super for God.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, well, you know, Catholicism is very metal. It's very intense, it's very morbid, it's very death heavy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, they want your blood, they want your cum, they want your shit, they want to eat it. The Catholics are.

[Marcus Parks]

I found a picture of myself the other day in the Stations of the Cross play. And it's just me holding a spear at Jesus.

[Ed Larson]

I was like, hell, yeah. Now, before we get into the nitty gritty, it might be helpful to talk a bit about how saints are chosen and ratified, as it were. This is a process called canonization. These days, there Are two lanes by which one can become a saint, martyr or non martyr. If you died a martyr, meaning you were voluntarily killed because you didn't waver in your faith in Christianity, then only one miracle needs to be attached to you, either during life or after death. Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

As long as we got your body and your soul, like you gave that up for us. We only need one.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, only one.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, an after death miracle, is that like stories that people told about the person?

[Ed Larson]

No, but people would say, we'll get more into it later. But basically it's people say, I prayed to this person and now I'm healed. Therefore it is a miracle. Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And it can turn your. Your flopper into a grower if you pray at a picture of Mother Teresa. And by pray, I mean pull on your penis.

[Marcus Parks]

I've been praying to St. Cocker.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, Joe.

[Ed Larson]

The miracle part is why all those other Christians who died alongside the saints we talked about last episode didn't get canonized. Ed, I think you brought up that point. Why did and why did Christopher get canonized and all the people who were killed around him got killed? You can't just die for Christianity. God has to choose you for reasons that are never given. You know, it's something you file under moves in mysterious ways.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Which we. Which is a great file because it covers everything.

[Ed Larson]

Anything. Martyrs, however, began to run out as Christianity became a more dominant world religion. And when Christianity became a dominant world religion, a person was more likely to be killed for not being a Christian than they were for being a Christian.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, it flips to the other side because it's not as cool to die for Christ. If ever. Everybody's dying for Christ.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Yeah. So to allow for the creation of more saints and therefore more bonus content for the Catholic church, the church had to widen the net. They figured that if a person was simply a model Catholic and a virtuous person, a good example, as it were, they could be canonized if two miracles could be attributed to them in life or after death. As far as how the after death stuff works, we'll get into that later. But this expansion of sainthood begs the question as to who decides who gets to be a saint. See, back when it was all reprobrises and elmos and blandinas.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Blandina. Blandina, Quit pulling your tits out at the store. Did you drink all the lemonade again? Blandina, you're sucking all the milk and you're leaving your milk. Your mouth rings on the edges of the box.

[Marcus Parks]

This crystal light tastes like piss. Oh, it's Piss.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's piss.

[Ed Larson]

Well, back then, saints were chosen mostly by local chapters, isolated groups of Christian cultists. And this freedom to choose enabled Christianity to take root in hundreds of places across Europe.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The way I'd kind of put it is that it changed from the way last podcast and left grew from a grassroots, everybody telling each other about it. We won the People's Choice award at the Webbies. Right. That was our folk canonization by the Internet people of the time, which is still weak. We love our Webby. Every day it's in my office. I think about the Webby, and I miss that magical night, that one night we got to be at the Webby's. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Joel Joe McHale mispronounced my name and made fun of me.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah, it was great. I love it.

[Marcus Parks]

Mispronounced. Marcus Parks.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He called him Mark.

[Ed Larson]

He called me Mark Parks and said, that's a stupid name.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, he's a piece of shit. He's a piece of shit. An idiot.

[Ed Larson]

Why would you do that?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I don't know. But you see, that was how things used to get chosen. It was always about the public. They were building up these ideas and that helped Christianity for a while because it showed. Look, they love and our shit. We're going to make them a saint. We're going to. We're going to use the popularity index and we're going to make a mistake. But then it would switch to the smart less brand of Internet, right? Where now you have a bunch of celebrities and then like, you know, the Meghan Markle's, the Kelsey Brothers of the world, where what they do is they package their famous podcast and then just give it to you, and then you suck it up like a bunch of dogs and pigs. And that's the change. That's the difference of when they took over canonization.

[Ed Larson]

Fucking Christ.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, do saints have to be after Christ? Why isn't Noah or Moses a saint?

[Ed Larson]

You have to be a saint after. Because it's Christianity. It has to be Christian. Yeah. And Noah didn't die for Noah wasn't a martyr. You couldn't technically ton of miracles, I don't know. But that was mostly done by God.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He was different. He was a wizard.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

All right.

[Ed Larson]

I mean, don't worry. Magic plays a lot of a big role in all of this, of course. But by the second half of the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church decided that canonization needed to be centralized within the upper echelons of the church, both in who was chosen to be a saint and the process by which it was done. This had two effects. First, the church could make sure that the people didn't inject any ideas or philosophies into the Catholic doctrine that ran contrary to the church's agenda.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They gotta hold on to canon, right? Like, that's the thing they got. Like when we.

[Ed Larson]

That's where canon comes from.

[Henry Zabrowski]

When we worked for dc, where they showed up and we wanted to maybe use Superman for a thing, you're like, oh, you want to use Superman? Here's the four inch book of rules that you have to follow to use Superman.

[Ed Larson]

Same second, it gave the church the ability to carefully tailor new saints to make sure they were continually relevant. Like we talked about last week, you know, the latest saint, the first millennial saint, Carlo Acutis. They call him God's influencer. So they're trying to find some way to stay relevant in the 21st century.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Does God's influencer also sell Casper mattresses? Like, does it work? Like, is he out there selling, like, I'm trying to think blue chew?

[Ed Larson]

Well, as our head researcher Joel put it, the tailoring of saints to keep up with the times is sort of how Marvel and DC reboot superhero storylines every few years to attract new audiences. But they still make sure to keep just enough of the original concepts in place so as to not freak out the older fans. Think of it like the first into the Spider Verse movie.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You remember that movie, right?

[Marcus Parks]

I loved it.

[Ed Larson]

Fantastic movie. I mean, you can have a black Spider man as the main character, but you still have to have white Spider man there right alongside him, right next to you.

[Marcus Parks]

A bunch of white Spider Man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's the idea. All the rest of the Spider man happened to be white.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, even the chick was white.

[Henry Zabrowski]

There wasn't. I didn't notice one Jewish one, and I feel like that's an issue.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, I love Joel Spiederman. And if you throw an obscure fan favorite like Spider ham into the mix, along with a couple of little Easter eggs so people can feel special. Oh, I know that. That's a reference to SP number 52. Then you got a hit.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Did they do the Spider man green armor one? That was my favorite.

[Ed Larson]

Spider Man, Spider man, green armor.

[Henry Zabrowski]

When he had green armor.

[Ed Larson]

I have no idea what you're talking about.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This real 90s Spider Man. This is my hologram cover of Spider Man Spectacular Spider Man.

[Ed Larson]

Very good.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It was green emeralds.

[Ed Larson]

I think that might have just been the color of the COVID And isn't.

[Marcus Parks]

The Amazing Spider Man.

[Ed Larson]

It's. It's the Amazing. It's spectacular. And then there's just regular Spider Man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The pedophile Spider Man. Have you seen that one? Pedophile Spider Man.

