What sets them apart from us is twofold. Firstly, their remarkable lives or deaths. Secondly, that their lives are no longer their own. A saint’s life is for us, far more than any monarch, minister or hero, who usually have a hand in how their story is spun. In death, saints’ lives are plucked up to be placed into the common basket of goodness, to become apples of instruction. Or at least they were, until knowledge and study of the lives of saints fell away in almost every faith to make way for the inspection of the lives of the famous. Why should a contemporary woman such as myself have anything to say about this Saxon Christian saint?
First published here with full transcript, notes and more images, June 5th 2023.
Episode 30 - In the company of saints