[Marcus Parks]

Shooting all kinds of.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Little kids look like haunted houses.

[Ed Larson]

Catholicism.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's the spookiest child I've ever seen. Don't talk like that about him. He's traumatized.

[Ed Larson]

Catholicism, use of the saints. Especially in the Middle Ages, it worked much the same way. It introduced new characters while keeping just enough of the original magic so people don't react badly when something they hold so dearly changes just a little bit.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And the more you drag them along, the more you have to use super dumb advertising terms, a sticky customer. The more you get them to include the DLC of it, the more they're willing. They're showing their willingness to be involved in the religion.

[Ed Larson]

Yep. Now, for this episode, our source is far more academic than the first one and far more occult. This time we have Saints of the Later Middle Ages by Andre Vauchez, which is recommended only to the most dedicated hagiographers due to how extremely dense it is.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I tried and I've read Dianetics.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's very difficult. It's very academic.

[Marcus Parks]

There's no reason to read it.

[Ed Larson]

Nevertheless, our team was still able to glean a fascinating narrative from these pages, along with a ton of other sources all over the Internet, which often contradict each other wildly, as could be expected now.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So remember that when we're talking about religious figures, everybody's got a different set of. Let's use the word opinions about these things. Just remember, it's part of what we're doing here.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it's a different set of opinions. It's a different set of interpretations. A different set of fucking everything. The stories can wildly change from web page to wedge, web page, book to book. You know, how they became saints, what hap. What they were like, what they were like in life. Like there's no consensus on hardly anything.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's almost like the details. Yes, it does. It's almost like the details were made up in the first place and they don't really matter.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

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[Ed Larson]

Now. As we said earlier, aside from the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist and the Apostles, only martyrs were up for sainthood in the early days of Christianity. And before you ask about John the.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Baptist, he's an interesting character. John the Baptist.

[Marcus Parks]

He got his head chopped off.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, but it's continued to talk.

[Ed Larson]

He was killed because King Herod's second wife just didn't like him, because he was being very sanctimonious about Herod divorcing his first wife to marry her. And so she tricked her husband into beheading John the Baptist after his stepdaughter made him horny with a sexy dance at his birthday party. And because he was so horny and pleased with his stepdaughter, he told her that he'd give her anything she wished. And so she went to her mother and said, mother, what should I wish for? And her mother said, wish for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. And so he asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter after her mother told her to. And that's a bit of a simplification, but really, it's not that much of a simplification.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What the fuck Is so. It's like the Real Housewives of Constantinople. This is the dumbest shit.

[Marcus Parks]

Definitely a couple Cs back in the dictionary, man, that's.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You could hold down Alice Cooper.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He was King Herod. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

King Herod. Alice Cooper was King Herod.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

What are you talking about?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, the great Jesus Christ. Oh, Miss Wonderful Jesus Christ Superstar.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, okay.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, if you can show me yours. So divine. Can you turn this water into wine?

[Ed Larson]

Now, the martyrdom aspect of sainthood set forth a sort of perpetual motion, because the more Christians the Romans killed, the more it strengthened the faith of other Christians who inspired other people to become Christians who were also then killed. And this cycle continued until Christianity became the dominant religion.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's kind of an interesting feature, you realize. It really is. It's like you set up a bunch of, like, parameters. If you want to be a number one Catholic, you got to die miserably to be one. And then other people see it happen, and they don't realize once you're dead, you're not gonna fucking know if you're a saint or not. And then they think, oh, good, I'll get to go to heaven. I guess. I get box seats.

[Ed Larson]

No, you get to skip the line. You don't have to wait for the Day of Judgment like everyone else.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Right, that's right.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Because isn't that actual. The theology.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that's the actual theology is that.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You hang, you'll never see heaven. But I thought that Jesus opened heaven. I thought that was the idea that Jesus opened heaven.

[Marcus Parks]

Saint is sitting up there judging fuckers.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He's just the fucking. He's the bouncer.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. I mean, it's. For me, the whole Day of Jud Judgment thing, like, it seemed. It's definitely up to interpretation, because some people do believe that it will. That we will never get into heaven until the Day of Judgment. That's why people are pushing for the Day of Judgment, because we're all just.

[Henry Zabrowski]

People just hanging out the queue.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, people are just hanging out. People are just like, what did Jesus do? He died for our sins and made it possible for. It's kind of like a miracle. It's like.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. After.

[Ed Larson]

It's like when a restaurant calls us and allows us to have reservations. Yeah, exactly.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You have an opportunity to spend money with supreme this afternoon.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Now, when the persecution of Christians ended In the early 4th century, the worship of martyrs became a massive part of the religion. And the process of exhuming the corpses of saints to transfer them to places where they could be easily and safely worship began.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's awesome.

[Ed Larson]

This practice also increased the power of local bishops who were responsible for the worship and celebration of their local saint. These bishops gained further renown for compiling and distributing histories of their saints throughout the Christian world. These are the so called hagiographies. This created a large number of martyr cults which you'd think would run afoul of the ten Commandments. But it was found that martyr cults were more successful at converting European pagans who had no frame of reference for a more ethereal Middle Eastern religion. Like Christianity, isn't it?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I find that fascinating in a way where like it really was. I don't know, on some level they must have known that what they were doing. Right. They knew that this style of like, like we'll let them start their little grassroots, like churches on their own, like we'll let them do it and. Because what it's doing is it's flipping people without them having to do anything.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And they know it. They could just sit back and take the new people.

[Ed Larson]

Well, it changed throughout the centuries, like, especially when the missionaries came to America and tried starting to convert, like the indigenous people. Because the indigenous people would say, like, oh, you got a God, cool, we'll just fold them into the rest of them. Yeah, we'll just put them in. But then the Catholics got particularly pissed off, like, no, no, no, you can't fold them in to the rest of your guys.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And you're like, only gotta have this one guy here, man. I just, I just got you. You just showed up, you got. I'm barely wearing anything.

[Ed Larson]

And of course it varied from tribe to tribe, but you know, that was overall what happened again and again.

[Marcus Parks]

Also these small town bishops, you know, like they didn't have the Internet, they didn't have phones, you know, so they were kind of like they were going crazy. They were doing weird, just making up the religion as they went.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's awesome. Yeah, that's got to be fun.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Oh, it's gotta be extremely fun to make up all your own shit. Yeah. And then see if it sticks. But martyr cults, they focused on the relics of the saints, amulets, talismans, clothes and bones, which could actually be seen and prayed to. So while European pagans couldn't really wrap their heads around the ephemeral concept of the Father, the Son and the Holy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Ghost, most people can't.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, they could understand that if they worshiped a thing they could see like a necklace or a skull, then they could expect something in return. In other Words they could understand magic.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But that also puts us on the slippery hardcore slope towards idolatry.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Which is going to make everybody super butthurt.

[Ed Larson]

Now, as far as how these magical powers are defined, Christian dogma said that saints were compensated for their merits and sufferings with a reward of a mystical power called virtus.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Virtus. It is strange. You just get a power. You get powers, but it's their. It's completely passive.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Virtus is only awarded after the saint's death, and it's contained within the bodily remains of the saints. Think of it like radio. It's like radioactivity, but good.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Made of virtually.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Now, because a saint's corpse was imbued with virtus, that meant that it was not supposed to fall prey to the same inconveniences of decomposition as any old cadaver left in the street. Instead, it was said that the corpse of a saint would still feel as soft as they had when they were alive.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Soft as a saint. That's how I like my toilet paper.

[Ed Larson]

That made it appear as if the saint was just sleeping. It was even said that even after burial, a saint's body would not decompose. And it was often claimed that if a saint's corpse was exhumed years after it was buried, it would still appear as if it was freshly dead.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And that seems to be a main point of a lot of canonization is the idea of, like, he ain't green, like he's the ain't bones.

[Marcus Parks]

But were they digging them up at all?

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And they were staying.

[Ed Larson]

Well, according to legend, they were just.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hacking off parts of them, though at that point, they were just hacking off parts.

[Ed Larson]

But the unintended consequence of this is that if anyone found a corpse that appeared as if it had not decomposed to the expected level, then the person whom that corpse belonged to had a chance of being worshiped as a saint, even if they hadn't been the greatest person when they were alive. Well, by the rules, God must know something about this guy that everyone who knew him when he was alive didn't. So stories would be created and histories would be written just because Jimmy the had died or had been buried in a place where his body was more likely to avoid decomposition.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, look at. We saw the marsh people right in the swamp. Guys like all the flat people. Like, if you're. If you're buried in a specific conditions. Mud. Mud, you could be mummified. You that can look like you're a saint if you're buried in specific dry conditions. You could look mummified. You could literally dry out. Specific cold conditions you can just turn into. Essentially, you just kind of dry. Like a jerky.

[Marcus Parks]

Or you freeze.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah. So that is, you know, it's very difficult. You go find. You can dig up a lot of guys in the. In the FS and find out that they're all, you know, accidental saints.

[Marcus Parks]

I love Saint Encino Man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He's one of my favorites. One of my favorites.

[Ed Larson]

I love.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, because nothing like the historically religious touch of the weasel.

[Marcus Parks]

He's an apostle.

[Ed Larson]

It was also said that vertis could manifest itself in how the corpse smells.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This is interesting.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. A saint was supposed to have a particularly strong, distinctive and pleasant scent.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It was supposed to smell.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Saints are smelly.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. It was supposed to be present both in life and in death. A smell that was called the odor of sanctity.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I think I smelled the odor of sanctity earlier today in my Uber on the way to the show.

[Ed Larson]

I certainly smelled it in the 33rd street station last night.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Oh, it's a very. What a holy subway station this must be.

[Ed Larson]

It's quite a stale sanctity. Now, this smell was usually faked with a shitload of garlic. If the saint was already dead.

[Marcus Parks]

Is that why so many saints are Italian?

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's racist.

[Ed Larson]

But if they were alive and considered to be a person already on their way to sainthood, there is a possible scientific explanation for the so called odor of sanctity. Oh, see, as we said earlier, many.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Of them natural deodorant.

[Ed Larson]

Natural. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I got garlic in my shorts right now.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I took the shit in my pants earlier.

[Ed Larson]

See, as we said earlier, many of the medieval saints were not martyrs. Often they would create their own suffering through vows of poverty or by intentionally torturing themselves by putting stones in their shoes or wearing extremely uncomfortable hair shirts.

[Marcus Parks]

Fucking jerk offs.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, no, they're all jerk offs.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Cause this is like, how does this make you extra holy? You're doing this to yourself.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, well, because you're going through the pain of Jesus Christ and you're just living a miserable life.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No one asked you, bro.

[Marcus Parks]

So all saints are cutters?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, a lot of them are.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, a lot of them. Yeah. They all could look like Grimes Tumblr girls just like, with messed up mascara.

[Ed Larson]

Most commonly, though, saints would fast, meaning they would starve themselves. Starvation calls ketosis in humans, which can produce the distinct odor of acetone. Now, acetone does not have a conventionally pleasant scent, but it is a Smell that was probably conjured or in your memory the second I mentioned it. In other words, it's very distinctive. And it's likely that acetone or nail polish remover as it's used today is the odor of sanctity.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know, I was looking the. I was looking up, why is garlic used? Because a lot of times they talk a lot about the power of the smell of garlic and how it's holy, it can heal you. We know now that garlic does have actual, like, healing properties or whatever, antiviral thing. But I was, like, trying to find out because it was also one of the. I believe it's hectate. Is that how you pronounce it?

[Ed Larson]

Probably the goddess. The goddess. The witch, yes, the witch goddess. Hecate.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hecate, yeah. Oh, I love a cold Hecate. In a summer day, they sacrifice garlic to her, and it's been around for a long time. And I was really looking up, like, why garlic? Why does it. Why does it turn against vampires? Like, why is this? And it's legitimately, it seems. Seems it's just. Cause it smells like that.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And that when they first found it and they cracked it open, they were like, whoa, what's that? And that makes me kind of feel weird. And they're like, must be salt magic. And then they just stuck like that forever.

[Ed Larson]

Great. Now, every part of a saint's corpse was supposed to be imbued with virtus, and that included their bodily secretions. Blood and even soil stained with all of the horrible things that leak from our bodies after we die, was collected and mixed with oils that were believed to be full of supernatural powers. Peasants. Peasants would scrape up soil that a saint's corpse had touched and mix it into their water. And the water used to wash the saint's corpse was collected and sold for a tidy sum. But if you wanted a discount magic potion, you could buy water that had been poured through a saint's tomb. And that was discount because it only had trace amounts of virtus.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Did it.

[Marcus Parks]

Did this kill people?

[Ed Larson]

Probably, yeah, I did.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, people say dysentery, like, easily, right?

[Ed Larson]

Most likely.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, everyone shits when they die.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, they did not. They said a lot of times one of the ways they could tell you're about to be magically healed is that you spent a long time getting. Being more sick than you've ever been.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You would go through a night of night sweats. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Thank God.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Now because. Yeah, now because there was so much magic and therefore so much obvious profit from Having even a piece of a saint's corpse in your town. Christians would often voraciously dismember the corpse of a holy person as soon as they die.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's cool.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, honestly, spread me around. I have one resting place.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I walked by St. Peter's the other day and I remember they have. What's it, Carol O Connor. What's his name? The guy, the big cardinal that everybody likes. The guy that was there.

[Marcus Parks]

Carol O'Connor.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He's from. He's there from the. Michelle.

[Marcus Parks]

Archie Bunker.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He's Archie Bunker. There's somebody else, some Irish guy. But I just kept thinking how fun it would be if you just put out that fat bastard's corpse in a big box and we just go up there with ice picks and just cut little pieces off them and that's all. That's what New York got to do for a Wednesday.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Well, organs were removed and stored in urns while the rest of the corpse was placed in a temporary reliquary until a proper tomb, basically a tourist attraction could be built.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And they're nice. All these reliquaries I looked at are very.

[Ed Larson]

Reliquary is the thing that the saints. The. The reliquary.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's what I got wrong last time.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. The reliquary is the thing that the saints remains are contained within. And the tomb or the church is what contains the reliquary.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Like I saw one that was very, very ornate. It was like this trifolding thing in the center of it. It was a reliquary that contained Mary Magdalene's tooth. And in it was this thing that didn't look like a tooth but it looks like a shard of something ancient in the very center of it. And the other one I saw was awesome. Where they put a skull in it and had a. A dude inside of it for forever until eventually someone came and knocked the hole in the back of the thing and took the skull out of it to go bring it other places. Cuz that's what they would do. Cuz that's how you took it. Essentially you just have to steal it. Like the old version of stealing your God.

[Marcus Parks]

You probably needed an ashtray.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. And we're going to get into that later. Like all the different thefts.

[Marcus Parks]

Hell yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Once the tomb was ready, monks would boil the Saints bodies until only bones were left.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's the broth thing I was talking about earlier. We'll get into this later.

[Ed Larson]

After which they would be enshrined in a reliquary. A container for holy relics, while the head was separated and displayed as a protective talisman for the town. But if the original saint of the town's tomb wasn't drawn the crowds it once did, and a newer, more popular saint came along, then the old saint would be moved to a shittier tomb in a smaller town to make for the new flavor. In a way, these were like reboots for the tomb. Same familiar location and concept, new storyline.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's always been this way. Yeah, you're just one minute you're in, the next week you're out.

[Marcus Parks]

It's just so crazy because, like, they would put up heads to, like, scare people, but then they'd also put up heads to, like, worship and protect people.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Humans are one of the most complicated primates that you see outside of the zoo, my friends.

[Ed Larson]

I think the lesson here is that in the Middle Ages, people were very comfortable with dismembered heads.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, these guys, they saw them a lot.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Well, the bones and relics of the saints would also be locally traded between communities based on who was most in need of saintly virtus. This of course, led to a large number of arguments and feuds, as well as physical skirmishes and all out espionage. For example, in the year 866, a group of monks from one abbey were jealous of the popularity and profitability that another abbey was enjoying because they held the bones of Saint Faith. Saint Faith was an OG saint who was cooked to death over a red hot brier by the Romans when she was 12 years old for refusing to make pagan sacrifices.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And Saint Faith was the actual patron.

[Ed Larson]

Saint of slow cookers, also known as Saint Foy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Saint Foy.

[Ed Larson]

Now, Saint Faith was a very popular saint. So the monks at the covetous abbey sent a guy undercover to St. Faith's original abbey on a long con so they could be the ones in charge of the bones of a tween girl.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hallelujah. Let us in. We're a bunch of wet, naked girls. What we need is some shelter because our brass heaving and shuddering, the Trojan whores.

[Ed Larson]

Well, after spending a decade ingratiating himself with the abbey.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, that's real. That's a real fucking spy.

[Marcus Parks]

They had more time back then.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. The undercover monk spirited away the bones of Saint Faith late one night, setting off a protracted rivalry between the two abbeys that involved legal battles and the occasional fist fight.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He was never a sexy girl. He was never a sexy girl. He lied. And all the times I made fuck to it.

[Ed Larson]

Well, in the end, the monks who stole the bones kept them at their reliquary, where they're still occasionally on display to today. Incidents like the thievery of St Faith's bones happen so often. There's actually a phrase for it, fertum sacrum, or holy robbery.

[Marcus Parks]

Ferm sacrum means stealing the little girl's bones.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I actually saw a couple of ferdum sanctums on the way to Union Square this morning out there, people looking good, people working out, a lot of walking.

[Ed Larson]

Now, towns and abbeys weren't just attached to their relics because of what they stood to gain from tourism. Remember, these people truly believed in this stuff. And in the end, the most important resource of a saint relic was the virtus, because it was the virtus that produced miracles.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But the virtus is also what drove the economic part of it. And like we talked about the last episode, where there were towns built around these, like, tourist areas built around these areas. It. The virtus was another. I feel like there was always people that were true believers and people that were very cynical about what was going on.

[Marcus Parks]

And I do think guys who sold the rosary beads.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes. And the guys, they would manipulate the true believers into handling the bad. I feel like they're the ones there cleaning the reliquary, doing all the dumb. They're the guys who show up and collect all the money at the end of the day, and they're the ones who notice because why would saints go in and out of favor if they didn't, like, in one way, probably don't have the same juice. No, there's probably less people getting more vertus. They're saying, oh, you know, my blind aunt went to Saint Bing Bong, and she. She got. She's not blind anymore. Right. Cool, Whatever. But then I went there and I'm still got a three inch dick.

[Ed Larson]

You know what I mean?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Like, it's that thing where you're like, then maybe they're moving on to another saint. And so then they're watching it from the outside in a cynical way, knowing that the vertus means money.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. Because virtus is what produces miracles. Virtus is the juice that produces the miracle. And this is why people still to this day take pilgrimages to pray at the tombs of saints, because they believe that the virtus can directly and concretely answer their prayers, which are usually associated with curing a disease or healing an injury. It's said that a pilgrim has to spend anywhere between nine days and three weeks before a saint will deem Them worthy of attention. But when it does happen, it is said that bones and nerves can be heard cracking and popping back into place.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What the fuck? Why is it like that?

[Ed Larson]

While those who are diseased sweat out their malady over a long night? And this is why. This is why people will flock to a fucking stain that looks like the Virgin Mary. Because they think, oh, it's got Vertus.

[Henry Zabrowski]

If I hang in front of it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So you have to hang with it. Like our old timey weed dealers.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You have to go, like, hang out and just be, like, a comedy and, like, put FaceTime in.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, man. Not at least nine days. It's not like where you have to fucking go over to the guy's house and watch, like, two episodes of Weeds before you're allowed to leave.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Why do I think it's actually more straightforward? Just pay for it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Instead of hanging out, just pay for it.

[Ed Larson]

Well, eventually it did get to that, and that was why we have Protestantism.

[Marcus Parks]

How many people hung out with, like, Virgin Mary toast for nine days? Like, this isn't working.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This sucks. This toast is not funny. And the more I look at. That's a blob. This is a toast of malfunction. I don't believe in God anymore.

[Ed Larson]

But around the 13th century, people were reporting that they were receiving miracles from saints without being near a tomb or a relic. These people said they had been healed simply by praying to drawn or painted depictions of saints. This opened up a whole new line of merch for Christianity. Christianity. Prayer cards, which are still sold to this day.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, my grandmother. The entire wall was prayer cards.

[Marcus Parks]

Every funeral, they give you one. They like, pick. Pick a saint for you, and they give you one. You put your name on the back, and all of a sudden, that's your saint.

[Ed Larson]

Yep. That ain't free.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But isn't that interesting that they, like. That's another. You know, this is where the history of religion I find. Because it's, In a way, it's a business, and it's not. So, like, they let the audience tell them what they'll buy.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So they were like, oh, you want this? All right, we can make that. We know a lot of painters. Yeah. You know.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, man. I went to a. A store outside the Vatican, and it's just like holy water. It's like, come on. You telling me that the Pope came by, blessed this?

[Henry Zabrowski]

There you go. Hey, make sure I get 10%.

[Marcus Parks]

Wave your arms in front of the store like it's blessed.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Boom.

[Ed Larson]

Done.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Here you go. Bless Sparrows is your bless. Coca Cola zero. You know, like, that's easy. That's going to be awesome.

[Ed Larson]

Him as pope now. Right around the turn of the 12th century, the church declared that no saint could be canonized without papal authorization, because it became clear to the Church that they needed to guide the future of their religion so it wouldn't become muddled and or infused with ideas they considered dangerous. But even though this decree came from the Pope himself, people still worshiped their local saints for centuries, some of whom still aren't canonized to the day. The best example of this kind of so called folk saint is a woman named Vilafortis, whose legend arose in Portugal in the 14th century. According to the story, Vilafortis was a teenager who'd been betrothed to a Moorish king. She wanted nothing to do with the marriage, so she took a vow of virginity and prayed to God to make her ugly somehow.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Make me ugly, which is so hard as a Portuguese lady.

[Ed Larson]

God did so by giving Ville Gefortis a big bushy beard. Whoa. And the Moorish king withdrew the engagement soon after.

[Henry Zabrowski]

According to official court documents, he said, ew.

[Ed Larson]

Villefortis father, however, was so incensed that his daughter had done such a thing that he had her publicly crucified.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He wasn't confused. He wasn't like. Honestly though, if you like, I think that's gotta be at least conflicting where you like, you know, I'm mad that you messed this up for the family, but it's crazy that you have a beard now, right? It's not just like. That means it works. That means that we could pray to him for other.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, if you have your daughter crucified, do you have to pay for it?

[Henry Zabrowski]

According to tradition, yes. Normally the father of the crucified has to pay for it.

[Ed Larson]

Now, per the rules, Ville Gefortis meets the criteria of a saint, a martyr with one miracle. Although the martyr part is debatable.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, because it wasn't necessarily for God. It was because she didn't want to marry the guy, but God helped her.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, but I think the reason behind the Church's refusal to canonize Vilafortis and why her veneration was eventually actively suppressed, was because Vilafortis was a rebellious woman who disobeyed her father and rebelled against the idea that a woman is a thing to be traded. And God, by giving her a beard, was on her side.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's true. It's God chose. God said, all right, I'll make you ugly.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. God said, yeah, you're right. You shouldn't have to marry this guy. You shouldn't be treated like property.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But if he was a real man, he'd shave that beard and he'd kiss you anyway because it's what's underneath that counts. And comes down to. That's why I had to shave my beard. Because you got to show. You got to be reveal. You have to reveal to your wife, St. Gillette.

[Ed Larson]

Well, in addition, Vil Jafortis was and sometimes still is called upon by women who want to escape abusive husbands. And we all know that the Catholic Church is of the firm opinion that you should stay with your spouse until you die, no matter how miserable or abused you might be.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's almost the point. It's almost like you should then definitely stay because that's your trial. Congratulations.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, you get to become closer to sainthood because you have this. You have all these examples of all these people who suffered for Christ and suffering brings you suffering brought the saint closer to Christ. So to can you be brought closer to Christ by staying in a horrible marriage now?

[Marcus Parks]

So can you ask for forgiveness if you murder your husband?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Always.

[Marcus Parks]

Don't get divorced. Just kill him.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Exactly. Exactly. And put all your reasons on the bullet casings because it's fun as hell for everybody else.

[Ed Larson]

Having built.

[Marcus Parks]

America. Kill my mother.com.

[Henry Zabrowski]

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[Ed Larson]

Another change the church made when they were rewriting the rules of sainthood was to even further loosen up who could be considered a saint. Reacting to outside pressures, the church offered up a new kind of saint who could be canonized simply for being an extremely virtuous human being.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Is it just because of. Talent Pool was thinning.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, they just said they just needed more time. And it was also.

[Henry Zabrowski]

How do we expand again?

[Ed Larson]

No, it was also because the people were asking for it. The people were like, hey, there's this guy. He's fucking amazing.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Make him a saint. Why?

[Ed Larson]

Come on, make him a saint. Why not?

[Marcus Parks]

Do we know how many saints there are?

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's a great question, Eddie. It's more than 10,000. It was an editing joke for you. You don't know because it was an editing joke.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, but now it's. Now they do. Well, the man who inspired this change, whose horrible name is right up there with Reprobus, was an extremely popular Italian tailor named Homo Bonus.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Homo Bonus.

[Marcus Parks]

Extra gay.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, dude, I got two butts. It's great. That's great for him.

[Ed Larson]

I mean, how is it. I can't imagine how it's pronounced in Italian. Like Homo Bonus.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I think it might be Homobanis.

[Ed Larson]

Homo Bonus.

[Marcus Parks]

I'll say it faster, I think.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, that's always how you get through everything. That's how I do it.

[Ed Larson]

Homo Bonus. Well, Homobanus was an honest mer. It's horrible. Anyway, he was an honest merchant who gave most of his money to the poor. And because he was so popular, he became Saint Homo Bonus after his death.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's so hard to call it when you. When you spell alligator. There's no dash in there. I mean, there's no homo.

[Marcus Parks]

We didn't write his name.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We're just giggling because we don't know not to address Homobanis.

[Ed Larson]

Homobidus. Saint Homobanus, after his death, became patron saint of tailors, shoemakers, and businessmen.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Now, not stopping there. The church also formalized the process of making a recently dead person a saint, which included interrogating witnesses about miracles and interviewing people who knew them to make sure they were as virtuous as the petitioner said, which included an investigation.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And think about what you're willing to say when a guy from the Vatican shows up and he's asking all these questions, you're good. And you are. If you're talking to somebody from the Vatican and you're not in trouble, you are, like, you're obviously a super fan, right? You're. You're there to talk to them about it. They're going to ask you pointed questions about your homo bonus friend, right? They're going to say, what. What did he do? What were his miracles? And you're going to want to make that guy happy. Yeah. I think you're going to want to tell that guy exactly what he wants to hear and more. And they're going to go like, wow. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Imagine getting jealous, though, like, your buddy dies and he sucks, you know? And then the Vatican shows up and they're like, tell us, you know, is Jerry Saint?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Where?

[Marcus Parks]

They're like, fucking Jerry.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Jerry's the guy. Let me ask. Let me ask you, how'd you get that? All right? I've been doing these fucking Zoom Saint auditions for the last four years.

[Ed Larson]

Well, if it was said that a Satan waiting had miraculously healed a person, a church official would be sent out to see if the healed person had remained clear of the malady from which they'd been cured. Because it was only a miracle if a person was permanently healed. In other words, you had to pass the sniff test and you had to pass it thoroughly. And one saint who was thoroughly sniffed was Clare of Montefalco. While she was alive, St. Clair was supposedly capable of what we would call astral projection, in which she would fall into a deep religious trance and leave her body to join in loving union with the soul of God.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, I did that too, man. It's called mushrooms, man.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, bro.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, bro.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Fucking sticky leaf. That's all you need, man.

[Marcus Parks]

Patriot saint of mescaline.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Dude, she's just getting fucked by God.

[Ed Larson]

Super fucked.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, I mean, seriously, she going up there? Is that what she means by communion with the Holy Spirit?

[Ed Larson]

Loving union with the whole, with the soul of God. Does sound like doggy style.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It sounds like, oh, let's hit that doggy style alarm.

[Ed Larson]

Well, according to witnesses, her face.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's been a hard week, all right? I lost a good friend. Two days ago, I lost a good friend out in the open. I can't believe he's gone. I've been missing him ever since. God, I just. I've not been right. Oh, God.

[Ed Larson]

According to witnesses, her face would brightly glow during these trances, and people would Poke her body to get her to stir and would even try moving her. But St. Clair's physical form was as solid as a rock when her soul was visiting God. Once Claire died, though, the clergy cut open her corpse as they usually did with people who were already on their way to sainthood. But this time, to check a claim Claire had made in which she felt as if her physical heart contained a physical cross, they opened up the organ.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Whoa.

[Ed Larson]

Supposedly located in the chambers of her heart. They found a tiny crucifix, a tiny crown of thorns, and a tiny whip.

[Marcus Parks]

Dominatrix.

[Ed Larson]

A scourge. You know, for a. You know that You. You know, you do. The self flagellation. The scourge.

[Marcus Parks]

Are they sure the cross was an iud?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Get all the way up into our.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Heart, yet sometimes you on a too hard of a horse ride.

[Marcus Parks]

Little cross in the uterus. Protecting my wife from my semen.

[Henry Zabrowski]

By the power of Christ. The power of Christ to compel you. Come.

[Ed Larson]

Well, figuring if one organ was holy, maybe others would be as well, they opened up her gallbladder and found three gallstones which to represent the Holy Trinity. She was sick.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey, listen, I know this sound crazy, right? You cut her boobies off so I could play with them. Listen, I just want to see what it's like, okay? I've never just played with boobies without a woman next to him.

[Ed Larson]

And so Claire of Montefalco became St. Clair. Now, besides just the control issue, another problem the Catholic Church had with the populism model of sainthood was that there were a lot of people who were locally worshiped as saints who didn't really have a reputation outside of their own village. In addition, many of these populous saint saints were usually just well loved local Christians who'd been killed or murdered in horrible ways, but hadn't necessarily been martyred.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This is just so many people just saying, I'm sorry. You got diced up to death after death, and it's like, man, they're dead, they don't know.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. You didn't get killed in London. You got killed in some little shire and so no one gives a. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

For example, there was Radagunda Veldenberg.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yep.

[Ed Larson]

He was a farm servant. Eaten by wolves, but also good guy. So Saint Radagon.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's it? That's all he was.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

She's a good guy.

[Ed Larson]

She's a good guy. There was Panasia of Corona, who was murdered by her mother in law.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What'd she do?

[Ed Larson]

Bad death.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, bad death.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But she's a nice lady.

[Ed Larson]

The worst. The worst was a German pilgrim named Nun who was unjustly accused of being a pedophile by a village. She was just passing through and was subsequently burned alive.

[Henry Zabrowski]

See, that's not sainthood. I call that like a mulligan. There's a bunch of guys going like, hey, listen, I'm sorry. We had just seen. What was it? The. Than the one with Sean Penn where.

[Marcus Parks]

They beat the grave.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Miss the grave. Yeah. So I was all fucking. Oh, man. I was keyed up.

[Ed Larson]

I'm sorry. We thought that Jimmy the pedophile was out of town that week.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We didn't know.

[Ed Larson]

It was.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Just turned out that he was there the whole time.

[Marcus Parks]

I think they should investigate the priest that made a mistake and be like.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey, sometimes mistakes are made. We gotta think about this.

[Ed Larson]

Well, in one case from the 13th century, a town in France actually canonized a dog.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Saint Guinefor the greyhound.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That totally demoralizes every other meaning of the saints.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, I'd much rather hang out with a bunch of dogs and saints.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Of course, according. But still, like, if you're. Like if. If you think that you're the holiest of holies. And then suddenly they let a dog in.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Super dogs there.

[Marcus Parks]

Was it Saint Bernard?

[Ed Larson]

It was greyhound. No, God damn it. God damn it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He got you.

[Ed Larson]

He got me. He got me. He got me. Well, according to legend, the dog had been left alone with its master's child, and the dog protected the child in his master's absence by violently killing a snake that had slithered its way into their home.

[Marcus Parks]

Fuck. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

But when the child's parents returned, they found the dog first, who presented himself with bloody jaws. Coming immediately to a very reactive conclusion that the dog had eaten their baby. The parents killed the dog immediately.

[Marcus Parks]

These French always jump in a conclusion.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They love killing dogs.

[Ed Larson]

But when they heard the child. But when the parents heard the child crying, probably because he was distressed by the noise that had been made when the parents killed the dog.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's super noisy to immediately kill a dog. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

The parents rushed to the kid's room and found the dead mangled snake nearby.

[Henry Zabrowski]

C'est la vie.

[Ed Larson]

Say what the hell?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey, hey, child. Every cigarette I know you are Now I know you are. In the up to one peck a day.

[Ed Larson]

The parents realized their mistake and dropped Gwinefort's body down a well, which was then covered with stones and planted with trees. It actually became an extremely popular shrine where large miracles were said to occur, presumably because St. Gwynnefort was such a good boy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What happened to the parents?

[Ed Larson]

They took care of the. They took care of the shrine.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, wow.

[Ed Larson]

Like, they dedicated their lives to the shrine of Saint Gwyneth.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, this other guy can crucify his daughter. These. These people can kill a dog.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Wow. Yeah. Let's hold space for them.

[Ed Larson]

But the point is, when dogs and farm workers started making the cut, the church realized that it needed to put the people in their place, both spiritually and socially. So they switched the focus of saints from regular people to nobles, royalty, and clergy to remind everyone who God's chosen really were. Well, when they would investigate the canonization of all these nobles, the nobility and the clergy tended to back each other when it came to proclaiming their virtues, because it was in the interest of the ruling class to appear as if they were favored by God over the peasants in every way.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And they didn't just take that as their station in life. Showed them.

[Ed Larson]

No.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That they were special.

[Ed Larson]

This also helped reaffirm the concept of primogeniture in royalty.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's what I mean.

[Ed Larson]

Where the firstborn inherits the titles and powers of the king because God wants him to do that, no matter how horrible of a ruler a person might be. But the practice of canonizing nobility and royalty was particularly popular in France and England, although the practice of canonizing kings started off way back in the early days of Christianity as yet another tool for recruitment rather than simple subjugation.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. And also just shows that the. The. The rulers are now in charge. Like this. Us making it even more powerful. Like, that's kind of what I mean, where the dog one kind of lowers, but the king ones raise the value of the other saints.

[Marcus Parks]

The dog ones probably sold a lot of amulets.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It did.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. It very much did. Yeah. It was the patron saint of babies in France for centuries.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Literally. Yeah. It made him a lot of money.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Well, the oldest holy king was Saint Sigismund, the king of Burgundy in what is now France. Died 523 AD he strangled his own son to death, then was beheaded and thrown down a well by his rival, Clodir.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He's a real saint. Yeah. That's what I like. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

But that's all to say that Sigismund hardly lived a noble life, nor did he die a martyr's death.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You see, it's the. It's the Homer Bart meme.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know what I mean?

[Ed Larson]

But Sigismund was the first barbarian leader of the Gauls to convert to Catholicism. So it was in the church's best Interest to rewrite his history and make him a saint so a cult could form around him.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's big brain thinking and that changes a lot of shit because you're trying to bring. You're trying to convert these guys. Guys.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's so much better than just killing them, because then you get them too.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And to further tighten their grip, the Catholic Church would elevate long dead leaders of converted regions into sainthood, rewriting their story before aggressively spreading it to prevent a backslide into paganism. You can't revert to a story that's not there anymore. By the Middle Ages, however, Christianity had become the dominant religion in Western Europe. So this retroactive manipulation of history was no longer necessary. Instead, they had to worry about canonizing nobility in the here and now. To secure their future and their power. The Catholic Church began rejecting all canonization requests from the people and instead transformed the process of canonization into an industry of preparing nobility and clergy for sainthood while they were still alive. Basically, it's like padding a college application with extracurricular activities.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Tell me, I know your GPA looks very good, but have you killed your son? That might actually help. Some of the numbers here we're finding. If we look at some of the cross references. Can be a dog, can you kill a dog? Can you kill a dog?

[Marcus Parks]

Can you be eaten by wolves?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Can your blood make me not sick anymore?

[Marcus Parks]

But this is like how we got like St. Edward, who was a king. Yeah, it was King Edward. And he just like, he's like, ah, you. When I die, I'm going to be a saint. And everyone's like, of course, then you.

[Ed Larson]

Can have a couple of people like afterwards, they're like, yeah, I prayed to St. Edward and he cured my drop seed.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah, he was over there. I was having a hard time coming up with the new mix for the Yay album. And I prayed to St Eugene that next thing you know, hubba dubba dump. The dump bump. Hubba dub dump. I was fired.

[Ed Larson]

But before long, contemporary martyrs began to reappear in the Catholic religion. After the Middle Ages, when Henry VIII created the Church of England because the Pope had refused to grant him a divorce in 1534, half a century later, the relationship between the Church of England and the Catholics had gotten pretty acrimonious. So the Anglicans declared Catholic priests to be guilty of high treason simply for existing on.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, drink them up.

[Ed Larson]

The Anglicans ain't fucking great either.

[Henry Zabrowski]

String them up. Get out of them. I said get out of them. Well, this is Again, I like religion when it's this openly a scam. This is when you're, like, you see how little it really matters. They're just making up the rules as they go.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. In addition, those who harbor Catholics, and especially Catholic priests, could be fined, imprisoned, and executed. And that's how a woman named Margaret Clithero came to become one of the many martyred saints killed. Killed by the British.

[Henry Zabrowski]

She's a real clit hero.

[Ed Larson]

You're not like, clit hero.

[Marcus Parks]

It's hard on the thumbs.

[Henry Zabrowski]

How do you think I busted my wrist?

[Ed Larson]

In addition, those who clar. Heroes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Now, Margaret probably would have never been discovered hiding priests had she not been so arrogant. Flags were raised when she loudly sent her son Henry to train for the priesthood in France. And when Margaret's husband was summoned for questioning, he folded almost immediately. Seems like Margaret's husband didn't really like her very much.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. I don't know why, though. It sounds like she's a lovely woman, you know?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. She seemed very. Just. She seemed very, very, very, very, very, very Catholic. And I think her husband really didn't.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Give a. Yeah, no, he's just, like. Just. I don't care.

[Marcus Parks]

Maybe it's just because Margaret is a really fun name to yell.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Margaret.

[Marcus Parks]

God damn it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Margaret. Margaret. I have had it with your nonchalance.

[Ed Larson]

When Clithrow's house was searched, soldiers very quickly found Catholic priests in a hidden room that was built specifically for this purpose.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Priest shaped tubes.

[Ed Larson]

These rooms. Seriously called priestholes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Aw, cute.

[Ed Larson]

Were built in houses all over England and still exist in some structures today.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Put them head first. Yeah, dude. Just a. Just a hole. Just like a literal hole.

[Ed Larson]

Well, it's a little hidden room. Oh, no, it's not like, just a hole. Like a literal, like, hole. Like Looney Tunes hole in the ground.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He pops his head up like. Like a little groundhog.

[Marcus Parks]

It's like a pantry.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Now, Margaret refused to plead guilty or innocent one way or another after she was arrested so her children wouldn't be compelled to testify against her.

[Marcus Parks]

It's like Colonel Clink.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I know nothing.

[Ed Larson]

Now, as was the custom at the time for people who refused to plead one way or another in the English judicial system, she was sentenced to death by pressing. Crushed to death. All while being pregnant with her fourth child.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Whoa. That's how you pop.

[Marcus Parks]

How does that happen?

[Ed Larson]

I'm gonna ignore that because I knew. I knew you were gonna mention something about it, because it popped into my head, too. Yeah, it did. It did.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, it depends on how many months Pregnant she is.

[Henry Zabrowski]

At that time, it's technically, you're no longer a lady, you're a gusher. Can we please move on?

[Ed Larson]

Now, two British sergeants were supposed to carry out the dreaded task of crushing a pregnant woman with rocks. But not having the heart, they hired four beggars to take their place.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And they're all like, yeah, I can't wait. Yeah, I've been thinking about this for a long time. What do you think, Radio Joe? Do we get the keeper?

[Ed Larson]

Come on.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I want some of the slime. Can I have what's left of the baby? I want to eat it. These guys are great. Task rabbit go. Helps me with everything.

[Ed Larson]

Well, after stripping Margaret down and tying a handkerchief across her face, the beggars lay Margaret on a sharp rock about the size of a man's fist and placed it in the small of her back. Then they took the door from her own home, which that was part of the custom of pressing to death. It had to be a door from their own home. And they laid it on on top of her. Finally, they started stacking rocks on the door little by little, 10 pound by 10 pound by 10 pound.

[Marcus Parks]

Crazy.

[Ed Larson]

The torture was designed so the sharp rock would break her back before she died. And all told, the slow crushing of Margaret Clithro took an excruciating 15 minutes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Damn. And they knew that she was finally dead, like the Wicked witch of the west because of her name. Her labias just popped out at the bottom of the door at the very, very end that suddenly knew she was done.

[Marcus Parks]

And then a boat sank because loose lips sink ships.

[Henry Zabrowski]

See, that's too far. That's too far because that's not even on topic.

[Ed Larson]

No, it's really not.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's not even on topic.

[Ed Larson]

No, it's quite a non sequitur, Edward.

[Marcus Parks]

Sorry.

[Ed Larson]

St. Margaret, however, wasn't canonized until 1970 when she and dozens of other martyrs time period were canonized in a ceremony honoring a group that sounds like a bad British Invasion ban. Cuthbert main and the 39 Companion Martyr.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Top of the Pops this week.

[Ed Larson]

This week on Top of the Pops we've got Coot at main and the 39 Companion Martyr with the head.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Strawberry Sunset. It's the Strawberry Sunset and I can see the day.

[Marcus Parks]

Go grab the door and I'll get the stones.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Preston of Preggy. Ever seen that? You ever seen Preston Preggy?

[Marcus Parks]

That's a B side, I think.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Have you seen this? Have you heard this?

[Ed Larson]

Really rare. Yeah. But before we go, let's cover one more saint one who is said to have had an actual magical powers.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This is my favorite one.

[Ed Larson]

Although it seems like his powers were completely out of his control and totally accidental. He's more like an X man than spider man. This saint was named Joseph of Cupertino. According to Franciscan accounts from the 17th century, Joseph was, quote unquote, remarkably unclever, but was able to achieve regular bouts of levitation and he would have ecstatic visions.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Now, for ecstatic visions, just understand that what that is. It's like you, you're having like a trance state. Now, Joseph of Cupertino was a local simpleton that was very. They all liked him, everyone liked it. And he came up there going like, hey, everybody, you got. You guys see paracris? And it was just like, oh, hey Jo. You know, being like, oh, he's really manhandling the sugar packets. Get off of the sugar packets. You know, we love him though. We love. You know, he's. You need help? In the back of me getting the eggs, being like, no, Joe, we don't need help. Thank you, though. Thank you so much. You're so sweet.

[Ed Larson]

But instead of being venerated for his regular bouts of levitation in which he would fly, Joseph was deemed disruptive and was confined to a small cell where he was forbidden from joining any public gathering.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I don't feel bad because I just don't want to bum anybody out. So if I feel like I need to be in here, then that's fine for me.

[Marcus Parks]

A fun new expression is, he's so dumb, he floats.

[Ed Larson]

Well, partly this is because levitation was widely connected not to a godly blessing, but devilish witchcraft. As such, Joseph was very lucky to not end up on the rack, especially after he was put up for an official inquisition.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's just kind of fun to be in a new place. Everybody ask me questions and stuff. I hope you guys found the power of Christ where you could have put that. Let's nail him in the fucking forehead. Let's turn his bones into fucking confetti.

[Marcus Parks]

If you think that's a good idea, go ahead.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Makes you feel good.

[Ed Larson]

But instead of being tortured to death, Joseph was passed from one friary to another until he finally landed with an understanding group of Capuchin friars in the Italian town of FA Sombrone. He lived a simple life until his death and was canonized a little over 100. But concerning his so called miracles, it's been suggested that Joseph of Cupertino may have actually just been a very talented, if misunderstood, gymnast.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What does that even mean?

[Marcus Parks]

According, according they Never seen anyone do a backflip before. This guy was dumb enough to try.

[Ed Larson]

According to written accounts, some of his alleged levitations originated from a crouching position instead of being pro standing.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Kneeling. Hey, guys, look. Hey guys, look at you.

[Ed Larson]

Look.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey guys, look.

[Ed Larson]

It's possible that witnesses mistook a very impressive leap made by a Joe.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, wow. Great, Jo.

[Ed Larson]

No, no, no. A very impressive leap made by a very agile man as levitation. And the story just grew from there.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey, man, I get it. Air Jordan. He was like that. And he was, you know, he was good at business, good at basketball. Not great at being a father.

[Ed Larson]

No.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Even worse as a son. Whoa. Sadly. Sadly. But Joey just flied to float.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I just say the jumping jacks.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's kind of amazing that they didn't just fucking kill him.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it was. I think it was because he was not that bright.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Remarkably unclear.

[Marcus Parks]

Remarkably.

[Ed Larson]

Uncle. He was nice. He was very nice. And they're like, this guy can't. He's just floating there. And he also didn't really seem to enjoy it that much.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Because he would fly. Go. No. Oh no. Oh no. Somebody get a string.

[Ed Larson]

Oh no.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm going to be clown.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh no. And they're like, what do you do with that guy?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Every time they tried to kill him, the guy had a hammer next to his head. He's like, I can't do it.

[Ed Larson]

It's too cute.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He's too cute. He's so nice. He's so nice. What you doing with that hammer? You gonna put up a painting? What are you doing with it? Pretty cool. What are you doing? You wanna have. You wanna go out for lunch? God. God damn it, Joe. Send him to a friar. Just get down. Just get off the ceiling.

[Marcus Parks]

This map is real cute.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Get off.

[Ed Larson]

But nevertheless, because of Joseph of Cupertino's aerial abilities and his so called remarkable uncleanness, he has probably the widest span of patrons being both a patron saint of intellectual disabilities and astronauts.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, how bad do astronauts feel?

[Marcus Parks]

And that's where we get the insult. Your mom is an astronaut.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Here's your Joseph of Cupertino. Really? The patron saint of simple boys. Simple Jack is supposed to accompany me to the iss.

[Ed Larson]

That's it for the Saints for this second installment. Maybe we'll do more in the future. We, you know, we have more stories. There's. I mean, there's 10,000 saints.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Wacky and horrible.

[Ed Larson]

But yeah, I could even tell the story of Tommy Cantaloupe. We ran out of time.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, but guys, this Is not. I heard some conjecture that episode 600 was not going to come until 2025. And to those people, you're fucking dead ass wrong.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. There's a whole month till 2020.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Next week we begin a very large series that I'm very, very excited for. It's a story we've wanted to tell for a very long time. And this is going to be. It's going to be fun.

[Ed Larson]

It's going to be really fun. So many great characters in this. It's going to be a three parter. It's. I, I'm. I'm jazzed for this.

[Marcus Parks]

It's the story of my C section.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Five days long. Well, thank you guys so much. Go to patreon.com Last podcast on the left and you can pay to watch us flop around. We're here in the lovely. We got to thank these studios here.

[Marcus Parks]

Melrose.

[Ed Larson]

Melrose Podcast.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We're at Melrose Podcast. Thank you so much for having us. You guys were awesome. And go to LastPodcastLeft.com to buy tickets for our live show. We tomorrow night we are at King's Theater. Yeah, we are doing good for. Honestly, we're doing great for digging.

[Marcus Parks]

But we, we opened up the, the second balcony or whatever.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Come on out.

[Marcus Parks]

So there's a little extra room.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's an impossibly large room. So please come out. We're gonna have. We can't wait to be back. And we're in Philly tonight.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, we're in Philly tonight, but also in January. Don't forget. This be a great Christmas present. We're going to be in Atlanta on January 11th at the Coca Cola Roxy. And also after that, we'll be in Dallas, Nashville, Detroit, Toronto. Toronto.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And if you're looking for another really nice Christmas gift for your loved ones, get in your orders now for Spring Hill Jack coffee.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes, we have a brand new one. It's. We have a. We have a new line also coming.

[Ed Larson]

Out as we have a new line coming up. But they make but the. All the rest of the Spring Hill Jack. I'm a high strangeness man myself.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I love it. I like black, but I like. Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Hi. I'm a high strangers man. So yeah, go buy some Spring Hill Jack coffee for your loved ones.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, beautiful.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey, hail Satan and let's go be saint. Let's go be saintly today, Marcus.

[Ed Larson]

All right.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Go kill somebody at the hotel and ask for forgiveness at St. Peter's Hail Tia.

[Marcus Parks]

Nicole Blankenship. She's a fan that we lost this week, patron saint of last podcast network.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's very, very sweet. Absolutely. And thank you, Adam, our guest producer for today.

[Ed Larson]

Thank you, Adam.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

All right, bye.